"Perverseness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of November next as a day of thanksgiving and prayer to our beneficent Father, who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... to save thee from her, foolish wench!" cried Mother Chattox, "but thy perverseness will defeat all ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... meanly flatter them with the name of a free people, and make a merit of his crime, under the disguise of their essential rights and permanent interests, is something which disgraces even the character of perverseness. Is he afraid they will send him to Hanover, or what does he fear? Why is the sycophant thus added to the hypocrite, and the man who pretends to govern, sunk into the humble ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... the parents to a state of slavery. They suffered many hardships during several years, but at length God was pleased to deliver them in a miraculous manner by the hand of Moses, who would soon have conducted them into the promised land, had not their disobedience and perverseness brought upon them the punishment of a forty years' wandering in the wilderness. During this time, God commanded Moses to deliver his laws to the people of Israel. Aaron the brother of Moses was made High Priest, and to him was committed ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... she fought down the kindly feeling. "I am glad of it," said she, out of perverseness. She added after a while, "Edouard, you are ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... said this I should have felt that it was out of mere perverseness. But dear little Helen is not perverse; she is ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... strange defects, to return the orthodox civilities, when they come across any strangers. But should they not return the proper civilities, they should, by no manner of means, be suffered to behave with such perverseness. It's the way that grown-up people doat on them that makes them what they are. And as they can, first and foremost, boast of bewitching good looks and they comport themselves, secondly, towards visitors with all propriety—, in fact, with less faulty ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... they were all horrified—not moved with grief, this time, but shocked. It seemed such a repulsive and indelicate step to take. Which it was. And which, in her curious perverseness, Alvina must have intended it to be. Mrs. Houghton assumed a remote air of silence, as if she did not hear any more, did not belong. She lapsed far away. She was really very weak. Miss Pinnegar said: "Well really, if she wants to do it, why, she might as well try." And, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... great account who is for thee or against thee, but mind only the present duty and take care that God be with thee in whatsoever thou doest. Have a good conscience and God will defend thee, for he whom God will help no man's perverseness shall be able to hurt. If thou knowest how to hold thy peace and to suffer, without doubt thou shalt see the help of the Lord. He knoweth the time and the way to deliver thee, therefore must thou resign thyself to Him. To God it belongeth to help and to deliver from all confusion. Oftentimes ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... those who do not understand reason, just as you would in vain exhibit a curious piece of limning to the blind, or endeavour to bribe, as scripture saith, a sow by the offer of a precious stone. The fault is not, in such case, in the accuracy of your sacred reasoning, but in the obtuseness and perverseness of the barbarians ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the influence of the propensity is to make them feel as if they could freely forgive all who had ever offended them, and I can say with truth such has been the effect on my own nerves of the plaintive murmurs of the neela-cobeya, that sometimes, when irritated, and not without reason, by the perverseness of some of my native followers, the feeling has almost instantly subsided into placidity on suddenly hearing the loving ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... marriage had satisfied her ambition, had been pleasing to her kith and kin, and she saw no good reason why her niece should not, under any circumstances, form a similar union. That the girl should revolt now, in the face of such urgent necessity, was mere perverseness. Sharing in her husband's anxieties and fears, she found solace and diversion of mind in her beloved housekeeping. Neither of the old people had the imagination or experience which could enable them to understand the terror and distress of their niece, whom with good intentions ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... ran; her appeals to the dog, now seated on a knoll looking somewhat foolishly for the rabbit which had given him the slip, and her commands to the cattle alike fell on unheeding ears. She was in no joyous mood at best, and the perverseness of things aggravated her beyond endurance. Her callings to the cattle became more and more tearful, and presently ended in ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... supreme arbiter of all the revolutions which we observe in this planet: so irresistible is power, that it often thwarts the tendency of the most forcible causes, and prevents their subsequent salutary effects, though ordained for the good of man by the Governor of the universe. Such is the perverseness of human nature; who can describe ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... and the honour of the office would derive on it additional authority and dignity. The tribunes also, considering the discharge of the duty (as was really the case) as necessary rather than the duty itself, as being attended with lustre, did not indeed offer opposition, lest they should through perverseness show a disposition to thwart them even in trifles. After the honour was rejected by the leading men of the state, the people by their suffrages appointed to the office of conducting the census Papirius and Sempronius, concerning whose consulate doubts are entertained, that in that magistracy ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... case she felt bound to refuse to yield to their requests, her refusal was made and maintained with such mild firmness, that none could be offended, none feel inclined to charge her with obstinacy or perverseness. She was at this time the mistress of her father's household, her exemplary and intellectual mother having several years before deceased, and her elder and only sister, the year previous, married one of the leading loyalists of Guilford. And it had been mainly through the influence ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... With the perverseness of nature, the less water one has the thirstier one becomes. When it is on tap one doesn't think of it. But down to the last half-gallon, our ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... myself, the sweetest-tempered man alive, and hate a teasing temper; and so I tell her a hundred times a day.—Ay! and what is very extraordinary, in all our disputes she is always in the wrong. But Lady Sneerwell, and the set she meets at her house, encourage the perverseness of her disposition. Then, to complete my vexation, Maria, my ward, whom I ought to have the power of a father over, is determined to turn rebel too, and absolutely refuses the man whom I have long resolved on ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... foolishly straying about, weak, nor fit for combat: so the Trojans formerly would not stand even for a little against the might and prowess of the Greeks. But now, far away from the city, they combat at the hollow ships, through the perverseness of our general, and the indifference of the troops; who, disputing with him, are unwilling to defend the swift ships, but are slain among them. Yet although in reality the hero, the son of Atreus, wide-ruling Agamemnon, be altogether in fault, ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... pray you put that thought out of your head. The more precious the drug, the less should it be exposed to the air, because of the perverseness of those who trust only to outward signs. These are not different in the case of honourable and faithful affection than in any other case, so they must none the less be hidden when the love is virtuous ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... and wretched ones! That feeble in the mind's eye, lean your trust Upon unstaid perverseness! now ye not That we are worms, yet made at last to form The winged insect, imp'd with angel plumes That to heaven's justice unobstructed soars? Why buoy ye up aloft your unfleg'd souls? Abortive then and shapeless ye remain, Like the untimely ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... poets have seldom risen. Their thoughts are often new, but seldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they just; and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more frequently by what perverseness of industry ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... man of any conceivable European blood—a Finlander, suppose, or a Zantiote—might have written Tom; only not an Englishman. Whether an Englishman could have forged Tom must remain a matter of doubt, unless the thing had been tried long ago. That problem was intercepted for ever by Tom's perverseness in choosing to manufacture himself. Yet, since nobody is better aware than M. Michelet that this very point of Kempis having manufactured Kempis is furiously and hopelessly litigated, three or four nations claiming ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... the haven, for which they are bound. Besides, the fascinations of domestic life would attract them from many duties which they owe to their fellow creatures. There are then many disadvantages connected with matrimony. There is so much ignorance, perverseness, undue inclination for power, disposition to contradict, anger, jealousy, hatred, and versatility among human beings that many unpleasant occurrences will necessarily arise, and especially in the marriage state, because ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... a tiresome while; but as he neither looked up nor spoke, she finally made a movement to the door, and I followed. We were recalled by a scream. Linton had slid from his seat on to the hearthstone, and lay writhing in the mere perverseness of an indulged plague of a child, determined to be as grievous and harassing as it can. I thoroughly gauged his disposition from his behaviour, and saw at once it would be folly to attempt humouring him. Not so my companion: she ran back in terror, knelt ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... "Pride and perverseness, Ailie!" then, in reply to the eager exclamation, "I believe he was justified in all he said. But, Ailie, I have preached to Colin more than I had a right to do about forgiving his brother. I did not know how provoking he can be. I did not think it ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... both hands even to get food to his mouth or to turn over the leaves of a book. In spite of this he is one of the hardest workers in Russia, and although his obstinacy, his hatred of compromise, and a sort of mixed originality and perverseness keep him almost permanently at loggerheads with the Central Committee, he retains everybody's respect because of the real heroism with which he conquers physical disabilities which long ago would have overwhelmed a less ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... very questionable distinctions between venial sins and others. Papal dispensations and decisions of Catholic casuists, especially in the order of the Jesuits, have startled the world by their moral perverseness. Yea, the very principles of probabilism and mental reservation which the Jesuits have espoused are antiethical. In accordance with the principle last named, "when important interests are at stake, a negative or modifying clause ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... depraved tendency, Doctor,—this unaccountable perverseness. My dear Sir, I am afraid your school is in the right about human nature. Oh, those words of the Psalmist, 'shapen in iniquity,' and the rest! What are we to do with them,—we who teach that the soul of a child is ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... man, glaring savagely across the fire at the other. "But that ain't tellin' us what ails the black," he went on, dropping the subject of the white and taking up with the symptoms of the black, evidently through perverseness. "He's solemn and dumpish," he declared, thoughtfully, "like he might have distemper. But he 'ain't got distemper. And his teeth ain't sharp, yet he don't eat at all. And I can't see anything the ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... that matters were just where they were before. Philip went back to his inn, moralizing on the pride and perverseness which made it impossible to make any impression on a Redclyffe Morville, whom not even the fear of ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or theirs of their; though ours, yours, hers, and theirs, are often very improperly spelt with an apostrophe, a fault not always imputable to the printer; while in it's, which is unquestionably the possessive case of it, the apostrophe, by a strange perverseness, is almost always omitted."—Churchill Gram., p. 222. The charge of strange perverseness may, in this instance, I think, be retorted upon the critic; and that, to the fair exculpation of those who choose to conform to the general ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... in the Whig plot, and had with difficulty eluded the vengeance of the court, Sir Patrick Hume, of Polwarth, in Berwickshire. Great doubt has been thrown on his integrity, but without sufficient reason. It must, however, be admitted that he injured his cause by perverseness as much as he could have done by treachery. He was a man incapable alike of leading and of following, conceited, captious, and wrongheaded, an endless talker, a sluggard in action against the enemy and active only against his own allies. With Hume was closely ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... keep her always in hopes of an accommodation, to negotiate perpetually with her, and still to throw the blame of not coming to any conclusion, either on unforeseen accidents, or on the obstinacy and perverseness of others. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... people best that are the best, Daisy?" said papa laughing. "Because, I confess I have a wicked perverseness to do ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... thought it unreasonable in parents to desire to chuse for their children on this occasion; since to force affection is an impossible attempt; nay, so much doth love abhor force, that I know not whether, through an unfortunate but uncurable perverseness in our natures, it may not be even ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... the study of physick, he inquired, as he says, of Dr. Sydenham, what authors he should read, and was directed by Sydenham to Don Quixote; "which," said he, "is a very good book; I read it still." The perverseness of mankind makes it often mischievous in men of eminence to give way to merriment; the idle and the illiterate will long shelter themselves under ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... in Piel, not a transitive, but an intensive meaning. Calvin remarks: "By the verb, insane fervour is indicated, as indeed we see that idolaters are like madmen; it shows that such is the perverseness of their hearts, that they will not at once return to a sound mind." The distress at first only increases [Pg 241] the zeal in idolatry; compare Jer. xliv. 17. Every effort is made to move the idols to help. But if help be, notwithstanding, refused—and how could it be otherwise, since ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... then: "The fool and blind! Such mad perverseness who may apprehend?" - "Nay; there's no madness in it; thou shalt find Thy ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... being unable to play at battledore, and thought Kate's failures and dislike pure perverseness. Once Kate by accident knocked her shuttlecock through the window, and hoped she had got rid of it; but she was treated as if she had done it out of naughtiness, and a new instrument of torture, as she called it, ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with his father, and got so much the start of him in brutality, that even he cowered before him, thus realizing that "He that soweth the wind shall reap the whirlwind." But those years passed on; the children grew up in their perverseness, a family that ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... what she was thinking of, nor if they did would patiently draw out her thoughts, canvass them, set them right, or show them wrong. No one now could tell what she was feeling, nor had the art sweetly, in a way she scarce knew how, to do away with sadness, or dulness, or perverseness, and leave her spirits clear and bright as the noonday. With all the petting and fondness she had from her new friends, Ellen felt alone. She was petted and fondled as a darling possession—a dear plaything—a ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... has ordered that the Indians shall not be punished in money fines; but as they all, in their perverseness and evil disposition, are more afraid of the punishment of taking from them a real than of a hundred floggings, the desired results do not follow, and they do not plant, raise animals, and do other things tending to the production of supplies, and to the common good. It would be ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... example of this hardness of heart was given by one Colin, the richest farmer and proprietor in Napoule, whose vineyards and olive gardens, whose lemon and orange trees could hardly be counted in a day. One thing particularly demonstrates the perverseness of his disposition; he was twenty-seven years old, and had never yet asked for what purpose girls ...
— The Broken Cup - 1891 • Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke
... repeatedly declared therein, that the reason of God's dispensations towards them was, "that all the earth might know that the Eternal is God, and that there is no other but Him." According to its history, when God threatened to destroy the Israelites for their perverseness in the wilderness, and offers Moses, interceding for them, to raise, up his seed to fulfil the purposes for which he designed the posterity of Abraham; he tells Moses that his purpose should not be ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... would not by any means recede from the position taken in the formulas of the 25th of December. Relying upon his cunning, bureaucratic and judicial logic, he tried in the face of the entire world to show that white is in no way different from black, and it was our own perverseness which made us insist that there was such a difference. Count Czernin, the representative of Austria-Hungary, played a part in those negotiations which no one would consider inspiring ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... and in this thing in particular; I have therefore the comfortable assurance that he will direct my paths concerning this part of my service, as to whether I shall be occupied in it or not. Further: "The integrity of the upright shall preserve them; but the perverseness of fools shall destroy them." Prov. xi. 3. By the grace of God I am upright in this business. My honest purpose is to get glory to God. Therefore I expect to be guided aright. Further: "Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... the soul, Edgar Allan Poe, found among the springs of human nature the quality of perverseness, the disposition to do wrong because it is wrong; in reality, however, Poe's Imp of the Perverse is active far beyond the boundaries of the human soul; his disturbances pervade the whole world, and nowhere are they more noticeable than in the printing office. This is so because elsewhere, ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... have married him for better, for worse, that you should divide my nonsense and importunity between you. Je laisse courir ma plume, which would be abominable and indiscreet, if I was not writing to one who is used to hear me say a thousand things which he attributes to passion and perverseness, and is not for that the less my friend. Then I like, when my mind and heart are full, and I cannot open the budget before him, to evaporate upon paper, which provokes no tart reply. I wish that we were agreed upon every point of consideration ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... with which our Noah's ark accompanied the driver's abuse of his clumsy grey mares. Grand chameau, sacre vache, and canaille, where the most genteel and decent terms with which he favoured them, and his perverseness was in proportion. For this precious commodity, selected I should conceive from the most consummate ragamuffins on the road, we were indebted to Mons. Picon, a master voiturier at Paris, who imposed on us both as to the number of horses, and ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... my confusion was a sign of my amendment. That she might indeed have used another method, by commanding me to seek a reconciliation with my brother; for she did not imagine I was already so far gone in perverseness, as not to hold her commands as inviolable; but she was willing, for my good, first to convince me of my folly." As soon as my confusion would give me leave to speak, on my knees I gave her a thousand thanks for her goodness, and went immediately to seek ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... sons, twin brothers, of a piece In vice, perverseness, folly, and caprice, Would lunch off nightingales: well, what's their mark? Shall it be chalk or charcoal, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... famous. There are families whom everybody praises, and families who are treated in a different way. Either will do; all the sons and daughters of the first succeed; all the sons and daughters of the last are encouraged in perverseness by the prophetic determination of society. Half a dozen married sisters, who were the delight and ornament of their circles, in the case of Lady Corisande were good precursors of popularity; but the world would not be content with that: they credited her with all their ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... a proud heart, Madam. I cannot but hope for some instances of previous and preferable favour from the lady I am ambitious to call mine; and that her choice of me should not appear, not flagrantly appear, directed by the perverseness of her selfish persecutors, who are ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Some heredities will carry men further, and some environments will overcome them more quickly; but as surely as effects follow from causes, every heredity will meet disaster in some way under any environment, and the time and kind of disaster it meets depend not upon perverseness or freedom of will, but upon the fortune of the meeting of heredity with the manifold environment that surrounds every life. It must be plain that life lasts only as long as it makes adjustments. That it consists only of adjustments. That, ordinarily, strong heredity and a good environment ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... fire, yea, even put in their hand, and not be scorched or burnt. 'Tis a miracle they want, a miracle at every turn, a suspension of the laws of nature to save them from the effects of their voluntary perverseness. Too lazy to employ the means at their command, they thrust the whole burden on the Maker. God helps those who help themselves. A supernatural state does not dispense us from the obligation of practising natural ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... following, eat nothing but bread and water. As the wafer digested, the tincture mounted to his brain, bearing the proposition along with it. But the success has not hitherto been answerable, partly by some error in the quantum or composition, and partly by the perverseness of lads, to whom this bolus is so nauseous, that they generally steal aside, and discharge it upwards, before it can operate; neither have they been yet persuaded to use so long an ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... like an immense broken billowy ice field, or millions of big powder puffs jammed together in an immense plain. Following the distinguishable shore line they came within fifteen miles of Tripoli where the fog, with dangerous perverseness, extended far into the desert. Earth passed out of sight and they were in a private world of much space and no substance, as might have been before land and sea were formed. Far below on the cloud-like surface of the fog a circular rainbow preceded them and when the operators, thinking ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... having achieved this feat, began to strike down others there present. Hrishikesa ran to prevent him from doing further mischief. At that time, however, O monarch, the Bhojas and Andhakas, impelled by the perverseness of the hour that had come upon them, all became as one man and surrounded the son of Sini. Janardana of mighty energy, knowing the character of the hour, stood unmoved without giving way to anger ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... idiotic, but it suits only some people; it suits me. There is a certain perverseness about it, a determination to do just what one is told not to do, that affects me most agreeably. Did I"—glancing at the rosy shower at his feet—"did I hurt you ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... His pleasure; that His intervention is a logical sequence of His moral government. But his most withering denunciation of the Manicheans was directed against their pride of reason, against their darkened understanding, which led them not only to believe a lie, but to glory in it,—the utter perverseness of the mind when in rebellion to divine authority, in view of which it is almost vain to argue, since truth will neither ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... by countless suitors, among them the base Florez, whom her father promptly forbids the house. Idalia's vanity is piqued at the loss of a single adorer, and more from perverseness than from love she continues to correspond with him. He makes no further use of her condescension than to boast of her favors, until at the command of his patron, Don Ferdinand, he induces Idalia to make an ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... proof of which, and a decisive one too, I would refer him to the prophecy of Balaam, recorded, Num. ch. xxii. 21. where Balaam exclaims in his prophetic enthusiasm, "He [i.e. God] hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel." ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... much the more reason for them to make a regulation in this matter, because they are the only people of those parts that neither allow of polygamy, nor of divorces, except in the case of adultery, or insufferable perverseness; for in these cases the Senate dissolves the marriage, and grants the injured person leave to marry again; but the guilty are made infamous, and are never allowed the privilege of a second marriage. None are suffered to put away their ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... were two: old Nicholas, the unswerving, the devoted; and Kashkine, who owed him nothing, who had given—was to give—so much! Why was it that they counted so lightly in the scales against these others? Who can say? who explain that perverseness of human nature which will not value what it has, but must drop it by the way to stretch out unavailing hands for the fleeting ungraspable? This, certainly, was what Ivan did; and his face came in time so to show the bitterness of his heart, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Lovelace.— Defends the lady from the perverseness he (Lovelace) imputes to her on parting with some of her apparel. Poor Belton's miserable state both of body and mind. Observations on the friendship of libertines. Admires the noble simplicity, and natural ease and dignity ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... only so far as they travel his road, and his lagging is pretty sure to be atoned for by earnest endeavor in the end. With these are to be classed numerous other varieties: those who are "Hunkerish" on account of some strange spiritual obtuseness, or from misanthropy, or perverseness, or self-conceit, or a cold and sluggish temperament, or from weak, human sympathies governed by strong political prejudice,—together with those countless larvae and tadpoles, the small-fry of sons and nephews, of individuality yet undeveloped, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... understandings. At the same time it must be observed—that, as this Class comprehends the only judgements which are trustworthy, so does it include the most erroneous and perverse. For to be mistaught is worse than to be untaught; and no perverseness equals that which is supported by system, no errors are so difficult to root out as those which the understanding has pledged its credit to uphold. In this Class are contained censors, who, if they be pleased with what is good, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... Curtis's temperament it seemed to be a wildly fanciful thing that he should have yielded so swiftly. Two hours ago he had not seen Hermione, did not even know her name, whereas now he breathed it with devout reverence, though, with a perverseness seldom attached to such circumstances, the amazing fact that she was his wife formed a stubborn barrier against which the flood of new-born desire must rage in vain. For, above all else, he held dear his plighted word. He knew now that the marriage offered an almost insuperable ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... don't believe it is duty you are saving, as much as indulging in perverseness by not donning one of your most fetching ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... over temporal matters and causes as over spiritual, is taken by no sane man to be a literal fact in temporal matters, it is violating the analogy of the Constitution, and dealing with the most important subjects in a mere spirit of narrow perverseness, to insist that it can have none but a literal meaning in ecclesiastical matters; and that the Church did mean, though the State did not to accept a despotic prerogative, unbounded by custom, convention, or law, and unchecked by acknowledged and active ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... general importation should take place! Where then is the honor! where is the shame of these persons, who can look into the faces of those very men with whom they have contracted, & tell them Without Blushing that they are resolved to Violate the contract! Is it avarice? Is it obstinacy, perverseness, pride, or from what root of bitterness does such an unaccountable defection from the laws of honor, honesty, and even humanity spring? Is it the Authority Of An Unnatural Parent—the advice of some false friend, or their own want of common ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... summon him to attend her, according to promise, in spite of Sir Rowland's order!" thundered Lord Strathern, with all the perverseness of an angry man. ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... child, it is mere perverseness in you to refuse an answer. I am sure you understand. You are in my power for good or evil, and if you refuse to speak I must consider you worthy of the following treatment: you shall be made an example to the crowd of the reality ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... indifferent circumstances: this faction, under the name of Puritan, became very turbulent, during the whole reign of Queen Elizabeth; and were always discouraged by that wise queen, as well as by her two successors. However, their numbers, as well as their insolence and perverseness, so far increased, that soon after the death of King James the First, many instances of their petulancy and scurrility, are to be seen in their pamphlets, written for some years after; which was a trade they began in the days of Queen Elizabeth: particularly with great rancour against the bishops, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... islands of Pintados, especially the women, are very vicious and sensual. Their perverseness has discovered lascivious methods of communication between men and women; and there is one to which they are accustomed from their youth. The men skilfully make a hole in their virile member near its head, and insert therein a serpent's ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... man, often full of vices, and always full of faults, she ought to learn betimes even to suffer injustice, and to bear the insults of a husband without complaint; it is not for his sake, but her own, that she should be of a mild disposition. The perverseness and ill-nature of the women only serve to aggravate their own misfortunes, and the misconduct of their husbands; they might plainly perceive that such are not the arms by which ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... subjected to it; and yet I may tell them that the physical suffering I endured was as nothing when compared to the anguish of mind I felt, when, left for hours and days to my own bitter thoughts, I remembered that through my own perverseness I had brought it all ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... magnificence of the capital, immediately procured my charts, chronometers, and astronomical instruments, and returned on board my ship on the 2nd of September, to be in waiting for the first fair wind. The wind however chose, as it often does, to put our patience to the proof. Its perverseness detained us in the roads till the 6th; and though a temporary change then enabled us to sail, we had scarcely reached Portland point when a strong gale again set in ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... of common human perverseness that kept Lidgerwood from thanking Judson when the engineer overtook him at the corner of the plaza. Uppermost in his thoughts at the moment was the keen sense of humiliation arising upon the conviction that the plucky little man had surprised his secret and would despise him accordingly. ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... coffee quite strong enough to suit him, although it was prepared almost in the form of a concentrated tincture and he drank large quantities of it. He smoked to excess, and the strongest cigars at that; in short, he seems to have been entirely without regard for his physical condition. Or was it perverseness which prompted him to prefer close confinement in his room to the long walks which he ought to have taken for his health? Even his recreation, which consisted chiefly in playing the violin, brought him no nervous relaxation, for it is said that he would often play himself into ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... bring on themselves by their own folly and perverseness; and some sorts people work on others by their own wicked self-will. God does not cause that, though He will overrule it to do ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... outbreak, and began to take a gloomy view of the situation; Vespaluus was evidently going to show a dangerous obstinacy in persisting in his heresy. And yet there was nothing in his appearance to justify such perverseness; he had not the pale eye of the fanatic or the mystic look of the dreamer. On the contrary, he was quite the best-looking boy at Court; he had an elegant, well-knit figure, a healthy complexion, eyes the colour of very ripe mulberries, and dark hair, smooth ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... Lizerolles, which her perverseness, her resentment, and a repugnance founded on instincts of delicacy, had made her prefer to a journey to Italy, Jacqueline, having nothing better to do, took it into her head to write to her friend Fred. The young man received ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... of man, that he should repent: Hath he said, and shall he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? Behold, I have received commandment to bless: And he hath blessed, and I cannot reverse it. He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, Neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel: The LORD his God is with him, And the shout of a king is among them. God bringeth them forth out of Egypt; He hath as it were the strength of the wild-ox. Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, Neither is there any divination against Israel: Now shall ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... penitence and sobs of perverseness are mighty well suited!—You may go up to your chamber. I shall talk with ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Breton of pure blood has a long head, light yellow complexion of bistre tinge, eyes black or brown, stature short, and the black hair of the Cabyle. Like him, he instinctively hates strangers; in both are the same perverseness and obstinacy, same endurance of fatigue, same love of independence, same inflexion of the voice, same expression of feelings. Listen to a Cabyle speaking his native tongue, and you will think you bear ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... a fool," said Diana, with somewhat unreasonable perverseness. "Or, if I was not a fool, ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... heard from Blackwell strange accounts of Philip's obdurate perverseness, vile associates, and unredeemable character, was roused from his usual timidity by the appeal ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... adopting the familiar style of addressing them by their christian name—as, for instance, "set upright, Sally; more forward, Eliza; keep your rein-hand more square, Ellen;" and soon; he hath, however, yet many good points that amply compensate for this perverseness of habit. Among the genuine good ones, the real thing, as the sporting phrase has it, not a biped in Bath beats Tom Williams, who, agreeable to our Eton Gradus, is good at every thing: a more jovial, worthy-hearted, respected soul breathes not within the merry court of King Bladud, and very ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... occasions. The flexible will be reformed by gentle discipline, and the refractory must be subdued by harsher methods. The degrees of scholastick, as of military punishment, no stated rules can ascertain. It must be enforced till it overpowers temptation; till stubbornness becomes flexible, and perverseness regular. Custom and reason have, indeed, set some bounds to scholastick penalties. The schoolmaster inflicts no capital punishments; nor enforces his edicts by either death or mutilation. The civil law has wisely determined, that a master who strikes at a scholar's eye ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... was out of reach of the weak. For many months, the average of deaths during these voyages was seventy-four in 1,000; the corpses were shot out into the waters; and who shall say that they were the most unfortunate? At Scutari, the landing-stage, constructed with all the perverseness of Oriental ingenuity, could only be approached with great difficulty, and, in rough weather, not at all. When it was reached, what remained of the men in the ships had first to be disembarked, and then conveyed up a steep slope of a quarter of a mile to the nearest ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... Hard is the task to shape that beauty's praise, Whose judgment scorns the homage flattery pays! But praising Amoret we cannot err, No tongue o'ervalues Heaven, or flatters her! Yet she, by Fate's perverseness—she alone Would doubt our truth, nor deem such praise her own! Adorning Fashion, unadorn'd by dress, Simple from taste, and not from carelessness; Discreet in gesture, in deportment mild, Not stiff with prudence, nor uncouthly wild: No state has AMORET! no studied mien; She frowns no GODDESS, ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... the lake of Brienz, we came to the far-famed valley of Meyringen, which had been much cried up to us; but, whether from the usual perverseness of human nature, or from being spoiled by the luxury of cascades, valleys, and Alps we had previously seen, we were disappointed in it, though, to do it ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... results to the tablecloth. For Kezia had not betrayed the reason of Maggie's refusal to come down, not liking to give her mistress a shock in the moment of carving, and Mrs. Tulliver thought there was nothing worse in question than a fit of perverseness, which was inflicting its own punishment by depriving ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... died before his apprenticeship was expired, and he was not able to bear the perverseness of his mistress. He, therefore, quitted her house upon a stipulated allowance, and married a young widow, with whom he lived at Bow. When his apprenticeship was over, he worked, as a journeyman, at the printing-house of Mr. Barber, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... of some serious purpose which he is about to impart, the woman's perverseness, and the tyrannical waywardness with which she taunts him and plays upon his ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson |
