"Perverse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sentiments expressed; of any want of concentration in thought, of national or historical keeping. Far from this, indeed, a deliberate unity of purpose is strikingly apparent. Without referring for the present to what are assumed to be perverse faults of execution—a question the principles and bearing of which will shortly be considered—assuredly the mention of the names of a few among Browning's poems—of "Paracelsus," "Pippa Passes," "Luria," the "Souls's Tragedy," "King Victor ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... was natural that Neville should agree with Rodney; but Pamela had picked up foolish ideas from working among the poor and living with Frances Carr, and Nan was, as usual, merely wrong-headed, childish and perverse. ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... lubrication of the mental processes and a sedative for the nerves besides; but the act of chewing must be discreetly and inaudibly carried on, and he who in the heat of argument or under the stress of cross-questioning a perverse witness failed to patronize the cuspidors which dotted the floor at suitable intervals stood in peril of a stern admonishment for the first offense and a fine ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... friends, who all declared that, instead of being deranged in my intellect, they had never heard my conversation manifest so much energy or sublimity of conception; but, for all that, over the singular delusion that I was two persons my reasoning faculties had no power. The most perverse part of it was that I rarely conceived myself to be any of the two persons. I thought for the most part that my companion was one of them, and my brother the other; and I found that, to be obliged to speak and answer ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... forms of thieving. He had gained his spurs in that sphere, and naturally enough had kept for it, after his promotion to another department, a feeling not very far removed from affection. Thieving was not a sheer absurdity. It was a form of human industry, perverse indeed, but still an industry exercised in an industrious world; it was work undertaken for the same reason as the work in potteries, in coal mines, in fields, in tool-grinding shops. It was labour, whose practical difference ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... against they wanted. It is said, "Oh, that my People had hearkened to me, and Israel had walked in my ways, I should soon have subdued their Enemies, and turned my hand against their Adversaries" (Psalm 81.13-14). But now our perverse and evil carriages in the sight of the Lord, have so offended Him, that instead of turning His hand against them, the Lord feeds and nourishes them up to be a scourge to the ...
— Captivity and Restoration • Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
... morning? For what his eyes had seen, of course, was a lady overcome with emotion at the sight of blood of her dear friend, and that same dear friend restoring her with assurances that his hurt was very far from mortal. Later, much later, he was to blame his own perverse stupidity. Almost is he too severe in his self-condemnation. For how else could he have interpreted the scene he beheld, his preconceptions being ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... at dinner, and no supper. With such a diet, how much better is he than an Irishman—a Celt, as he calls him? No, the truth is, that the misery of Ireland is not from the human nature that grows there—it is from England's perverse legislation, past ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... because they choose to live alone, without any witnesses of their actions. They fear the gifts of fortune, from the apprehension of losing them; and, lest they should be miserable, they embrace a life of voluntary wretchedness. How absurd is their choice! how perverse their understanding! to dread the evils, without being able to support the blessings, of the human condition. Either this melancholy madness is the effect of disease, or exercise on their own bodies the tortures which are inflicted on fugitive slaves ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... many years since a grave writer set him down as a denier of immortality; because, forsooth, in The Winter's Tale he makes the rogue Autolycus say, "For the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it." This mode of judging is indeed so perverse or so ignorant, that to spend any words in refuting or reproving it would be a mere waste of breath; or, if there be any so innocent as to need help on that point, it is not ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... railway carriages Possess a sense which none disparages; So those who are not perverse or froward May be trusted to see that the blinds are lowered, To cover the windows so totally That no one inside can be seen, or see. Mem.—This need not be done, as lately decided, If blinds for the windows have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... 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 one has ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... grace, which makes man acceptable and by which we merit eternal life, is offered to all. But it is not grafted on all, for they will not purge away the wild branches of their trees—that is to say, unbelief or a perverse will, or disobedience to the commandments of God. But in order that this branch of divine grace may be planted in our soul, three things are necessary; the antecedent grace of God, the conversion of our free will, and the purification of the conscience. Antecedent ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... the early morning, before visitors began to arrive who might be alarmed at seeing an elephant at large. He was addicted to minding his own business, and never paid the slightest attention to any occupants of cage or enclosure. He was quite unaware of the hostility which he had aroused in the perverse and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... lost!' says the black-coat gent, a-leanin' back like he's plumb dejected that a-way an' hopeless. 'It is a stiff-necked gen'ration an' sorely perverse a lot.' ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... in particular, for the most exquisite specimen of pig-headedness that the world can furnish, his perverse evidence on the once famous case at the Warwick assizes, of Captain Donelan for poisoning his brother-in-law, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... proposition that a something, having nothing in common with anything, is necessarily existent. Matter is everywhere around and about us. We ourselves are matter—all our ideas are derived from matter—and yet such is the singularly perverse character of human intellect that, while resolutely denying the possibility of matter's eternity, an immense number of our race embrace the incredible proposition that matter was created in time by a necessarily existing Being who is ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... him up—encourage your man,' said Devereux, who took a perverse pleasure in joking; 'tell him to flay the lump, splat him, divide him, and cut him ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... catch Charity's eye, but was made aware once more of the eternal truth that women are perverse and fickle creatures, for she would not look at him, and seemed absorbed in ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... the discontents of the nation, and we shall see how it harassed the queen in her dying hours. It is even suspected that the queen still retained so much of the woman, that she could never overcome her perverse dislike to name a successor; so that, according to this opinion, she died and left the crown to the mercy of a party! This would have been acting unworthy of the magnanimity of her great character—and as it is ascertained that the queen was very sensible ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... call a shop-girl because you have the habit. There is no type; but a perverse generation is always seeking a type; so this is what the type should be. She has the high-ratted pompadour, and the exaggerated straight-front. Her skirt is shoddy, but has the correct flare. No furs protect her against the bitter ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... delicate duskiness, which had so worked upon her in imagination and in fact the evening before. She put her hand kindly on that long slim hand stretched out beside her, and, because she knew not what else to speak, and because the tongue is very perverse at times,—saying the opposite of what is expected,—she herself blundered out, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... walked about a mile, he turned into a road leading eastward, with the design of going a few miles in that direction, and then turning to the north. When he had travelled what to his weakness was a long distance, all at once, with the dismay of a perverse dream, rose above the trees the towers of Cairncarque. Was he never to escape them, in the body any more than in the spirit? He turned ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... obey the behests of conflicting deities; in the second place, the different prophets of Jehovah in Judaism and Christendom had, so far as Mohammed knew, been uniformly successful, for he was familiar with the glorious history of Abraham, Moses, and David, and he always held to the perverse conception that Jesus was not crucified. However deep in the dumps prophets may have been on occasion, they have invariably believed one thing: victory for their particular cause would inevitably come. Neither an unbroken series of worldly failures nor the chastisement ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... cur was demanded by one, and, as he was aware, sought for by many, Vanslyperken put a value upon him that was extraordinary. Snarleyyow had become a precious jewel in the eyes of his master, and what he suffered in anxiety and disappointment from the perverse disposition of the animal, only endeared him the more. "Yes, my poor dog," apostrophised the lieutenant, "they would seek your life, nay, that hardhearted woman demands that you should be laid dead at her porch. All conspire against you, but be not afraid, my dog, your master will ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... smartly, though it were for stewed ibis or boiled elephant, rather than that each customer should sit holding his head in his hands, plunged in arithmetical calculations about how much food there can be on the premises. Most of us have suffered from a certain sort of ladies who, by their perverse unselfishness, give more trouble than the selfish; who almost clamor for the unpopular dish and scramble for the worst seat. Most of us have known parties or expeditions full of this seething fuss of self-effacement. From much meaner ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... with His Church and people since He ascended to glory. The years upon years He has borne with their perverse resistance of His grace, their treacherous ingratitude, their wayward wanderings, their hardness of heart and contempt of His holy word. Yet, behold the forbearing love of this Saviour of God! His hand of mercy is ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... stair, a gentle hand upon the latch, and strange Kitty, perverse even among her best impulses, started up, and stood cold and silent ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... was accidental. I never went to the levee; for having seen the courts of Mussulman and Catholic sovereigns, my curiosity was sufficiently allayed; and my politics being as perverse as my rhymes, I had, in fact, 'no business there.' To be thus praised by your Sovereign must be gratifying to you; and if that gratification is not alloyed by the communication being made through me, the bearer of it will consider ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... conditions as to cultivating the opposite right ones in their place. If you are inclined to be neurasthenic your mind is frequently occupied with fear. This fear haunts you because some thwarted element in your personality, surviving in the Unconscious, gains through it a perverse satisfaction. In other words, your Unconscious enjoys the morbid emotional condition which fear brings with it. Should you succeed in banishing your fears you would probably feel dissatisfied, life would seem empty. The old ideas would beckon you with promises, ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... epitome of Seward's views when spoken without restraint. His friends thought them "bold" and his opponents denounced them as "most perverse and dogmatic," but, whether bold or perverse, he devoted the chief part of every speech to them. He was not without humour, man's highest gift, but he had more of humanity; he spoke seriously and solemnly, usually to grave, sober, reflecting men of all professions and parties; and, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... 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 the prospect of a union which was to consign ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the child is a mere human larva, weak, perverse, disagreeable, the heir of mortality, with all manner of "defects of doubt and taints of blood," gathered in the long experience ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... declined to be sold off in such a fashion unless—she coyly admitted—she could have half of the rum herself. Loth as he was to do so, Toby was brought to agree to this proposition, for he knew that rum was rare and good and girls were common and perverse, so the gentle forest lily took her mug of liquor and tossed it off. Now, it is not clear whether she wished to nerve herself for the deed that followed or whether the deed was a result of the tonic, but she made off from the paternal wigwam ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... neighbor and doing him harm, they are rendering a service to God Himself; but in so doing they but manifest the effects of earlier sin, personal, perhaps, and original, which has darkened their understanding and made perverse their moral vision, so that, having eyes, they see not, having ears, they hear not, neither do they understand.(35) Following the corruption of their own nature, bleeding from the wounds of original sin, they are prone to blaspheme ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... 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
... by perverse chance, involved and as it were absorbed in that foolish question of his English Marriage, we have nothing for it but to continue our sad function; and go on painfully fishing out, and reducing to an authentic ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the voice of egotism, and care for nothing but themselves. It may, therefore, be assumed, that any view current on certain tangible interests which concern man very nearly, and which has been shared by great parties and even by whole peoples for generations, is not based only on ignorance or a perverse love of wrong. The error consists more frequently in applying measures wholesome and even absolutely necessary under certain circumstances, to circumstances entirely different. And here, a thorough insight into the conditions ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... 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 ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... health, lots of adventure, hardship enough (for you must know that, if I do sleep under a sky-blue canopy, I am esteemed one of the most hardy men in all Greenland) to satisfy the most insatiate appetite and perverse disposition." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... decencies of religion—such is the aspect which Scottish national character bore to Clarendon. To a superficial and distant observer there was not a little which justified such a judgment; and in the case of Clarendon it was buttressed by a solid mass of honest, however perverse, prejudice. ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... the Lady Elizabeth Ellis, of Terraced Garden, in Camden, by the Wateree. And he is writing without hope that he will see the Lady and her Lord and the Princeling, for moons and moons. This is a sad, sad word for him to write. But the whole world is skew-jee, awry, distorted and altogether perverse. The President is broken in body, and obstinate in spirit. Clemenceau is beaten for an office he did not want. Einstein has declared the law of gravitation outgrown and decadent. Drink, consoling friend of a Perturbed World, is shut off; and all goes merry ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... will not permit me to take my breath, But filleth me with bitterness, If we speak of the strength of the mighty, lo it is he! And if of justice, Who will summon him? Though I am righteous, my own mouth condemns me, Though I am perfect, it would prove me to be perverse. The earth is given into the hand of the wicked; He covereth the faces of its judges; If not he, then who ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... voice showed scorn at his perverse lack of intelligence. "Out contract was made with ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... or scorn the spear.' Urania arraigns Keats for having made his inroad upon the dragon, unguarded by wisdom or by scorn. His want of wisdom was shown (we may assume) by the grave blemishes and defects in his Endymion, the wilful faults and perverse excesses and extravagances which mark its composition, and wantonly invited attack. His want of scorn was (according to Shelley's view of the facts), clear enough: he had not been equal to despising a spiteful attack, but had fretted himself to death ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... incident of the Cattle Trail, that most unique and stupendous of all modern migrations, and its founders must have been inspired with a malicious desire to perpetrate a crime against geography, or else they reveled in a perverse cussedness, for within a mile on every side lay broad prairies, and two miles to the east flowed the indolent waters of the Rio Pecos itself. The distance separating the town from the river was excusable, for at certain seasons of the year the placid ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... its neighbor. The sunshine is sunshine, and the pine-burr a pine-burr, obstinately, through and through. So Nature rests us. But whatever grows out of a man's brain is like the brain, patched, uncertain: a perverse streak in it somewhere, to spoil its thorough good or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... sheep and all the foodstuffs for the journey were bought from Jabez at his own price, for which he thanked me much, and on the third day we started. At the last moment the Prince, whose mood seemed to be perverse that evening, refused to travel with the host upon the morrow because of the noise and dust. In vain did the Count Amenmeses reason with him, and Nehesi and the great officers implore him almost on their ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... all my annual income to his beneficent efforts on my behalf. And the worst of it is, that he has a kind of top-heavy and overwhelming good-nature about him. He honestly means to be kind and genial where he only succeeds in irritating his perverse acquaintances. Was BULMER always thus? When he began on his small salary, did he patronise the office-boy? When he had learnt to spell, did he devote his first epistolary efforts to the pompous patronage of his parents? I fancy I can ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... at Constantinople. Indeed, he had, in Mr. Spencer Walpole's words, 'reason to suspect that the absence of a properly credited Turk was not due to the dilatory character of the Porte alone but to the perverse action of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe.'[38] Lord Clarendon did not hesitate to declare that Lord Stratford was inclined to thwart any business which was not carried on in Constantinople, and the English Ambassador ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... insignificant, his demands so imperious, that the entire household dance attendance on the wee tyrant, and count it joy. But by and by the things at which we used to laugh become presumptuous, and that which was once funny is now perverse. And the more practical a man is, the larger his stock of Connecticut commonsense, the greater his disillusionment as his children grow to manhood. When he beholds dawdling inanity and dowdy vanity growing ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... chief actors in the book are clever, rising often into the high latitudes of genius, yet without that perverse kink which is wont to mar all satisfaction. There is no taint of poison in the air they breathe. There is no passion hovering on the border-land of crime, or defiling its garments with the dust of earthliness. Love ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... in earnest still, as I have said, all I have to do in my present uncertainty, is, to brighten up my faculties, by filing off the rust they have contracted by the town smoke, a long imprisonment in my close attendance to so little purpose on my fair perverse; and to brace up, if I can, the relaxed fibres of my mind, which have been twitched and convulsed like the nerves of some tottering paralytic, by means of the tumults she has excited in it; that ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... for all his Irish ardor he was wary. He had never asked her to marry him. She thought she knew the reason. He did not want for a wife a woman who had been "Slim" Jim's girl. And Annie—because she was Irish too and perverse—held her head high and went with Collins openly before the eyes of the ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... understood the part this perverse creature had been playing! Now he could account for their meeting in this train coming from Rouen!... She had recently associated with Corporal Vinson as a priest. She had seen him off, no doubt, and, anxious to rid herself of her ecclesiastical exterior ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... message to deliver, a message of error; but at his command there are not only perverse intellects but all the elegance of polished language and all ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... lesson of this parable is parallel with that which is taught by the experience of the penitent thief. Both greatly magnify the patience and long-suffering of God: they record and proclaim, each in its own way, that there is hope at the eleventh hour. But in such a case, a perverse carnal mind frequently turns the grace of God into lasciviousness. Because the mercy of our Redeemer is stretched to the furthest verge of safety to leave room for the outcast to enter, when on the darkening evening of the day ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... of his self-esteem, however, he was not unwise enough to feel sure of the result. Were not all women, even the best of them, notoriously perverse? And there was always, conceivably, that inopportune third party, a preferred rival, to be counted with, who might have been first ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... of being aware of the magnitude (the amount, if we might use such a word,) of the offence he commits, by being capable of something like an adequate conception of the being against whom it is committed. A perverse child, committing an offence against a great monarch, of whose dignity it had some, but a vastly inadequate apprehension, would not be punished in the same manner as an offender of high endowments and responsibility, and fully aware of the dignity of the ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... native of Aragon and had been a subject of Ferdinand, was a stolid, perverse, and stubborn being; so much is advertised in his low forehead, impudent prominent nose, thick sensual lips, and stout bull neck. This Pope considers the matter; considers, by such lights as he has, to whom he shall entrust the souls of these new heathen; considers which ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... Pope may appoint an observance; he simply enquires, whether this were the intention of the Pope, to bind all equally to abstinence from meats, so that one who should partake would be liable to hell-fire, even although no perverse contempt should be committed. And he who says this in the Colloquies, adds that he hates fishes not otherwise than he does a serpent. Now, there are some so affected that fish is poison to them, just as there are found those who in like manner shrink from wine. If one who is ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... the church-builder, and the patriot in all those generations, and the kingdom of God is not with us yet, seems, indeed, to be as far off as ever. When the world has been at peace for a while and the millennium seems imminent, all of a sudden a perverse, stiff-necked, wall-eyed generation supervenes, and evolution gives ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... they would see clearly how to remedy the wrong that arouses their antagonism. Action, when accompanied by personal resistance, however effective it may seem, does not begin to have the power that can come from action, without such resistance. As, for instance, when we have to train a child with a perverse will, if we quietly assert what is right to the child, and insist upon obedience without the slightest antagonistic feeling to the child's naughtiness, we accomplish much more toward strengthening the character of the child than if we try ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... Lord Kilcullen's wooing. To be sure, time would do a great deal: but then, there wasn't so much time to spare. He had already taken steps to borrow the thirty thousand pounds, and had, indeed, empowered his son to receive it: he had also pledged himself for the other fifty; and then, after all, that perverse fool of a girl would insist on being in love with that scapegrace, Lord Ballindine! This, however, might wear away, and he would take very good care that she should hear of his misdoings. It would be very odd if, after all, his plans were to be destroyed, and his arrangements disconcerted ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... their doctrine orthodox By apostolic blows and knocks; 200 Call fire and sword and desolation, A godly thorough reformation, Which always must be carried on, And still be doing, never done; As if religion were intended 205 For nothing else but to be mended. A sect, whose chief devotion lies In odd perverse antipathies; In falling out with that or this, And finding somewhat still amiss; 210 More peevish, cross, and splenetick, Than dog distract, or monkey sick. That with more care keep holy-day The wrong, than others ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... rais'd my Estate to the Value of L10000 I then looked on the Ashes of our City, and, the Misery of its late Inhabitants, as an Effect of the just Wrath and Indignation of Heaven towards a sinful and perverse People. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... magician, loving darkness rather than light, and darkening himself in the delusions of his darkness, stubbornly persevered in his malice, and still contentiously affirmed that his wicked and perverse opinions excelled the doctrines of the saint. And the king feared that the works of the magician would be overturned, and he proposed a certain trial to be made between them: "Let your books be plunged into the water, and he whose writings are blotted or effaced, let his preaching ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... shall let her see!' replied the perverse girl; 'and I shall tell her so, too—see if I don't,' she added, nodding her head; though, when she came into the presence of that good lady, she had not a word to say for herself, such a charm is there in the manner of some ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... fit to-day, and went off to write notes, et cetera, on Guy Mannering. This was perverse enough; but it was a composition between humour and duty; and as such, let ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... his search for ear-splitting discords, forced transitions, harsh modulations, ugly distortions of melody and rhythm. Everything it is possible to think of is raked up to produce the effect of odd originality, but especially strange keys, the most unnatural positions of chords, the most perverse ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... inevitably recalled the hopes with which they had begun their official relationship three years before, at that time neither having the faintest intimation of the tremendous problems that were to draw them asunder. Mr. Wilson at this meeting did not impress his Ambassador as a perverse character, but as an extremely pathetic one. Page came away with no vexation or anger, but with a real feeling for a much suffering and a much perplexed statesman. The fact that the President's life was so solitary, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... disgraced creature was an attractive, pure, innocent little girl. Her adopted father lavished upon her numerous presents, and spent hundreds of dollars to obtain her recovery to health. Yet through this awful vice she was ruined utterly, and rendered so wholly perverse and bad that she had no desire to be better, no disposition to reform. God only knows what will be her sad end. May none who read these lines ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... not what may still be the perverse beauty's fate: I want thee, therefore, to see and admire her, while she is serene and full of hope: before her apprehensions are realized, if realized they are to be; and if evil apprehensions of me she really has; before her beamy eyes ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... attempted for these indispensable purposes, quite unavailing; so that there were continual frauds, concealments, and thefts, which animated every one against his neighbour, and produced infinite contentions and perpetual quarrels. Hence a perverse and malevolent disposition was constantly kept up among them, which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... the girl with a growing 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 ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... that followed the divine pleading. That divine voice leaves no man as it finds him. If it does not sway him to obedience, it deepens his guilt, and makes him more obstinate. Like some perverse ox in the yoke, he stiffens his neck, and stands the very picture of brute obduracy. There is an awful alternative involved in our hearing of God's message, which never returns to Him void, but ever does something ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... necessary is to sacrifice to the gods: a simple and convenient ceremony effected by dropping a pinch of incense on the altar, after which the prisoner is at once set free. Under such circumstances you have only your own perverse folly to blame if you suffer. I suggest to you that if you cannot burn a morsel of incense as a matter of conviction, you might at least do so as a matter of good taste, to avoid shocking the religious convictions of your fellow citizens. I am aware that these considerations ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... the supreme prerogative of knowledge that it reveals all other things. It is not a phenomenon like any other phenomenon of the world. When we say that knowledge has been produced in us by the external collocations, we just take a perverse point of view which is unwarranted by experience; knowledge only photographs the objective phenomena for us; but there is nothing to show that knowledge has been generated by these phenomena. This is only a theory which applies the ordinary conceptions of causation to knowledge ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... of Gertie, so pretty, so girlish, so understandable, so full of innocent winning coquetry. I softened. Could any one help preferring her to me, who was strange, weird, and perverse—too outspoken to be engaging, devoid of beauty and endearing little ways? It was my own misfortune and nobody's fault that my singular individuality excluded me from the ordinary run of youthful joyous-heartednesses, and why should I be nasty to ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... roof shades the Fitzherbert Fair; Reserved, perverse. As coach and coach roll by She mopes within her lattice; lampless, lone, As if she grieved at her ungracious fate, And yet were loth to kill the sting of it By frankly forfeiting the Prince and town. "Bidden," says she, "but as one ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... servant of the Prophet, his hands tied, his turban off, woe-begone but resigned; faithful and philosophic Moslem that he was, he only waited for his throat to be cut, since it was his kismut, his perverse destiny, that had brought him to such a region of Kafirs, (infidels). Assuring him that there was nothing to fear, I despatched a messenger in search of the interpreter, while Beebe wept and protested. Presently an imposing ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... there is pride and anger, and a perverse heart in thy replies. The sins of the senators—and as they are men, they are not without spot—can in no manner whiten thine own. Though an unjust sentence should condemn one to punishment, it leaves the offences against God in their native ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 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 believers;" and, "believers" were "added to ...
— Miscellaneous Pieces • John Bunyan
... dislik'st the piece thou light'st on first, Think that of all, that I have writ, the worst: But if thou read'st my book unto the end, And still do'st this and that verse, reprehend; O perverse man! if all disgustful be, The extreme scab take thee, and thine, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... male would have been as agreeable a task as falls to the lot of a man of letters. And being a young man he would begin by considering the long series of poets, painters and musicians, he had read of in Balzac's novels, but as none of these would be within the harmony of Violet's perverse humour, he would turn to life, and presently a vague shaggy shape would emerge from the back of his mind, but it would refuse to condense into any recognizable face; which is as well, perhaps, else I might be tempted to pick ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... that Order to General Lossow, and tell him he is not to take it ill that I trouble him, as I have none in my Suite that can do anything.'" Let the Suite take it as they can! A most pungent, severe old King; quite perverse at times, thinks Schmettau. Thus ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... sacred; but when I consider Herbert's story, and trace how the deed came to be done and the impulsion of circumstances that led to it, it seems to have been in some sort thrust upon him by the same perverse fate that dogged our steps. He had meant the king no harm—indeed it may be argued that, from whatever motive, he had sought to serve him—and save under the sudden stress of self-defense he had done him none. The king's unlooked-for ignorance of his errand, Herbert's ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... 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 ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... considered the pathological habits, such as alcoholism, excessive smoking and eating, perverse sex habits. The latter, the perverse sex habits, will be studied when discussing the sex feelings and purposes in their entirety. Alcoholism is not yet a dead issue in this country though those who are sincere in wishing their fellows well hope it soon will be. It stands, however, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... Christian principles in seeking after divine perfection. But when he comes to believe that he has already attained it he makes of himself a god. "If I justify myself," said Job, "mine own mouth shall condemn me; if I say I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse." And St. John: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." More than this, if we seek perfection in others we deceive ourselves equally and make gods of men. This is precisely the conclusion at which perverted Freemasonry and the forms of Socialism ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... Woe for sin of minds perverse, Deadly fraught with mortal curse. Behold us slain and slayers, all akin. Woe for my counsel dire, conceived in sin. Alas, my son, Life scarce begun, Thou wast undone. The fault was mine, mine ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... treat with the English envoys already named by the Queen. There had been much delay in the arrival of those deputies, on account of the noise raised by Barneveld and his followers; but Burghley was now sanguine that the exposure of what he called the Advocate's seditious, false, and perverse proceedings, would enable Leicester to procure the consent of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 2. Some men of perverse temperament, who delighted in public misfortune, had concocted a number of accusations against this prince for acts which they imputed to him even when scarcely grown up, and had exaggerated them to Valens. Among these men was ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... seem to take a perverse pleasure in evoking reproof, appeals, entreaties, and exhortations. A small boy of four who had several times repeated the particular sin to which his attention had been directed by the frequency of his mother's warnings ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... altered the months; in fact, abandoned the "lunar month" and instituted the "calendar month." Thus he decreed that the ordinary year should be 365 days, but that every fourth year (which, for some perverse reason, we call "leap" year) should have an extra day. He ordered that the alternate months, from January to November inclusive, should have thirty-one days and the others thirty days, excepting February, which was to have in common years twenty-nine, but in every fourth year (our leap year) ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... two miles away, lived Thomas Day, author of Sandford and Merton; Thomas Day, who took a foundling child of thirteen and named her Sabrina, and educated her to be his wife—a position which she, at an age to marry, refused. His fate was perverse to the end. He taught himself to dance, wooing another lady who spurned him; and, teaching himself to ride, he was ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... in Rogers' heart toward the two outlaw leaders, and a perverse devil lurked in him. For many months he had worshiped Barbara Morgan from a distance, vaguely aware that his passion for her could never be realized. But there was a spark of honesty and justice in Rogers despite his profession, and a sincere ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... portentous conference, was: "Mr. Bart must seek me, and seek very zealously. I know you well enough Amy, to be sure that you will give him no hints. It's bad enough to love a man before I've been asked to do so. What an utterly perverse and unmanageable thing one's heart is! I shall do no angling, however, nor shall I ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... happened to be riding alone with Lenox; the third time, her husband was with them: and on every occasion Quita's companion was James Garth,—the only one among them all who enjoyed the situation. Quita herself found a perverse satisfaction, unworthy of her best moments, in thus emphasising her indifference to her husband's presence; ignoring, with characteristic heedlessness, the fact that a two-edged weapon is an ill thing to handle: and Lenox, accepting her unspoken intimation au pied de la lettre, steeled ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... common measure for these names, but it is clear that what is most distasteful to the writer, in theory at any rate, is variety. Epic is the most solemn, stately, and frigid of all kinds of composition. This was the result attained by the perverse following of precepts supposed to be classical. The critics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were generally right in distinguishing between Epic and Romance, and generally wrong in separating the one kind from the ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... two goats," replied the aged hag, "there is no better, both being equally stubborn and perverse, though one may be finer-looking and more vainglorious than the other. Yet should I foster this one to the detriment of her fellow, what would be this person's plight if haply the weaker died and ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... that has been said yet!' exclaimed she. 'Now I shall have a chance for Albinia!' and accordingly, Mr. Kendal having given a gracious and grateful consent, Albinia was informed; but Winifred thought her almost perverse when a perturbed look came over her, and she said, 'It is very kind in Maurice, but I must ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she said; "what would be the use? Through one of the usual perverse tricks of fate, M. le Comte would be sure to inquire after the very piece of jewellery of which I had so disposed, and ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... opportunities that offered, cut down and did to death because of their skaldic quality. Another he killed with his own hand, I know not for what reason. In brief, after about a year, Thangbrand returned to Norway and king Olaf; declaring the Icelanders to be a perverse, satirical, and inconvertible people, having himself, the record says, "been the death of three men there." King Olaf was in high rage at this result; but was persuaded by the Icelanders about him to try farther, and by a wilder ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... in the home. Una was doubtless purely perverse in competing with men for the commercial triumphs of running that gray, wet towel round and round on its clattering roller, and of wondering whether for the entire remainder of her life she would ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... disposition quite different from Juliana's. It was also indispensable that he should have been accompanied to Europe by these young ladies and should have established himself there for the remainder of a struggling, saddened life. There was a further implication that Miss Bordereau had had in her youth a perverse and adventurous, albeit a generous and fascinating character, and that she had passed through some singular vicissitudes. By what passions had she been ravaged, by what sufferings had she been blanched, what store of memories had she laid away ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... sweet maid, and let who will be clever,'" declaimed the Bonnie Lassie, who was feeling perverse that day. "You want me to define his social status for you and tell you whether you'd better invite him to dinner. You'd better not. He might swallow ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of great concern to find, that the heir of the crown was so blinded with bigotry, and so deeply engaged in foreign interests; and that the king himself had been prevailed on, from low Interests, b hearken to his dangerous insinuations. Very bad consequences might ensue from such perverse habits and attachments; nor could the nation and parliament guard against them with too anxious a precaution. But that the Roman pontiff could hope to assume the sovereignty of these kingdoms; a project which, even during the darkness of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... something unsatisfactory about it; one feels the narrator is on guard always, as it were, and, aware of an audience cold and of strangers, keeps this back and trims up that to make himself more what he should be (or, in some perverse cases, what he should not be). But probably no man who is worthy of attention sits down to write a letter to a good friend with one eye on posterity and the public. In his intimate correspondence he is off guard. Hence, some ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... returned Bitzer, 'that's where it is. If they were more provident and less perverse, ma'am, what would they do? They would say, "While my hat covers my family," or "while my bonnet covers my family," - as the case might be, ma'am - "I have only one to feed, and that's the person I most ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... critics past and present combine to indicate an unmistakable difference of touch or an unmistakable diversity of date between this and that portion of the same play, or where the internal evidence of interpolation perceptible to the most careless and undeniable by the most perverse of readers is supported by the public judgment of men qualified to express and competent to defend an opinion, have I thought it allowable to adopt this facile method of explanation. No scholar, for ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... will see that I am capable of sharing your literary glory on the sly, and without compunction. Indeed, the false role created in me a perverse mood. And I entered into a literary discussion with M—— that outraged his pedantic soul. It was my way of perjuring his judgment, in return for his unwitting approval of my reviews. Besides, the assumption of infallibility by dull, scholarly men who have neither imagination nor genius ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... peculiar: at the most perilous moment of all, which is the moment before she is actually overtaken by the breaking crest of the wave, she is apt to refuse to answer her helm, and he who is steering her loses all control over her; she seems to be seized with a perverse determination to take a broad sheer one way or the other, with disastrous results, despite a hard-over helm, and then the only thing to be done to retrieve the situation is to effect a lightning shift of helm against all your past experience and your ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... more capricious power—the power that abstains from "nipping." "One nips or is nipped, and never knows beforehand," quoted Rickie, and opened the poems of Shelley, a man less foolish than you supposed. How pleasant it was to read! If business worried him, if Stephen was noisy or Ansell perverse, there still remained this paradise of books. It seemed as if he had read nothing for two years. Then the train stopped for the shunting, and he heard protests from minor officials who were working on the line. They complained that some one who didn't ought to, had mounted ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... human being is a perverse creature; and when he isn't that, he is a practical joker. The result to the other person concerned is about the same: that is, he is made to suffer. The washing down of the decks begins at a very early hour in all ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... made conscious that a familiar figure was hastening along a crosspath in her direction; a comfortable-looking, middle-aged figure that moved with a stately stride. For an instant Elizabeth was possessed with a perverse feeling of irritation, as though he were guilty of the restrictions laid upon her. That he was the innocent cause of some of them could not be denied, for he was a very particular gentleman as to his own and everyone else's deportment, and the sight ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... said, with a hard laugh. "You had better find him in church to-morrow morning, and tell him that you have been wilful and perverse and disobedient. He'll give you absolution, no doubt. So now you'd better go back to your dancing. Your many friends will be ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... are perverse, I shall not take you to the Regatta next Sunday," threatened Monsieur, in deep tones that very thinly veiled the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... instinctively try to show that Mr. Keynes must surely be wrong about the Treaty of Versailles; that Mr. Gibbs must be perversely exaggerating the horrors of modern war; that Mr. Hobson certainly views the industrial crisis with unjustifiable pessimism; that "business as usual" cannot be that socially perverse and incredibly inexpedient thing Mr. Veblen shows it to be; that Mr. Robin's picture of Lenin can only be explained by a disguised sympathy ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... conducted the whites to the water-side, where he communicated with them every night, and taught them to build a small vessel, which carried them to another country, from whence, after a long period, they returned with various kinds of merchandise to barter with the blacks, whose perverse choice of gold in preference to the knowledge of letters had doomed ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... sighed Lulu, "what a time poor Washington did have with Congress being so slow, and officers under him so perverse, wanting their own way instead of doing their best to help him to carry out his ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... or Unitarianism would have been the death of Christianity, reducing it to cosmology and ethics, and that it served only as a bridge whereby the learned might pass over to Catholicism—that is to say, from reason to faith. To this same learned historian of dogmas it appears to be an indication of a perverse state of things that the man Athanasius, who saved Christianity as the religion of a living communion with God, should have obliterated the Jesus of Nazareth, the historical Jesus, whom neither Paul nor Athanasius knew personally, nor yet Harnack himself. Among Protestants, ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... when you saw her, Lady Lettice," saith he. "But—women be so perverse! Why, the poor wretch might have lived till this summer next following, or even (though I scarce think it) have tided o'er another winter, but she must needs take it into her foolish head to rush forth into the garden, to say ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... world and especially for the moral world within; and thus, by what Newman calls "powerful and concurrent" reasons, he finds himself inexorably committed to the dogma of the Incarnation. To the unbeliever, this method seems disingenuous and perverse; for the unbeliever is, as a rule, not so greatly troubled to explain the world to himself, nor so greatly distressed by its disorder; nor is he generally concerned (in modern terms) to "preserve values." He does not consider that if certain emotional states, certain ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... down its net of crime;—Devouring insects, who weary and confuse men's minds, Ignorant, oppressive, negligent, Breeders of confusion, utterly perverse:—These are the ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... I to blame, if nature threw my body In so perverse a mould? yet when she cast Her envious hand upon my supple joints, Unable to resist, and rumpled them On heaps in their dark lodging, to revenge Her bungled work, she stampt my mind more fair; And as from chaos, huddled and deformed, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... With a truly perverse instinct, I saw how strong this might be made, at the fond reader's expense, to be sure, and how much more pathetic, in such a case, the silhouetted figure on the coke-cart would really be. I should, of course, make ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... measures by which this country is destined to become great. The war is doing us the glorious service of bringing the 'copperheads' before the people in their true light—the light of foes to equality, to the rights of the many, and as perverse friends of all that is anti-American. Who and what, indeed, are their leaders! Review them all, from FERNANDO WOOD down to the wretched SAULSBURY, including W. B. REED, in whose veins hereditary traitorous blood ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... are some of us who abuse memory just as much by picking out, with perverse ingenuity, every black bit that lies in the distance behind us, all the disappointments, all the losses, all the pains, all the sorrows. Some men look back and say, with Jacob in one of his moods, 'Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life!' Yes! and the same man, when he was in a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... chivalrous deeds to be less ennobling to the character of Southern men, than similar ones, springing from like motives, on the part of our armies? It is the motive which gives character to all actions, and mistake or error of the most perverse kind, when arising from honest conviction, cannot alter the merit of what is done or suffered. If it be said that the assumed convictions of the Southern people are incredible, it is only necessary to look back a few centuries, in order to see the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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 nervous and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... can I describe these eventful days? One lesson may they teach me, that God is love, and that whatever good thing I am blessed with is not in me. He has been so kind, so gracious, and I so very perverse, frequently so distrustful, so easily wounded; but He, as if He will not take offence, again and again has pity on me. How was I met and saluted with the words, "By Myself have I sworn," as part ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... writing. Trustworthy information respecting America, in the absence of maps, gazetteers, and books of travel, was more difficult to procure. The ordinary Englishman of that day regarded America with horror or contempt as perverse and rebellious colonies, making a great to-do about a paltry tax, and giving "the best of kings" a world of trouble for nothing. He probably heard little of the thundering eloquence with which Fox, Pitt, Burke, and Sheridan were nightly defending the American cause in the ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... returned Heliobas,—"You must understand that the chief vow of the Fraternity of the Cross and Star is SECRECY,—a promise never to divulge the mysteries of God and Nature to those who are unfitted to receive such high instruction. It is Christ's own saying—'A faithless and perverse generation asketh for a sign, and no sign shall be given.' You surely are aware how, even in the simplest discoveries of material science, the world's attitude is at first one of jeering incredulity,—how much more so, then, in things which pertain solely to the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... be looked for in a mind educated and trained as his had been. As to the conduct of the apprentices, he said they were peaceable and industrious, and mostly well disposed. But after all, the negroes were a perverse race of people. It was a singular fact, he said, that the severer the master, the better the apprentices. When the master was mild and indulgent, they were sure to be lazy, insolent, and unfaithful. He ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... its destination. There has been, indeed, for some four years past, a tri-weekly overland mail from St. Louis via New Mexico and Arizona to San Diego, in the extreme south of California,—a route nearly a thousand miles longer than it need or should have been, and evincing a perverse ingenuity in the avoidance not only of Salt Lake and Carson Valley, but even of Santa Fe. This long and mischievous detour—one of the latest of our wholesale sacrifices to Southern jealousy and greed—has at length been ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... A. Poe wrote to a friend. The fact of his birth in Boston he regarded as merely an unfortunate accident, or perhaps the work of that malevolent "Imp of the Perverse" which apparently dominated his life. That it constituted any tie between him and the "Hub of the Universe," unless it might be the inverted tie of opposition, he never admitted. The love which his charming little actress mother cherished for the city in which ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... the beholder's mind than when viewed from the general level. The little girl may have had but the faintest intimation of such an interchange; yet, depend upon it, had it not existed, she never would have troubled herself to clamber up the hill, excepting when the cattle were up there and too perverse to come down ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... and stepped a pace away, the better to gaze upon me, so astounded was he at the unimaginable rashness of my speech. And, to speak truth, I was astounded at myself; I knew perfectly well that I was in all probability only adding fuel to the flame which would ultimately consume me, yet some perverse influence altogether beyond my control seemed to urge me to speak as I did, whether I would or no. And, strangest circumstance of all, my words, instead of evoking from my questioner the white-hot explosion of wrath that I fully expected, seemed to gratify the man rather ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... begins, indeed, in the most agitating manner. Orestes, after the murder of his mother, is represented lying on his bed, afflicted with anguish of soul and madness; Electra sits at his feet, and she and the chorus remain in trembling expectation of his awaking. Afterwards, however, everything takes a perverse turn, and ends with the most ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... the national soul. It was a strange irony that even the aristocracy should end by falling victim to its own environment. Exploited by miracle-mongers, thrown off its balance by paroxysms of so-called mysticism, it disappeared from view in a welter of practices and beliefs that were perverse and ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... morals, he seems to have been officially upright, and he wished well to the colonies, saving always the dominant interests of England. He was bold, ambitious, vehement, and sometimes headstrong and perverse. ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... whose smile of cheer And voice in dreams I see and hear,— The sweetest woman ever Fate Perverse denied a household mate, Who, lonely, homeless, not the less Found peace in love's unselfishness, And welcome wheresoe'er she went, A calm and gracious element,— Whose presence seemed the sweet income And womanly atmosphere ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... camstairie (perverse) lassie," said Bruce, pushing her away with a forceful acidity in the combination of ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... himself a small hut, which he occupied when I first, by mere accident, made his acquaintance. This soon ripened into friendship—for there was much in the recluse to excite interest and esteem. I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy. He had with him many books, but rarely employed them. His chief amusements were gunning and fishing, or sauntering along the beach and through the myrtles, in quest of shells or entomological specimens;—his ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... in spite too of the sacraments, and the many graces we daily receive, in spite of prayer, meditation, and other spiritual exercises, this grand object is but partially attained in this world. For we find our perverse will again and again rising in rebellion against God. When a command is imposed upon us which does not chime in with our wishes, private interests, views, or natural inclination, we not unfrequently must drag ourselves by main force to perform what is commanded. And if we do obey, it ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... Behold, O ye wicked and perverse generation, how have ye forgotten the tradition of your fathers; yea, how soon ye have forgotten ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... pedant, mountebank, or infidel. After that we may read Voltaire's sneers with patience, and even enter with gravity on the examination of Father Hardouin's historic doubts. The fanaticism of an outraged liberalism, produced by centuries of injustice and despotism, is but a poor excuse for such perverse blindness. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... would like to know the truth I should have been very willing to oblige him—to a certain extent. But he asked me nothing, and from talking of me—listen to this Father Karnis—and saying that the great Father in Heaven had granted me every good gift, he went on to speak of you as a wicked, perverse and reprobate old heathen." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... servant is, I should imagine, the last human being in the world to preserve those traits of the cave-dweller from which she was fleeing. Her father would never consent to see her after the marriage. Such unforgiving selfishness is difficult to understand unless as a perverse sort of refinement. There were also doubts as to Carleon Anthony's complete sanity for some considerable time ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... certain cases, in which the evidence of things not seen nor either sensibly or demonstrably perceived, can justly challenge so entire an assent, that he who should pretend to refuse it in the fullest measure of acquiescence, would be deservedly esteemed the most stupid or perverse of mankind. ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... clearly the better of the day, that their adversaries were blind and obstinate heretics; that nothing but the most extreme depravity of heart could induce men to contest such self-evident principles; and that the severest punishments were due to their perverse wickedness. So pleased were they with their superiority in this favorite point, that they soon after renewed the dispute at Oxford; and, to show that they feared no force of learning or abilities, where reason was so evident ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... chosen mine. I can find no warranty for believing in the distinct creation of a score of successive species of crocodiles in the course of countless ages of time. Science gives no countenance to such a wild fancy; nor can even the perverse ingenuity of a commentator pretend to discover this sense, in the simple words in which the writer of Genesis records the proceedings of the fifth and sixth days ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... it met with was far beyond my wildest expectations. The public were delighted with it, but what were my feelings? Anything, alas! but those of delight. No sooner did the public express its satisfaction at the result of my endeavours, than my perverse imagination began to conceive a thousand chimerical doubts; forthwith I sat down to analyse it; and my worst enemy, and all people have their enemies, especially authors—my worst enemy could not have discovered or sought to ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... It is perverse reasoning to conclude, because our sense of propriety shows itself in all the smallest ramifications of our deportment, to take the least important of them and uphold it as the type, and pass judgment upon the principle itself. Which is more important, to eat or to observe rules of propriety ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... are perverse, nothing they know. Men of every name, what do they know? Do they good or ill, nothing they know. O lord, cast not down thy servant! Him, plunged into the flood, seize by the hand! The sin I have committed turn thou to favor! The evil ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... possessed with devils, and that his divine virtue shone forth in nothing more conspicuous than in expelling them. I am very far from having the least intention to undermine the foundations of the christian doctrine, or to endeavour, by a perverse interpretation of the sacred oracles, to despoil the Son of God of his divinity, which he has demonstrated by so many and great works performed contrary to the laws of nature. Truth stands no more in need of the patronage of error, than ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead |
