"Pervert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... return home, and, search having 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 ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... which had been, from time to time, made in favour of the protestants. But the investigation of these things was carried on with the most manifest partiality; old charters were wrested to a wrong sense, and sophistry was used to pervert the meaning of every thing, which ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... in fact by his own wishes, and 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 ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... soul that 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 place, spake ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... second of October. Though none of the Royal Family appeared at it, it was no less injurious to their interests than the former. The enemies of the Crown spread reports all over Paris, that the King and Queen had manoeuvred to pervert the minds of the troops so far as to make them declare against the measures of the National Assembly. It is not likely that the Assembly, or politics, were even spoken of at the breakfast; but the report did as much mischief as the reality would have done. This was quite sufficient ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... Isab. You pervert my meaning: I would not keep my actions from his knowledge; your bold attempts I would: But yet henceforth conceal your impious flames; I shall not ever be thus indulgent to your shame, to keep it ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... familiar with the figure of Sokrates as he went in and out amongst them; they knew his character and his manner of life; and, though the poet ventured to pervert the teaching and to ridicule the habits of a well-known citizen, he would not venture to put before the people a representation in which there was not ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... the text it would all have been well; but a reporter is a reporter; in spite of the editors there were numerous little elaborations to pervert the context. A great man must be careful of his speech. Dr. Holcomb was often busy refuting; he could not understand the need of these little twistings of wisdom. It kept him in controversy; the brothers of his profession often took him to task for these little distorted scraps ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... talents, of figure and fortune in the world, and without the advantages of apparent disinterestedness on their side, will allways have address enough, with a seeming plausibility, to pervert every act of Government at home, and to defame and run down every publick transaction abroad; and disciples will never be wanting of capacity and passions fitted to become the dupes of such false apostles. The corruption ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... highly absurd to deny, that this gentleman has manifested very extraordinary powers of language and imagination in his treatment of the allegory, however grossly and miserably he may have tried to pervert its purpose and meaning. But of this more anon. In the meantime, what can be more deserving of reprobation than the course which he is allowing his intellect to take, and that too at the very time when he ought to be laying the foundations of a lasting and honourable ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... What was once written was popular or priestly property. Histories were newly narrated, laws enlarged and rearranged, prophecies attributed to conspicuous persons. All this took place not in deliberate intention to pervert historic truth, but because there was no interest in historic truth and no conception of it. The rewriting of a nation's history from the point of view of its priesthood bore, to the ancient Israelite, beyond question, an aspect altogether different from that which the same transaction would ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... 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
... form of art, is acceptable and even longed for. This is the allurement of war, its persistent illusion, perhaps. The aesthetic forms of war take war out of the field of reason, and on occasion make it transcend or pervert reason. So we may understand why it is true that sometimes those who but little understand why they are to die on the field of battle may display the greatest courage and the greatest enthusiasm for war, and we must not say that these ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... perverse instincts. These unfortunate beings cannot be consigned to ordinary prisons, since, owing to their state of mental alienation, they do not possess even the modesty of the vicious—hypocrisy—and they never fail to pervert those criminaloids with whom they come in contact. Malcontents by nature, they distrust everybody and everything, and as they see an enemy in every warder and official, they are ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... before 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 so justly celebrated. From the disorders that disfigure ...
— The Federalist Papers
... be the cause of the ignorance we call involuntary, it is impossible to determine. A wrong act, an improper thought, belonging to years ago and even repented of since, may project its dark shadow into the present, and pervert the judgment. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... what is called philosophy is sadly at war with both our mental and our bodily endowments. I have heard there are lands in which certain persons think they confer honour upon our sex, by mixing us more up with the bustle and turmoil of the world—methinks they would strangely pervert our natures." ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Prussia is only a prop and ally of the existing order of things. In France, Napoleon makes the press, which has become in civilized countries an educator of the people, the mere instrument of his will. Tyrants do not hesitate to pervert schools and the press, learning and literature, to the support of tyranny. But with us the press and the school are free; and this freedom, denied through fear in other countries, is the best evidence of the stability of our institutions. It is now a hundred ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... temptation, assaulted women or young female children, sometimes under circumstances exhibiting extreme brutality. In the majority of these cases, he says, the offenders are curable under a proper system of treatment, and it is seldom that they again offend. He goes on to say: "The real sexual pervert, however, who is continually tampering with young children is different, as is also the case when young boys are the victims. The worst pervert of all is the one who flagrantly offers himself for the purposes of sodomy. Strange as it may seem, there are ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... Lyra is satisfied with this interpretation, and follows it. He ought to have been familiar with the unchanging practice of the Jews to pervert Scripture by substituting a material meaning for a spiritual one, in order to gain glory among men. Could anything more derogatory to the holy patriarch be said than that he gave such expression to his joy over the birth of his son Noah on ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... psychology? This, surely: so far as these writers awaken an interest in the wild denizens of the field and wood, and foster a genuine love of them in the hearts of the young people, so far is their influence good; but so far as they pervert natural history and give false impressions of the intelligence of our animals, catering to a taste that prefers the fanciful to the true and the real, is their influence bad. Of course the great army of readers prefer this sugar-coated natural history to the real thing, but the ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... the race. Nutrition is a purely selfish process; reproduction is purely unselfish in its object; though the human species—unlike the lower animals, which, while less intelligent, are far more true to nature—too often pervert its functions to the ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... stimulants to the senses for elevation to the principle, or softening of the heart. By abandoning its direction to the most volatile and licentious of the community, we may render it an instrument of evil instead of good, and pervert the powers of genius, the magic of art, the fascinations of beauty, to the destruction instead of the elevation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... motive to this study is nothing better, and who have the further disadvantage of becoming a nuisance very often to society, in proportion to the progress they make. The former do not improve their reading to any good purpose; the latter pervert it to a very bad one, and grow in impertinence as they increase in learning. I think I have known most of the first kind in England, and most of the last in France. The persons I mean are those who read to talk, to shine in conversation, and to impose in company; who, having few ideas to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... (1) avert, 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, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... that non-capitalist section of the Liberal Party for which Chesterton and Belloc speak. Perpetual opposition is a dishonourable aim in politics; and a man who mingles in political development with no intention of taking on responsible tasks unless he gets all his particular formulae accepted is a pervert, a victim of Irish bad example, and unfit ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... no such Laws of the Province or should our Enemies pervert these & other Laws made for the same Purpose, from their plain and obvious Intent and Meaning, still there is the great and perpetual Law of Self preservation to which every natural Person or corporate Body hath an inherent Right ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... or did not, pervert the ballad, and turn a false Elliot into a false Scott version, cannot be obtained unless new documents bearing ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... says: "He who through idleness eats often at another's table, must needs flatter the one who feeds him." It is also written (Ex. 23:8): "Neither shalt thou take bribes which . . . blind the wise, and pervert the words of the just," and (Prov. 22:7): "The borrower is servant to him that lendeth." This is contrary to religion, wherefore a gloss on 2 Thess. 3:9, "That we might give ourselves a pattern," etc., says, "our religion ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... my soul I deny the fantastic superstition that our rule can benefit a people like this, a nation of one race, as different from ourselves as dark from light—in colour, religion, every mortal thing. We can only pervert their ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... see every side of every question; To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long; To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose, To use great feelings and passions of the human family For base designs, for cunning ends, To wear a mask like the Greek actors— Your eight-page paper—behind which you huddle, Bawling through the megaphone of ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... devotee, And then the promised gift deny, Be his who willed the prince should fly. When weapons clash and heroes bleed, With elephant and harnessed steed, Ne'er, like the good, be his to fight Whose heart allowed the prince's flight. Though taught with care by one expert May he the Veda's text pervert, With impious mind on evil bent, Whose voice approved the banishment. May he with traitor lips reveal Whate'er he promised to conceal, And bruit abroad his friend's offence, Betrayed by generous confidence. No wife of ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... away from other prisoners at night. He was sentenced for 15 months for swindling. He himself related that in youth he had seen many monks and had become possessed of the idea of being one. He was a sex pervert. ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... world? Is it not a terribly perverted taste, a hungering for the black sins of death? I contend that it is the work of a good paper to be a beacon light, even though it shines from a lofty light-house. It may thereby shine out farther and wider. Away with the doctrine of devils that would pervert the truth and ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... England, which never encourages cruelty or calumny. Let them seek for it amongst the members of the Church of Rome, and more especially amongst those who have renegaded to it. There is nothing, however false and horrible, which a pervert to Rome will not say for his church, and which his priests will not encourage him in saying; and there is nothing, however horrible—the more horrible indeed and revolting to human nature, the more eager he would be to do it—which he will not do for it, and which his priests will not encourage him ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the States to revise the Constitution, and that the Administration abandon the narrow platform of the Chicago convention, expel corrupt men from office, and exclude advocates of abolition from the Cabinet, declaring that it would "regard any attempt to pervert the conflict into a war for the emancipation of slaves as fatal to the hope of restoring ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... ensued: and Edwin raised his eyes In tears, for grief lay heavy at his heart. 'And is it thus in courtly life,' (he cries) 'That man to man acts a betrayer's part? 'And dares he thus the gifts of heaven pervert, 'Each social instinct, and sublime desire? 'Hail Poverty! if honour, wealth, and art, 'If what the great pursue, and learned admire, 'Thus dissipate and quench the soul's ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... well-founded principle into its untoward consequences from timidity or false delicacy, is not worthy of the name of a philosopher: a writer who assumes the garb of candour and an inflexible love of truth to garble and pervert it, to crouch to power and pander to prejudice, deserves a worse title than that of ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... subject, and to show how many persons strive to pervert praiseworthy enterprises, I will instance again the people of St. Malo and others, who say that the profit of these discoveries belongs to them, since Jacques Cartier, who first visited Canada and the islands of New Foundland, was from their city, as if that city had contributed ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... still endeavor to explain natural phenomena by supernatural theories, and while they do not assign preternatural powers to witches and demons, they yet persist in attempting to pervert facts of science, and delude themselves with faith in some supernatural force. The clergy state that the physician cures disease through the mediation of God, the physician merely playing the part of the agent of God, through ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... discredited, because they preach a different gospel from that preached by Paul, who says: "I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ, unto another gospel: which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed," Gal. 1:6-9. "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema, ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... standard authority upon economic questions impose this sophistry of overproduction and pressure of population upon mankind, and are applauded for their ignorance, or the cupidity which makes them to pervert the truth. ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... epulas fortis vir esse potest ac in bello, as much valour is to be found in feasting as in fighting, and some of our city captains, and carpet knights will make this good, and prove it. Thus they many times wilfully pervert the good temperature of their bodies, stifle their wits, strangle nature, and ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... to 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 felt in the discharge of the ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins
... that one sister died of pulmonary tuberculosis, and that another is now afflicted with chorea. The patient was addicted to the excessive use of alcohol and cocaine and is considered to be a sexual pervert. Ever since she was admitted to the penitentiary she has exhibited signs and symptoms of insanity; her present symptoms are described as ungovernable temper, attacks of extreme nervousness, attacks of ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... the proper business of the police to dispense charity. They have their hands full with repressing crime. It is the mixing of the two that confuses standards and makes trouble without end for those who receive the "charity," and even more for those who dispense it. You cannot pervert the first and finest of human instincts without corrupting men: witness my sergeant in Church Street ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... legislative. Of his three assertions, one, the all-parties program, was already on the way to defeat Another, nationalism, as the President interpreted it, had alienated the Abolitionists. The third, his argument for himself as tribune, was just what your crafty politician might twist, pervert, load with false meanings to his heart's content. Men less astute than Chandler and Wade could not have failed to see where fortune pointed. Their opportunity lay in a combination of the two issues. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... 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 ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... man the right to pervert language, fixing new meanings to words in common use which are in direct opposition to established usage? The man who knows the meaning of a word and uses it in a contrary sense is guilty of an abuse of language; and if ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... in view, it is very important to forbid these offices to persons who are under obligations, which induce an insatiable greed and presumption; and, to fill that yawning void, the wealth of all the Indias is insignificant. The worst is, that they pervert a man, and lead him astray by their influence. If I were to recount here in detail all the difficulties which they occasion, I should have to take twice the space. In short, everyone there is lamenting; and these people come in smiles, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... Liberty; Men o' Strength; the world has its eye on ye! What will y' do? M' word is this t' all time: M' word is th' simple word o' the old prophets that ye conned by heart at y'r mother's knee: Y' ha' seen the author o' crime an' outrage an' murder tryin' to wrest the judgment, t' pervert the court, to slander the dead, t' send into th' wilderness a poor innocent scapegoat o' sin, to defile the vera presence o' death. An' ye ha' seen a young man single-handed fightin' for right, to save y'r land from the looters, ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... 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 and rain and sunlight ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... according to his deserts. These protestations were reenforced by an ardent letter from Countess Tolstoy, the wife of the great author, who reproached Andreyev for having so complacently painted such sombre pictures, with such low and violent scenes, all of which tended to pervert youth. The writers were not the only ones to take offence. Two important Russian newspapers organized a sort of inquiry, and they published many of the answers received from the young people of both sexes, but these ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... 56, (Circular of Gohier, Minister of Justice, to the French people, July 6, 1793). "Certain persons are disposed to pervert the events of May 31 and June 2, by atrocious exaggerations and the grossest fables, and prevent the fortunate results they present from being seen. They are absolutely determined to see nothing but violations of the liberty of the people's representatives ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... life and ennoble it. This is the teaching of "Tintern Abbey," in which the best part of our life is shown to be the result of natural influences. According to Wordsworth, society and the crowded unnatural life of cities tend to weaken and pervert humanity; and a return to natural and simple living is the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... destructive spirit. It is time a halt was called to luxury 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 ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... 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 of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... 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 favour for years; and in the meantime—you ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... aristocratical 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
... 'The Catholic Parsonage'?" 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 ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... represent a Man as hypocritical and designing to one, which make him appear a Saint or Hero to another. He therefore who looks upon the Soul through its outward Actions, often sees it through a deceitful Medium, which is apt to discolour and pervert the Object: So that on this Account also, he is the only proper Judge of our Perfections, who does not guess at the Sincerity of our Intentions from the Goodness of our Actions, but weighs the Goodness of our Actions by the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... publications.... But to repeat the experiments before the public, to descend from the professional chair in order to practise the part of a butcher or of an executioner, is painful to the feelings and disgusting to the sentiments of the student.... Such public exhibitions are ignoble, and of a kind which pervert the generous sentiments of youth. An end should be put to them. Ought we to allow the e'lite of our French youths to feed their eyes with the sight of the flowing blood of living animals, and to have ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... thoughts were bright upon our souls, There came the rumour that a day was set To hear us. Many of our former friends, Some with entreaties, some with taunts and threats, Came to us to pervert us; with the rest Again Perpetua's father, worn with care; Nor could we choose but pity his distress, So miserably, with abject cries and tears, He fondled her and called her 'Domina,' And bowed his aged ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... practical importance. The "mystery of iniquity" in Paul's time, and since his day, did not, 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 three witnesses, instead of ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... distinction between liberty of conscience and liberty of teaching. JOHNSON. 'Consider, Sir; if you have children whom you wish to educate in the principles of the Church of England, and there comes a Quaker who tries to pervert them to his principles, you would drive away the Quaker. You would not trust to the predomination of right, which you believe is in your opinions; you would keep wrong out of their heads. Now the vulgar are the children of the State. If any one attempts to teach them doctrines contrary to ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... or of our naval officers during the struggle has been presented to this Government, and it is a matter of regret that so many of our own people should have given ear to unofficial charges and complaints that manifestly had their origin in rival interests and in a wish to pervert the relations of the United States ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... Brachiano and Ferdinand, the employers of Flamineo and Bosola, are tyrants such as Savonarola described, and as we read of in the chronicles of petty Southern cities. Nothing is suffered to stand between their lust and its accomplishment. They override the law by violence, or pervert its action to their ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... former, "shalt thou make thee in all thy gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee; and they shall judge the people with just judgment. Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift; for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise and pervert the words of the righteous." To the same purpose Josephus relates, in his account of the last address delivered by Moses to the Hebrew people, that this great legislator gave instructions to appoint seven judges in every ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... that he might perhaps best in this way bring about a result which would be so manifestly for her advantage. It might be that the books of poetry and the modes of thought which his wife described as "Ushanting" were of a nature to pervert his girl's mind from the material necessities of life and that a little hardship would bring her round to a more rational condition. With a very heavy heart he consented to do his part,—which was to consist mainly of silence. Any words ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... All the ways discovered so far lead to the horrors of our existing civilizations, described quite justifiably by Ruskin as heaps of agonizing human maggots, struggling with one another for scraps of food. Pious fraud is an attempt to pervert that precious and sacred thing the child's conscience into an instrument of our own convenience, and to use that wonderful and terrible power called Shame to grind our own axe. It is the sin of stealing fire from the altar: a sin so impudently practised by popes, parents, ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... to pervert the exhortation of Karl Marx, and unite under the banner of envy and greed every ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... contrasted, in a striking manner, with the indigence and uncleanliness of its inhabitants; and I regretted that it had not fallen to the lot of civilized men. I was wrong no doubt: it is just that those should be most favored by their common mother, who are least disposed to pervert her gifts, or to give the preference to advantages which are factitious, and often very frivolous. We quitted with regret this charming spot, and soon came to another large village, which our guide informed us was called Kathlapootle, and was situated ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... will be our task, But ever to do ill our sole delight, As being the contrary to his high will Whom we resist. If then his providence Out of our evil seek to bring forth good, Our labour must be to pervert that end, And out of good still to find means of evil; Which ofttimes may succeed so as perhaps Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb His inmost counsels from their destined aim. But see! the angry Victor hath recalled His ministers of vengeance and pursuit Back to the gates of ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... governed, or to be held infamous forever. Nay, more: he does not recognize at all those fundamental principles of the Constitution and Declaration which are stated in plain terms in the first lines of both. He did worse than torture and pervert language: he reversed its meaning. He denied the undoubted facts of history. He denied the settled truths of science. He slandered the memory of the founders of the government and framers of the Declaration. He was ready to cover the most glorious page of the history of his country ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... servants from schools in which sedition is shown to be rife. It can hold them collectively responsible, as some Indians themselves recommend for crimes perpetrated by youths whom they have helped to pervert. But these are rigorous measures that we can hardly take with a good conscience so long as our educational system can be charged with neglecting or undermining, however unintentionally, the fabric upon which Indian ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... Hell and his approach to the new world. To his Son, sitting on his right hand, he pointed out the fallen spirit. "No prescribed bounds can shut our Adversary in; nor can the chains of hell hold him. To our new world he goes, and there, by no fault of mine, will pervert man, whom I have placed therein, with a free will; so to remain until he enthralls himself. Man will fall as did Satan, but as Satan was self-tempted, and man will be deceived by another, the latter shall find grace where his tempter ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... father without fear of being harshly judged," resumed M. Fauvel. "A father not only pardons, he forgets. Do I not know the terrible temptations that beset a young man in a city like Paris? There are some inordinate desires before which the firmest principles must give way, and which so pervert our moral sense as to render us incapable of judging between right ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... gradually lost, in the fresher incidents of those eventful seas. But the mariner, long after was known to shorten the watches of the night, by recounting scenes of mad enterprise that were thought to have occurred under his auspices. Rumour did not fail to embellish and pervert them, until the real character, and even name, of the individual were confounded with the actors of other atrocities. Scenes of higher and more ennobling interest, too, were occurring on the Western Continent, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... afraid,' she returned, 'to leave him, I am afraid to leave any of them. When I am gone, they pervert—but they don't mean ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... said I, sitting up,—I could not stand, for my legs were tied, and my arms fixed in a neat pair of steel handcuffs. "I have," said I, "unbelieving dogs! I have. Do you think to pervert a Christian gentleman from his faith and honor? Ruffian blackamoors! do your worst; heap tortures on this body, they cannot last long. Tear me to pieces: after you have torn me into a certain number of ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to fittingly characterize this scandalous effort to pervert a great State trial into an instrumentality for the successful exploitation of a commercial venture which was by no means free from the elements of ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... still polite about the whole thing and protectively pervert the original spelling of "Rabbit" to "Rarebit" in their culinary guides. We have heard that once a club of ladies in high society tried to high-pressure the publishers of Mr. Webster's dictionary to change the old spelling ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Kate, I thought better of you than that. Isn't that precisely the poor girl's complaint that everybody wants to use her as a sort of telephone connection with the other world? No. If you invite her here, receive her as a lady, not as a pervert. But, now, let us see. You say Clarke is going to issue his ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... she had above all others loved and trusted, had broken away from its teachings and defied her own belief. She would not secede with her father; but remained in the Church of the mother she was never to see again, and this in spite of extraordinary and dogged efforts on the part of Lord Rens to pervert her to his own Atheism. His mind had been so warped by the agony of his heart that he had come to feel as if by tearing his only child from the religion he had been led to by the greatest sinner he had known, he would be, in some degree ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... stir and glare of the world are shut out, and every voice is subdued,—where a human being lies prostrate, thrown on the tender mercies of his fellow,—the moral relation of man to man is reduced to its utmost clearness and simplicity: bigotry cannot confuse it, theory cannot pervert it, passion, awed into quiescence, can neither pollute nor perturb it. As we bend over the sick-bed all the forces of our nature rush towards the channels of pity, of patience and of love, and sweep down the miserable choking drift of our quarrels, our debates, our would-be wisdom, and our ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... her home to her parents this very night,' declared Aunt Margarine; 'she shall not stay here to pervert our happy household with her ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... to make it appear that slavery was the cause of that war; that the Southern men fought to keep their slaves. They utterly miss the point, or purposely pervert ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... Such was, soon after this time, the fate of a woman, a school-teacher by profession, found guilty of heresy. In any case, the judges took effectual measures to forestall the deplorable consequences that might ensue from permitting the "Lutherans" to address the by-standers, and so pervert them from the orthodox faith. The hangman was instructed to pierce their tongue with a hot iron, or to cut it out altogether; just as, at a later date, the sound of the drum was employed to drown the last utterances of the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... re-arrested. But while he was absent at the land sales at Fort Leavenworth, Judge Lecompte a second time set this wretch at liberty. Mr. Geary was provoked beyond endurance, and wrote to the President that he would not remain in office and allow such a scoundrel to be kept in a position to pervert the ways of justice. President Pierce nominated C. O. Harrison, of Kentucky, to take Lecompte's place, but for some unexplained cause the appointment was not confirmed in the Senate, and Judge Lecompte retained his place, and in unspeakable disgust Gov. Geary resigned, making his resignation take ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... a serene and benevolent wisdom are in our ears. We will attempt to preserve strict impartiality. But we are not ashamed to own that we approach this relic of a virtuous and most accomplished man with feelings of respect and gratitude which may possibly pervert our judgment. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and Spirit of God is to oppose, corrupt, or pervert their testimony and to turn people away from them; and the judgments of Heaven are pronounced in that Word and by that Spirit against such as turn away from the truth unto fables. They shall have their part in the lake that burns with fire ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... description 'first-born of Satan' is applied in the text, and of this I venture to say that it is altogether inapplicable to Marcion. No doubt Marcion, like every other heretical teacher of the second century, or indeed of any century, did 'pervert the oracles of the Lord' by his tortuous interpretations; but he did not pervert them 'to his own lusts.' The high moral character of Marcion was unimpeachable, and is recognized by the orthodox writers of the second ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... prepared yourself for sleep by anything you have done, but seek after it only because you have nothing to do. It is the same in the enjoyments of love, in which you rather force than follow your inclinations, and are obliged to use arts, and even to pervert nature, to keep your passions alive. Thus is it that you instruct your followers—kept awake for the greatest part of the night by debaucheries, and consuming in drowsiness all the most useful part of the day. Though immortal, you are an outcast from the ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... 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 ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... revelation. God taught Adam how to please Him, and Noah, and Abraham, and Job. He has taught every nation all over the earth sufficiently for the moral training of every individual. In all these cases, the world's part of the work has been to pervert the truth, not to disengage it from obscurity. The new ways are the crooked ones. The nearer we mount up to the time of Adam, or Noah, or Abraham, or Job, the purer light of truth we gain; as we recede from ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... A pervert whom I can trust told me that he had made advances to upward of one hundred men in the course of the last fourteen years, and that he had only once met with a refusal (in which case the man later on offered ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... public attention to; adver'tisement; animadvert' (Lat. n. an'imus, the mind), to turn the mind to, to censure; avert'; controvert', to oppose; convert', to change into another form or state; divert'; invert', literally, to turn the outside in; pervert', to turn from the ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... answered the Dame; "but is that a good reason why he should pervert the king's liege subjects ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott |
