"Perversion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the "golden quality," nor does a million dollars in bank epitomize its character. Its language is not spoken in the dialect of Wall Street or of wheat pits. Gold, grain, stocks, and bonds and estates too often mean the perversion of those qualities most valuable to human life. Realty is not the prime issue of life, but reality. If that which a man gets in his pay envelope, however lucrative that may be, constituted his only reward, his effort ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... be thought dutiful, in military officers, to treat the orders of their commander-in-chief as we do the command of our Master; or in mercantile agents, to interpret thus loosely the instructions of their employers? The perversion, however, has become so familiar to us, that we are insensible of it; and the fact may be numbered among other wonders of a like kind, which the experience of a few past years has exhibited. A few years since, good men were ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... complexion of paragraphs like these is falsehood; which is sometimes direct, though it is more commonly a perversion of existing facts. The pamphlet I had written, which had been partially made known to the public by the advertisement that had appeared, the patronage of Sir Barnard, my ambitious views on the Mowbray family, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... say, father, when you thus forget all that constitutes the integrity and dignity of man, and stoop to the discreditable meanness of falsehood, I ask you, is it manly, or honorable, or affectionate, to involve me in proceedings so utterly shameful, and to ask me to abet you in such a wanton perversion of truth? Sir, there are fathers—indeed, I believe, most fathers living—who would rather see any child of theirs stretched and shrouded up in the grave than know them to be guilty of such ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... from others only in what is not so much worth while. If you have anything in common with your fellow-creatures, it is something that God gave you; if you have anything that seems quite your own, it is from your silly self, and is a sort of perversion of what came to you from the Creator who made you out of himself, and had nothing else to make any one out of. There is not really any difference between you and your fellow-creatures; but only a seeming difference that flatters and cheats ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... gross, an expression of intelligence and benignity. In the latter part of life, his character appears to have undergone a greater change, from its primitive openness and good nature, than mere time and experience of the world should have wrought in it. Perhaps this was nothing more than a slight perversion which he had contracted in the school of Warburton. What was a coarse arrogance in the master himself, assumed the form of nicety and superciliousness in the less confident and better regulated tempers of Mason and Hurd. His harmless vanity cleaved to ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... curiosity, but nobody had thought to stimulate it by even casually telling him that the finest minds of humanity had been trying to systematise the mysteries for quite twenty-five centuries. Of physical science he had been taught nothing, save a grotesque perversion to the effect that gravity was a force which drew things towards the centre of the earth. In the matter of chemistry it had been practically demonstrated to him scores of times, so that he should never forget ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... work; and, if they can not do good work, the whole colony must suffer in a general way, while the bowels must also suffer in a special way. The function of drainage or sewerage is very important, and the perversion of it brings on much ill health. The principal perversion to the function of sewerage is that of constipation, the location of which is limited to the lower portion of the large intestine, a section of the canal least endowed with ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... to which the sovereignty is determined. The laws are the determining principles, according to which the dominant body governs and restrains those who would, and punishes those who do, transgress them. He defines three kinds of constitutions, each of them having a corresponding perversion:—a republic, arising from the principle of equality; this at times degenerates into democracy; monarchy, and aristocracy, which arise from principles of inequality, founded on the preponderance ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... eager to distinguish himself in some great military campaign. It has always been unfortunate for the peace and happiness of mankind, under all monarchical and despotic governments, in every age of the world, that, through some depraved and unaccountable perversion of public sentiment, those who are not born to greatness have had no means of attaining to it except as heroes in war. Many men have, indeed, by their mental powers or their moral excellences, acquired an extended and lasting posthumous fame; but in respect to all ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... for the same offense. Does this section propose to punish the community where the custom prevails? or is it to punish the person who, under color of the custom, deprives the party of his right? It is a manifest perversion of the meaning of the section to assert ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... Indians that never could be caught, killed, or crippled, though two regiments were hurried into Gloucester and battled with them for a fortnight. Thus, the rumor went around that these were not an enemy of flesh and blood, but devils who hoped to work a moral perversion of the colony. From 1692, when they appeared, until Salem witchcraft was at an end, Cape Ann was under military and spiritual ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... spared by the Huguenots, now being used as an adjunct to a hospital; and the Church of St. Pierre. The latter is the most appalling example of a Renaissance building which one is likely to meet with, and shows in its remarkable facade, in sheer perversion of misdirected labour, the grossness of pseudo-classicism, which quite entitles it to rank with that other equally abominable example ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... mischief, Miss Havisham sent her with the malicious assurance that she was beyond the reach of all admirers, and that all who staked upon that cast were secured to lose. I saw in this that I, too, was tormented by a perversion of ingenuity, even while the prize was reserved for me. I saw in this the reason for my being staved off so long and the reason for my late guardian's declining to commit himself to the formal knowledge of such a scheme. In a word, I saw in this Miss Havisham as I had her ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... thousands do, and omit to offer it in the name of Christ. The custom of Masons, and other secret orders, of having a form of religion that ignores Christ, that does not recognize His mediatorship and that is not offered in His name, is supremely wicked. It is a gross perversion of the religion of Jesus. And how Christian men, even preachers of the gospel, can find it in their hearts to acquiesce in such a thing, is to us a profound puzzle. The institution that has no place for my Master has no place ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... medicine or theology. The number of lunatics increased continually; suicides multiplied in the world of wealth, and many of them were accompanied by atrocious and extraordinary circumstances, which bore witness to an unheard o perversion of ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... be Written Thomas Tyler Frank Harris Harris "durch Mitleid wissend" "Sidney's Sister: Pembroke's Mother" Shakespear's Social Standing This Side Idolatry Shakespear's Pessimism Gaiety of Genius Jupiter and Semele The Idol of the Bardolaters Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion Shakespear and Democracy Shakespear and the British Public The Dark ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... replied with an emphasis on the "Mr." "Now there, I grant you, is a man," she said reluctantly. "I cannot understand the perversion of his destiny or the folly ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... endocrine soil of a particular kind, perhaps affected by the internal secretions much as natural soil is by fertilizers like phosphates or nitrates. Increased production follows increased fertilization. Natural disability must vary similarly with a perversion or improper mixture, deficiency or absence of the hormones that combine ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... her an unconscious business. After several years of it she evolved into a flushed, nervous victim of her own technique. She managed, however, to preserve her self-esteem by looking upon the perversion of her normal sexual instincts into a species of verbal nymphomania as an indication of a superior soul state. Radical books excited her mind as ordinarily her body might have been excited by radical caresses. Amateur theatricals, publicity ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... is a leading error in the philosophy of American household decoration—an error easily recognised as deduced from the perversion of taste just specified., We are violently enamoured of gas and of glass. The former is totally inadmissible within doors. Its harsh and unsteady light offends. No one having both brains and eyes will use it. A mild, or what artists term a cool light, with its consequent warm shadows, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the guest whom she wishes to honor. And sometimes, when stooping over them, she rubs them gently with her loosely-flowing hair—not as a substitute for a towel, but as a token of kindly welcome. This privilege belongs to the oldest daughter of the family; and the custom once liable to perversion, now shines with new beauty, as the expression of Christian love. He who once accepted the service in his own person, will hereafter say, to many a daughter of Chaldea, "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... interesting to compare tales of feats of arms, narrated by the victor (so-called) or the vanquished. It is hard to tell which account is truthful, if either. Mere assurance may carry weight. Military politics may dictate a perversion of the facts for disciplinary, moral ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... 'But it is nevertheless our duty, in the selection of our principles, to take those which are the purest, the most humane, the most accordant with what is best in us, and the least liable to perversion and abuse. And whether, if this be just, it be better that mankind should have presented for their imitation and honor the character and actions of Jesus Christ, or those of Jupiter "Greatest and Best," may be left for ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... utterance; but to assert that opium was the cause or the main cause of Coleridge's inability to do what he wanted himself to do, or what his friends and contemporaries expected him to do, is a gross perversion of the facts of the case. Coleridge's inability arose from his multiplicity of motive, his visionary faculty of seeing in the light of a new principle a host of problems rise up on all sides, all claiming recognition ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... all-essential for the satisfaction of our religious cravings, as a presupposition of trust, love, prayer, obedience, and such relationships; as bringing out the transcendence in contrast with the all-pervading immanence of the deity; as checking the pantheistic perversion of this latter truth by which, in turn, its own deistic perversion is checked. God is not only in and through all things; but also outside and above all things; just as Christ is not only the soul of the Church, but also its ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... between Johnson when he 'talked for victory[358],' and Johnson when he had no desire but to inform and illustrate. 'One of Johnson's principal talents (says an eminent friend of his)[359] was shewn in maintaining the wrong side of an argument, and in a splendid perversion of the truth. If you could contrive to have his fair opinion on a subject, and without any bias from personal prejudice, or from a wish to be victorious in argument, it was wisdom itself, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... lip service, lip reverence; misdevotion^, formalism, austerity; sanctimony, sanctimoniousness &c adj.; pharisaism, precisianism^; sabbatism^, sabbatarianism^; odium theologicum [Lat.], sacerdotalism^; bigotry &c (obstinacy) 606, (prejudice) 481; blue laws. hardening, backsliding, declension, perversion, reprobation. sinner &c 949; scoffer, blasphemer; sacrilegist^; sabbath breaker; worldling; hypocrite &c (dissembler) 548; Tartufe^, Mawworm^. bigot; saint [Iron.]; Pharisee; sabbatarian^, formalist, methodist, puritan, pietist^, precisian^, religionist, devotee; ranter, fanatic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hypothesis. He has been guilty of such palpable and material falshoods, as, while they destroy his credit as an historian, would reproach his veracity as a man, if we could impute them to premeditated perversion of truth, and not to youthful levity and inaccuracy. Standing as they do, the sole groundwork of that reign's history, I am authorized to pronounce ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... { as found in neurasthenia, or in mania. { Anesthesia (absence of sensation) { as in the numbness of hysteria; in sensory { paralysis. Disorders / Retardation of < as in dementia and melancholia. Sensation "Clouding" or dulness { as in simple depression. { Perversion { as in dementia and melancholia. Sweet may taste sour; fresh food ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... Hayes, and at Hayes a few weeks later the great career came to an end. His last battle was at least heroic. If his stroke was struck on the wrong side and for a cause his prime had done so much to baffle, it is not necessary to attribute his perversion entirely to the insidious ravages of the malady that had clouded his whole life. He could not bear to see the country that was in so eminent and so intimate a sense his country yield even to claims that were conspicuously right and just at the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... The perversion of the ordinance into sprinkling, and that in infancy, takes away the divinely ordained object-lesson; and in the case of the infant must of necessity substitute mere ceremonialism for experience, for the child of unaccountable years ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... or the halter: His sacrifice now stands the only bar Between the wanton cruelties of war, And our much-suffering soldiers: yet, when weigh'd With gratitude, for that he sav'd thy life, These things prove gossamer, and balance air:— Perversion monstrous of man's ...
— Andre • William Dunlap
... progress of the insurrection, let them determine whether it has not been fomented by combinations of men, who—careless of consequences and disregarding the unerring truth that those who rouse cannot always appease a civil convulsion—have disseminated, from an ignorance or perversion of facts, suspicions, jealousies, and accusations ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... God. And to sustain his charge of God's injustice toward him, he resorted to misrepresentation of the words and acts of the Creator. It was his policy to perplex the angels with subtle arguments concerning the purposes of God. Everything that was simple he shrouded in mystery, and by artful perversion cast doubt upon the plainest statements of Jehovah. His high position, in such close connection with the divine administration, gave greater force to his representations, and many were induced to unite with him in rebellion ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... don't know. It's probably a perversion of stint, a task or part, which is also to be found in the dictionary as stent. What does it matter? There is the word, and there is the thing, and both are charming. I approve of the stunt because ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... which excites contraction of the small blood vessels and thus raises blood pressure. The latest views of this disease thus stand: (1) that it is entirely dependent on suprarenal disease, being the result of a diminution or absence of their internal secretion, or else of a perversion of their secretion; or (2) that it is of nervous origin, being the result of changes in or irritation of the large sympathetic plexuses in the abdomen; or else (3) that it is a combination of glandular inadequacy and sympathetic ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... narrative, one finds that he has mental capacity of a high order. He was as mean a rascal as Noah Claypole: and yet he had a fine clear-seeing intellect. Now what does this gallows-bird tell us? Why, his whole argument is intended to prove that he was an ill-used victim of society! Such a perversion has probably never been quite equalled; but it remains there to show us how firmly my theory stands—that the real scoundrel never knows himself to be a scoundrel. Had Fury settled down in a back street and employed his genius in writing stories, he could have earned ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... or paganism as we often call it. Naturalism is a perversion of that high instinct in mankind which issues in the old concept of supernaturalism. The supernaturalist, of a former and discredited type, believed that God violates the order of nature for sublime ends; that He "breaks into" His own world, so to speak, ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... changed; instead of "keeping it holy," as all pious Jews still do, the early Fathers converted it into the "Feast of the Resurrection," which could not be kept too joyously. The "Sabbatismus" of the Sabbatarian Protestant who keeps holy the wrong day is a marvellous perversion and the Sunday feast of France, Italy, and Catholic countries generally is far more logical than the mortification day of England and the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... upon the good name and dignity of his own family. That ideal of simplicity and directness which he regarded as the very essence of domestic morality had been blurred and marred within his own home by the taint of that poison which he believed to threaten the perversion of English life. From its encroachments he would fain have kept his own household free; but it was in that household that he saw that poison first assert itself, and even encroach upon the royal dignity which, ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... Commission was placed Sir William Parsons, the Surveyor-General, who had come into the kingdom in a menial situation, and had, through a long half century of guile and cruelty, contributed as much to the destruction of its inhabitants, by the perversion of law, as any armed conqueror could have done by the edge of the sword. Ulster being already applotted, and Munster undergoing the manipulation of the new Earl of Cork, there remained as a field for the Parsons ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... essential; you yourself Remained a man, a very child of Adam! You are still a suffering, longing mortal, You call for sympathy, and to a god We can but sacrifice, and pray, and tremble! O unwise exchange! unbless'd perversion! When you have sunk your brothers to be play'd As harp-strings, who will join in harmony With ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Another great perversion of truth has been the arraignment of the men who participated in the formation of the Confederacy and who bore arms in its defense, as the instigators of a controversy leading to disunion. Sectional issues appear conspicuously in the debates of the Convention which framed the Federal Constitution, ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... two cases the ultimate object was not a low one, it was one which was supposed to be for the benefit of humanity and of the dumb creation. But that does not justify the means. The maxim, "The end justifies the means," is the greatest perversion of truth, and still more so if this hidden power, the power of suggestion, is used to injure any one for a more personal motive than in these cases which I have cited. The lower the motive, the lower the action becomes, ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... sanctioned, if they did not enforce, manifest injustice, they have repudiated the whole as unworthy of belief. A deplorable conclusion, truly! Then, though responsible for this infidelity through their perversion of Scripture, these same writers, or those of a kindred spirit, denounce every argument or movement in favor of the equal rights and privileges of women as evil, and only evil, and necessarily evil, because among the advocates ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... Catholic to a man—and a woman—and the Ultramontanes held the reins of government. While one would have been enough, they professed to have two grievances. One was the "political poison" of the Liberal opposition; and the other was the "moral perversion" of the King. In March matters came to a crisis. A number of University professors, headed by the rigid Lasaulx, held an indignation meeting in support of the Ultramontane Cabinet and "their efforts to espouse the cause of good morals." This ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... green old-fashioned garden at Lower Halliford. To him I first read some of my Undertones, getting many a rap over the knuckles for my sacrilegious tampering with Divine Myths. What mercy could I expect from one who had never forgiven "Johnny" Keats for his frightful perversion of the sacred mystery of Endymion and Selene? and who was horrified at the base "modernism" of Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound?" But to think of it! He had known Shelley, and all the rest of the demigods, and his speech was golden with ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... often does the Body appropriate what was meant for the Cloth only! Whoso would avoid falsehood, which is the essence of all Sin, will perhaps see good to take a different course. That reverence which cannot act without obstruction and perversion when the Clothes are full, may have free course when they are empty. Even as, for Hindoo Worshippers, the Pagoda is not less sacred than the God; so do I too worship the hollow cloth Garment with equal fervour, as when it contained the Man: nay, with more, for I now fear no deception, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... a stale and shriveled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... taken in my sister's talent he transferred in part to me, although I don't think he ever thought me her equal. Floss made her first appearance in the child's part in Taylor's play "A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing," and Marion her first appearance as Ophelia in his version of "Hamlet"—perhaps "perversion" would be an honester description! Taylor introduced a "fool" who went about whacking people, including the Prince, by way of brightening ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... a contempt for the historical framework of Christianity. We have already seen how strongly St. John warns us against this perversion of spiritual religion. But those numerous sects and individual thinkers who have disregarded this warning, have often appealed to the authority of St. Paul, who in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians says, "Even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... do you expect me to do about it?" retorted District Attorney Peckham in his office next morning when Mr. Tutt had explained to him the perversion of justice to accomplish which the law had been invoked. "I'm sorry! No doubt he's a good feller. But he's guilty, isn't he? Admitted it in the ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... alludes, about the Unicorn allowing itself to be ensnared by a maiden (and of which Marsden has made an odd perversion in his translation, whilst indicating the true meaning in his note), is also an old and general one. It will be found, for example, in Brunetto Latini, in the Image du Monde, in the Mirabilia of Jordanus,[6] and in the verses of Tzetzes. The latter represents Monoceros ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... words in relation to the action of "Ginistrella"; and yet, though they had made a sharp impression on the author of that work, like almost all spoken words from the same source, he a week after the conversation I have noted left England for a long absence and full of brave intentions. It is not a perversion of the truth to pronounce that encounter the direct cause of his departure. If the oral utterance of the eminent writer had the privilege of moving him deeply it was especially on his turning it over at leisure, hours and days later, that it appeared to yield him its full meaning and ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... painful to suspect, and shocking to know, that courts and juries are liable ever to suffer by such unprincipled practices. After ten years upon the bench, I never witness a conviction of crime without pain; but that pain is light, compared with the distress of knowing of a wilful perversion of justice. It is a relief to me to be able to say to you that such instances are, in my judgment, exceedingly rare, and—so keen is the awful searching power of truth—are ...
— Eli - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... as the descriptions themselves. They were interpreted as divinations, and were cited as forebodings and examples of wrath, or even as glorifications of the Almighty. The semi-human creatures were invented or imagined, and cited as the results of bestiality and allied forms of sexual perversion prevalent in those times. We find minute descriptions and portraits of these impossible results of wicked practices in many of the older medical books. According to Pare there was born in 1493, as the result of illicit intercourse between a woman and a dog, a creature resembling ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... every trifling invention, and made subservient to the lucre of traffic and merchandise. There cannot surely be a greater proof of the degeneracy of the times than so unparalleled a degradation and so barbarous a perversion of terms. For the word philosophy, which implies the love of wisdom, is now become the ornament of folly. In the times of its inventor, and for many succeeding ages, it was expressive of modesty and worth; ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... that, to say the least, the grievances of the Socialists are greatly—one might almost say grotesquely—exaggerated, and that they are largely founded on a perversion of facts; a perversion which can be easily explained by the desire of the Socialist leaders to arouse the blind passions of the discontented wage-earners in accordance with Gronlund's advice, quoted on ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... the foundations of a fallen world, and a sea below the seas on which men sail. Seas move like clouds and fishes float like birds above the level of the sunken land. And it is here that tradition has laid the tragedy of the mighty perversion of the imagination of man; the monstrous birth and death of abominable things. I say such things in no mood of spiritual pride; such things are hideous not because they are distant but because they are near to us; in all our brains, certainly in mine, were buried things as bad as any buried ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... your doing," she said. "How can I tell that you are not a Jesuit in disguise? one has read of such a thing. The boys were as good, nice, pious boys as one could wish to see; and there's Gerald on the point of perversion, and Frank—I tell you, Dora, it must ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... heads of their offense—their perversion of gospel truth—their teaching for doctrine the commandments of men. There is no need to trace every error through all its dark and crooked windings. Truth is one: that God has allotted to his elect. Errors are manifold, and sown broadcast ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... truth, and an adroit perversion of the explanation which General Reed gave to the demands of the American Commander-in-Chief, respecting his correspondence with the British Commissioners, his descendants have managed, so far, with tolerably general success, to thrust into the ranks of the Carrolls and Hancocks, the ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... always been formed for evil purposes. On the contrary, many have arisen from the highest aspirations of the human mind—the desire for a knowledge of eternal verities. The evil arising from such systems has usually consisted in the perversion of principles that once were pure and holy. If I do not insist further on this point, it is because a vast literature has already been devoted to the subject, so that it need only be touched on ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... more nor less than an account of the various attempts at expressing the Inexpressible' (Lectures on the Science of Language, Second Series). The witch-creed may be indirectly referred, like many other absurdities, to the perversion of language. ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... perversion of conscience to require of any man, condonation of the infamous cruelties and treacheries which have disgraced our foes during the last two years. The best elements in us rise in irrepressible repugnance ...
— No. 4, Intersession: A Sermon Preached by the Rev. B. N. Michelson, - B.A. • B. N. Michelson
... much of his early success had been due to this heroic upbringing, Adrian was too honest not to admit, but then—by God, it had been hard! All the colour of youth! No time to dream—except sorely! Some warping, some perversion! A gasping, heart-breaking knowledge that you could not possibly keep up with the people with whom, paradoxically enough, you were supposed to spend your leisure hours. Here was the making of a radical. And yet, despite ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... their thoughts; and no reasonable person can doubt their sincerity. But most of the political talk in the Philippines is on a par with certain socialistic thought in the United States—the socialistic talk of modern writers and speakers, of idealists and dreamers. It seems as great a perversion of abstract justice, to a Filipino, that an alien nation should administer his Government, as it seems to a hard-working American woman that she should toil all her life, contributing her utmost to the world's progress and the common burden of humanity, ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... of heaven came to his aid. That is to say, the Lord God Jehovah arranged it that one of the leading Methodist clergymen of the city—in fact, the chronicler's chief opponent—should be taken in an unmentionable sexual perversion at the headquarters of the Young Men's Christian Association, and so be forced to leave town between days. This catastrophe, as we say, the chronicler ascribes to divine intervention. It was entirely unexpected; ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... entirely agree with you about "Martin Chuzzlewit." But the point seems to me that the preposterous perversion of truth and the ill-nature and malice of the book are of consequence chiefly as indicating Dickens' own character, about which I care not a rap; whereas, the characters in American shortcomings and vices and follies as typified are immortal, and, moreover, can be studied ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... its policy of frightfulness, it held in reserve murderous inventions that had been contributed to the German General Staff by chemists and other scientists working in conjunction with the war. Never since the dawn of time had there been such a perversion of knowledge to criminal purposes; never had science contributed such a deadly toll to the fanatic and criminal ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... operations it manifestly subdues the irrational motions, both gnostic and appetitive, and absolves itself from them, as from things foreign to its nature. But it is necessary to investigate the essence of every thing, not from its perversion, but from its energies according to nature. If therefore reason, when it energizes in us as reason, restrains the shadowy impressions of the delights of licentious desire, punishes the precipitate motion of fury, and reproves the senses as ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... Beauvais. In regard to the hair upon the arm, L'Etoile has been obviously disingenuous. M. Beauvais, not being an idiot, could never have urged, in identification of the corpse, simply hair upon its arm. No arm is without hair. The generality of the expression of L'Etoile is a mere perversion of the witness' phraseology. He must have spoken of some peculiarity in this hair. It must have been a peculiarity of color, of quantity, of length, or ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... darkness, bondage, ignorance, and bloodshed. We have there subverted the whole order of nature; we have aggravated every natural barbarity, and furnished to every man motives for committing, under the name of trade, acts of perpetual hostility and perfidy against his neighbour. Thus had the perversion of British commerce carried misery instead of happiness to one whole quarter of the globe. False to the very principles of trade, unmindful of our duty, what almost irreparable mischief had we done ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... distortion or perversion in this choice and use of his instrument, any more than in Fielding's adaptation of the method of Joseph Andrews to the matter of the Voyage to Lisbon. In the first place, the imaginative form of narrative ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Meech's perversion from Mongolia to China is much to be deplored. I think it would be wrong in me not to inform you of the true state of matters, and to remind you that it is little short of nonsense to speak of reopening the Mongolian Mission so long as there is only one man in the field. I ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... during the coming interview. He selected a high-backed cane-seat chair from those around the writing table, and as he had already twice said, "Good morning, Mrs. Chester," and "I am very glad to meet you"—the last being a wicked perversion of his real emotions—he waited for the party of the second part to open the ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... man spoke carefully, "that, too, is the goodness-gone-wrongness as you call it; the sheer perversion of a duty sense. If it were just myself to be thought of, perhaps I couldn't fight you on a point of conscience. But it isn't just me—not if you ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... examination of the workshops of their own country, which contain within them a rich mine of knowledge, too generally neglected by the wealthier classes." This complaint is we fear but too well grounded; and it is to such indifference, not to say ignorance, that we must attribute the perversion of wealth from the encouragement of art and science to objects less worthy of patronage. Unhappily for all states of mankind, enjoyment too often drives from the mind of the possessor, the bare remembrance of the means of acquisition: ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... out from beneath his bushy grey eyebrows, resembling a worn and dilapidated perversion of Whistler's portrait of Carlyle. His eyelids seemed to work as he brooded upon her announcement. It was as though, together, these two explored the Blanchard archives for confirmation of Jenny's sweeping ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... should continue from month to month hiding it within his own bosom. With Father Malachi Mr. Jones was on good terms, but to him he could say nothing on the subject. The absurdity of the conversion, or perversion, of the boy, in reference to his religion, made Mr. Jones unwilling to speak of him to any Roman Catholic priest. Father Malachi would no doubt have owned that the boy had been altogether unable to see, by his own light, the difference between ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... sums for questionable services, has seduced the virtue of some counsel whose eminence makes their example important, and that in a few States the degradation of the bench has led to secret understandings between judges and counsel for the perversion of justice." ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... perversion of fact, for it was Tom who had made the discovery. Mr. Linton was about to so state the matter when he reflected that doubtless Jerry's intentions were honest and that his failing memory was to blame for the misstatement. It was annoying to be robbed of ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... mere gas behind. However, every man may speak for himself, and I do not feel that your charge comes home to me. I am only bigoted against bigotry, and that I hold to be as legitimate as violence to the violent. When one considers what effect the perversion of the religious instinct has had during the history of the world; the bitter wars, Christian and Mahomedan, Catholic and Protestant; the persecutions, the torturings, the domestic hatreds, the petty spites, with ALL creeds equally blood-guilty, one cannot but be amazed that the concurrent ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... New Testament were also written in an age of great moral corruption. Judaism was virtually dead; the current religion in the Holy City was "a sad perversion of the truth." Hypocrisy sat in high places when John Baptist came with his protest and his rebukes. The Herods, who held the sceptres of provincial authority, were either base time-servers, or worse, they were monsters of lust and depravity. In the far-off capitals of ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... which is the most important of all things to be done for the people over whom they preside, but doing what is in substance and effect the reverse; and doing it on that great scale, which contrasts so fearfully with the small one, on which the individuals who deplore such perversion of power are confined to attempt a remedy ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... just now save that connected with the military occupation; but the peaceful look of the sunny sleepy streets made one doubt if the fighting line was really less than five miles away... Yet the French, with an odd perversion of race-vanity, still persist in speaking of themselves as ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... all others that is given oftenest—'Do justice and judgment.' That's your Bible order; that's the 'Service of God,' not praying nor psalm-singing. You are told, indeed, to sing psalms when you are merry, and to pray when you need anything; and, by the perversion of the Evil Spirit, we get to think that praying and psalm-singing are 'service.' If a child finds itself in want of anything, it runs in and asks its father for it—does it call that, doing its father a service? If it begs for a toy or a piece ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... beforehand supplied; to whose capabilities no problem was presented except even this, How to cultivate them to best advantage, should attain less real culture than he whose first grand problem and obligation was nowise spiritual culture, but hard labour for his daily bread! Sad enough must the perversion be, where preparations of such magnitude issue in abortion: and a so sumptuous heart with all its appliances can accomplish nothing, not so much as necessitous nature would of herself have supplied! Nevertheless, so ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... best, I suppose," said Rachel, quietly. "I think very likely I could be—a baker. But I'm certain of this much," she added lightly. "I never would make a brick loaf; that always seemed to me a man's perversion ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... responsible for everything and bending under the burden of its responsibilities, political convulsions, revolutions without end, ruins over which all forms of socialism and communism attempt to establish themselves; these are the evils which must necessarily flow from the perversion of law. ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... explicit terms; and when I learned details of his life, they were, by the nature of the case and my own PARTI-PRIS, read even with a certain violence in terms of his writings. There could scarce be a perversion more justifiable than that; yet it was still a perversion. The study indeed, raised so much ire in the breast of Dr. Japp (H. A. Page), Thoreau's sincere and learned disciple, that had either of us been men, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... black spun silk stockings, and shoes tied with ribbon; a long black overcoat, cheap gloves, black, and worn for ten days, and a gold watch-chain—in every point the lower grade of magistrate known by a perversion of terms ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... Mr. ——'s title for this book on the psychology of war, for he means by morale not "ethics" or "moral philosophy", but "the temper of a people expressing itself in action". But no doubt there is authority for the perversion of the French word.' ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... privilege to love. The modern heroine could still charm even after she had ceased to desire to. Neither in the new fiction nor in the old was there a place for the unhappy woman who desired to charm but could not; she remained what she had always been—a tragic perversion of nature which romance and realism conspired to ignore. Women in novels had revolted against life as passionately as she—but one and all they had revolted in graceful attitudes and with abundant braids of hair. A false front ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... however, there was not only much private and public profusion, many expensive and unnecessary wars, great perversion of the annual produce from maintaining productive to maintain unproductive hands; but sometimes, in the confusion of civil discord, such absolute waste and destruction of stock, as might be supposed, not only to retard, as it certainly did, the natural accumulation of riches, but to have left the ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... his defence, consisted of fourteen articles, the principal of which were, his entering into the solemn league and covenant with England; and his complying with Oliver Cromwel, &c.; all the rest being a heap of slanders, and perversion of matters of fact, gathered up against this good and great man, all which he abundantly takes off ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... authority would have snapt under the strain: but this is idle theory; for it was as clear as daylight to me that they held a totally different doctrine, and that the High Church and Popish fancy is a superstitious perversion, based upon carnal inability to understand a strong spiritual metaphor. On the other hand, my brother's arguments that the Baptismal Service of the Church taught "spiritual regeneration" during the ordinance, were short, simple, and overwhelming. To imagine a twofold ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... pignoratio. And so far has this gone that neighbours club together and transfer their claims to some one person who "pignorates" for the whole of them, thus in fact compelling a man to pay a debt to an entire stranger—a monstrous perversion of all the rules of law, which separates so delicately between the rights even of near relations, and will not allow the son to be sued for the father's debts unless he is the heir, nor the wife for the husband's unless she has succeeded to the estate. Hitherto our ignorance ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... our growing science of hypnotism we find the promise of a possibility of superseding old inherent instincts by new suggestions, grafting upon or replacing the inherited fixed ideas. Very much indeed of what we call moral education, he said, is such an artificial modification and perversion of instinct; pugnacity is trained into courageous self-sacrifice, and suppressed sexuality into religious emotion. And the great difference between man and monkey is in the larynx, he continued,—in the ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... there is no such secret;—it is a bugbear! But the moral perversion of the person who could soberly ask the question that Helwyse asked is not so easily disposed of. It met, indeed, with full recognition. As for the subtile voice, having accomplished its main purpose, it began now to evade the point and to run into digressions; ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... in other people's digestions than our philosophy can account for," she replied, with a wicked perversion of classic phrase. "What was the ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... uncritical even for an eminently uncritical age, accepting and retailing any and every monstrous invention, the more readily apparently in proportion to its monstrosity. For all that—despite his prejudices, despite even his often deliberate perversion of the truth, it is difficult to avoid a certain kindliness for him. To the literary student he is indeed a captivating figure. With his half-Welsh, half-Norman blood; with the nimble, excitable, distinctly Celtic ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... perversion of justice in our minds, and, as a necessary result, in our acts, becomes a demonstrated fact when it is shown that the opinions of men have not borne a constant relation to the notion of justice and its applications; that at different periods they have undergone modifications: ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... reasonably be expected that efforts will be made on the part of the majority to rectify this injurious operation of their institutions. But although no evil of this character should result from such a perversion of the first principle of our system—that the majority is to govern—it must be very certain that a President elected by a minority can not enjoy the confidence necessary to the successful discharge ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... whole of Stephen Arnold, all that was so openly the Mission's and all that was so evidently God's. It will be seen that she felt in no way compelled to advise him of this her backsliding. I doubt whether such a perversion of her magnificent course of action ever occurred to her. It was magnificent, for it entailed a high disregarding stroke; it implied a sublime confidence of what the end would be, a capacity to wait and endure. She smiled buoyantly, ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... perversion man can allow his heart to come to! Moshi has said that man by nature is good; but although not a particle of fault can be found with what he has said, when the evil we have learned becomes a second nature, men reach this fearful degree of wickedness. When men come to this pass, Koshi[93] and ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... passage. They want the term "to bless" to mean "to praise." They want the passage to read: In thee shall all the nations of the earth be praised. But this is a perversion of the words of Holy Writ. With the words "Abraham believed" Paul describes a spiritual Abraham, renewed by faith and regenerated by the Holy Ghost, that he should be the spiritual father of many nations. In that way all the Gentiles could be given ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... that any long word with which he was unfamiliar referred to sexual perversion, asked what such ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... cunning. If, when throwing away his manhood, man becomes a creature more to be dreaded than a beast or venomous reptile, whichever he happens most to resemble, woman, parting with her womanhood, scarcely finds her counterpart even in the most noxious forms of earthly existence. She becomes, in her perversion, something that is unnatural and monstrous; something, so opposite to the Creator's design, as to suggest it only in caricature, or, more often, in fiendish mockery. The Gorgons, Sirens, and Harpies of the ancients are scarcely myths, for their fabled forms only too accurately portray, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe |
