"Perversity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... met, and cared less for the company of others. Then a quarrel broke out in the ranks of the popular party, and Warren heard that Taylor was so hectoring the others as to what they should do, that at last, out of sheer perversity, two or three came to walk home with them, and held a discussion concerning Taylor and his ways that ought to have made that ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie
... Now such was the perversity of Jack that he actually felt ill-natured about this letter, although it was the very thing that he knew was best for him. He was certainly relieved from one of his many difficulties, but at the same time he was vexed and mortified at this rejection of his proposal. ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... 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 nervous ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... was calming down when Mother started off on George Alston—how fine he used to treat her and all that. It was then that Lorry did the queer thing—not a word out of her; just got up and kissed Mother and sat down. In her heart Sadie marveled at the perversity of men—Mark to have fallen in love with the elder when ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... witnesses and insolent foe to the police. As it had been possible to predict, from the mere look with which he had risen to his feet, the kind of cross-examination in store for each witness called by the prosecution, so it was obvious now that his own witness had come forward from her own wilful perversity and in direct defiance ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... invented Gothic architecture; I do not suppose it was. Anyway, there is said to be but one Gothic church in Rome, and this I did not visit, perhaps because I felt that I must inure myself to the prevalent baroque, or perhaps from mere perversity. I can merely say in self-defence that, on the outside, Santa Maria sopra Minerva no more promised an inner beauty than Il Gesu, which is the most baroque church in Rome, without the power of coming together for a unity of effect which ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... woman!" ejaculated Lady Portarles, "did ever anyone see such perversity? My Lord Grenville, you have the gift of gab, will you please explain to Madame la Comtesse that she is acting like a fool. In your position here in England, Madame," she added, turning a wrathful and resolute face towards the Comtesse, "you cannot afford to put on ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... their children. Their attempts, however, made me not to swerve either to the right hand or to the left, although to see and feel so sorely their injustice and ingratitude made me often lament the frailty, the perversity, and sinfulness of our fallen nature. I persevered in an onward course, determined, as the steward and servant of my Master, to do them good whether they would have it or not. And I have so strove, so labored, to the last. The result is in the hands of Him who fixes and determines ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the devil taken by many so seriously that they almost lost their minds. And yet the fact that they cherished hatred or envy in their hearts, that they had cursed before or after Mass, that they had intentionally lied or slandered, all this moved them not at all. Whence this perversity? From the "traditions of men who turn from the truth," [Tit. 1:14] as the Apostle says. Because we have neglected to offer God a confession of true sins, He has given us up to our reprobate sense, [Rom. 1:24] so that we delude ourselves with fictitious sins and deprive ourselves ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... exclaimed, almost in spite of myself, so excessive did the perversity of this man seem to me. "Patience, my child, offer up to Heaven the sufferings which your husband's impiety causes you, and remember that your efforts will be set down to you. You have ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... lay there, fearing the vengeance of the law and the Holy Brotherhood for what he had done, he was also reviewing in rage the ingratitude of mankind and the perversity of the iron age. ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... utter weariness and abandonment of hope, he revealed all the national shame of slavery, and its degradation of body and soul. Every American cannot but blush to look upon it, so simple and dignified is its rebuke of the nation's long perversity and guilt. The artist's next important effort was the famous Winifred Dysart, as far removed in purpose from The Quadroon as it could well be, yet akin to it by its added testimony to the painter's constant sympathy with weak and beseeching things, and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... perversity had taken me to show myself at my most prosaic and unromantic. I think it was the contrast with the glamour of those fine gentlemen. I had neither claim nor desire to be of their company, and to her I could ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... to the interest of the scene. At last, those who had been agitating so long for self-government had the boon apparently within their grasp. In their eyes it was a great occasion—the true commencement of national life in the Colony. The irony of fate, or the perversity of man, turned it into a curious anticlimax. The Parliament, indeed, duly assembled. But it dispersed after weeks of ineffectual wrangling and intrigue, amid scenes which were discreditable and are still ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... this intention as the perverse delirium of an unbridled sensuality. It was certainly the gross act of a madman, but there was perhaps more politics in his madness than perversity; for it was an attempt to introduce into Rome the dynastic marriages between brothers and sisters which had been the constant tradition of the Ptolemies and the Pharaohs of Egypt. This oriental custom certainly seems a horrible ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... standing grief to the good old priest, this strange perversity of the girl in the matter of religious duty, as he saw it. True she had a faithful guardian in Gaspard Roussillon; but, much as he had done to aid the church's work in general, for he was always vigorous and liberal, ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... far distant heights of paradise. Again, in her pagan gladness of living, she might have been a Valkyr come down from Valhalla on a shooting-star. And yet, in this wilderness that was famishing for woman's love and tears and laughter, by a very perversity of fate ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... be just a dash of perversity in its choice. The spectacle of the mere word-grabbing game played by the soft determinists has perhaps driven me too violently the other way; and, rather than be found wrangling with them for the good words, I am willing to take the first bad one which comes along, provided it be unequivocal. The ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... men sat on the verandah while a servant brought brandy-and-soda, and Nana Sahib, with a restless perversity akin to the torturing proclivity of a Hindu was quizzing the Frenchman ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... which a people escaped from bondage and raised themselves on the wreck of thrones, principalities, and powers, to greatness; published the laws by which that most chosen people were governed; and dwelt upon the perversity of human nature; and as other men, divinely inspired, have sublimely represented the highest stages of Jewish civilisation, so did I propose to myself to exhibit the rise of Canada from a primitive condition ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... Tour conducted us to the cathedral, which has been criticized by Victor Hugo and many others, and which we, perhaps from pure perversity, found much more harmonious than we had expected. The facade, which the local guidebook pronounces majestic, even if batarde in style, is rich in decoration, and the little columns on the towers I thought graceful and beautiful, however ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... town gardeners generally do rather the reverse of that: our suburban gardeners in London, for instance, oftenest wind about their little bit of gravel walk and grass plot in ridiculous imitation of an ugly big garden of the landscape- gardening style, and then with a strange perversity fill up the spaces with the most formal plants they can get; whereas the merest common sense should have taught them to lay out their morsel of ground in the simplest way, to fence it as orderly as might be, one part from the other (if it be big enough ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... being so very shy of men, too, must have made John's handsome regimentals quite overpowering to her, poor thing,' added Mrs. Garland, following the catastrophic young lady upstairs, whose indisposition was this time beyond question. And yet, by some perversity of the heart, she was as eager now to make light of her faintness as she had been to make much of it ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... district-attorney directed the attention of the jury to this stupid attitude, evidently deliberate, which denoted not imbecility, but craft, skill, a habit of deceiving justice, and which set forth in all its nakedness the "profound perversity" of this man. He ended by making his reserves on the affair of Little Gervais and ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... sovereignty of the people, is in a position to go to great lengths, and to sink very low. Moral maxims and written laws are trodden under foot, a struggle without pity or remorse begins, a struggle of life and death. Social passions easily acquire a degree of perversity which political passions do not possess; the former are without conscience and without compassion; they will be satisfied, cost what it may; triumph is in their eyes an absolute, an inexorable necessity. Rather than not conquer, ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... obliterated. If the ship's blocks were branded with the name of the vessel to which they were attached, this would be important as establishing the identity of the ship that drifted down as the 'Terror'. As an instance of the perversity of fate, I mention that we found among them a piece of wax candle that they had preserved all these years, while every scrap of paper had perished. We saw here a Netchillik, named Issebluet, who with his ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... of indignation at being spoken to thus rudely, and in his heart he believed that if he was indeed fit for nothing, his sad condition was due much more to his uncle's neglect than to his own perversity. He did not, however, give utterance to the thought, because he was of a respectful nature; he merely flushed and said,—"Really, uncle, you do me injustice. I may not be fit for much, and every day I live I feel bitterly the evil ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... of novels Sienkiewicz differs greatly from Balzac, for instance, who forced himself to paint the man in his perversity or in his stupidity. According to his views life is the racing after riches. The whole of Balzac's philosophy can be resumed in the deification of the force. All his heroes are "strong men" who disdain humanity ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... Stafford comes in. She is radiant, a very sunbeam, in spite of the fact that Sir Penthony is again an absentee from his native land, having bidden adieu to English shores three months ago in a fit of pique, brought on by Cecil's perversity. ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... Yvette absolutely baffles me, moreover. She is a mystery. If she is not the most complete monster of astuteness and perversity that I have ever seen, she certainly is the most marvelous phenomenon of innocence that can be imagined. She lives in that atmosphere of infamy with a calm and triumphing ease which is either wonderfully profligate or entirely artless. Strange scion of an adventuress, ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... remembrance) he has made a statement to this effect—That the custom prevalent among children in that age of asking their parents' blessing was probably first brought into disuse by the Puritans. Is it possible to imagine a perversity of prejudice more unreasonable? The unamiable side of the patriotic character in the seventeenth century was unquestionably its religious bigotry; which, however, had its ground in a real fervor ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... which, for twenty years, he had seen in visions. Often had he rehearsed this meeting, varying his imaginary behavior to suit all conceivable moods and attitudes of his enemy, but never thinking to provide for perversity in himself! So far from veiling his designs with the soft-voiced cunning of his Oriental nature, he had been a wild beast! A misgiving haunted him, moreover, that he had babbled something in the false security of darkness, which might ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... billy-goated dispositioned, vulgar plebeian, who could no more be made to read cold, scientific, ungarnished facts than you can make an unwilling horse drink at the watering-trough. Human weakness and perversity is silly, but it is sillier to ignore that it exists. So, for the sake of boring and driving a few solid facts into the otherwise undigesting and unthinking, as well as primarily obdurate understanding of the untutored plebeian, I ask the indulgence ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... Louis. Callieres, who had deserved it less, had received it several years before; but he had not found or provoked so many defamers. Frontenac complained to the minister that his services had been slightly and tardily requited. This was true, and it was due largely to the complaints excited by his own perversity and violence. These complaints still continued; but the fault was not all on one side, and Frontenac himself had often just reason to retort them. He wrote to Ponchartrain: "If you will not be so good as to look closely ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... yet all things put under Him" (Heb. ii. 8). Although He "gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people zealous of good works" (Tit. ii. 14), the perversity of man has spoilt the perfection of His work, and hindered the results of His self-sacrifice. Eighteen hundred years have passed, and still His rule is imperfect; and not one third of the human race, whom He redeemed unto Himself with His own blood, accept ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... curious perversity of fate which is so often noticeable, Mr Banks was in a peculiarly lamb-like and long-suffering mood this morning. Actions for which O'Hara would on other days have been expelled from the room without ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... Romance left in this old world yet if one would only go to seek it. Here I was, sun-browned, strong, healthy, having come through many trials and still on the edge of adventure, when I might, but for my own headstrong perversity, have yet been vegetating on the hills of Glengyle. A great exultation welled up in me, the voice of youth and ambition, the lust to conquer. I would succeed, I would wrest from the vast, lonely, mysterious North some of its treasure. I ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... quarters, and there, at the foot of the little flight of steps leading up to the parade, they came suddenly upon Captain Chester, who was evidently only moderately pleased to see them and nervously anxious to expedite their onward movement. With the perversity of both sexes, however, they stopped to chat and inquire what he was doing there, and in the midst of it all a faint light gleamed on the opposite wall and the reflection of the curtains in Alice Renwick's window was distinctly ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... CYNICS.—Aristippus, in his praises of pleasure as the one good for man (see above, p. 126), remarks that there were some who [209] refused pleasure "from perversity of mind," taking pleasure, so to speak, in the denial of pleasure. The school of the Cynics made this perverse mood, as Aristippus deemed it, the maxim of their philosophy. As the Cyrenaic school was the school of the rich, the courtly, the self-indulgent, ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... her vocation. His pleasure in her society had driven all thought of it from his mind. He had even forgotten that he had ever supposed her to have a profession. Elizabeth had said nothing about her work, at first from whimsical perversity. But this morning, as they talked, a definite desire crept into her mind that ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... From very perversity her heart turned to other interests. She was desperately in love with soldiers en masse and individually. There was safety in numbers and a canceling rivalry between those who were going out perhaps to death and those who had come back from the jaws of death variously the worse ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... that way with Tessie. She fought first and investigated later. This unfortunate characteristic was responsible for much of her perversity. She set herself against conditions instead of ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... we had trouble; in the beginning, when this learning was undertaken, I must be whipped to answer as he would have me. Ay, and many a night have I gone sore to bed for my perversity, for in respect to obedience his severity was unmitigated, as with all seafaring men. But I might stand obstinate for a moment—a moment of grace. And upon the wall behind his chair, hanging in the dimmer light, was a colored print portraying a blue sea, spread with rank upon rank of accurately ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... battle charger, and, perhaps, some memory of those martial days, the waving of plumes and the clashing of arms, reawoke his combative spirit of old. Or, possibly his brute intelligence penetrated the dwarf's knavish pusillanimity, and, changing his tactics that he might still range on the side of perversity, resolved himself from immobility into a rampant agency of motion. Furiously he dashed into the thick of the conflict, and Triboulet, paralyzed with fear and dropping his lance, was borne helplessly onward, execrating the ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... temperament exasperating to a high degree. His theme was Ranald's rescue of Maimie, and the pauses of the singing he filled in with humorous comments that, outside, would have produced only weariness, but in the church, owing to the strange perversity of human nature, sent a snicker along the seat. Unfortunately for him, Ranald's face was so turned that he could not see it, and so he had no hint of the wrath that was steadily boiling up ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... help admiring the ser Ciappelletto of Boccaccio, who, even on his death-bed, pursues and realizes his ideal of the perfect rascal, making the small and timid little thieves who are present at his burlesque confession exclaim: "What manner of man is this, whose perversity, neither age, nor infirmity, nor the fear of death, which he sees at hand, nor the fear of God, before whose judgment-seat he must stand in a little while, have been able to remove, nor to cause that he should not wish to die as ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... not dispute directly with his perversity; she knew that in this mood of his it would be useless trying to make him partake the wonder she shared with her neighbors that the stranger had chosen David Gillespie again for his host out of the many leading men who had pressed their hospitality upon him, and ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... of hanging, scarcely allowing a crime to escape, from cold-blooded murder down to the act of the famished wretch who snatched a roll from a baker's basket. However insensible these strange lawgivers may have been to so much cruelty, however blind to the perversity, prejudices, and weaknesses incident to human testimony, however ignorant of the total inefficacy of their remedy to deter from crime, one might have imagined that they could not but have known, if they ever looked inwardly into their own hearts, how obscure are human motives, and especially ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... "Guards of Honour." Its recruits are very numerous, their chief vocation being cattle-stealing and filching other people's goods without unnecessary violence. It is feared they may extend their operations to other branches of perversity. The society is said to be a continuation of the Guardia de Honor created by the Spaniards and stimulated by the friars in Pangasinan as a check on the rebels during the events of 1896-98. At the American advent they continued ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... was a sensible fellow. But I felt very uncomfortable. When he had left the room, I mused over the conversation which had just taken place between us, but I could make nothing out of it, except that it argued an even greater perversity of mental vision than I had been yet prepared for. And this made me wretched; for I cannot bear having much to do with people who think differently from myself. All sorts of wandering thoughts kept coming into my head. I thought of my master's hut, and my seat upon the mountain ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... them, was proposed and put into operation. In these buildings, however, the spirits did not choose always, to appear to order—sometimes they quitted the spot where the edifice had been erected; sometimes they would only appear there periodically; and sometimes, out of perversity, they would appear when least expected. But whether occult manifestations really took place in these buildings or not, those assembled to see them were persuaded by those in charge of the building, who saw thereby an opportunity of making money, that the spirits were actually there; and in due ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... In the course of years it fortuned that Urania and Amyntas fell in love, and though misliking of the match, Pilumnus went so far as to consult the oracle concerning his daughter's dowry. With the uncalled-for perversity characteristic of oracles ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... opposition to the want of information, and the too great confidence in ministers, who though in duty bound to ascertain the temper and disposition of the Americans, had totally failed for want of that knowledge. An appeal to the sword was denounced as a most dangerous precedent, and by a strange perversity of mind the leaders of the American revolution were described and especially by Wilkes, as men averse to a change of government, and as being only driven to extremities by an accumulation of neglect, insult and injury, and by two years of a savage, piratical, and unjust ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... husband's condition, and stricken with remorse at the thought that it was perhaps his ill-starred marriage which had in some wise tended to bring about this ruin of a life. And yet things had gone well with him, existence had been made very easy for him, since his marriage; and only moral perversity would have so blighted a career which had lain open to all the possibilities of good fortune. The initial difficulty—poverty, which so many men have to overcome, had been conquered for Brian within the ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... preserved at all, until Sumter came, then firmness of conviction took immediate possession of them, and life and treasure alike thenceforward devoted to the maintenance of Federal authority. Of course, there was a troublesome minority North, who, either through political perversity, cowardice, or disloyalty, never did support the war, at least willingly. It was noticeable, however, that many of these were, through former residence or family relationship, imbued with pro-slavery notions and prejudice against ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... over—the words were spoken—he had got her by the hand. Again the perversity of the tender passion showed itself more strongly than ever. The confession which Blanche had been longing to hear, had barely escaped her lover's lips before Blanche protested against it! She struggled to release her hand. She formally appealed to ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... last manuscript aside, under it she discovered one of her own—a cynical, ribald, pencilled parody which she remembered she had scribbled there in an access of malicious perversity. ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... spoken these words, than I felt an icy chill creep to my heart. I had had some experience in these fits of perversity, (whose nature I have been at some trouble to explain), and I remembered well that in no instance I had successfully resisted their attacks. And now my own casual self-suggestion that I might possibly be fool enough ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... them appeared to dart at her, out of the dance, as if with a sharp peck. It came to her with a lively shock, with a positive sting, that Mr. Drake was—could it be possible? With the idea she found herself afresh on the edge of laughter, of a sudden and strange perversity of mirth. Mr. Drake loomed, in a swift image, before her; such a figure as she had seen in open doorways of houses in Cocker's quarter—majestic, middle-aged, erect, flanked on either side by a footman and taking the name of a visitor. Mr. Drake then verily was a person who opened the door! ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... sad presentiment that some day (so great is the perversity of man) an association will be organized to secure the ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... coil of fables, impurities, intolerances, as makes it a questionable step for me here and now to say, as I have done, that Mahomet was a true Speaker at all, and not rather an ambitious charlatan, perversity, and simulacrum, no Speaker, but a Babbler! Even in Arabia, as I compute, Mahomet will have exhausted himself and become obsolete, while this Shakespeare, this Dante may still be young;—while this Shakespeare may still pretend to be a ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... illicit pleasures, and to betray the confidence of his hosts by seducing their wives and families. He had money and authority to help him, and the feverish impatience of one whose star is on the wane. At last the arrival of the reinforcements revealed the perversity of his strategy. He had too few men to assume the offensive, even if they had been unquestionably loyal, and their loyalty was under grave suspicion. However, their sense of decency and respect for the general restrained them for a while, though ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... a great desire, wherefore I do not know, unless out of pure bravado and the spirit of perversity, to do something unseemly. After having searched all of one morning for this something ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... out of the dining-room Lila caught sight of Bea waiting at the elevator door. Dodging three seniors, a maid with a tray, and a man with a truck full of trunks, she made a dash for the new arrival who in a sudden freak of perversity danced tantalizingly ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... does the husband, bending with solicitude over the sick-bed of his wife; does the wife, clinging to her husband through evil report and good report, through broken fortunes and failing health, indicate no loftier emotion than lust, no warmer sentiment than friendship? What ignorance, what perversity is so gross as not to perceive something here nobler than either? Do you say that such scenes are, alas, rare? We deny it. We see them daily in the streets; we meet them daily in our rounds. Admitted, by our calling, to ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... "Of course it must be so sooner or later," said Lady Grant, "and the quicker you do it so much easier will be the doing." It should be told that Mrs. Holt had, without telling her daughter in her passion, herself written to Mr. Western. "You have sacrificed my daughter in your perversity, and that without the slightest cause for blame." Such had been the nature of Mrs. Holt's letter, which had reached him but a day before that of his sister. Lady Grant's appeal had not been of the same nature. She had said nothing of the sin of either of them; but ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... our ears, but every stage of the passion of Phedre is indeed reasonable, logical, as only a French poet, since the Greeks themselves, could make it. The passion itself is an abnormal, an insane thing, and that passion comes to us with all its force and all its perversity; but the words in which it is expressed are never extravagant, they are always clear, simple, temperate, perfectly precise and explicit. The art is an art exquisitely balanced between the conventional and the realistic, and the art of Sarah Bernhardt, when she plays the part, is balanced ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... here, when Shoepack Sam came plucking him at the elbow, saying, "Was I right or was I wrong?" then Rainbow Pete stared at him with his eyes like drills, and he said to him, "You were curious and nothing more." Oh my, isn't this the perversity ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... fashion about the Queen of Heaven, after the pattern of the disreputable little genii attendant upon a Venus of a bad school. That same instinct which degraded a youthful Eros into the childish Cupid was the death-stroke to the pristine dignity and holiness of angels. Nowadays, we see the perversity of it all; we have come to our senses and can appraise the much-belauded revival at its true worth; and our modern sculptors will rear you a respectable angel, a grave adolescent, according to the best canons of taste—should you still possess the faith that once requisitioned ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... some permanent record. One set of usages has occasionally been violently overthrown and superseded by another; here and there a primitive code, pretending to a supernatural origin, has been greatly extended, and distorted into the most surprising forms, by the perversity of sacerdotal commentators; but, except in a small section of the world, there has been nothing like the gradual amelioration of a legal system. There has been material civilisation, but, instead of the civilisation expanding the law, the law has limited the civilisation. The study of races ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... her knees and was praying aloud: praying to the Virgin with sighs and sobs and all her soul: wrestling so in prayer with a dead saint as by a strange perversity men cannot or will not wrestle with Him, who alone can hear a million prayers at once from a million different places,—can realize and be touched with a sense of all man's infirmities in a way no single ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... Perversity prompted her answer, but at once she remembered Crewe, and turned away in annoyance. Tarrant was ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... Sunday.—Woke up with a fearful headache and strong symptoms of a cold. Carrie, with a perversity which is just like her, said it was "painter's colic," and was the result of my having spent the last few days with my nose over a paint-pot. I told her firmly that I knew a great deal better what was the matter with me than she ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... vices, perhaps lying is the meanest. It is in some cases the offspring of perversity and vice, and in many others of sheer moral cowardice. Yet many persons think so lightly of it that they will order their servants to lie for them; nor can they feel surprised if, after such ignoble instruction, they find their servants lying ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... their children, and still to continue to live upon this earth, ennobled and perfected in their lives, long after he is dead; to wrest from mortality the spirit, the mind, and the character with which in his day he perchance put perversity and corruption to flight, established uprightness, aroused sluggishness, and uplifted dejection, and to deposit these, as his best legacy to posterity, in the spirits of his survivors, in order ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Theocrine with the same baleful fires as Francesco Cenci looked on Beatrice, but the height of horror, harrowing the soul with pity and anguish, culminates in Ford's terrible scenes Tis Pity She's a Whore (4to, 1633), so tenderly tragic, so exquisitely beautiful for all their moral perversity, that they remain unequalled ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... know why, as time went on, I didn't tell you who I was. Maybe it was natural perversity, or the fateful habit of ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... Grandcourt, even as a schoolboy, had invariably been tinged with tolerance and good-humoured contempt. Dysart had always led in everything; taken what he chose without considering Grandcourt—sometimes out of sheer perversity, he had taken what Grandcourt wanted—not really wanting it himself—as in the ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... not for what he writes, but for what he is. A landmark. Think of when he wrote. It was an age of giants—Darwin and the rest of them. Their facts were too much for him; they impinged on some obscure old prejudices of his. They drove him into a clever perversity of humour. They account for his cat-like touches, his contrariness, his fondness for scoring off everybody from the Deity ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... that her curiosity and perversity would make her disobey him. She waited with impatience till the man had left, when she hurried to cook and eat the fish. Thereby she became a mother, and the ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... these little stratagems utterly disgusts me. I would so willingly reverence and trust any man of high standing and ability. I am so utterly unable to comprehend this petty greediness. And yet withal you will smile at my perversity. I have a certain pleasure in overcoming these obstacles, and fighting these folks with their own weapons. I do so long to be able to trust men implicitly. I have such a horror of all this literary pettifogging. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... everything about him uncertain and perilous. His sister Joan had already been disturbed by his love of gambling with his savings. Scrutinizing him constantly with the eye of affection, she had become aware of a curious perversity in his temperament which caused her much anxiety, and would have caused her still more if she had not recognized the germs of it in her own nature. She could fancy Ralph suddenly sacrificing his entire career for some fantastic imagination; some cause ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... to enter, he can but stay outside. So it fell out with me, and being outside I did not know what passed within nor how my Lord Carford fared with Mistress Barbara. I flung myself in deep chagrin on the grass of the Manor Park, cursing my fate, myself, and if not Barbara, yet that perversity which was in all women and, by logic, even in Mistress Barbara. But although I had no part in it, the play went on and how it proceeded I learnt afterwards; let me now leave the stage that I have held too long and pass out of sight till ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... Gothic: it can hardly be too frank in its confession of rudeness, hardly too rich in its changefulness, hardly too faithful in its naturalism; but it may go too far in its rigidity, and, like the great Puritan spirit in its extreme, lose itself either in frivolity of division, or perversity of purpose.[67] It actually did so in its later times; but it is gladdening to remember that in its utmost nobleness, the very temper which has been thought most adverse to it, the Protestant spirit of self-dependence and inquiry, was expressed in its every ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... The spirit of perversity entered into Ted, and merely because he was told not to tease Don he went on doing it, pretending that it was for the dog's good. Don took no heed of his pats, commands, reproaches, or insults, till Ted's patience gave out; and ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... created the suns themselves; and when these starry lustres that now glorify the firmament shall wax dim, and fade away like a wasted taper, the light of the soul shall still remain; nor time, nor cloud, nor any power but its own perversity, shall ever quench its brightness. Again I would say that whenever a human soul is born into the world, God stands over it, and pronounces the same sublime fiat, "Let there be light!" And may the time ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... mind usually the thought that it is one's own happiness only that is put up as the end by the moralists he opposes. This was pure misunderstanding, however, or perversity. Other men's happiness has intrinsic worth (or IS intrinsic worth, for the word and the phrase are synonymous) as truly as mine; and morality is concerned quite as much with guiding the individual toward the general good as toward his own ultimate welfare. To this point we must return, merely mentioning ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... right in the popular heart to rectify the balance; and in default of evidence to the contrary, I am fain to suppose it did.—A few words must be added as to one branch of our immediate subject,—the doubt or disbelief of the sincerity of the North on the question of Slavery. Had no prejudice or perversity of argument been imported into the subject, it would, I imagine, have been apparent to most of my countrymen that the dominant party at the North was genuinely antagonistic to slavery; that, as long as the South did not violate the Federal Constitution, the North was trammelled from interfering ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... any one of them and remote foreign nations. The Biscayans, for example, could even import and export commodities to and from remote countries by sea, free of duty, while their merchandize to and from Castile was crushed by imposts. As this ingenious perversity of positive arrangements came to increase the negative inconveniences caused by the almost total absence of tolerable roads, canals, bridges, and other means of intercommunication, it may be imagined that internal traffic—the very life-blood of every prosperous nation—was very nearly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Auntie. They're to make the talking machine play!" declared Dot, frightened by Aunt Sarah's manner into most unusual perversity. She was ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... loved his wife and children. He wanted them to be happy, but in his way. He must choose their pleasures. If they could not be satisfied with what he chose for them, it was not his fault; it was their perversity. And as no two souls are alike, the attempt to fit a number of them by the same pattern necessarily caused suffering to the souls ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... of his fifteenth chapter to the Obongos, or Dwarfs. Nearly all African explorers and travellers have been much amazed at the diversity of color and stature among the tribes they met. This diversity in physical and mental character owes its existence to the diversity and perversity of African climate. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... as you know, all Roman Catholics, and the most superstitious and ignorant Catholics of Germany. The step is but short from superstition to infidelity; and ignorance has furnished in France more sectaries of atheism than perversity. The Illuminati, brothers and friends of Montgelas, have not been idle in that country. Their writings have perverted those who had no opportunity to hear their speeches, or to witness their example; and I am assured by Count von Beust, who travelled in Bavaria ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... we see the effect of antiquity? Not in language, not in the imitation of something or other, and not in perversity and waywardness, to which uses the French have turned it. Our museums are gradually becoming filled up: I always experience a sensation of disgust when I see naked statues in the Greek style in the presence of this thoughtless philistinism ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... told that the right way—the one followed by all sensible people—of seeing the gorge from Sainte-Enimie to Le Rozier was to come down the stream in a boat; but circumstances, or my own perversity, had led me once more to do the thing that was considered wrong. Instead of coming down the swift stream like a fly on a leaf, my intention was to crawl up the gorge by such goat or mule paths as were available ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... they sent word up to all the old-timers on Sea Lion. But it's ten miles farther than Dawson, and when they arrive they'll find the creek staked to the skyline by the Dawson chechakos. It isn't right, it isn't fair, such perversity ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... worship. Although this apparent sympathy of nature may be less true than imaginative, its lesson is not destroyed, since it sufficiently shows that what man chooses to consider good in this world is good, and that most of its strife and deformities proceed from his own perversity. ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... too late. The Pottses had not been the only members of the little circle gathered about her father who had called forth her mother's wounding levity. She had taken refuge on many other occasions in the half-playful, half-decisive, "I hate 'em," as if to throw up the final barrier of her own perversity before pursuit. Not that she hadn't been decent enough in her actual treatment, it was rather that she would never take the Pottses, or any of the others—oddities she evidently considered them-seriously; it was, most of all, that she would never let them come near enough to try to ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... "Oh! the perversity of human nature! Oh! you degenerate girl! As if I cared for Clem in that way! Have I not from the first set my heart on this real-life romance ending in the only way ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... small too. But these are my own reflections and I am by no means sure that I am right in attributing them to him. At all events the phrase in question grew daily in favor, notwithstanding the gross impropriety of a man betting his brains like bank-notes:—but this was a point which my friend's perversity of disposition would not permit him to comprehend. In the end, he abandoned all other forms of wager, and gave himself up to "I'll bet the Devil my head," with a pertinacity and exclusiveness of devotion that displeased not less than it surprised me. I am always displeased by circumstances ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Green he met Fullerton. It was long since the Modern and Classic seniors had nodded as they passed, but in the curious perversity of things both ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... dear, you are quite certain as to who made you, and for what purpose you were made. You nature myths were created in the Mythopoeic age by the perversity of old heathen nations: and you serve your creator religiously. That is quite as it should be. But I have no such authentic information as to my origin and mission in life, I appear at all events ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... his mind were occupied with thoughts which he did not care to interrupt, and turned toward the window, when Virginia, who had greeted him simultaneously with a smile obviously designed to convey a similar impression, and, piqued to perversity by the fact that Dan had so readily interpreted her wishes, paused in the middle of a sentence and looked back over ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... later unfortunate occurrences is attributable to personal perversity or deficiency. Peril depends more on the man than on circumstances. One is in danger on a wall twenty feet high, another safe on a precipice of a thousand feet. No man has a right to peril his life in mere mountain climbing; ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... adaptation of tone, thought, taste, and fancy to the measure of the common Englishman were what chiefly gave him a hearing. Swift aimed and flew higher, but also did not miss the lower mark. No one has ever doubted that Johnson's depreciation of The Conduct of the Allies was half special perversity (for he was always unjust to Swift), half mere humorous paradox. For there was much more of this in the doctor's utterances than his admirers, either in his own day or since, have always recognised, or have sometimes been qualified by ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... University, which we visited next, I recall only the baroque facade; the interior was in reparation and I do not know whether it would have indemnified us for not visiting the University of Salamanca. That was in our list, but the perversity of the time-table forbade. You could go to Salamanca, yes, but you could not come back except at two o'clock in the morning; you could indeed continue on to Lisbon, but perhaps you did not wish to see Lisbon. A like perversity ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... was a desert, and Ralph's seeming unconsciousness of the fact increased her resentment. She had had but one chance at Europe since her marriage, and that had been wasted through her husband's unaccountable perversity. She knew now with what packed hours of Paris and London they had paid for their empty weeks ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... The perversity of his experience came to him vividly. In actual fact he had made such a leap in time as romancers have imagined again and again. And that fact realised, he had been prepared, his mind had, as it were, seated itself for a spectacle. And no spectacle, but ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... the chieftain, "and I deem that thy meaning is that we should go supperless to bed; and this cometh of thy perversity: for we know thee despite thy vizard. Belike thou deemest that thou shalt not be met this even, and that there is no free alien in the island to draw sword against thee. But beware! For when we came aland this morning we found a skiff of the aliens tied to a great spear ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... he has omitted to mention the last phenomenon, which I will tell you. Yes, I, a criminal, feel a terrible wish for somebody to know of my crimes, and when this requirement is satisfied, my secret has been revealed to a confidant, I shall be tranquil for the future, and be freed from this demon of perversity, which only tempts us once. Well! Now that is accomplished. You shall have my secret; from the day that you recognize me by my eyes, you will try and find out what I am guilty of, and how I was ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... reason for this depreciation save the true one. They declaimed against the corruption of the ministry, the want of patriotism among the Moderates, the intrigues of the emigrant nobles, the hard-heartedness of the rich, the monopolizing spirit of the merchants, the perversity of the shopkeepers,—-each and all of these as causes of ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... man appears, deceitfully enough, to think little of his appearance, and he will give himself the trouble to pursue a heart because he knows that the heart will not follow after him. Moreover, we women (said the jay) are by nature pitiful, and this our enemies term a "strange perversity." A widow is generally disconsolate if she loses a little, wizen-faced, shrunken shanked, ugly, spiteful, distempered thing that scolded her and quarrelled with her, and beat her and made her hours bitter; whereas she will follow her husband ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... to the carrying-on of a secret intrigue. The more fully I became aware of the veneration with which the countess was looked up to by the whole country, the more I learned to appreciate her ability in dissembling and her profound perversity; and I was all the more proud of her. I felt the pride setting my cheeks aglow when I saw her at Brechy; for I came there every Sunday for her sake alone, to see her pass calm and serene in the imposing security of her lofty reputation. ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... gas-masks to everyone in Jimmie's unit, and put an alarm bell in the shed, and made everybody practise putting on the masks in a hurry. Jimmie was so scared that he thought seriously of running away; but—such is the perversity of human nature—what he did was to run in the opposite direction! His officer in command came into the shed and demanded, "Can any of you men ride?" And imagine any fellow who worked at repairing motor-cycles admitting that he couldn't ride! ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... programmers, hackers consider it the {canonical} example of a naive algorithm. The canonical example of a really *bad* algorithm is {bogo-sort}. A bubble sort might be used out of ignorance, but any use of bogo-sort could issue only from brain damage or willful perversity. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... massive, broad, and prominent, while the basilar region is broad and deep, with a stout neck, we know the great force and activity of the animal nature, and unless the upper surface of the brain is well developed all over, we may expect some excess in the way of violence, temper, selfishness, perversity, sensuality, dishonesty, avarice, rudeness of manners, moral insensibility, slander, contentiousness, jealousy, envy, revenge, or some other form of wickedness, according ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... morning's World for the benefit of members of the Convention. But if she were a confiding miss of "sweet sixteen," instead of the "strong-minded woman" that she is, and the blushes of all those brilliant signs were transfused into her own lovely cheeks, we suspect (such is the infirmity or the perversity of "those odious men") that she would make more conquests than she can reasonably expect to do with the intellectual blaze and brilliancy of this week's Revolution—splendid new signs and all. We fear the time ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... behavior, particularly before a comparative stranger like me, was very poor taste. But there was something elusive about Mrs. Oke, which made it next to impossible to speak seriously with her; and besides, I was by no means sure that any interference on my part would not merely animate her perversity. ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... feelings of utter abandonment which had driven me into that remote and unsocial region of the country. Yet although the external abbey, with its verdant decay hanging about it, suffered but little alteration, I gave way, with a child-like perversity, and perchance with a faint hope of alleviating my sorrows, to a display of more than regal magnificence within.—For such follies, even in childhood, I had imbibed a taste and now they came back to me as if in the dotage of grief. Alas, I feel ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Magdalenen wurden purifiziert durch die laeuternde und suehnende Macht meiner Liebesflammen,"[279] a moral aberration which he attributes to an imperfect interpretation of the difficult philosophy of Hegel. If further evidence were necessary to show the perversity of Heine's moral sense, the following paragraph from a letter to Varnhagen would suffice, in its way perhaps as remarkable a contribution to the theory of ethics as has ever been penned: "In Deutschland ist man noch nicht so weit, ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... every morning, that before night you will meet with some meddlesome, ungrateful and abusive fellow, with some envious or unsociable churl. Remember that their perversity proceeds from ignorance of good and evil; and that since it has fallen to my share to understand the natural beauty of a good action and the deformity of an ill one; since I am satisfied that the disobliging person is of kin to me, our minds being both extracted from the Deity; ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... lessons of value which might be derived from so-called "classical" studies, is that of the proper estimate in which the true teacher should be held; for among the Greeks no calling or occupation was more honored. Yet with a strange perversity, albeit for centuries the precious time of youth has been wasted, and the minds and morals of the young perverted by "classical" studies, this ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... intention of asking Wallace Hood what he thought about it. But perhaps he might have some other explanation of her niece's sacrifice. It must have been a sacrifice to something. An answer to some fancied call of duty. Unless it were a freak of sheer perversity. But this was dangerous ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the tragedy of it culminates in those occupations, pandering to evil, in which the soul is sacrificed for the sake of the livelihood, in which the workman works with the consciousness, not of the uselessness merely, but of the social perversity, of his work, manufacturing the poison that will kill him, the weapon, perchance, with which his children will be murdered. This, and not the question of wages, ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... short sticks by which they are held, and the strings by which they are tied getting entangled together. In an exaggerated pantomime, Madame Tres-Propre expresses her despair at wasting so much of our valuable time: oh! if it only depended on her personal efforts! but ah, for the natural perversity of inanimate things which have no consideration for human dignity. With monkeyish antics, she even deems it her duty to threaten the lanterns and shake her fist at these inextricably tangled strings which have the presumption to delay us. It is all very well, but we know this maneuver ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... of observation, my father was able to follow innumerable cases of moral insanity in which perversity was manifested literally from the cradle, and in which the victims of this disease grew up into delinquents in no wise distinguishable from ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... Voltaire, and he won it. Third, and worst of all, he had prefixed a preface to the sixth volume, in which he deliberately went out of his way to rouse the active enmity of the very men on whom depended his annual re-election to the post of examiner for the Polytechnic School. The result of this perversity was that by and by he lost the appointment, and with it one half of his very modest income. This was the occasion of an episode, which is of more than merely ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... hardly refrain from giving public utterance to the anathemas that burned on my tongue, when the wretched animal, who seemed to have an insane attraction to me, floundered about my legs as I moved, or flapped his stump tail under my chair when I sat still. Dora alone, with strange perversity, persisted in ignoring his bad habits, his vulgar manners, his uselessness, his ugliness, and his impudence, and set me at defiance when I objected to him, by pressing him in her beautiful arms—happy cur that he was!—and laying her soft cheek against his villainous bristles, till ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... become very irritable, moody, and perverse, and her perversity developed itself in ways which puzzled ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Sunday I saw the Scotch Preacher and found him perplexed as to what to do. I don't know yet positively, that he had a hand in it, though I suspect it, but on Monday afternoon Charles Baxter went by my house on his way to town with a broken saw in his buggy. Such is the perversity of rival artists that I don't think Charles Baxter had ever been to Carlstrom with any work. But this morning when I went to town and stopped at Carlstrom's shop I found the ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... what sort of whim, prank, or perversity it was, that, after all these leave-takings, induced me to go to the pigsty, and take leave of the swine! There they lay, buried as deeply among the straw as they could burrow, four huge black grunters, the very symbols of slothful ease and sensual ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was fretfully drowsy, but with the innate perversity of toddling babyhood, resented and resisted every effort to soothe her to sleep. Refusing to lie across the nurse's lap, the small tyrant clambered up, wrapped her arms about her neck, and finally Beryl rose and walked up and down, humming softly Chopin's dreamy "Berceuse"; ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... as man never spake before, tell, in a symbolism that is self-evidently true, the way by which alone, real happiness is won. We are blessed or cursed of God, through the working of His laws immutable, according as our relation to those laws is one of knowledge and obedience, or of ignorance and perversity. As, in the Hebrew tongue the words we render, "to curse," and "to bless," run back to the same root idea, so in point of fact, the very suffering which, sooner or later, comes to us when we are out of touch with the divine order of love to God and love to man, is the means ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... Court, and resembled, as they possibly might, Pym and Haslerig, and other stubborn and sturdy members of the long Parliament, the wheels of government would be totally obstructed. Such men would oppose, merely to shew their power, from envy, jealousy, and perversity of disposition; and not gaining themselves, would hate and oppose all who did: not loving the person of the prince, and conceiving they owed him little gratitude, from the mere spirit of insolence and contradiction, they would oppose and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... philosophizing; but if the story has any point it will be evident in the narrative itself, and no preliminary explanation will atone for later neglect to make it of human interest. There is no good reason, unless it be the perversity of human nature, why you should begin a story by making trite remarks about things in general, ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... for example, realize that the desire on the part of the child to touch, to do—to get into mischief—is a fundamental characteristic of childhood, and not an indication of perversity in her particular Johnny or Mary? How many know that these instincts are the most useful and the most usable traits that the child has; that the checking of these impulses may mean the destruction of individual qualities of great ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... which false interpretations were put upon this theory (natural selection) and a function was assigned to it which it could never fulfil, will some day be recognised as one of the least creditable episodes in the history of science. With a curious perversity it was the weakest elements in the theory which were seized upon as the most valuable, particularly the part assigned to blind chance in the occurrence of variations. This was valued not for its scientific ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... at this cold-blooded perversity of his uncle; but Clameran showed his immense superiority in wickedness, and the ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... tyrant, full of learning and devoid of sense, enfeebled alike in mind and body, is cast upon the world, he there by his unfitness, by his pride, and by all his vices, makes us deplore human wretchedness and perversity. We deceive ourselves; this is the man our whims have created. Nature makes men by a ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... casting their eyes about them, to grow experienced in the ways of men, or the on-goings of the world. This spectacle gave me, I can assure you, much and no little insight; and so dowie was I with the thoughts of what I had witnessed of the selfishness, the sinfulness, and perversity of man, that I grew more and more home-sick, thinking never so much in my life before of my quiet hearthstone and cheerful ingle; and though Thomas Clod insisted greatly on my staying to their head-meeting dinner, and taking ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... maliciousness turn the world into disorder. Purity, intelligence, spirituality and subtlety constitute the vital spirit of right which pervades heaven and earth, and the persons gifted with benevolence are its natural fruit. Malignity and perversity constitute the spirit of evil, which permeates heaven and earth, and malicious persons are affected by its influence. The days of perpetual happiness and eminent good fortune, and the era of perfect peace and tranquility, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Edward!" continued the softened veteran, "how many of my day-dreams have been destroyed by thy perversity! nay, I know not that Kit, discreet and loyal as he is, could have found such a favor in my eyes as thyself; there is a cast of thy father in that face and smile, Ned, that might have won me to anything short of treason—and then Cicely, provoking, tender, mutinous, kind affectionate, ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... you too well, Stanley. You want no advice. You never took advice—you never will. Your desperate and ingrained perversity has ruined us both.' ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... intimate a union could never have been formed among previously discordant allies but for their overmastering fear of Napoleon. Such a treaty was without parallel in European history; and the stringency of its clauses serves as the measure of the prowess and perversity of the French Emperor. It is puerile to say, as Mollien does, that England bribed the allies to this last effort. Experiences of the last months had shown them that peace could not be durable as long as ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... on a vision. He has the habit, or, say, the fault, of defective mantelpiece clocks, of suddenly stopping in the very fulness of the tick. If you have ever lived with a clock afflicted with that perversity, you know how vexing it is—such a stoppage. I was vexed with Marlow. He was smiling faintly while I waited. He even laughed a little. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... perversity of bears! No sooner did anything like a smile from Fortune's face alight upon him, than he seemed resolved, by his uncompromising temper, to turn it to a frown! As long as the business was new to him, he took pleasure in performing the duties belonging to it in a proper manner; ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... we have already observed, was far from being of a cruel and hardened disposition, and his acquiescence in the unprincipled actions of his master arose more from dread of his character than perversity of heart. He was now strangely perplexed, anticipating the disastrous results which might spring from the unlooked-for meeting of Gomez Arias and the forsaken victim of his satiated passion. He almost regretted having removed the error under which Theodora laboured with ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio |
