"Pervert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... breath. I am going to put every faculty I own on to making 'The Opp Eagle' a fine paper. I expect to get here at seven o'clock A.M., and continue to pursue my work as far into the midnight hours as may need be. Nothing in the way of pleasure or anything else is going to pervert my attention. Of course you understand that my mind will be taken up with the larger issues of things, and I'll have to risk a dependence on you to attend to ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... and profligacy; time that the door was shut in the face of invading vulgarity. Creation has not agonized in bloody sweat through countless ages of suffering and achievement that those who possess the highest opportunities for doing good should pervert those opportunities into a mere platform for the display of a harmful badness. Evolution was not aiming at Belgravia when it set out on its long journey from the flaming mist of the nebula. We cannot suppose that Nature is content with ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... trade, and the enacting by Congress of a Territorial slave code. We must prevent each of these things being done by either Congresses or courts. The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both Congresses and courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... jealousy would still have done its worst in besmirching. It was not, if the Rabelaisian trend in so much of Jacobean writing be any indication, a particularly moral age. Few ages in history are. It was not, with a reputed pervert as the fount of honour, a particularly moral Court. Since the emergence of the lovely young Countess from tutelage at Audley End there had been no lack of suitors for her favour. And when Frances so openly exhibited her preference for the King's minion there would be some among ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... us are soon to be overwhelmed by the tempestuous waves of sedition and party rage. If momentary rays of glory break forth from the gloom, while they dazzle us with a transient and fleeting brilliancy, they at the same time admonish us to lament that the vices of government should pervert the direction and tarnish the lustre of those bright talents and exalted endowments for which the favored soils that produced them have been ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... and leaves none for the commission of great misdeeds. As hunters it is divided between the toil of the chase, the idleness of repose, or the indulgence of inebriation. Hunting is but a licentious idle life, and if it does not always pervert good dispositions; yet, when it is united with bad luck, it leads to want: want stimulates that propensity to rapacity and injustice, too natural to needy men, which is the fatal gradation. After this explanation of the effects which follow by living in the woods, shall we yet vainly flatter ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... and with one stroke of his compass, he might describe or divide a right line, had yet rather do this in a circle or longer way, according to the constituted and forelaid principles of his art: yet this rule of his he doth some- times pervert, to acquaint the world with his preroga- tive, lest the arrogancy of our reason should question his power, and conclude he could not. And thus I call the effects of nature the works of God, whose hand ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... this feeling of the soul's sensitiveness, the thoughtful man is very often intolerant of things which to others seem of little moment, because he sees how they are tending to dull or deaden the eye of the soul, or to pervert or to kill its finer instincts; and how, in consequence, though tradition may have given them a sort of spurious consecration, or the world in its blindness may have come to honour them, they are in fact laden with mischief to the ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... and does not, consist in making too much of God's ordinances in their purity and proper use. That cannot be done, any more than you can intelligently love the Bible too much, or the Sabbath. But, to pervert them, or to make additions to them, or to rely upon them wholly, is Romanism. But can men make too much of having a seal on a deed? Is the deed good for anything without the seal? Can they make too much of having three witnesses to their wills? Those ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... GOD in the *great *assembly stands *Bagnadath-el Of Kings and lordly States, Among the gods* on both his hands. *Bekerev. He judges and debates. 2 How long will ye *pervert the right *Tishphetu With *judgment false and wrong gnavel. Favouring the wicked by your might, Who thence grow bold and strong? 3 *Regard the *weak and fatherless *Shiphtu-dal. *Dispatch the *poor mans cause, 10 And **raise the man in ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... enlightened book-mongers their St. Paul, either by threats, revilings, force, violence, fire, and faggot, we shall not be able to hook in any more of them to nibble at below. He dines commonly on counsellors, mischief-mongers, multipliers of lawsuits, such as wrest and pervert right and law and grind and fleece the poor; he never fears to want any of these. But who can endure to be wedded to ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... for we will then be fulfilling our legitimate duties. Yet, it so happens that we too know a few characters. But, as we can read, it behoves us to choose no other than wholesome works; for these will do us no harm! What are most to be shirked are those low books, as, when once they pervert the disposition, there remains no ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... disreputable to take tithes, intended for the service of God, and lavish them away at watering-places or elsewhere, seeking pleasure instead of doing God service. It is not considered disreputable to take fee after fee to uphold injustice, to plead against innocence, to pervert truth, and to aid the devil. It is not considered disreputable to gamble on the Stock Exchange, or to corrupt the honesty of electors by bribes, for doing which the penalty attached is equal to that decreed to the offence of which I am guilty. All these, ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat
... said, and his face darkened as he spoke; "the newspapers are simply the hired mouthpieces of power; the devil's advocates of modern civilization; their influence is always at the service of the highest bidder; it is their duty to suppress or pervert the truth, and they do it thoroughly. They are paid to mislead the people under the guise of defending them. A century ago this thing began, and it has gone on, growing worse and worse, until now the people laugh at the opinions of the press, and doubt the truth even of ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... in the barren white light of his own purposes which so simplified things for Captain Hahn. He was a son of that mesalliance of nations which was Austria-Hungary Slavs, their slipping grasp clutching at eternity, Transylvanians, with pervert Latin ardors troubling their blood, had blended themselves in him; and he was young. Life for him was a depth not a surface, as for Captain Hahn; facts were but the skeleton of truth; glamour clad them and made them vital. He had been transferred ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... injustice and harm. Over that book, if it be a prettily written tale, many young ladies will weep: and though without the faintest intention of imitating your hero's behaviour, they will think that it would be a fine thing if they did so. And it is a great mischief to pervert the moral judgment and falsely to excite the moral feelings. You forget that wrong is wrong, though it be done against yourself, and that you have no right to acquit the wrong to yourself as though it were no wrong at all. That lies beyond your province. You may forgive the personal offence, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... been created before Adam, but the Holy One—blessed be He!—said, "Should he pervert things as I make them, then there will be no one to rectify them; so behold I will create Adam first, and if he should make things crooked, then Abraham following him will make ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... the lawyer accurately expressed the conviction in my mind. The narrative related by Ambrose had all the appearance, in my eyes, of a fabricated story, got up, and clumsily got up, to pervert the plain meaning of the circumstantial evidence produced by the prosecution. I reached this conclusion reluctantly and regretfully, for Naomi's sake. I said all I could say to shake the absolute confidence which she ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins
... together, But we cannot speak when absent, Cannot send our voices from us To the friends that dwell afar off; Cannot send a secret message, But the bearer learns our secret, May pervert it, may betray it, May reveal it unto others." Thus said Hiawatha, walking In the solitary forest, Pondering, musing in the forest, On the welfare of ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... lost the principle of its animation becomes dust. Hence it is an axiom that the change or perversion of the principles by which anything was produced, is the destruction of that very thing; if you can change or pervert the principles from which anything springs, you destroy it. For instance, one single foreign element introduced into the blood produces death; one false assumption admitted into science, destroys its certainty; one false principle admitted into ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... acclaim of every group or authority in the State again swell the one great, constant, triumphant adulatory hymn which, with its insistence, unanimity and violent sonorities, tends to bewilder all minds, deaden consciences and pervert the judgment. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... sound of many voices in the street commanding silence. Then followed a louder voice. It was a herald's proclamation. Listening attentively, I recognized the words of the Resolution of the Council, enjoining the arrest, imprisonment, or execution of any one who should pervert the minds of the people by delusions, and by professing to have received revelations ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... you must lose no time over this. Can't you manage to get some articles in the other papers hinting that at the last election we bribed all the voters in the county, and that we gave out enough contracts to simply pervert the whole constituency. Imply that we poured the public money into this county in bucketsful and that we are bound to do it again. Let Drone have plenty of material of this sort and he'll draw off every honest unbiased vote ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... is the cause of this corruption? It is, says the theologian, because the first man, beguiled by the first woman, ate an apple, which God had forbidden him to touch. Who beguiled this woman into such folly? The devil. Who made the devil? God. But, why did God make this devil, destined to pervert mankind? This is unknown; it is a mystery which the Deity alone is ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... regardless of little besides his own convenience.—Fancying you to have fathomed his secret. Natural enough!—his own mind full of intrigue, that he should suspect it in others.—Mystery; Finesse—how they pervert the understanding! My Emma, does not every thing serve to prove more and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... cipher even, has power to change the total. The strength of wisdom in the majority of a nation may be more than sufficient to-day to counteract the folly of the unit; but there is always the chance that the folly of the individual may in time prevail against the experience of the wise, and pervert the nation. At all events, we ought to consider such possibilities before we hold ourselves free to do as we please in contempt ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... however, was entirely another affair. He could neither stifle nor deaden that. It was always jabbing him with white-hot barbs, waking or sleeping. But it never said: "Tell someone! Tell someone!" Was he something of a moral pervert, then? Was it what he had lost—the familiar world—rather than what ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... disloyal. Our nation is a democracy of nationalities having for its aim the equal growth and free development of all. It can take no sides. To require it to take sides, German or Anglo-Saxon, Slavic or Jewish, is to be untrue to its spirit and to pervert ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... arrogance'; and his son Robert was not less manly and independent. He was too sound in judgment; too conscious of his own worth, to sink into mean and abject servility. But this factor, perhaps more than anyone else, did much to pervert, if he could not kill, the poet's ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... they are in reality serving him. "Therefore," he continues, consciously following an argument of St. Cyprianus against the pagan miracles, "these wicked spirits do lurk in shrines, in roods, in crosses, in images: and first of all pervert the priests, which are easiest to be caught with bait of a little gain. Then work they miracles. They appear to men in divers shapes; disquiet them when they are awake; trouble them in their sleeps; distort their members; take away their ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... divert, convert, invert, pervert, advertize, inadvertent, verse, aversion, adverse, adversity, adversary, version, anniversary, versatile, divers, diversity, conversation, perverse, universe, university, traverse, subversive, divorce; (2) vertebra, vertigo, controvert, revert, averse, versus, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... that "salvation was confirmed" by the preaching of the Gospel, "God also bearing witness with signs, and wonders, and divers miracles."[12] But those things which we are told were seals of the Gospel, shall we pervert to undermine the faith of the Gospel? Those things which were designed to be testimonials of the truth, shall we accommodate to the confirmation of falsehood? It is right, therefore, that the doctrine, which, according to the evangelist, claims the first ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... this page for the exact word, my eye is caught by one of the sentences of Londonian[4] thought which constantly pervert the well-meant books of pious England. "We see also," says the Dean, "the union of innocent fiction with worldly craft, which marks so many of the legends both of Pagan and Christian times." I might simply reply to this insinuation that ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... and his followers say that they take their doctrine of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" from Marx, they pervert the truth; they take from Marx only the phrase, not their fundamental policy. It is not to be denied that there were times when Marx himself momentarily lapsed into the error of Blanqui and the older school of Utopian, conspiratory ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... skilful geometrician, who when more easily, and with one stroke of his compass, he might describe or divide a right line, had yet rather to do this in a circle or longer way, according to the constituted and fore-laid principles of his art: yet this rule of His He doth sometimes pervert, to acquaint the world with His prerogative, lest the arrogancy of our reason should question His power, and conclude He could not. And thus I call the effects of nature the works of God, whose hand and instrument she only is; and ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, And rulers of the house of Israel, That abhor justice and pervert all equity; That build up Zion with blood, And Jerusalem with iniquity. The heads thereof judge for reward, And the priests thereof teach for hire, And the prophets thereof divine for money; Yet will they lean upon the Lord, ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... he asked again; "or, 'Lays of the Apostles'? or, 'The English Church older than the Roman'? or, 'Anglicanism of the Early Martyrs'? or, 'Confessions of a Pervert'? or, 'Eustace Beville'? or, ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... who pervert the king's true bent, The white crow's part who play, Have slain their thousands innocent, And slay, and ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... beauty, nor worth, nor credibility. Some teach only a very small portion of Christianity, and the portion they teach they often teach amiss. Some doctrines they exaggerate, and others they maim. Some they caricature, distort, or pervert. And many add to the Gospel inventions of their own, or foolish traditions received from their fathers; and the truth is hid under a mass of error. Many conceal and disfigure the truth by putting it in an antiquated and ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... Iupiter lapis, when you know that Iupiter cannot be angry with anyone?[702] What is to become of the people of Ulubrae,[703] if you have decided that it is not right to take part in civic business? Wherefore, if you are really and truly a pervert from our faith, I am much annoyed; but if you merely find it convenient to humour Pansa, I forgive you. Only do write and tell us how you are, and what you want me to do or to ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... it very absurd. Common custom is the standard of propriety in language. And for any man to affect speaking improperly is to pervert the use of speech, and can never serve to a better purpose than to protract and multiply disputes, where there ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... home to her parents this very night,' declared Aunt Margarine; 'she shall not stay here to pervert our happy household with ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... speak these things? And the words of your mouth be like a mighty wind? Doth God pervert justice? Or ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... been instituted, her dismembered body was found strewn about the garden. The clerk was arrested, and in his diary was found this entry, recently made: "Killed a little girl; it was fine and hot." This man was either a sadistic sexual pervert, or a victim of homicidal impulse. Maudsley gives this instance as an example of the latter, while Krafft-Ebing gives it as an example of the former. There is a great difference between these two mental derangements. The victim of homicidal impulse kills without any ulterior object, while the ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... head in a royal Ball, And saw all the Haram so hoary; And who there besides but Corinna de Stal![48] Turned Methodist and Tory! "Aye—Aye"—quoth he—"'t is the way with them all, When Wits grow tired of Glory: But thanks to the weakness, that thus could pervert her, Since the dearest of prizes to me's a deserter: 200 Mem—whenever a sudden conversion I want, To send to the school of Philosopher Kant; And whenever I need a critic who can gloss over All faults—to send for Mackintosh to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... in the Talmudic and Midrashic literature which must be taken literally. These are the discussions of the Halaka (the legal and ceremonial portions). To pervert these from their literal meaning, or to maintain that the intention of the law is the important thing and not the practice of the ceremony, is heresy and infidelity; though it is meritorious to seek for an explanation of every law, as the Rabbis ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... paid attorneys arguing the cause before the court must be arguing for the unjust side and in favor of wrong. Hence, it is claimed, the system of paid advocacy must in every case tend to an effort on one side or the other to pervert justice and mislead the judges into inequity ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... deeds. Many contributed to those funds the very money which they derived from the negro slave trade; who, while they professed to execrate white man slavery, perpetrated the same barbarities upon their brethren of a different colour and caste. How strangely does sin pervert the understandings of men, who arrogate to themselves the highest grade ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... apostasy from the true religion. We know that the children of Seth were good till they married the children of Cain, and then they also became wicked; for, remember, there is always more likelihood that the bad will pervert the good, than that the good will convert the bad. Besides the disputes occasioned between husband and wife by the diversity of their religion, their families and relatives, being also of different religions, will seldom be at peace or ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... cries shame upon us that their voice has been so long unheeded. The free Lybian, in his scorching deserts, was as much a slave when he rushed, in the wild chase, upon the king of beasts, as is his unhappy offspring before our laws cleave to him. God creates no slaves. The laws of man do oftentimes pervert the best gifts of nature, and wage an impious warfare against her decrees. But you can discover what is of the earth and what is from above. You may take man at his birth, and by an adequate system make him a slave, a brute, a demon. This is man's work. ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... partly in consequence of an adequate retribution having failed to overtake her betrayer, and the family, then resident at Waddow, not having dealt out to him the just punishment of his deserts. Thus had she been permitted to pervert the proper influences and benevolent operations of this mystic disturber to her own mischievous propensities; and thenceforth a malignant spirit troubled the house, heretofore guarded by a saint of true ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... and, after fully explaining his wants and wishes to his keenly appreciating auditory, made proclamation among them, that the Demon who should invent a new vice, which, under the name and guise of Pastime, should be best calculated to seduce men from the paths of virtue, pervert their hearts, ruin them for earth and educate them for hell, should be awarded a crown of honor, with rank and prerogative second only to his own. He then, with many a gracious and encouraging word to incite in them a spirit of emulation, and nerve them for ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... Are not you the cause of it? what had you to bate in your Pursuit of Maria to pervert Lady Teazle by the way.—had you not a sufficient field for your Roguery in blinding Sir Peter and supplanting your Brother—I hate such an avarice of crimes—'tis an ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... house to be scattered with profane and wicked Books, such as stir up to lust, to wantonness, such as teach idle, wanton, lascivious discourse, and such as has a tendency to provoke to profane drollery and Jesting; and lastly, such as tend to corrupt, and pervert the Doctrine of Faith and Holiness. All these things will eat as doth a canker, and will quickly spoil, in Youth, &c. those good beginnings that may be putting forth themselves ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... 'go between' Desdemona and himself. It is fortunately a fact in human nature that these aspects of Cassio's character are quite compatible. Shakespeare simply sets it down; and it is just because he is truthful in these smaller things that in greater things we trust him absolutely never to pervert the truth for the sake of some doctrine or purpose ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... to the soul, yet it must be remembered that in the world at large there is nothing corresponding to ideal order, to poetic ethics, and that to act these forth as the supremacy of what ought to be is to misrepresent life, to raise expectations in youth never to be realized, to pervert practical standards, and in brief to make a false start that can be fruitful only in error, in subsequent suffering of mind, and with material disadvantage? I must be frank: I own that I can perceive in Nature ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... whose very existence as such is professedly to cultivate and disseminate the principles of sound morality and true religion, does fall so far short of the faith delivered to the saints—does so far forget its origin, and pervert its aims, as to violate common law and common honesty, and persist in its violation, deliberately, against repeated remonstrances, by sheer force? Yet we see no convulsion in the community. Nothing intimates that a great ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... or did not, pervert the ballad, and turn a false Elliot into a false Scott version, cannot be obtained unless new documents bearing on the matter ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... It ought to be an invariable rule with all who have the care of children, to give them food only when it is needful. Instead of observing this simple and obvious rule, it is too common, throughout every period of childhood, to pervert the use of food by giving it when it is not wanted, and consequently when it does mischief, not only in a physical but in a moral point of view. To give food as an indulgence, or in a way of reward, or to withhold ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... according to reason, nor would anything appear to be his own doing. It would be the same if he foreknew events. ii. If man saw divine providence plainly, he would inject himself into the order and tenor of its course, and pervert and destroy them. iii. If man beheld divine providence plainly he would either deny God or make himself god. iv. Man can see divine providence on the back and not in the face; also in a spiritual, not a ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... de Quincey was an opium-fiend, Poe a drunkard and Oscar Wilde a pervert, it does not follow that every clever writer is unfit for decent society. Even if he were, his popularity would not suffer. Few things help a man's public reputation so much as his private vices. Don't you think you could cultivate hashish, Mario? Sherlock Holmes' weakness ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... has its own religion, a lay religion. If I possess any other it is through its condescension and under restrictions. It is, by nature, hostile to other associations than its own; they are rivals, they annoy it, they absorb the will and pervert the votes of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... not conscious that, when we opened this book, we were under the influence of any feeling likely to pervert our judgment. Undoubtedly we had long entertained a most unfavorable opinion of Barere; but to this opinion we were not tied by any passion or by any interest. Our dislike was a reasonable dislike, and might have been removed ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the literature about the "protocols" that appeared in various parts of the world in 1920 is based on the "documents" vouched for by the mysterious Sergius Nilus, and fortified by the irresponsible Jew-baiter and intellectual pervert ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... sins shall die." If you will read the whole chapter and seriously consider it, and pray to God through Jesus Christ to open your understanding, that you may understand the scriptures, you would not misappply and pervert them as I fear you do. In your speaking at the house of mourning, you began and spake very eloquently at first upon death; then you brought forward the same ideas, with respect to death, as you did before at the grave. I do not remember that you, at either ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... for they don't swear, he comes sometimes in lawn sleeves, and looks like a bishop, which is popery, or in the garb of high churchmen, who are all Jesuits. Is it any wonder these cantin' fellows pervert the understanding, sap the principles, corrupt the heart, and destroy the happiness of so many? Poor dear old Minister used to say, 'Sam, you must instruct your conscience; for an ignorant or superstitious ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... closely connected grammatically with the immediately preceding words or phrases, that they should be read without a perceptible pause, or with only a slight one for breath, without change of voice. Some of the commas would grossly pervert the meaning if strictly construed. Thus, from No. 3 it would appear that the people of the United States in general lived adjacent to the frontier; from No. 4, that all observers have recently investigated the point in question; from No. 6, that all the cabin passengers were so situated ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... Leo, &c., are so clearly described with two tier of oars, that I must censure the version of Meursius and Fabricius, who pervert the sense by a blind attachment to the classic appellation of Triremes. The Byzantine historians are sometimes guilty of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... of the room from Mr. Durham to the provost, craving his assistance to apprehend Mr. Durham as a Jesuit, assuring the provost, that if ever there was a jesuit in Rome he was one, and that if he were suffered to remain in the town or country, he might pervert many from the faith.——Upon which the provost, going along with him to the house where the pretended jesuit was, and entering the room, he immediately knew Mr. Durham, and saluted him as laird of Easter Powrie, craving his pardon for their ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... true devotion, and that ignorance and neglect on the part of the clergy, has introduced to that ceremony,—nevertheless it is not so; the clergy themselves appear to co-operate in those attempts to pervert the ideas of the nation. The proof of it is, that being ordered by all the councils, especially that of Trent, to preach a sermon, during the high mass, explaining the gospel for the day, as is done in all other Roman Catholic countries, yet in Spain no such practice is ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... of Italy to the other, nothing is listened to in the way of music but Rossini and his imitators. The man must have a transcendant genius, who can lead and pervert the taste of his age as Rossini has done; but unfortunately those who have not his talent, who cannot reach his beauties nor emulate his airy brilliance of imagination, think to imitate his ornamented style by merely crowding note upon note, semi-quavers, demi-semi-quavers, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... acknowledged, "I always adopt a little pleonasm myself to avoid Christian controversy, and say 'when So-and-so became' a Roman or Anglican Catholic, a Protestant, Positivist, or whatever else it might be; and I let them say 'convert' or 'pervert,' whichever they like, to me, because I know that it really cannot matter, so long as they are agreeable—not that anybody ever expects them to be, poor little people! although they know quite well that they should never let their ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... vital phenomena are accompanied by, and dependent on, molecular or atomic changes; and whatever retards these retards the phenomena of life; whatever suspends these suspends life. Hence, to say that an agent which retards tissue metamorphosis is in any sense a food, is simply to pervert and ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... hearsay of old standing, such errors are scarcely to be wondered at, particularly when they are found to correspond with the partialities and prejudices of the narrator. These, strengthening as we grow older, gradually pervert or at least alter, the accuracy of our recollections, until they assimilate them to our ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... lead it. And it will cost but little to put in the crossing and take a chance. Remember, Bryce, once we have that crossing in, it stands like a spite-fence between Pennington and the law which he knows so well how to pervert to suit his ignoble purposes." He turned earnestly to Bryce and waved a trembling admonitory finger. "Your job is to keep out of court. Once Pennington gets the law on us, the issue will not be settled in our ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... countless young people, who have, as we say, been educated, but who have not been taught the principles and habits which lead to honorable living; the thousands in our great cities who are driven into surroundings which pervert and undermine character. And worse still, the good, instead of uniting to labor for a better state of things, misunderstand and thwart one another. They divide into parties, are jealous and contentious, and waste their time and exhaust their strength in foolish and futile ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... down an axiom in literary criticism:—"A mere literary attack, however well or ill-founded, would not easily have drawn me into a public expostulation; for every man's true literary character is best seen in his own writings. Critics may rail, disguise, insinuate, or pervert; yet still the object of their censures lies equally open to all the world. Thus the world becomes a competent judge of the merits of the work animadverted on. Hence, the mere author hath a fair chance for a fair decision, at least among the judicious; and it is of no mighty consequence ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... passion, energy, colour, and vast prodigality of ineffaceable pictures place it undoubtedly at the head of all the pictorial histories of modern times. And the dramatic rapidity of its action, and the inexhaustible contrasts of its scenes and tableaux—things which so fatally pervert its truthfulness as authentic history—immensely heighten the effect of the poem on the reader's mind. Not that Carlyle was capable of deliberately manufacturing an historical romance in the mendacious way of Thiers and Lamartine. But, having ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... from the faith. 9. Then Saul, (who also is called Paul,) filled with the Holy Ghost, set his eyes on him, 10. And said, O full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord? 11. And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season. And immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness; and he went about seeking some to lead him by the hand. 12. Then ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... and experience they appear to have, they are stationed; and if they grumble at the duty assigned them, they are called mutinous rascals, and threatened with the cat; the warrant officers are charged to watch them closely, lest they should attempt to pervert the crew, and to prevent them from sending letters from the ship to their friends. Should any letters be detected on them, the sailors are charged, on pain of the severest punishment, to deliver them to some of the ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... people." "Your majesty is greatly mistaken," replied the chancellor; "the nation in general must esteem themselves most happy under your reign; but it will always happen that ill-disposed persons seek to pervert the public opinion, and to lead men's minds astray. The duchess, when travelling, was the faithful and active agent of her brother. The duke, to secure his stay in the ministry, will eagerly avail himself of every adventitious aid; within your kingdom he ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... men have made. The twofold vision ranges free and far. Here are no brick walls, no unnatural need or circumstance, no confusing inventions, no gasping haste, no specious distractions, no clamour of wheel and heartless voices, to blind the soul, to pervert its pure desires, to deaden its fears, to deafen its ears to the sweeter calls—to shut it in, to shrivel it: to sicken it in every part. Rock and waste of sea and the high sweep of the sky—winds ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... whether in jest or earnest, only do temporary harm for the moment, but those who injure the character by their praise, aye, and by their flattery undermine the morals, act like those slaves who do not steal from the bin, but from the seed corn.[393] For they pervert the disposition, which is the seed of actions, and the character, which is the principle and fountain of life, by attaching to vice names that belong properly only to virtue. For as Thucydides says,[394] in times of faction and war "people change the accustomed meaning of words ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... disgrace, when he was appointed to play before the court the part of Orosmanes. Even Louis XV, had been prejudiced against him. But that king, who possessed judgment, intelligence, and a natural taste that nothing could pervert, appeared astonished that any person should have formed so ill an opinion of the new actor, and said—"Il m'a fait pleurer, mot qui ne pleure guere."—He has drawn tears from me, 'albeit unused to the melting ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... reflect upon the honour of your conduct! Offering to pervert me [the joke is that the gentleman is pressing the lady for her daughter's hand, not for her own]—perverting me from the road of virtue, in which I have trod thus long, and never made one trip—not one faux pas. Oh, consider it; what ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... significations, when applied to faith, and that seldom, are laudable; but when they are drawn from the life and conversation, they are dangerous, and, when men make too many of them, pervert the doctrine of faith. Allegories are fine ornaments, but ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... It likewise supplies a test for ascertaining the state of the heart. Those who receive it with faith unfeigned will delight to meditate on its wonderful discoveries; but those who are unrenewed in the spirit of their minds will render to it only a doubtful submission, and will pervert its plainest announcements. The apostle therefore says—"There must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you." [208:5] The heretic is made manifest alike ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen |
