"Perverse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the glasses and half-glasses in which he had answered his friends' congratulations must have amounted to a considerable number. If he tried to concentrate his thoughts on any particular subject, they slipped away from him in the most perverse manner. He reflected vaguely that this was the kind of mood in which he had of old committed all manner of pleasant follies and youthful indiscretions. And why not? Was he not young, ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... bed, and thinking over all these marvellous visions, this perverse hypocrite came down from his mountain, placed his hollow stick to her ear, as before, and commanded her, once for all, to obey the message and take her daughter to the hermit for ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... at that moment returning to his place with a cup of hot coffee. By some perverse trick of fate his glance fell on Doble's sinister face of malignant triumph. His self-control snapped, and in an instant the whole course of his life was deflected from the path it would otherwise have taken. With ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... it. Although Mr. Dicey endeavors not to commit himself upon the vital differences in the agitation of anti-slavery sentiments by the Abolitionists and by the Republican party, it is very evident that he inclines to the belief that the former, in their advocacy of disunion, acted not from a perverse and fanatical philosophy, but from the logical compulsions of a critical understanding, stimulated by an intense conviction of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... STORY. An honest man, with a chance pleasantry, putteth to shame the perverse hypocrisy of the religious ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... 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. Because, indeed, I am not in the very least degree perverse in this fault of mine, which is my destiny rather than my choice, and comes upon me, I think, just where I would eschew it most. So little has perversity to do with its occurrence, that my fear of it makes me sometimes feel quite ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... twelve hours once more to get her to put the alarm on again. That sort of nonsense went on a week or two, then the expert came up and put in a new clock. He came up every three months during the next three years, and put in a new clock. But it was always a failure. His clocks all had the same perverse defect: they would put the alarm on in the daytime, and they would not put it on at night; and if you forced it on yourself, they would take it off again the minute your back ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... told concerning thee, fair planet—for I will ne'er believe that thou canst take a perverse pleasure in distorting the brains of us, poor mortals. Lunatics! moonstruck! Calumny invented, and folly took up, these names. I would hope better things from thy ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... refuge against reproach: but, on the contrary, the same sensitiveness that kept him so awake to the applauses of mankind rendered him, in a still more intense degree, alive to their censure. Even the strange, perverse pleasure which he felt in painting himself unamiably to the world did not prevent him from being both startled and pained when the world took him at his word; and, like a child in a mask before a looking-glass, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... too delicate to hear the truth, the mind will be too perverse to profit by it." And then Mr. Crawley got up to take his leave. But Lady Lufton insisted that he should go with her to luncheon. He hummed and ha'd and would fain have refused, but on this subject she was peremptory. It might be that she was unfit to advise a clergyman as to his ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... and the boy ridiculed him for it. He said terrible things to him, and the boy covered his face with his hands, as though he were crying; but he was laughing. He was suspended from school for three days, and he returned more perverse and insolent than before. Derossi said to him one day, "Stop it! don't you see how much the teacher suffers?" and the other threatened to stick a nail into his stomach. But this morning, at last, he ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... thus he flew, For ever changing, yet for ever true: Swoln with success, and with applause imflamed, He scorn'd all caution, all advice disclaim'd: Arm'd with war's thunder, he embraced no more Those patriot principles maintain'd before. Perverse, inconstant, obstinate, and proud, Drunk with ambition, turbulent and loud, He wrecks us headlong on that dreadful strand He once devoted all his powers to brand! 150 Our hapless country views with weeping eyes, On every side, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... first problem is to seek both the motor tendencies and the psychic motives bequeathed to us from the past. The view of Groos that play is practise for future adult activities is very partial, superficial, and perverse. It ignores the past where lie the keys to all play activities. True play never practises what is phyletically new; and this, industrial life often calls for. It exercises many atavistic and rudimentary functions, a number of which will abort before maturity, but which ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... circumstances—and Lucy requested him not to make himself ridiculous. It was too bad, she decided; here she had been looking forward to a delightful visit from George Leicester, probably a whole evening spent in his society, and now this pestilent cousin of hers must needs take it into his perverse head to walk over from Gosport—to be found later on by "dear George" making fierce love to her, the unfortunate Lucy;—which would be quite sufficient, she felt sure, to choke the said George off for at least another ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... is surrounded by people whom the law encourages to prey upon her. She is compelled to exert her energies at highest tension to earn the very large sums which are necessary, not to gain profits for herself, but to feed all the sharks who are eager to grab what is given to her. The blind or perverse zeal of the moral legislators not only intensifies the evils it aims at curing, but it introduces a ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... intensely nervous, but through it all she felt a perverse pleasure in irritating Miss Tasker, so she performed some grotesquely uncouth steps which raised a smile on ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... come by birth? Nay then—too often the reverse. Wise father oft has son perverse; Solomon's son ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... France? Those who look on the world as an arena for the exploits of heroes at the cost of ordinary mortals may applaud the scheme. But could men who were responsible to France regard it as anything but a final proof of Napoleon's perverse optimism, or a flash of his unquenchable ambition, or a last mad bid for power? He showed signs of anger on hearing of their refusal, but set out for Rochefort at 6 p.m.; and thus the Prussians were cheated of their ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... whole, the women are treated fairly well by their husbands, but for an occasional beating, which is often provoked by foolish behaviour; and they are taken care of, as they represent a great value. There are old ruffians, however, who take a perverse pleasure in torturing their wives, and these unhappy women are quite helpless, as they are entirely in the power of their husbands. Otherwise, the fate of the women is not as bad as many people think, and the severest rules have never yet prevented Eve ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... intellectual one, as his skill at repartee, and praises the literary crack shot, and defines manliness to be readiness, as he does in this last volume and in the preceding one, I am filled with a perverse envy of all the confused and stammering heroes of history. Is Washington faltering out a few broken and ungrammatical sentences, in reply to the vote of thanks of the Virginia legislature, less manly than the glib tongue in the court-room or in the club that can hit the mark every time? ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... Dieu severely, "must we exclaim, that abuses known by all the world, against which every voice is raised, have secret supporters who know how to defend them, in a manner to tire out well-meaning people? Must we speak of false characters, perverse hearts, that seemed to regard errors and abuses as their patrimony?" Let us dare to acknowledge it, Gentlemen, evil is generally perpetrated in a less wicked manner: it is done without the intervention of any strong passion; by vulgar, yet all-powerful routine, and ignorance. I observe the same ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... whatsoever came to his notice which was irregular or unbecoming or perverse his eye did not spare;[232] but as the hail scatters the untimely figs from the fig-trees,[233] and as the wind the dust from the face of the earth,[234] so did he strive with all his might to drive out before his face and destroy entirely such things from his people. And in place ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... give thyself wholly to laborious research into the nature of things, and diligently examine the causes and reasons of the art thou teachest, believe me, thou shalt but see with other men's eyes, and hear with other men's ears. But the minds of many are preoccupied with a certain perverse opinion, or rather ignorant conceit, that in grammar, or the art of speaking, there are no causes, and that reason is scarcely to be appealed to for any thing;—than which idle notion, I know of nothing more foolish;—nothing can be thought of which is more offensive. Shall ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... wailing wife; Oh, a weary way is the way of life! A heartless threat and a cruel blow And grief that the world can never know; A tongue obscene and a will perverse, A horrid oath and a muttered curse, A winter drear and a scanty meal, A heart so hard, oh, a heart of steel! A wizened look and an infant's cry, The cold, cold clutch of Poverty, A withered hand and a blanched cheek, Alone, and, ah, no friend to seek! A chilly hearth and ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... doubt exclaim, "How can Bonaparte employ, how dares he confide, in such a man?" Fouche is as able as unprincipled, and, with the most unfeeling and perverse heart, possesses great talents. There is no infamy he will not stoop to, and no crime, however execrable, that he will hesitate to commit, if his Sovereign orders it. He is, therefore, a most useful instrument in the hand of a despot who, notwithstanding what is said to the contrary in ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... the perverse little maid by boxing her ears, pinching her arm, or giving her a good spanking. They even tried to improve her temper by taking away her dinner, ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... it, Jackson," McLeod continued. "Nobody can get that money from me without my consent. Now it so happens that I want to help Earth; I have a certain perverse fondness for the human race, even though it is inconceivably backward by Galactic standards. We have about as much chance of ever becoming of any importance on the Galactic scale as the Australian aborigine ...
— A World by the Tale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... not doubt either his patriotism or his integrity; but he is vain beyond any man I have ever known, and, what is remarkable in a vain man, he is obstinate and self-willed and unyielding. His judgment, except in conducting a campaign in the field, is perverse and unsound; and when, added to all this, we consider that, if elected at all, it will be under the auspices of Seward and his Abolition associates, I fear for the fate of this Union." General Scott was mercilessly ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... dress lighter; her conversation, toned by the ideas of pride and self-love reflected from the society she moved in, was profane and irreligious; and soon the roses of Christian virtue that bloom in the cheek of innocent maidenhood became sick and withered in the heated, feverish air of perverse influences that tainted ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... the stream, his heart began to thump; he summoned up, however, all his resolution, gave his horse half a score of kicks in the ribs, and attempted to dash briskly across the bridge; but instead of starting forward, the perverse old animal made a lateral movement, and ran broadside against the fence. Ichabod, whose fears increased with the delay, jerked the reins on the other side, and kicked lustily with the contrary foot: it was all in vain; his steed started, it is true, but it was only to plunge to the opposite ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... your fine American principles," she said to Calvert, who was seated beside her at the table, "but because I like your Mr. Jefferson. For myself, I vastly prefer a king and a court, and I like titles and rank and power—all of which is heresy in your American ears, is it not?" she asked, with a perverse look. "However, Henri's enthusiasm is enough for us both," she said, smiling a little scornfully at her brother, who, indeed, was quite wild with enthusiasm, and was on his feet drinking Lafayette's toast of "Long life and prosperity ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... no foresight on the part of elders, and no gradual acclimatisation of a sensitive and ardent nature in the fixed principles which are essential to right conduct in the frigid zone of our relations with other people. It was one of the most elementary of Rousseau's many perverse and mischievous contentions, that it is their education by the older which ruins or wastes the abundant capacity for virtue that subsists naturally in the young. His mind seems never to have sought much ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Among them are observations on the famine year (he spent two months in one of the worst districts). In other articles he has analyzed a moral malady peculiar to our state of society:—honor. In the recent Russian duels he studied the perverse notions of honor and the moral changes produced by sickly egotism. He has studied the causes that bring about the complete loss of individuality. Finally, in 1910, he published under the title, "Present Customs (Notes of a Publicist under Sentence of Death)" a series of documents gathered ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... it is necessary to demonstrate that this poetic allusiveness is the characteristic of true slang. Such an expression as 'Keep your hair on' is positively Meredithian in its perverse and mysterious manner of expressing an idea. The Americans have a well-known expression about 'swelled-head' as a description of self-approval, and the other day I heard a remarkable fantasia upon this air. An American said that after the ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... I'm griev'd to see, That you can so ill-temper'd be; You make your faults a great deal worse, By being angry and perverse. ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... white clothes, his name red-lettered across his lower shirtfront, spluttering from under a green-lined umbrella almost tearful appeals to be introduced to the Unintroducible; naming loudly the Unnameable; dancing, as it seemed, in perverse joy at mere mention of the Unmentionable—found those limits. There was a moment's hush, and then such mirth as Gihon through his centuries had never heard—a roar like to the roar of his own cataracts in flood. Children cast themselves on the ground, and rolled back and forth cheering and ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... old lady's petticoat?" He replied, "No, I won't." "Then," said I, "here goes," and I struck my lash through her hooped petticoat, for which, no doubt, though I have forgotten it, I was properly punished. But, possibly from some want of judgement in punishments inflicted, I had become perverse and obstinate in defying chastisement, and rather proud of it than otherwise.' This last anecdote is as happily typical as a bit of Greek mythology which always prefigured the lives of heroes in the stories of ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... time of occurrence, which has nevertheless turned and altered his whole career. 'Tis with almost all of us, as in M. Massillon's magnificent image regarding King William, a grain de sable that perverts or perhaps overthrows us; and so it was but a light word flung in the air, a mere freak of perverse child's temper, that brought down a whole heap of crushing woes upon that family whereof ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... an author, or in the language or actions of men, is awry or depraved does strangely stir mean affections, and provoke for the most part to laughter. And therefore it was clear that all insolent and obscene speeches, jests upon the best men, injuries to particular persons, perverse and sinister sayings (and the rather unexpected) in the old comedy did move laughter, especially where it did imitate any dishonesty, and scurrility came forth in the place of wit, which, who understands the nature and genius of ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... exactly right. The book must be, anyhow, something benedictory by a sinning fellow-man. Cleverness would be repellent at such an hour. Cleverness, anyhow, is the level of mediocrity today; we are all too infernally clever. The first witty and perverse paradox blows out the candle. Only the sick in mind crave cleverness, as a morbid body turns to drink. The late candle throws its beams a great distance; and its rays make transparent much that seemed massy and important. The mind at rest beside that light, when ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... perceive the full significance of the emphatic statements in the twelfth chapter regarding our entire dependence for spiritual renovation, and all good, on the Holy Spirit. The words are: "Of nature we are so dead, so blind, and so perverse, that nether can we feill when we ar pricked, see the licht when it shines, nor assent to the will of God when it is reveiled, unles the Spirit of the Lord Jesus quicken that quhilk is dead, remove the darknesse from our myndes, and bowe our stubburne hearts to the obedience of His blessed ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... they ought to be," said Dolly, laughing now. "But somehow, Christina, I believe the ruins give me more pleasure than if they were all new and perfect—or even old and perfect. It is a perverse taste, I ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... was bent on destroying your son-in-law's home. To what end?—I know not. My brain is not equal to seeing clearly into these dark intrigues—perverse, ignoble, infamous! Your Madame Marneffe does not love your son-in-law, but she will have him at her feet out of revenge. I have just spoken to the wretched woman as she deserves. She is a shameless courtesan; I have told her that ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... around, and rigid in his trousers' straps—imposed upon his goddesses? Madame Colette Willy is a live woman, a real woman, who has dared to be natural and who resembles a little village bride far more than a perverse woman of letters. ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... instance. 'Every man dishonoured by dissipation,' says Sallust, 'who by his follies or losses at the gaming table had consumed the inheritance of his fathers, and all those who were sufferers by such misery, were the friends of this perverse man.' Horace, Juvenal, Persius, Cicero, and other writers, attest the fact of Roman gambling most eloquently, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... is and will be nowhere to be dreaded; the instinct of both races will prevent such mingling, and the blacks are as anxious to remain separate from the whites as the whites are to avoid alliance with the blacks. As I have said, nothing but slavery, and the perverse habits that it engenders, could have succeeded in some sort in breaking down this barrier. If the class of mullattoes thus formed rule in some republics of South America, it proceeds from the absence of a numerous and powerful white race, like that which is covering the United ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... to breathe. He was no parasite of royalty; he had that strong personal affection to the prince which it is often the good fortune of royalty to attract. Nothing is less founded than the complaint which poets put into the lips of princes, that they have no friends,—it is, at least, their own perverse fault if that be the case; a little amiability, a little of frank kindness, goes so far when it emanates from the rays of a crown. But Vernon was stronger than Lucretia deemed him; once contemplating ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and keep your eyes wide open; for, d'ye see, you've plenty to learn, and you can't begin too soon. We must square the mainyard, captain, if you please," continued he as we entered Blackwall Reach. "What could make the river so perverse as to take these two bends in Limehouse and Blackwall Reaches, unless to give pilots ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... his laborious endeavours after words suitable to the grandeur of his ideas. "Our language," says Addison, "sunk under him." But the truth is, that, both in prose and verse, he had formed his style by a perverse and pedantick principle. He was desirous to use English words with a foreign idiom. This in all his prose is discovered and condemned; for there judgment operates freely, neither softened by the beauty, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... nature perverse, and it was partly her love for Jimmy which pushed her towards the man who killed his son. But she had not told that even to herself. And she never told her secrets to other people, not even when they were ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... not meaning to make it, of her love to Romeo. She would fain have recalled her words, but that was impossible: fain would she have stood upon form, and have kept her lover at a distance, as the custom of discreet ladies is, to frown and be perverse, and give their suitors harsh denials at first; to stand off, and affect a coyness or indifference, where they most love, that their lovers may not think them too lightly or too easily won; for the difficulty of attainment ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... wrestled with the Arians and Polytheists, and though he affected the rigor of geometrical demonstration, his commentaries revealed the literal and allegorical sense of the Scriptures. A mystery, which had long floated in the looseness of popular belief, was defined by his perverse diligence in a technical form; and he first proclaimed the memorable words, "One incarnate nature of Christ," which are still reechoed with hostile clamors in the churches of Asia, Egypt, and Aethiopia. He taught that the Godhead was united or mingled with the body of a man; and that the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... hence it is that a Christian is not called a doer, a reasoner, an objector, and perverse disputer; but a BELIEVER. Be thou an example to the believer. 'And believers were the more added to the Lord,' &c. (Acts 5:14; 1 ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the door, her departing laugh rippling mockingly through the dusk. Alma picked up Gilbert Murray's letter and went to her room. She wanted to cry, since she could not shake Anna. Even if she could have shook her, it would only have made her more perverse. Anna was in earnest; Alma knew that, even while she hoped and believed that it was but the earnestness of a freak that would pass in time. Anna had had one like it a year ago, when she had cast Gilbert off for three months, driving ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... half instead of one fiftieth part of the nation. One Secretary of State, one Commissioner of the Treasury, the Secretary at War, the majority of the great dignitaries of the household, the majority of the officers of the army, are always to be Catholics. Such were the designs of James after his perverse bigotry had drawn on him a punishment which had appalled the whole world. Is it then possible to doubt what his conduct would have been if his people, deluded by the empty name of religious liberty, had suffered him to proceed without ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... somewhere rolls, The wicked River Plate; Upon its banks there flourish souls Perverse and reprobate. Ah, send your missionaries there! If haply it repents, I'll not surrender Eaton Square For Surrey's wild ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... a building such as she had not dreamed of in her wildest fantasies, and having very sweetly thanked the Arab, had clapped her hands, and being of perverse mood, had indifferently bidden him good night, and entered the rose pink sleeping-room where the couch had been designed by love, and the colouring reflected by the great mirrors by passion; to slip from out her perfumed raiment, and step down into the pink marble Roman bath and hide beneath ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... my attempts reach your ears, and {your} taste relishes {these} Fables, as being composed with skill, {my} success {then} banishes every complaint. But if, on the contrary, my learned labours fall into the hands of those whom a perverse nature has brought to the light of day, and {who} are unable to do anything except carp at their betters, I shall endure my unhappy destiny[18] with strength of mind, until Fortune is ashamed of her ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... The perverse bird had heard Giles often dictate this avowal, but had entirely refused to repeat it, till, stimulated by the new surroundings, it had for the first time ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... now be evident that the mainspring of the undeniable and volcanic power of 'Sartor Resartus' (and the same is true of Carlyle's other chief works) is a tremendous moral conviction and fervor. Carlyle is eccentric and perverse—more so in 'Sartor Resartus' than elsewhere—but he is on fire with his message and he is as confident as any Hebrew prophet that it is the message most necessary for his generation. One may like him or be repelled by him, but a careful reader cannot remain unmoved by ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... gaily, and, turning to the companion of her own studies, she added: "Did you hear, Charmian? If we had only succeeded in perceiving the wisdom and calm, purposeful order of existence which the Stoics, amid so much that is perverse, unhealthy, and provocative of contradiction, nevertheless set above everything else! How can I, in order to live wisely, imitate Nature, when in her being and action I encounter so much that is contradictory to my human reason, which is a part ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... confounded muddlehead!" cried the Crow, losing patience with his perverse and stupid companion. "How can she give us the office with that cove at ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... grief, ever increasing in vehemence; then she was quieted a little, and was left to herself, but she could not, or would not, turn where alone comfort could be found, and repelled, almost as if it was an insult to her affection, any entreaty that she would even try to be comforted. Above all, in the perverse-ness of her undisciplined affliction, she persisted in refusing to see her brother. "She should do him harm," she said. "No, it was utterly impossible for her to control herself so as not to do him harm." And thereupon her sobs and tears ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... naturally very little inclined to suspicion and distrust; I willingly incline towards excuse and the gentlest interpretation; I take men according to the common order, and do not more believe in those perverse and unnatural inclinations, unless convinced by manifest evidence, than I do in monsters and miracles; and I am, moreover, a man who willingly commit myself to Fortune, and throw myself headlong ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... great-grandmothers cherished it as a sacred religious principle till their tea was taxed. I dare say that if the truth could be got at, we should find that little Victoria was at times trying enough to mother, masters, and attendants; that she was occasionally passionate, perverse, and "pestering," like all children who have any great and positive elements in them. I dare say she was disposed, like any other "only child," to be self-willed and selfish, and that she required a fair amount of wholesome discipline, and that she got it. Had she been the prim and pious ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... supremely well lost—by the Missionary, whatever be his time or country or creed. Francis Xavier lost it well when he made his response to the insistent question: "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Henry Martyn lost it well when, with perverse foolishness as men accounted it, he sacrificed the most brilliant prospects which a University offers to preach and fail among the heathen, and to die at thirty, forsaken and alone. John Coleridge Patterson lost it well when, putting ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... and dreary vale They passed, and many a region dolorous, O'er many a frozen, many a fiery alp, Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death— A universe of death, which God by curse Created evil, for evil only good; Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds, Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Obominable, inutterable, and worse Than fables yet have feigned or fear conceived, Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire. Meanwhile the Adversary of God and Man, Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design, Puts on swift ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... also to the Pope and warned him of his purpose. The termination of that epistle is noteworthy: 'I can thus have no longer any hope in your Holiness, but must turn to Christ alone, who chooses the weak of this world to confound the strong lions among the perverse generations. He will assist me to prove and sustain, in the face of the world, the holiness of the work for the sake of which I so greatly suffer: and He will inflict a just punishment on those who persecute ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... rough-book the number of miles, the course of the ship, and in the column for "wind" scrawled the word "calm" from top to bottom of the eight hours since noon. He was exasperated by the continuous, monotonous rolling of the ship. The heavy inkstand would slide away in a manner that suggested perverse intelligence in dodging the pen. Having written in the large space under the head of "Remarks" "Heat very oppressive," he stuck the end of the penholder in his teeth, pipe fashion, and mopped ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to dwell in the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human art contrived, or else of a dismal swamp, I should certainly decide for the swamp. How vain, then, have been all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... introduced to prevent any perverse or ingenious misapplication of the well-known maxim, that an affirmative in particular cases implies a negative in all others; and, e converso, that a negative in particular cases implies an affirmative in all others. The maxim, rightly understood, is ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... system of fortification, Tizoc explained: "These are the barriers set up against the Tlahuicos, who, heeding not the order given of old by our lord Chaltzantzin, have striven many times to break forth from the valley—for among these men there are many of perverse ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... consent to this transaction has made me miserable almost from the moment I gave it; that I meant and wished to retract as soon as reflection pointed out to me my error, and that circumstances the most perverse, not blindness to propriety, nor stubbornness in wrong, led me to make, at last, that fatal attempt, of which the recollection, to my last hour, must fill me ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... quick return Repeated; she to him as oft engag'd To be returned by noon amid the bow'r, And all things in best order to invite Noon-tide repast, or afternoon's repose. Oh much deceived, much failing, hapless Eve! Of thy presumed return, event perverse! Thou never from that hour in Paradise Found'st either ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... "What a perverse girl you are to-day!" cried Richard. "You won't understand me. I mean that your words and your voice are so pleasant they make anything interesting, whether ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... town had there happened anything which so much alarmed this primitive community. One of the possessors of these profane chairs, filled with repentance, wisely sent it back to the continent; the other, more obstinate and perverse, in defiance to all remonstrances, persisted in the use of his chair until by degrees they became more reconciled to it; though I observed that the wealthiest and the most respectable people still go to meeting or to their farms in a single-horse cart with a decent awning fixed over it: indeed, ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... thoroughly accommodated to his opinions. It was composed thus: a fiscal so terrified and possessed by fear that, if he were commanded to flog an image of Christ, apparently he would not hesitate to do so; one Cervantes, as coadjutor to the fiscal, a young fellow of malicious disposition and perverse inclinations, who not many years before had been condemned to death; one Angulo, in everything a man after Cervantes's own heart—young and of little understanding; and of so little ability that neither when he was a receptor of the Audiencia, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... human activities. They are subject to aesthetic temptation and sin, as all men are subject to temptation and sin of all kinds. Their public may tempt them to think more of themselves than of what they have to express, either by perverse admiration or by ignorant contempt. An actual audience may be an obstruction between them and the ideal audience to which every artist should address himself. Every artist must desire that his ideal audience should exist, and may ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... find a great convenience in having a carriage of your own, and appealeth to your lady if it is not so. Inquireth if you have had your arms done on vellum yet; and did not know till lately that such and such had been the crest of the family. His memory is unseasonable, his compliments perverse, his talk a trouble, his stay pertinacious; and when he goeth away, you dismiss his chair into a corner as precipitately as possible, and feel fairly ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... outright; she did live. Also he liked her; the implications in her glance appealed to him. The peculiar accents in which she referred to the enigma of Irene Wheeler were extraordinarily attractive to that part of his nature which was perverse and sophisticated. "At least she is not a simpleton," he thought. "And she doesn't pretend to be. Some day I ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... certain annoyances to which a man in my office is subjected. Whereby it must be understood that I refer to myself and my official position, not to the nine by twelve apartment where the wicked and perverse can always find my sign ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... this bad humour to end?" cried Aristo; "it has been a long fit; shake it off while you can, or it will be too much for you. What can you mean? a weariness! You are over young to bid youth farewell. Aching hearts for aching bones. So young and so perverse! We must take things as the gods give them. You will ask for them in vain when you are old. One day above, another day beneath; one while young, another while old. Enjoy life while you have it in your hand." ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... his perception of the public good. Our countryman, inferior to Bonaparte in invention, was far superior to him in wisdom. The French Emperor is among conquerors what Voltaire is among writers, a miraculous child. His splendid genius was frequently clouded by fits of humour as absurdly perverse as those of the pet of the nursery, who quarrels with his food, and dashes his playthings to pieces. Cromwell was emphatically a man. He possessed, in an eminent degree, that masculine and full-grown robustness of mind, that equally diffused intellectual health, which, if our national partiality ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... by Paul Henry, has been translated from the German by the Rev. Dr. Henry Stebbing, of London, and we have the first of the two octavos of which it consists, from the press of Robert Carter & Brothers. So much inexcusable ignorance, so much perverse misrepresentation, so much insolent lying, may be found scattered through modern literature, respecting the great Genevan, that Dr. Henry deserves well the thanks of the christian world for exhibiting the chief facts of his history, so plainly that every partisan knave who would repeat the old slanders, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... look for this from you. I thought God had set his mark on you if he ever had on any man. And it is for things like this that you set your soul back a thousand years from God. O foolish and perverse generation!" ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... knows the child. ... On the altar of Christ, Who is the prince of pardon and of peace, Vows of revenge are registered, and torches That are thrown into hearts of leaguered cities Are lit from tapers burning before God. Become thou king of sacrifice; ascend The holy hill of God; on these perverse Launch thou thy thunderbolts; and feared again And great thou wilt be. Tell me, Adrian, Must thou not bear a burden that were heavy Even for angels? Wherefore wilt thou join Death unto life, and make the ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... trade and he opposed the repeal of the Test Act. He prevented the grant of Catholic emancipation at the one moment when it might have genuinely healed the wounds of Ireland. He destroyed by his perverse creations the value of the House of Lords as a legislative assembly. He was clearly determined to make his will the criterion of policy; and his design might have succeeded had his ability and temper been proportionate to its greatness. It was not likely that ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... scrupulously clean man, but there was a kind of civilized wildness in his appearance which astonished people; and in perverse moments he liked to terrify those who knew him but little by affirming that he was a near relative of Christopher Smart, and then explaining in mirth-provoking phrases that one of the arguments used for proving Smart's insanity was that he did not ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... whole mind of man is conscious" of Him, "even if does not express itself," and Lactantius thinks that for Cicero "it was no difficult task, indeed, to refute the falsehoods of a few men who entertained perverse sentiments by the testimony of communities and tribes, who on this one point ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... spell under which Emily Musgrave came. But how strange it all is! She expected some one to-night, whom she would have welcomed as she never will me. "The only rival I have to fear may not be dead, as I supposed, and yet my perverse heart is more full of pity for her than jealousy. I had no idea that I was capable of such self-abnegation. Has she the art of spiritual alchemy, and so can transmute natures full of alloy ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... the Lord said to Balaam, while he remained flat on his face, "Wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass these three times? behold, I went out to withstand thee, because thy way is perverse before me: and the ass saw me, and turned from me these three times: unless she had turned from me, surely now also I had slain thee, and saved her alive." The moral of this is that asses stand the best chance of salvation, ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... the other hand, there are perverse and pathological impulses which are deserving of no regard and must be simply cast aside in the organizing process, because they lead only to unhappiness. There is a difference between the desirable and the desired; morality is not merely an organizing ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... hills. Currents of colder air sighing up through narrow defiles and dark crevices touched my face as with airy fingers. A certain feeling of anxiety and insecurity began to take possession of me, though there was no definable cause for it, unless that I might be belated in getting home. With the perverse instinct of those who are lost I hastened my steps, but was impelled now and then to glance back over my shoulder, with a sensation of being pursued. But no living creature was in sight. The moon, however, had now risen higher, ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... earthquake genius of the Italian republics were characteristics of all the individuals of this race. The proportions of their souls exceed the height of their destiny: vices, passions, virtues are all in excess. The women are all angelic or perverse, the men sublime or depraved, and their language even is as emphatic and lofty as their aspirations. There is in their most familiar correspondence the colour and tone of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... of double watchfulness when gloom and despondency come over our souls; for then the adversary seeks to stir up all the perverse passions ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... Io at the same time and by persistence induced them to pose for me on an apple branch. There was no trouble in securing the male as I desired him, with wings folded showing the spots, lining and flushing of colour. But the female was a perverse little body and though I tried patiently and repeatedly she would not lower her wings full width. She climbed around with them three-fourths spread, producing the most beautiful effect of life, but failing to display her striking markings. This is the one disadvantage in photographing ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... opposed; repugnant, incompatible, contradictory, retroactive, antagonistic, conflicting, abhorrent, inconsistent; perverse, wayward, refractory, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... boys who walk in line with you through the root-fields, or beat the coverts for pheasants. That might seem at first sight to be an easy business, but it is actually one of the most difficult in the world. For thorough perverse stupidity, you will not easily match the autochthonous beater. Watch him as he trudges along, slow, expressionless, clod-resembling, lethargic, and say how you would like to be the chief of such an army. He is always getting out of line, pressing forward ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... sense of injury. Of late she had seemed absolutely changed towards him; and from being his good friend, with established intimacies, she had turned before his very eyes into an alien, almost an enemy, more beautiful than ever, to be true, but perverse, mocking, impish. She flouted him for his youth, his bluntness, his guileless transparency. But hardest of all to bear was the delicate derision with which she treated his awkward attempts to express his passion for her, to speak of ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... said Putnam, rather fatuously. There seemed really nothing further to say, but as he lingered for a moment before turning away a perverse recollection surprised him, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... of imagination in the execution of these enormous buildings, have set their imagination to work, but in a perverse way and without candidly recognizing the conditions imposed upon them by the sky-scraper form: and the result here and there has been worse than dull; it has been distressing. But here and there, too, ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... The manner in which the earlier years of his manhood had been passed had given to his demeanour, and even to his moral character, some peculiarities appalling to the civilised beings who were the companions of his old age. The perverse irregularity of his hours, the slovenliness of his person, his fits of strenuous exertion, interrupted by long intervals of sluggishness, his strange abstinence, and his equally strange voracity, his active ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... never seem to find their special line. I've known people so perverse they wouldn't do what they could, simply because they would have preferred something else. But I'm a firm believer that every ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... suggested that Ned Tremayne, who was then at Torres Vedras with Colonel Fletcher, was the very man to fill the vacant place of military secretary to the adjutant, if he would accept it. In the reaction of self-contempt, and in a curious surge of pride almost as perverse as his humility, O'Moy had adopted her suggestion, and thereafter—in the past-three months, that is to say—the unreasonable devil of O'Moy's jealousy had slept, almost forgotten. Now, by a chance remark whose indiscretion Tremayne could not realise, since he did not so much as suspect the existence ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... to empty life of all its values. It has made us ashamed of loving anything; for all love, it has told us, is illusion produced by the will to live, or the will to power, or some other figment of its own perverse thought. And now, as a result of that perversity, the storm breaks upon us when we seem to have stripped ourselves of all shelter against it. The doctrine of the struggle for life becomes a fact in this ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... to-night: another day I will. I will only say one thing. To strain the meaning and the spirit of an exceptional law like the old Regulation of the year 1818 in such a fashion as this, what would it do? Such a strain, pressed upon us in the perverse imagination of headstrong men, is no better than a suggestion for provoking lawless and criminal reprisals. ("No.") You may not agree with me. You are kindly allowing me as your guest to say things with which perhaps you do not agree. (Cries ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... his pent-up thoughts and feelings. The only freedom she had was in the evening; and even then she was not always at liberty. There was Amanda always ready and at hand—it kept him busy dodging her. Why was Fate so perverse in her dealings with him? Why couldn't it be Tillie instead of Amanda? Fairchilds chafed under this untoward condition of things like a fretful child—or, rather, just like a man who can't ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... Whether you will be able at present, with a due regard for personal safety, to penetrate the Koordish mountains, and visit the Nestorian Patriarch, is very doubtful. But the journey should be performed as soon as may be, lest interested and perverse men should prejudice his ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... continued Gerard, "the strange thing is, the cave has verily fallen in; and had I been so perverse as resist thee, it had assuredly buried me dead there where I had buried myself alive. Therefore in this I see the finger of Providence, condemning my late, approving my present, way of life. What ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the querulous complaint of the last week's chill or the heavy washing of the day before, the ailing baby or the troublesome child, all told in the same whining voice. Even the choice bit of gossip which roused us at rare intervals always had its dark side, on which these poor women dwelt with a perverse pleasure. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... had evident reference to the perverse action of the Southern rebels, and were so entirely in harmony with the feeling of the House that at different stages of the brief address the Republican side of the chamber broke forth into loud applause. As soon as the election of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... on other topics than matrimony, and our thoughts are occupied with other things than courtships, establishments, dowries. The cloth we can't sell, the hands we can't employ, the mills we can't run, the perverse course of events generally, which we cannot alter, fill our hearts, I take it, pretty well at present, to the tolerably complete exclusion of such ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... mustn't say that. In a fortnight's time we shall all be at Brenlands together, and then we must try to rub some of the sharp corners off this perverse young gentleman. I must come back with you to the school and try to see him ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... of "Elsie's days," as Old Sophy called them. The light in her eyes was still, but very bright. She looked up so full of perverse and wilful impulses, that Dick knew he could make her go with him and her father. He had his own motives for bringing her to this determination,—and his own way of setting ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... the wear and tear essential to life, the new generations intended to succeed and supplant the old,—so soon as the question is proposed as one of physiology, the reply is inevitable that death is no accident introduced by the perverse will of our first parents, nor any way connected with man's sinfulness; but is purely a result of the conditions of animal life. On the contrary, St. Paul rests most important conclusions on the fact, that one man Adam by personal sin brought death upon all his posterity. ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... in Cadogan-place. He came home, wishing Theodora would go and relieve Arthur of some of the care Violet needed in her convalescence; and he was much disappointed by her apparent indifference—in reality, a severe fit of perverse jealousy. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is that he makes all natural impulses generous and virtuous, and man, therefore, naturally good instead of perverse,—thus throwing not only Christianity but experience entirely aside, and laying down maxims which, logically carried out, would make society perfect if only Nature were always consulted. This doctrine indirectly ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... average share of feminine happiness. So many of the things that make for fretfulness, disappointment and discouragement in a woman's life were removed from her path that she might well have been considered the fortunate Miss Greech, or later, lucky Francesca Bassington. And she was not of the perverse band of those who make a rock-garden of their souls by dragging into them all the stoney griefs and unclaimed troubles they can find lying around them. Francesca loved the smooth ways and pleasant places of life; she liked not merely ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... people! Whose every Alpine gap yawns with tradition, and is stocked with noble story; yet, the perverse and scornful one will none of it, and the sons of patriots are left with the clock that turns the mill, and the sudden cuckoo, with difficulty restrained ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... to the farm to which she had consigned him without his consent. The wicked old woman shouted for joy when she heard that the queen had found her a herd-boy, and sent word that she might treat him as she pleased, because the youth was very perverse, and nothing good was to be got out of him. She did not know how hard the new millstone was, and hoped to treat him in her usual fashion; but she was soon to discover that this fence was too high to jump over, and that the youth would not sacrifice a hair's-breadth of his rights. ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... like fields and gardens and anything connected with production; about which she was quite practical. She practised gardening; in that curious cockney culture she would have been quite ready to practise farming; and on the same perverse principle, she actually practised a religion. This was something utterly unaccountable both to me and to the whole fussy culture in which she lived. Any number of people proclaimed religions, chiefly oriental religions, analysed or argued about ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... enclosed space, this aesthetic consideration went for little against its manifest advantages as snug and defensible winter quarters. Shere Ali had indeed been all unconsciously a friend in need to the British force wintering in the heart of that unfortunate potentate's dominions. Human nature is perverse and exacting, and there were those who objurgated his memory because he had constructed his cantonment a few sizes too large to be comfortably defended by Sir Frederick Roberts' little force. But this was manifestly unreasonable; and in serious ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... apex of which this dark old Catholic city uplifts the glittering front of its cathedral— that might have been foretold by a keen observer of contemporary manners. But that it would really have the grossness to hang about is a fact over which, as he records it, an inveterate, a perverse cherisher of the sense of the past order, the order still largely prevailing at the time of his first visit to Italy, may well make what is vulgarly called an ado. The train does stop at Orvieto, not very long, it is true, but long enough to let you out. The same ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... my best for your sake, Tom, but she is a perverse creature, and don't mind a word I say, even about things much ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... it her father. She is so perverse that I sometimes feel inclined to say that I'll have nothing further to ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... passions strong even to violence; but they were controlled and directed by such vivid faith as has never been surpassed. Her long life had tried her with almost every pang that attends the attachment of such beings to the mortal and the suffering, the erring and perverse; and when those sorrows came, that reached her heart through its deepest and most sacred affections, the passion burst forth, that showed what the energy of that principle must have been, that could have brought such a mind to a tenor of habitual calmness and serenity. When every ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... it true that perverse ambition, once erected into theory, feels more at ease in working itself out to the end; a part of the responsibility will then be thrown upon logic. If the German race is the elect, it will be the only race which has an unconditional right to ...
— The Meaning of the War - Life & Matter in Conflict • Henri Bergson
... Tanqueray. Or, if she did think of him, her thinking no longer roused in her the old perverse, passionate jealousy. She no longer hated her genius because he had cared for it. She even foresaw that in time she might come to love it for that reason. But at the moment she was surrendered to ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... winds and clouds so perverse, the clerk of the weather best knows; but there was a reason for the unreasonableness of the ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing |
