"Perverted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... intolerant, accused the Founder of the religion, one Christus, before the Roman courts, and He was put to death, in my opinion most unjustly, seeing that there was no crime whatever alleged against Him, save that He perverted the religion of the Jews, which was in no way a concern of ours, as we are tolerant of the religions of ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... preaching would do well to consider that this talent of ridicule they value so much is a perfection very easily acquired, and applied to all things whatsoever; neither is anything at all the worse because it is capable of being perverted to burlesque; perhaps it may be the more perfect upon that score, since we know the most celebrated pieces have been thus treated with greatest success. It is in any man's power to suppose a fool's-cap on the wisest head, and then laugh at his own supposition. I think there are not many ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... who intended to be itinerants should bring testimonials, stating that they were men of sober life and character, and qualified to perform the functions to which they aspired. This bill raised a great sensation among dissenters, it being considered liable to be perverted to purposes of intolerance. It encountered, indeed, such a storm of opposition, and the house was so inundated with petitions, that when it came to be read a second time it was rejected ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... are idols which have crept into men's minds from the various dogmas of peculiar systems of philosophy, and also from the perverted rules of demonstration, and these we denominate idols of the theatre: for we regard all the systems of philosophy hitherto received or imagined, as so many plays brought out and performed, creating fictitious and theatrical worlds. Nor do we speak only of the present ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... to frustrate it. From beginning to end it is a book of stark adventure. The leader of the rising is a black missionary, who believes himself the incarnation of the mediaeval Abyssinian emperor Prester John. By means of a perverted Christianity, and the possession of the ruby collar which for centuries has been the Kaffir fetish, he organizes the natives of Southern Africa into a great army. But a revolution depends upon small things, and by frustrating the leader in these small things, the young storekeeper ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... alchemist In some perverted plan persist To turn my gold to dross. If I turned my gold their soul were sold Tho' I wore a crown and cloth of gold, Their soul ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... tattered pedlar; he leers hideously at the stirrup of Duerer's armed and stalwart knight. No gods of youth and Nature; no Hercules, no Hermes, no Venus, have invaded his German territories, as they invaded even his own palace, the burial-ground at Pisa; the antique has not perverted Duerer and his fellows, as it perverted Masaccio, and Signorelli, and Mantegna, from ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... had not the trained will of the older men that forced them into action in defiance of all emotional stress. He watched them moving as behind a glass that half destroyed their reality; it was dreamlike; perverted. Yet, through the torrent of Hank's meaningless phrases, he remembers hearing his uncle's tone of authority—hard and forced—saying several things about food and warmth, blankets, whisky and the rest ... and, further, that whiffs of that penetrating, ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... in amazement. Why should Braxton Wyatt say these things to him whom he hated most? Then he suddenly knew the reason. Deep down in the heart of everyone, no matter how perverted he may become, is some desire for the good opinion of others. The renegade was seeking to justify himself in the eyes of the youth who had been for a while a childhood comrade. He felt a sort of pity, but he knew that nothing ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... despiteful act Of Satan, done in Paradise; and how He, in the serpent, had perverted Eve, Her husband she, to taste the fatal fruit, Was known in Heaven; for what can 'scape the eye Of God all-seeing, or deceive his heart Omniscient? who, in all things wise and just, Hindered not Satan to attempt the mind Of Man, with strength entire and free will armed, Complete ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... word upon the most distasteful and effectual blight to which art is subject—the loss of naturalness, viz., affectation. Can anything be more irritating than an affected actor or singer, caterers to perverted tastes? ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... means to profit you and me and the rest of us, 't was a thing of the grandest import. So, at first, he would not have had us keep our secret for a day; but I—by a sophistry that is only sophistic when we add to the consideration man's impotent and easily perverted will—brought him into my plans, showing him what an instrument for good vast riches would be in his hands. And he was the more easily persuaded because of the very grand purity of his nature. Sans doute, he felt it to be altogether true, what I told ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... to me one engagement that has been honourably fulfilled—one military enterprise of which the professed object has not been perverted—or one solemn pledge that has not been forfeited; but my opinions on this want of faith, at various periods of the contest, when everything was fresh in my recollection, are recorded in my correspondence with the Minister of Marine, and more ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... dilapidated country. The power of the priesthood, exercised in the most fearful shape of tyranny; the power of the crown, at once feeble and arbitrary; the power of opinion, wholly extinguished; and the power of the people, perverted into the instrument of their own oppression—were the elements of evil with which the minister had to deal; and he dealt with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... Perverse, when he descends upon the printing office, sometimes becomes the Imp of the Perverted. Here his achievements will not bear reproducing. Suffice it to say that in point of indecency he displays the same superhuman ingenuity as in his more innocent pranks. His indecencies are all, indeed, in print, but fortunately scattered, and it would be a groveling ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... the farthest from correctness, and there were no man's words they ever heard that they again returned. They were in general ignorant, as acting mechanically; and by not considering the antecedent, and catching the sound, and not the sense, they perverted the sense of the speaker, and made him appear as ignorant as themselves."] it would be unfair to judge of it even from these specimens. A Report, verbatim, of any effective speech must always appear diffuse and ungraceful ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... the only sources of information drawn upon by so-called historians. All the references to the Upper Canadian Rebellion to be found in current histories are traceable, directly or indirectly, to Mackenzie himself, and all are built upon false hypotheses and perverted representations of events. To Mackenzie, more than to any other person, or to all other persons combined, are to be attributed all the worst consequences which flowed from that feebly-planned and ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... his fellow men, and divested of the conveniences of life, he will readily relapse into a state of nature.—Placed in contiguity with the barbarous and the vicious; his manners will become rude, his morals perverted.—Brought into collision with the sanguinary and revengeful; and his own conduct will eventually be distinguished, by bloody and ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... conception of what he had unwittingly come to, bore on him with a weight which his sensitive and upright mind magnified into an enormous and crushing shame. While his intention could bear arraignment and come away with acquittal, the fact that he had been perverted enough in the grain, as he looked at it, to drift unknowingly into love with another man's wife, galled him until his ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... household prepared their couches, as to them seemed best. Cunning was Kostbera, she could runes interpret; she the letters read by the bright fire;—her tongue she had to guard between both her gums—so perverted were they, it was difficult to ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... the king to Sin-tabni-usur: It is well with me. May thy heart be cheered. Concerning Sin-shar-usur, what thou didst send. How could he say evil words of thee and I hear anything of them? Shamash perverted his heart and Ummanigash slandered thee before me and would give thee to death. Ashur, my god, withholds me. I would not willingly slay my servant, and the support of my father's house. In that case, thou wouldst perish with thy lord's house. I would not see that. He and Ummanigash have compassed ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... jasper walls, of this high revel, supposedly held as a sacrament? Surely he must be sorry he was ever born of woman. But gluttony, and drunkenness and fireworks are not the full extent of a so-called Christian world's offering. We have perverted the communistic doctrine of Christ in our practice of giving Christian presents. So long as custom confines gifts to immediate relatives and dependents it was well enough, for the largesse was usually selected with discretion and prompted by love; but it has now become the practice to send ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... isn't that that I object to ... it is that he's allowing the original object of this colony, and of the Single Tax Idea, to become gradually perverted here. We're becoming nothing but a summer resort for the aesthetic quasi-respectables ... these folk are squeezing us poor, honest radicals out, by making the leases prohibitive in ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... spite of myself, and in spite of all that with most perverted pains he has made himself (so different from what he once was), can charm and interest, pain and perplex me:—not so D**, another disciple of the same school: he inspires me with the strongest antipathy I ever felt for a human being. Insignificant and disagreeable is his appearance, he ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... may be perverted by an impenitent heart to its own undoing. There is no falser notion than that expressed in the French proverb, Tout comprendre est tout pardonner (To understand everything is to pardon everything), for it means that man is the mere creature ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... disposed as Sir Joshua, to preserve, or even to seek, an intimacy. Their final parting at the deathbed of Gainsborough was most honourable to them both; and the merit of seeking it was entirely Gainsborough's. It is singular that any facts should be so perverted, as to justify an insinuation that Reynolds, whose whole life exhibited the continued acts of a kind heart, was a cautious and cold calculator. Good sense has ever a reserve of manner, the result of a habit of thinking—and in one of a high aim, it is apt to acquire ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... would now send messages to His Seven Churches, if the Churches would hear, needs stronger words than any I have yet dared to use, against the idolatry of the historical record of His messages long ago, perverted by men's forgetfulness, and confused by mischance and misapprehension; and if instead of the Latin form "Scripture" we put always "writing" instead of "written" or "write" in one place, and "Scripture" as if it meant our English Bible, in ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... most sovereign of all truths, in a state of things where the body social as a whole was kept distracted and miserable by the selfishness of a scanty few of its members. The Church, nominally built upon the morality of the Golden Rule, was perverted into being the great organ of sinister self-interest. The Atheists, apparently formulating the morality of the Epicureans, were in effect the teachers of public spirit and beneficence. And, taught in such circumstances, public spirit could only mean revolution. We may doubt whether Holbach had thought ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... children's persons or estates be "under ye management or power of ye said Mr Fielding and his now wife ye Estate would not be managed to ye best advantage and their Education would not be taken care of and there would be a great hazard that ye children might be perverted to ye Romish Religion." Then follows an order in Chancery, under the same date, "that ye eldest son of ye Defend't. Fielding ... be continued at Eaton School where he now is and that ye rest of ye children be continued where ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... with Mr. Parnell upon this great question; we admire his way of thinking, and most cordially recommend his work to the attention of the public. The general conclusion which he attempts to prove is this: that religious sentiment, however perverted by bigotry or fanaticism, has always a TENDENCY to moderation.; that it seldom assumes any great portion of activity or enthusiasm, except from novelty of opinion, or from opposition, contumely, and persecution, when novelty ceases; that a Government has little to fear from any ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... better than man what kind of food they need, for the simple reason that their tastes are natural, while man has allowed his to become perverted. In times of sickness absurd practices have been observed. Ice-cream and buttermilk, for example, were for ages refused to typhoid fever patients, while to-day they are generally used under such circumstances. But the natural desire for sour and cold things was always in evidence; ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... Guast to be near his person, who had ingratiated himself so far into his favour and confidence that he saw only with his eyes, and spoke but as he dictated. This evil-disposed man, whose whole life was one continued scene of wickedness, had perverted his mind and filled it with maxims of the most atrocious nature. He advised him to have no regard but for his own interest; neither to love nor put trust in anyone; and not to promote the views or advantage ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... carnage, of tears and anguish, of widowhood and orphanage. It can be compared to nothing but a Babel of confusion in which their own folly is worse confounded. And yet, I am sorry to say it, the languages of all ages and nations have been too frequently perverted, and compiled into a heterogeneous mass of abstruse, metaphysical volumes, whose only recommendation is the elegant bindings in ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... strength of his (p. 266) religious convictions, which as has been noticed, steadily deepened during his last years. It is clear from much that appears in his later novels that these had, to some extent, been perverted from their legitimate effect, and had made him at intervals illiberal and even bitter. But they had brought calm to an excitable nature, and healing to a spirit which had been sometimes sorely wounded. In 1851 he carried out a plan long before determined upon. In March of that year he became a communicant ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... containing a piano, and a profusion of paintings. On examining one of these, Fanny turned away with a burning cheek—for it was one of those immodest productions of the French school, which show how art and talent can be perverted to the basest uses. She looked at no more of the pictures, but went to a window and looked out. The view from thence was not extensive, but merely included a garden of moderate size, surrounded by a high wall; the prospect was not a pleasant ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... this spirit of amity and forbearance can in no instance be justified. If it was proper to rely on amicable negotiation for an indemnity for losses, it would not have been so to have permitted the inability of Spain to fulfill her engagements and to sustain her authority in the Floridas to be perverted by foreign adventurers and savages to purposes so destructive to the lives of our fellow citizens and the highest interests ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Monroe • James Monroe
... irreverent, nasty. There is a certain intolerable nastiness about the real Ibsen: the same thing is in Strindberg and in most of the Norwegian and Swedish writings. It is with them a sort of phallic worship also, but now the worship is mental and perverted: the phallus is the real fetish, but it is the source of uncleanliness and corruption and death, it is ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... changes in political conditions, especially changes in law through new legislation, frequently prove a profound modifying influence in societies. Lastly, there are certain moral causes inherent in the individual, oftentimes involving perverted expressions of instinct, which lead to profound social changes. Such was the vice which Rome copied very largely from Greece, but which proved the final solvent in ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... taking from Court favourites the nomination of officers to the charge of all districts and all fiscal and judicial Courts, and to the command of all corps and establishments, in order to render them efficient and honest, and prevent justice from being perverted, and the revenues of the state from being absorbed on their way to the treasury, they took no heed. Court favourites retained their powers, and the King and his minister relied entirely, as heretofore, upon the reports ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... with the subtle heathen had corrupted and perverted the speech of Adam's time: crafty phrases and false rhetorics had crept in, and the grand old Edenic idioms either were fast being debased or had become wholly obsolete. Such new-fangled words as "eftsoon," "albeit," "wench," "soothly," "zounds," "whenas," and "sithence" had stolen into ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... possibilities of individual pleasure and satisfaction, to the growing aversion of young people to matrimony, and the rush of women to the divorce courts for freedom from the galling bonds; all these and a thousand variations of each, until the nature of both sexes is so perverted that it is impossible to decide what ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... were converted in a day. Christianity overran the inhabited earth in the space of a few years. Judaism and Paganism trembled and crumbled before its mighty power. But now the religious world is contending with sin and crime, under the great disadvantages of a perverted mind and a Gospel beclouded with the smoke of Babylon, and the result is that three-score souls brought into the church is a great success for the labors of weeks, and even months. Why should this be so? It need not be. It would ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various
... and as to knowledge; and yet in some few cases it may fail, both as to rectitude, by reason of certain obstacles (just as natures subject to generation and corruption fail in some few cases on account of some obstacle), and as to knowledge, since in some the reason is perverted by passion, or evil habit, or an evil disposition of nature; thus formerly, theft, although it is expressly contrary to the natural law, was not considered wrong among the Germans, as Julius Caesar relates ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... that about this time there was a great battle between the Outagamies and the French, aided by their Indian allies, at the place called Little Butte des Morts, on the Fox River. According to the story, the Outagamies were nearly destroyed. Perhaps this is a perverted version of the Villiers affair. (See Wisconsin Historical Collections, viii, 207.) Beauharnois also reports, under date of 6 May, 1730, that a party of Outagamies, returning from a buffalo hunt, were surprised by two hundred Ottawas, Ojibwas, Menominies, and Winnebagoes, ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... though nothing in themselves, were uttered with a mysterious meaning that sounded ominous to Gomez Arias. He felt as though a cloud was darkening over the ambitious prospects which had seduced his mind and perverted his heart; the voice that spoke rung in his ear like an awful warning of which he had some strange recollection. Again he attempted to escape from the scene. One sudden powerful effort, and he loosened himself from the grasp of Theodora: the despairing girl fell ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... temper, but I went over the facts again, and clearly and concisely demonstrated to him how unjust he was and how he had perverted the facts. As I manifested no signs of backing down (and I am sure my eyes were beginning to snap), he led me to the rear of the building where, in an open court, stood a tent. In the same sneering tone he informed a couple of privates standing there ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... outline of a flag. Miss R. as percipient, in contact with Miss E. as agent. Very quickly Miss R. said, 'It's a little flag.' And when asked to draw, she drew it fairly well but perverted. I showed her the flag (as usual after a success), and then took it away to the drawing place to fetch something else. I made another drawing, but instead of bringing it I brought the flag back again ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... one another. But no vituperation is found in Sallust's works. There is, indeed, a coldness and reserve, a disinclination to praise the conduct and even the oratory of the consul which bespeaks a mind less noble than Cicero's, [86] But facts are not perverted, nor is the odium of an unconstitutional act thrown on Cicero alone, as we know it was thrown by Caesar's more unscrupulous partisans, and connived at by Caesar himself. The veneration of Sallust for his great chief is conspicuous. Caesar is brought into steady ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... rapid was her relapse and her delusion—that his form had again passed before her, beautiful as before his transgression!—"The Son of the Morning!" arrayed in the majesty which he had before the world was,—ere heaven's Ruler had hurled him from his throne. Her mental vision was perverted. Light and darkness, good and evil, were no longer distinguished. Perhaps it was a dream; but the imagination had becomed diseased, and she distinguished not its inward operations from outward impressions on the sense. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... forlorn visage? It is outrageously indecent. Why not? Who made this portentous "decency" to be the rule of free-born life? Who put fig-leaves upon the sweet flesh of the immortals? Decency after all is a mere modern barbarism; the evocation of morbid vulgarity and a perverted heart. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... monarchs, like those of other men, may be distinguished into two great types, characterized by the feelings of heart in which they take their origin. Some of these crimes arise from the malignant passions of the soul, others from the irregular and perverted action of the feelings of kindness and affection. The errors and follies of Charles, ending at last, as they did, in the most atrocious sins, were of the latter class. It was in feelings of kindness and good will toward friends of his own sex that originated that ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... than a scheme upon paper; and not a living, active, effective constitution. It is possible, that through negligence, or ignorance, or design artfully conducted, Ministers may suffer one part of Government to languish, another to be perverted from its purposes: and every valuable interest of the country to fall into ruin and decay, without possibility of fixing any single act on which a criminal prosecution can be justly grounded. The due arrangement of men in the active part of the state, far ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... perverted mind recognized that one was a gentleman, and the other—well, "a fashionable young man," as she would phrase it. The one, as a friend, would shield her from every detracting breath; the other, if ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... one hand they affected to conciliate the people, with the other they scattered the seeds of disaffection widely through the land by the most inflammatory and ill-judged libels upon the country and its claims. Thus, in the hands of those men, the benignity of the Sovereign was perverted into an instrument of discontent, and those rich concessions which, if judiciously administered, would have bound Ireland to Britain by indissoluble ties, were made means of exciting in numbers of ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... the East, sometimes indeed depicting their deities in human forms, did not hesitate to change them into monsters, if the addition of another leg or another arm, a dog's head or a serpent's tail, could better express the emblem they represented. They perverted their images into allegorical deformities; and receded from the beautiful in proportion as they indulged their false conceptions of the sublime. Besides, a painter or a sculptor must have a clear idea presented to him, to be long cherished and often revolved, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a high moral ideal for his nation. The other nations are feeble and decadent. Germany is to hold the sceptre of the nations, so as to ensure the peace of the world. It is only in Bernhardi that we find war in itself glorified as the stimulus of nations. Even this ideal has a perverted nobility; as Pol Arcas, a modern Greek writer, says: "If the devil knew he had horns the cherubim would offer him their place." And though it was only in the swelled head of the conqueror that the brutal philosophy of the Will-to-Power germinated, it was not so much the "blood and iron" of Junkerdom ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... French. In the kingdom of Louis the German, on the other hand, both people and language were German. The narrow strip of country between these regions, which fell to Lothaire, came to be called Lotharii regnum, or kingdom of Lothaire.[53] This name was perverted in time into Lotharingia and, later, into Lorraine. It is interesting to note that this territory has formed a part of the debatable middle ground over which the French and Germans have struggled so obstinately down to our ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... the view I am about suggesting has never before been presented to the American mind. But, Negro as I am, I shall make no apology for venturing the claim that the Negress is one of the most interesting of all the classes of women on the globe. I am speaking of her, not as a perverted and degraded creature, but in her natural state, with her ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... observed at Paris had turned to no account; on the contrary, the letter which I wrote to Mr. Secretary Stanhope was quoted as a base and fawning submission, and what I intended as a mark of respect to the Government and a service to my friends was perverted to ruin me in the opinion of the latter. The Act of Attainder, in consequence of my impeachment, had passed against me for crimes of the blackest dye; and among other inducements to pass it, my having been engaged in the Pretender's interest was one. How well founded this Article was has ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... must have become perverted," she replied. "I think Mr. Ward must have a very bad influence ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... takes its natural colors, and it is at once pleasant and good to catch such glimpses of Heaven's design, and sad to think how often this great boon, accorded by God to man and woman, must have been abused and perverted, ere it could have sunk to be the standing butt of farce-writers, and the theme ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... the Bible;—that some men are made infidels by hearing the Trinity, Depravity, Atonement, Divinity of Christ, Resurrection, Eternal Punishment. True: and these men find "great laws of their nature,—instinctive feelings"—just such as you find against slavery, and not more perverted in them than in you, condemning all this Bible. And they hold now, with your sanction, that a book affirming such facts "cannot ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... in spite of this great antiseptic, they are represented as the rotten, putrid things they are! And then another answer, equally empty with the former, is hinted to save the credit of the darling oracle. Its due influence has been perverted, its just expansion prevented, by the influence of national religions, by the intervention of the "historical" and "traditional," by false and pernicious education;—these things, it seems, have poisoned the waters of spiritual life in their ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... Durer, and the brothers Van Eyck receive due reverence. But it has fairly been questioned whether the majority of the sixty or more artists here immortalised would thank the painter for his pains. The reading given to historic facts is narrow, partial, not to say perverted, and could content only such ultra critics as ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... form and in color; mean and ugly low-roomed royal palaces, without either magnificence or simplicity; military costumes, in which gold and silver lace were plastered together on the same uniform, testified to the perverted perception of beauty and fitness which presided in the court of George the Fourth. Lawrence's own portrait of him, with his corpulent body girthed in his stays and creaseless coat, and his heavy falling cheek supported by his stiff stock, with his dancing-master's leg and his frizzled ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... resulting from it, ver. 50. How men are disappointed in their most expensive undertakings, for want of this true foundation, without which nothing can please long, if at all; and the best examples and rules will but be perverted into something burdensome or ridiculous, ver. 65 to 92. A description of the false taste of magnificence; the first grand error of which is to imagine that greatness consists in the size and dimension, instead ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... fraud or oppression. And yet the want of attending to this obvious distinction has occasioned these doctrines, of absolute power in the prince and of national resistance by the people, to be much misunderstood and perverted by the advocates for slavery on the one hand, and the demagogues of faction on the other. The former, observing the absolute sovereignty and transcendent dominion of the crown laid down (as it certainly is) most ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... think the line of preaching that seemed to impress the hearers most was one that reasoned with them about the growth, manufacture, and use of these three, being so contrary to Heaven's design in giving land and rain to grow food, that it was not to be wondered at if, seeing how the land and rain were perverted, God should send short rations. Evil speaking, vile language, made a fourth subject which naturally came in for notice, and on all these four subjects I scarcely ever spoke without gaining the nearly universal concurrence ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... follow this style of combination into the more refined kinds of work and into loom products, but may add that through all, until perverted by ulterior influences, the characteristic geometricity and monotonous repetition ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... stock what persons of refinement demand, but they also have fabrics and garments bizarre in color and cut, in which they revel and carry for apparently no other reason than the delectation of their own perverted taste, since they seldom or never sell them. But at times they light upon some one whose ignorance or easy-going disposition makes him a prey, and they send him forth an example of what they call a well-dressed man. More execrably dressed men ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... does to a child. It may immediately show an obvious physical one; it may later develop a mental one. It may never seem to have injured it at all, and yet it may have shocked a sensitive nature and injured it permanently. Crime is evolved from perverted natures, and natures become perverted from ill-usage. It merges into a peculiar structure of ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... was declared by God to Satan, "I will put enmity between thy seed and her seed," it is certain that the church of Cain was ever hostile to the Church of Adam. And the present text fully shows that the sons of men so increased and prevailed that they almost completely perverted and destroyed the Church of the sons of God. For in the great flood, only eight souls of them were saved; all the rest of the human race perished in the waters on account of ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... unto all other objects, I can profess, I never writ that piece More innocent or empty of offence. Some salt it had, but neither tooth nor gall, Nor was there in it any circumstance Which. in the setting down, I could suspect Might be perverted by an enemy's tongue; Only it had the fault to be call'd mine; ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... to-day a real menace to wholesome living. Many such blocks may be found in any of our older cities, casting a depressing influence upon all who come in sight of them, and deteriorating the manners and morals of all who live in them. For these have gone the way of the other classes mentioned and become perverted from the uses they were designed for. In the seventies there were still motherly women who had come to town to make a home for the children no longer content out of it. They were willing and capable of mothering a few other children and lonely teachers and clerks, so ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... "I have often wondered what the pleasure of sending such things consists in! I always fancy the sender taking out his watch, and saying, with malicious glee, 'I suppose so-and-so will be receiving my letter about now!' It must be a perverted sense ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... some ironical, some no doubt sincere. But to the last, these chivalric, but prejudiced and misguided gentlemen declined to listen to my explanations. Mellasys Plickaman had completely perverted their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... prostitution of virtue at the command of the parents, or for the support of the parents, was not only permitted but, under special conditions, was highly praised. Modern prostitution is rendered possible chiefly through the action of this perverted principle. Although the sale of daughters for immoral purposes is theoretically illegal, yet, in fact, it is ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... nature of man is to adore God and to love what is god-like in man. The office of the tongue is to bless. Slander is guilty because it contradicts this; yet even in slander itself, perversion as it is, the interest of man in man is still distinguishable. What is it but perverted interest which makes the acts, and words, and thoughts of his brethren, even in their evil, a matter of such strange delight? Remember therefore, this contradicts your nature and your destiny; to speak ill of others makes you a monster ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... but the most cowardly stand amid the risks of war; and the more noble, having strongly conceived an act as due to their ideal, affront and embrace death. Strange enough if, with their singular origin and perverted practice, they think they are to be rewarded in some future life: stranger still, if they are persuaded of the contrary, and think this blow, which they solicit, will strike them senseless for eternity. I shall be reminded what a tragedy of misconception and misconduct ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the land of Jews, because this does not entail their living together with them. Thus Solomon besought the King of Tyre to send master workmen to hew the trees, as related in 3 Kings 5:6. Yet, if there be reason to fear that the faithful will be perverted by such communications and dealings, they should ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... who, in the execution of their charge, violated every precept, not only of evangelical perfection, but even of moral virtue. By some of these unfaithful stewards the riches of the church were lavished in sensual pleasures; by others they were perverted to the purposes of private gain, of fraudulent purchases, and of rapacious usury. [140] But as long as the contributions of the Christian people were free and unconstrained, the abuse of their confidence could not ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... time to this I never heard what became of Dreadnought, and never saw the man who bought him, even in the dock. It is strange, however, that animals so true and faithful as dogs and horses should be instruments so perverted as to make men liars and rogues; while for intelligence many of them could give most of us pounds and pass us ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... the human race! Great cleanser of the human face! Thy potent art removes each stain From dirtiest mortal on this sphere mundane. 'Tis sad to think thy mystic spell Can't penetrate within the shell, And to a soiled, perverted heart Cleanliness and purity impart. Thy subtle essence, heretofore confined In bars of Windsor toilet cakes refined; In Colgate's honey for the barber's brush, And shapeless masses much resembling slush, Has now, according to our evening ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... strange to watch the women as the talk went on. The woman within them had died, there was nothing of it left to which we could appeal; everything about them was perverted, unnatural. I looked at the insensitive faces and then at the sensitive face of the child, and entered deeper than ever into the mercifulness ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... perverted product of a morally degraded race, had about him something of true dignity; something of sincerity, in a warped, twisted way. There were times when he seemed to sense vaguely, gropingly, wonderingly, that he ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... late events in Spain. How little honourable our line of policy appears according to this version, which the Queen is afraid is so very plausible that it will be received as the truth by the whole French public and a great part of the European public at large! It is, no doubt, perverted, but still the Queen must admit that our policy, and especially Mr Bulwer's conduct at Madrid, lays itself open to similar construction. After the gross duplicity and immorality which characterised the conduct ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... for recriminations, so that those papers had to resort for material for their vituperation to distorted incidents of Transvaal history prior to the peace of 1881. There would, for example, be dished up falsely rendered and dramatically coloured and perverted selections, such as the treacherous massacre of Retief's party in 1838, averring that the Zulu king, Dingaan, had been incited thereto by the British authorities; tragic descriptions of events, coupled with the massacres ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... grand arcade of elms over its avenue, spacious lawns, an elegant mansion, a luxurious flower-garden; but we are informed that happiness does not dwell there, that its owner is a misanthropic person, whose nature has been perverted by the selfishness of luxury; that there are no pleasant parties on the lawn, no happy wooing in that garden, no marriage festivals in those halls; and those possessions, which might have proved a ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... those who called themselves the followers of Christ. For nearly two thousand years they had fed the nations on lies and set up images which were abhorrent to the one and only God. They had, to suit their own doctrines and dogmas, perverted the meaning of the words of Jesus; they had made the name of Christ a byword to all true believers. The sin of hate and the lust for blood, which was to fill the hearts of all Christian countries, was to be a token to ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist. My arguments perverted some others, particularly Collins and Ralph; but, each of them having afterwards wrong'd me greatly without the least compunction, and recollecting Keith's conduct towards me (who was another free-thinker), ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... scrupled entering into the holy bands of matrimony, where her heart did not sincerely accompany all the words of the ceremony. Signora Diana had nothing to say in contradiction to this pious sentiment; and her brother applauded the honesty which could not be perverted by any interest whatever. She remained concealed in their house, where she helped in the kitchen, cleaned the rooms, and redoubled her usual diligence and officiousness. Her old master came to Lovere on ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... paradoxes, three strange and contradictory things: the paradoxes of man's perverted and fatal choice, of man's hate bringing death to the Lord of life, and of God's love and power causing life to come ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... Yet notwithstanding, as those that first bring honor into their family, are commonly more worthy than most that succeed, so the first precedent (if it be good) is seldom attained by imitation. For ill, to man's nature, as it stands perverted, hath a natural motion, strongest in continuance; but good, as a forced motion, strongest at first. Surely every medicine is an innovation; and he that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils; for time is the ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... current on any good authority at the time of our publication, and we employed every means in our power to test its accuracy, though the only other narratives which had then reached England were, as the Cardinal says (p. 9), too "partial and perverted" to enable us to sift it to the bottom. We stated that a rumour was current, not that its purport was true. (2) We did not speak of "only two addresses" actually submitted to the Commission. We supposed the report to mean, that of ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... know what you are doing: here we are stuck, chained at home, while you are off at your business! Fine business, truly! If I were in your place, I would invent business a little bit better put together than yours! Ah, you set us a worthy example! They say women are perverse. Who perverted them?" ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... was severely criticised by some of his friends. He was advised to suppress those expressions that were liable to be perverted to his injury, but he declared his resolution to abide by the consequences of a clear statement of the truth. And indeed, while the worldly wisdom of Coligny's censors has received a species of justification ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... superstructure can be erected again after the fiery purification. But if it be utterly rotten, what then? Such, however, is not the case in Ithaca, as long as there exists a man like the swineherd. From his rock, then, and, still more, from his spirit, is to issue the energy which is to transform that perverted land of Ithaca. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... the relative amounts of window and floor space that the schoolroom should have in order to be adequately lighted! Not one in ten has as much window space as it should have, and a good portion of what has been provided is frequently covered up by shades thru the teacher's perverted notion of relative values—seeming to have greater appreciation for certain so-called artistic effects than for eye comfort and safety in work. And then again, these scientific friends of ours have told us that there should ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... her mind as blotted out or perverted; he could not conceive of it otherwise than as corresponding with her outward symmetry. To his thought it slumbered, as her form might repose upon her couch, in a death-like trance. She went and came among them like a somnambulist, guided by ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... favorite and characteristic notion of modern society to associate goodness with dullness, and consequently, I suppose, to connect badness with all that is gay, interesting, and diverting. There is nothing more perverted, absurd, and contemptible than that notion in the ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... anarchy of mediaeval times. In America, where every man is a czar, so far as the disposal of himself is concerned, the enslavement of the Russians seems a frightful disregard of the rights of man, the nation a giant Gulliver bound down to the earth by chains of creed and custom, of bureaucracy and perverted public opinion. Like Gulliver, it was bound when asleep, and it must continue fettered while its intellect remains torpid. Some day it will awake, stretch its mighty limbs, burst its feeble bonds, and hurl in disarray to the earth the whole host ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... other; and as Grace bowed her ear Mrs. Maynard touched her cheek with her dry lips. In this kiss doubtless she forgave the wrong which she had hoarded in her heart, and there perverted into a deadly injury. But they both knew upon what terms the pardon was accorded, and that if Mrs. Maynard had died, she would have died holding Grace ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... hurtful in these cases, and fruits are particularly pernicious. Plain animal food is found to be the most suitable to their state. The utmost care should be taken under all circumstances to procure genuine unadulterated bread for children, as the great support of life. If the perverted habits of the present generation give them an indifference as to what bread they eat, or a vitiated taste for adulterated bread, they still owe it to their children as a sacred duty, not to undermine their constitution by this injurious composition. The poor, and many also of the middling ranks ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... was called "sound learning" declared his discoveries deceptions and his announcements blasphemy. Semi-scientific professors, endeavouring to curry favour with the Church, attacked him with sham science; earnest preachers attacked him with perverted Scripture; theologians, inquisitors, congregations of cardinals, and at last two popes dealt with him, and, as was supposed, silenced his impious ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... deeds. Yet even she is not without some extenuating traits. Her bigotry springs from her conscience, and she is truly devoted to her daughter's eternal welfare; she is of such a native frankness that at a certain point she tears aside her mask of dissimulation and lets Pepe see all the ugliness of her perverted soul. She is wonderfully managed. At what moment does she begin to hate him, and to wish to undo her own work in making a match between him and her daughter? I could defy anyone to say. All one knows is that at ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... Fairy Queen, "he has been too long perverted by the trifling ways of man: I should have taken him younger. I see that I cannot at once indoctrinate him into the arcana of nature; I must gradually lead him on, as if in play. Good! a bright idea! that must be the right way ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... early youth, tinctured his description of the heavens and hells of the spirit world, causing him to represent the soul as reaching a period in its love of evil when it cannot retrace its steps. The hells of the spirit are similar to the hells of earth, being like them the result of the ignorance and perverted loves of animal man. ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... that formed the axis of the Gaines garden-parties, Mr. Halford Gaines, a few paces from his wife and daughters, stood radiating a royal welcome on the stream of visitors pouring across the lawn. It was only to eyes perverted by a different social perspective that there could be any doubt as to the importance of the Gaines entertainments. To Hanaford itself they were epoch-making; and if any rebellious spirit had cherished a doubt of the fact, it would have been quelled by the official majesty of Mr. Gaines's frock-coat ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... place! Swine, and sometimes the more gentle race of dogs and cats, are guilty of this horrid and preposterous murder. When I hear now and then of an abandoned mother that destroys her offspring, I am not so much amazed, since reason perverted, and the bad passions let loose, are capable of any enormity; but why the parental feelings of brutes, that usually flow in one most uniform tenor should sometimes be so extravagantly diverted, I leave to abler ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... closed; but above all the sentiment of the day perverted morals. Here, too, everything was relative to men, and men demanded a sensitive weakness, a shrinking timidity. Courage, honour, truth, sincerity, independence—these were items in a male ideal. They were to a woman as unnecessary, nay, as harmful ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... honourable, honest, hard-working men made the gazing stock of a parcel of pampered perverted fools, for the fun of 'a change' to gratify their contempt for the blue-shirt and thick boots who had dared, mucky and muddy, to come out of their deep wet holes to hamper these gods of the land in their dog's game ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... worse than stupid, my blind heart saw nothing of this, and perverted what it saw. I construed the conduct of Julia into matter of offence, to be taken in high dudgeon and resolutely resented; and I drew myself up stiffly when she appeared, and by excess of ceremonious politeness only, avoided ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Hungarian writers were nearly always silent on the subject, or spoke of it with the utmost bitterness. He, however, quotes two who, in treating of the various nationalities, admit that Moldavia and Wallachia contain the descendants of the Roman colonists who speak a perverted Latin. One of them gives an extract from a poem by Martin Opitz (1621), who describes the national dance of Wallachia, the Hora, or 'Chora' as he calls it. After speaking of the vicissitudes through which the people have passed, he says ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... us in the publication of this volume, to be understood as encouraging the wanton destruction of poor innocent animals. Like all kindred sports, hunting and fishing for example, the sport of Trapping may be perverted and carried to a point where it becomes simple cruelty, as is always the case when pursued for the mere excitement it brings. If the poor victims are to serve no use after their capture, either as food, ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... country when his motives were made known—has been dwelt upon as the strongest evidence of unsoundness. Whether this and other strange things in his career are really indicative of partial insanity, or can be accounted for by ignorance of men, exaggerated egotism, or perverted moral sense, might be a question of difficulty. And difficulties of this kind you might find very perplexing if you were compelled to determine the question of insanity generally, without any rule ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... the fault of our whole lifetime, Laura,' said he, recovering himself, when a few agitated words had passed on either side. 'I taught you to take my dictum for law, and abused your trusty and perverted all the best and most precious qualities. It is I who stand first to bear the blame, and would that I could bear all the suffering! But as it is, Laura, we must look to enduring the consequence all our lives, and give each other ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and evokes laughter, although we have heard it a hundred times, and although the soldier has rightly or wrongly perverted the original meaning and regards it as an ironical reflection on his ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... do little more than state them. For even that, I now think, is much; it is at least the half of knowledge. In this particular field the evil of ignorance is magnified by our efforts to suppress that which never can be suppressed, though in the effort of suppression it may become perverted. I have at least tried to find out what are the facts, among normal people as well as among abnormal people; for, while it seems to me that the physician's training is necessary in order to ascertain the facts, the physician for the most part only obtains the abnormal facts, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of either forfeiting their vessel and cargo, or of perishing at sea; they must still have entered the port: the loss of their vessel and cargo being the lesser evil. But the character of the lawgiver assures them, that the intention of his laws are perverted, when misapplied to persons, who, under their circumstances, take refuge in his ports. They have no occasion to recur from his clemency to his justice, by claiming the benefit of that article in the treaty which binds the two nations together, and which assures to ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... observe the perverted understanding and obstinate temper of Madame Montoni; but, not less grieved for her sufferings, she looked round for some alleviating circumstance to offer her. 'Your situation is, perhaps, not so desperate, dear madam,' said Emily, 'as you may ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... after this consultation the Patriots celebrated the anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act by a day of general rejoicing. There were things that could be perverted, and were perverted, into signs of mob-rule and disloyalty. Daylight revealed hanging on the Liberty Tree effigies of Commissioner Paxton and Inspector Williams, the latter of whom, being a cabinet-maker, had a glue-pot by his side, but by order of the popular leaders ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... the same time the experience of every age teaches us that the weakness and perversity of many wrest to evil purposes these gifts, which in the Divine intention should serve only for good. It is against the perverted use of two of God's gifts that we would very ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... man is not only an effect but a cause; his freedom—not unlimited but quite real within its not inelastic confines—is the noblest of all his faculties, even though for that very reason it is capable of being most ignobly perverted. What its bestowal tells us is that God does not call us into servitude, but to that service which is perfect freedom; He might have made us His playthings, as Plato suggested,[3] but by endowing ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... to licentiousness and impiety—whose writings, in fine, are calculated to inflict serious injury upon the tastes, the understandings, and the hearts of her youthful female readers, by accustoming them to a vicious and ridiculous style, by filling their minds with false and perverted sentiments and wrong impressions upon some of the most important matters, and by setting before them the example of a woman who boasts of being a member of no undistinguished circle of society, and yet constantly ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... apocryphal words ascribed to Mr. Higginson. These were not fugitives seeking asylum from persecution. Still less were they planning an asylum for others. They were intent on the planting of a new commonwealth, in which the church of Christ, not according to the imperfect and perverted pattern of the English Establishment, but according to a fairer pattern, that had been showed them in their mounts of vision, should be both free and dominant. If this purpose of theirs was wrong; if they had no right to deny themselves the comforts and delights ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... secure secondary instruction, more than one-half of the youth of France undergo the internat, ecclesiastic or secular. This is peculiar to France, and is due to the way in which Napoleon, in 1806, seized on and perverted all ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Lamar I was not so sure but that the selection of the snake venom was simply the inspiration of a perverted brain, the evolution of the detailed method of killing her—an outgrowth of someone's familiarity with studio life in general, with the script of 'The Black Terror' in particular. Now I realize that we are face to face with ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... prove his Unitarian ideas. Shortly before this, in 1653, he wrote Demonstrationes Christianae, and finally his Epistola ad Christianos, published at Amsterdam in 1672. His strange views and perverted opinions first caused his dismissal from the army, and his works upon the Unitarian doctrines necessitated his removal from the office of teacher. He then journeyed to Helmstadt, but there the wanderer found no rest; for ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... caused me years of conflict and anguish, such as he little knows; I was almost shipwrecked; yet I will still say to the last that what I loved in him was a better self,—something really noble and good, however concealed and perverted by pride, ambition, and self-will. Though all the world reject him, I still have faith in this better nature, and prayers that he may be led right at last. There is at least one heart that will always intercede with God ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... Clifford. Sir Thomas, he says, 'had greatly distinguished himself in the House of Commons. Of the members of the Cabal, he was the most respectable. For, with a fiery, imperious temper, he had a strong though a lamentably perverted sense of duty and honour.' Farther on he adds that Clifford 'alone of the five had any claim to be regarded as an honest man.' Sir Thomas started a scheme which was practically the origin of the National Debt. Several statesmen who enjoyed the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... of disobedience and insubordination, do not expect that the desirable change can be effected by sudden, spasmodic, and violent efforts, accompanied by denunciations and threats, and declarations that you are going to "turn over a new leaf." The attempt to change perverted tendencies in children by such means is like trying to straighten a bend in the stem of a growing tree by blows ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott |
