"Pervert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Interpretations on them; so that the same Actions may represent a Man as hypocritical and designing to one, which make him appear a Saint or Hero to another. He therefore who looks upon the Soul through its outward Actions, often sees it through a deceitful Medium, which is apt to discolour and pervert the Object: So that on this Account also, he is the only proper Judge of our Perfections, who does not guess at the Sincerity of our Intentions from the Goodness of our Actions, but weighs the Goodness of our Actions by ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... infamous forever. Nay, more: he does not recognize at all those fundamental principles of the Constitution and Declaration which are stated in plain terms in the first lines of both. He did worse than torture and pervert language: he reversed its meaning. He denied the undoubted facts of history. He denied the settled truths of science. He slandered the memory of the founders of the government and framers of the Declaration. He was ready to cover the most glorious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... be imparted and acquired without any addition whatever to the capacity for the business of life.... History presents us with even University Systems of Education (so called) entirely destitute of all practical character; and there are elementary systems which tend as much to prejudice and pervert, not to say corrupt, the popular mind as to ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... generality of mankind, when not dependent on mere habit and inculcation, have their root much more in the inclinations than in the intellect, it is a necessary condition to the triumph of the moral bias that it should first pervert the understanding. Every erroneous inference, though originating in moral causes, involves the intellectual operation of admitting insufficient evidence as sufficient; and whoever was on his guard ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth, and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark." Had the man who wrote this story been a lawyer, and had he known how these would-be-Bible-believers, and at the same time geologists, would seek to pervert his meaning, he could not have more carefully worded his account. It is not possible for any man to express the idea of a total flood more definitely than this man has done. He does not merely say the hills were covered, but "all" the hills were ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton
... our Government to participate in the diplomatic coercion against Russia. Of course, Americans refuse. Mr. Seward, in harmony with the feeling of the people politely snuff off France. But O, Mr. Seward, why pervert history or show your ignorance, even of the national events and of Congressional records. The United States, Adams II., President, sent commissioners to the Congress of Panama, and the United States Congress did it after a discussion of several days. What is ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... by, and dependent upon, molecular or atomic changes; and whatever retards these retards the phenomena of life; whatever suspends these suspends life. Hence, to say that an agent which retards tissue metamorphosis is in any sense a food, is simply to pervert and misapply terms." ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... truly useful to ourselves and to other people, religion is absolutely useless and had better be ignored altogether. We must beware, however, of identifying the idea of religion with the men and the women who pervert it. If an electrician came to us to light our house, and the lights would not burn, we would not immediately condemn all electric lighting as bosh and nonsense, or as sentimental theory; we should know, of course, ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... supposition of a change of subjects, and the Judaisers with whom the Apostle waged a neverending warfare, never did evangelistic work amongst the heathen as these men seem to have done, but confined themselves to trying to pervert converts already made. It was not their message but their spirit that was faulty. With whatever purpose of annoyance they were animated, they did 'preach Christ,' and Paul superbly brushes aside all that was antagonistic ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... did, or did not, pervert the ballad, and turn a false Elliot into a false Scott version, cannot be obtained unless new documents bearing on ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... to 'go between' Desdemona and himself. It is fortunately a fact in human nature that these aspects of Cassio's character are quite compatible. Shakespeare simply sets it down; and it is just because he is truthful in these smaller things that in greater things we trust him absolutely never to pervert the truth for the sake of some doctrine or purpose of ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... Blanchemain. "I've got Agnes Scope, the niece of the Duke of Wexmouth. She arrived here this morning with her aunt, Lady Louisa. Of course I'm putting you next to her. As, besides being an extremely nice girl and an heiress, she's an ardent pervert to Romanism,—well, ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... debauchery, and the murder with the justifications of its necessity and justice, the exaltation and glorification of military exploits, the worship of the flag, the patriotic sentiments, the feigned solicitude for the wounded, and so on, does more in one year to pervert men's minds than thousands of robberies, murders, and arsons perpetrated during hundreds of years by individual men ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... forgive. Hast thou not observed those unto whom part of the scriptures was delivered? they sell error, and desire that ye may wander from the right way; but God well knoweth your enemies. God is a sufficient patron, and God is a sufficient helper. Of the Jews there are some who pervert words from their places; and say, We have heard, and have disobeyed; and do thou hear without understanding our meaning, and look upon us: perplexing with their tongues, and reviling the true religion. But if they had said, We have heard, and do obey; ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... in secret, be recorded for future generations. They, however, have no influence on the course of worldly events. They are known only to silent eye-witnesses, and soon fall into oblivion. But hypocrisy, illusion, and bigotry stalk abroad undaunted; they desecrate what is noble, they pervert what is divine, to the unholy purposes of selfishness; which hurries along every good feeling in the false excitement of the age. Thus it was in the years of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of French possess the Court, Pimps, priests, buffoons, in privy chambers sport; Such slimy monsters ne'er approach'd a throne Since Pharaoh's days, nor so defil'd a crown; In sacred ears tyrannic arts they croak, Pervert his mind, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... in return? Whiskey, to poison your bodies and pervert your minds; whiskey, to make you fierce beasts or dull brutes; whiskey, to make your eyes red and your hands unsteady; whiskey, to make your homes sties and yourselves fit occupants for them; whiskey, to ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... Spirit of God is to oppose, corrupt, or pervert their testimony and to turn people away from them; and the judgments of Heaven are pronounced in that Word and by that Spirit against such as turn away from the truth unto fables. They shall have ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... by threats, revilings, force, violence, fire, and faggot, we shall not be able to hook in any more of them to nibble at below. He dines commonly on counsellors, mischief-mongers, multipliers of lawsuits, such as wrest and pervert right and law and grind and fleece the poor; he never fears to want any of these. But who can endure to be ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... it may be pleaded for the Roman method, that they are most fit to have charge of a thing, who least desire to pervert it to their own ends. And, doubtless, if we examine the aims which the nobles and the commons respectively set before them, we shall find in the former a great desire to dominate, in the latter merely a desire not to be dominated over, and hence a greater attachment to ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... all men have an implicit notion of it, and are sensible, that they owe obedience to government merely on account of the public interest; and at the same time, that human nature is so subject to frailties and passions, as may easily pervert this institution, and change their governors into tyrants and public enemies. If the sense of common interest were not our original motive to obedience, I would fain ask, what other principle is there in human nature capable of subduing the natural ambition ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... his day, did not, and does not, consist in making too much of God's ordinances in their purity and proper use. That cannot be done, any more than you can intelligently love the Bible too much, or the Sabbath. But, to pervert them, or to make additions to them, or to rely upon them wholly, is Romanism. But can men make too much of having a seal on a deed? Is the deed good for anything without the seal? Can they make too much of having three witnesses to their wills? Those ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... the abuse of Councils progressively from the Nicene to that of Trent, and our knowledge of the causes, occasions, and mode of such abuse, are so far presumptive for its non-recurrency as to render it less probable that honest men will pervert them from ignorance, and more difficult for unprincipled men to do so designedly. Something too must be allowed for an honourable ambition on the part of the persons so assembled, to disappoint the general expectation, and win for themselves the unique title ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... the fire. Such was, soon after this time, the fate of a woman, a school-teacher by profession, found guilty of heresy. In any case, the judges took effectual measures to forestall the deplorable consequences that might ensue from permitting the "Lutherans" to address the by-standers, and so pervert them from the orthodox faith. The hangman was instructed to pierce their tongue with a hot iron, or to cut it out altogether; just as, at a later date, the sound of the drum was employed to drown the last utterances of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... because de Quincey was an opium-fiend, Poe a drunkard and Oscar Wilde a pervert, it does not follow that every clever writer is unfit for decent society. Even if he were, his popularity would not suffer. Few things help a man's public reputation so much as his private vices. Don't you think you could cultivate ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... make thee in all thy gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee; and they shall judge the people with just judgment. Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift; for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise and pervert the words of the righteous." To the same purpose Josephus relates, in his account of the last address delivered by Moses to the Hebrew people, that this great legislator gave instructions to appoint seven judges in every city, men who had distinguished ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... prettily written tale, many young ladies will weep: and though without the faintest intention of imitating your hero's behaviour, they will think that it would be a fine thing if they did so. And it is a great mischief to pervert the moral judgment and falsely to excite the moral feelings. You forget that wrong is wrong, though it be done against yourself, and that you have no right to acquit the wrong to yourself as though it were no wrong at all. That ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... but with all my soul I deny the fantastic superstition that our rule can benefit a people like this, a nation of one race, as different from ourselves as dark from light—in colour, religion, every mortal thing. We can only pervert their ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... there no God—no judgment? Father, in asking me to abet your falsehood, and sustain you in your deceit, you transgress the limits of parental authority, and the first principles of natural affection. You pervert them, you abuse them; and, I must say, once and for all, that be the weight of your vengeance what it may, I prefer bearing it to enduring the weight of ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... reprinted the work, with eighty pages interpolated, wherein, with an utter disregard to common delicacy toward the dead or self-respect in the living, unauthentic gossip is made to desecrate the reticent and consistent tone of the work, pervert its spirit, and detract from its harmonious attraction and truth. A greater or more indecent and unjustifiable liberty was never taken by a publisher with a foreign work; it was an insult to the memory of Washington Irving, to his biographer and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... whose motive to this study is nothing better, and who have the further disadvantage of becoming a nuisance very often to society, in proportion to the progress they make. The former do not improve their reading to any good purpose; the latter pervert it to a very bad one, and grow in impertinence as they increase in learning. I think I have known most of the first kind in England, and most of the last in France. The persons I mean are those who read to talk, to shine in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... to be overwhelmed by the tempestuous waves of sedition and party rage. If momentary rays of glory break forth from the gloom, while they dazzle us with a transient and fleeting brilliancy, they at the same time admonish us to lament that the vices of government should pervert the direction and tarnish the lustre of those bright talents and exalted endowments for which the favored soils that produced them have ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... pestilence or famine. We do not labour at present under any scheme of taxation new or oppressive in the quantity or in the mode. Nor are we engaged in unsuccessful war, in which our misfortunes might easily pervert our judgment, and our minds, sore from the loss of national glory, might feel every blow of fortune as ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... Italian despot. Brachiano and Ferdinand, the employers of Flamineo and Bosola, are tyrants such as Savonarola described, and as we read of in the chronicles of petty Southern cities. Nothing is suffered to stand between their lust and its accomplishment. They override the law by violence, or pervert its action ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... pervert. It would be a pity if he did. It wouldn't last, but it would give us a lot of trouble. We are very good Churchmen here. The vicar, and my son too when he's at home, set beautiful examples. My son is going into the Church himself. It has been his ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... to talk to the men. They were regular Caste Hindus; courteous—for they have had no cause to fear the power of the Gospel—yet keen and argumentative. One of them had evidently read a good deal. He quoted from their classics; knew all about Mrs. Besant and the latest pervert to her views; and was up in the bewildering tangle of thought known as Hindu Philosophy. "Fog-wreaths of doubt, in blinding eddies drifted"—that is what it really is, but it is very difficult to prove ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... to lead it. And it will cost but little to put in the crossing and take a chance. Remember, Bryce, once we have that crossing in, it stands like a spite-fence between Pennington and the law which he knows so well how to pervert to suit his ignoble purposes." He turned earnestly to Bryce and waved a trembling admonitory finger. "Your job is to keep out of court. Once Pennington gets the law on us, the issue will not be settled in our ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... search having been instituted, her dismembered body was found strewn about the garden. The clerk was arrested, and in his diary was found this entry, recently made: "Killed a little girl; it was fine and hot." This man was either a sadistic sexual pervert, or a victim of homicidal impulse. Maudsley gives this instance as an example of the latter, while Krafft-Ebing gives it as an example of the former. There is a great difference between these two mental derangements. The victim of homicidal impulse kills ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... combined to direct immigration to the Northern section; and with the increase of its preponderance appeared more and more distinctly a tendency in the Federal Government to pervert functions delegated to it, and to use them with sectional discrimination ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... "his anchor in these floods." He wrote to the King; he was at a loss to account for the "tempest that had come on him;" he could not understand what he had done to offend the country or Parliament; he had never "taken rewards to pervert justice, however he might be frail, and partake of ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... unseen spirits, the angels, heaven, but will not dare to doubt the existence of moving atoms, invisible corpuscles. This is the mental poverty into which the enemies of religious faith unwittingly fall. They pervert that instrument of reason whose true use is to supplement and fortify imperfect intelligence, and misuse it to discredit and overthrow ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... moral judgments is one of the most important elements of civilisation; it is upon this that the possibility of moral progress on a large scale chiefly depends. Few things pervert men more than the habit of regarding as enviable persons or qualities injurious to Society. The most obvious example is the passionate admiration bestowed on a brilliant conqueror, which is often quite irrespective of the justice of his wars and of the motives that actuated him. This false ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... in view, it is very important to forbid these offices to persons who are under obligations, which induce an insatiable greed and presumption; and, to fill that yawning void, the wealth of all the Indias is insignificant. The worst is, that they pervert a man, and lead him astray by their influence. If I were to recount here in detail all the difficulties which they occasion, I should have to take twice the space. In short, everyone there is lamenting; and these people come in smiles, and even negotiating for the honors which ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... expulsion of the Jews—deeds so awful in their consequences, that the actual motive of the woman-heart which prompted them, is utterly forgotten, and herself condemned. We must indeed deplore the mistaken tenets that could obtain such influence—deplore that man could so pervert the service of a God of love, as to believe and inculcate that such things could be acceptable to Him; but we should pause, and ask, if we ourselves had been influenced by such teaching, could we break ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... a prisoner had been of a far more trying sort; for the priests had sought earnestly, he said, by most stringent means, to pervert him from Christianity to their own faith. When we had been so rudely separated that day, after our interview with the Priest Captain, he, and El Sabio with him, had been hurried up the stairs to the temple, and ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... disguiss'd in every Shape. One imitates the Zealous Pharisee, The Essens this, the dammee Sadduce he; And such their ready, and their subtil Wit, For every Trade, and every Science fit: They Credit got, and stole into the Heart, And from their God, did many Souls pervert, Who seeming Jews, or what they were before, In Secret did the Idol Baal adore; Whole false Religion was but loose, and few Could bear the Righteous Strictness ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... no friend to a house who calumniates the husband to the wife. Is it the part of a friend to distort dear Ernest's kindliness and gayety into ill morals; to pervert his love of poetry and plays into an unworthy attachment to actors and—oh!" and the tears would come. But she dried them, for now she hated this man; with all the little power of hatred she had, she detested him. "Do you suppose I did ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... most rasping dissonance,—an orchestra in which each artist is tuning his instrument, setting it in a different key and to play a different tune: each bird recalls a different tune, and none sings "Annie Laurie,"—to pervert ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... falling from God. And at the end he saith, "Many are called, but few are chosen." These words of our Saviour are very hard to understand, and therefore it is not good to be too curious in them, as some vain fellows, who seeking carnal liberty, pervert, toss and turn the word of God, after their own mind and purpose. Such, I say, when they read these words, make their reckoning thus; saying, "What need I to mortify my body with abstaining from all sin and wickedness? I perceive God hath chosen some, and some are rejected. Now if I ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox
... issues of this war. I have simply responded to them with such vision as I could command. But I have responded gladly and with a resolution that has grown warmer and more confident as the issues have grown clearer and clearer. It is now plain that they are issues which no man can pervert unless it be wilfully. I am bound to fight for them, and happy to fight for them as time and circumstance have revealed them to me as to all the world. Our enthusiasm for them grows more and more irresistible as they stand out in more and more vivid ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... specific instructions. Had Lord Stanley acted with prudence he would have left much to Wilmot's judgment; but just before he had dilated with vast perspicacity on the tendency of governors to act in behalf of the colonists, to forget imperial interests, to misapply the funds and pervert the labor belonging to the crown. The precision of his injunctions left no alternative but to obey. Had Wilmot at once declared the impracticability of Lord Stanley's schemes he might have been recalled, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... loss of smell proved to me, too, that the absence of a sense need not dull the mental faculties and does not distort one's view of the world, and so I reason that blindness and deafness need not pervert the inner order of the intellect. I know that if there were no odours for me I should still possess a considerable part of the world. Novelties and surprises would abound, adventures ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... before published in this country, on "Uncle Tom's Cabin." The article in the London "Times" was eagerly reprinted in this country, was issued as a tract and sold by the hundred, headed, "What they think of 'Uncle Tom' in England." If I mistake not, a strong effort will be made to pervert the public mind of England, and to do away the impression which the ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... about the "protocols" that appeared in various parts of the world in 1920 is based on the "documents" vouched for by the mysterious Sergius Nilus, and fortified by the irresponsible Jew-baiter and intellectual pervert Ippolit Lutostansky. ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... there is another person in our history, as to whom there still exists so strong a feeling of dislike on the one hand, and of admiration on the other. By some he is regarded as a theorist and a demagogue, who, for selfish purposes, opposed the purest patriots, and disseminated doctrines which will pervert our institutions and destroy our social fabric; by others he is revered as the philosopher who first asserted the rights of man, and the statesman who first defined the functions of our government and demonstrated the principles upon which it should he administered. His detractors and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... understanding of the law of growth is of the highest importance to the student of Mental Science. The great fact to be realized regarding Nature is that it is natural. We may pervert the order of Nature, but it will prevail in the long run, returning, as Horace says, by the back door even though we drive it out with a pitchfork; and the beginning, the middle, and the end of the law of Nature is the principle of growth from a vitality inherent in the entity itself. If we ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... learned economists were the only ones to preach the permanent and often hereditary division of labour, we might allow them to preach it as much as they pleased. But the ideas taught by doctors of science filter into men's minds and pervert them; and from repeatedly hearing the division of labour, profits, interest, credit, etc., spoken of as problems long since solved, all middle-class people, and workers too, end by arguing like economists; ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... this corruption? It is, says the theologian, because the first man, beguiled by the first woman, ate an apple, which God had forbidden him to touch. Who beguiled this woman into such folly? The devil. Who made the devil? God. But, why did God make this devil, destined to pervert mankind? This is unknown; it is a mystery which the Deity alone is ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... to turn away the proconsul from the faith. [13:9]But Saul, [called] also Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looking steadily at him [13:10]said, O full of all deceit and all craft, son of a devil, enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord? [13:11]And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you shall be blind, not seeing the sun for a season. And immediately there fell upon him a mist and darkness, and going about he sought guides. [13:12]Then the proconsul seeing what was done believed, ...
— The New Testament • Various
... by the errors of these scoffers, grasp the truths that they pervert. Let us see that weak Man hanging helpless on the cross, whose 'cannot' is the impotence of omnipotence, imposed by His own loving will to save a world by the sacrifice of Himself. Let us crown Him our King, and let our deepest trust and our gladdest obedience be rendered to Him because He ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... discernment of his Praetorian praefects, he often placed himself by their side on the seat of judgment. The acute penetration of his mind was agreeably occupied in detecting and defeating the chicanery of the advocates, who labored to disguise the truths of facts, and to pervert the sense of the laws. He sometimes forgot the gravity of his station, asked indiscreet or unseasonable questions, and betrayed, by the loudness of his voice, and the agitation of his body, the earnest vehemence with which he maintained his opinion against ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Now,—not to pervert the intent Of a courtesy gentle and rare, Or observance so civilly meant With disparaging things ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... also. Flesh and blood must therefore play their part in the resultant harmony at which we are all the while aiming; and no contempt for the body, no hatred of the body, no refusal to recognize the supreme beauty and sacredness of the body, can be allowed to distort or pervert our vision. ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... speeches of any trouble you, who pervert the truth, that they may draw you aside from the truth of the Gospel ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... confidentially, "can talk of nothing else. When he was staying with us he was for ever telegraphing, cabling to America, or decoding messages. There was no peace in the house, by day or by night. Finally I made a stand. 'Gregory,' I said, 'you shall not pervert my servants with your odious tips, and turn my home into a public stock-exchange. Take your bulls and bears over to the Savoy and play with them there, and leave Doris to me.' And he did!" ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... power, not as, under better institutions, they would be admitted to power, erect, independent, unsullied; but by means which corrupt the virtue of many, and in some degree diminish the authority of all. Could any system be devised, better fitted to pervert the principles and break the spirit of men formed to be the glory of their country? And, can we mention no instance in which this system has made such men useless, or worse than useless, to the country of which their talents were the ornament, and might, in happier ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the style of soldier that the Commander-in-Chief liked to have about him, and he allowed his personal prejudices to pervert his judgment. ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... man, and are, with respect to principle and reciprocal conduct, like so many individuals in a state of nature. The inhabitants of every country, under the civilisation of laws, easily civilise together, but governments being yet in an uncivilised state, and almost continually at war, they pervert the abundance which civilised life produces to carry on the uncivilised part to a greater extent. By thus engrafting the barbarism of government upon the internal civilisation of a country, it draws ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... the tip of my tongue to point out that in these days of tree-peonies, and peonies so lovely in their silvery faint tints that they resemble gigantic roses, it is absolutely wicked to suffer those odious red ones to pervert one's taste; that a person who sees nothing but those every time he looks out of his window very quickly has his nice perception for true beauty blunted; that such a person would do well to visit my garden every day during the month ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... of Chili, thus easily begun, was not easily continued. Three brothers, Jose Miguel, Juan Jose, and Luis Carreras, and their sister, styled the Anne Boleyn of Chili, determined to pervert the public weal to their own aggrandisement. Winning their way into popularity, they overturned the national congress that had been established in June, and in December set up a new junta, with Jose Miguel Carrera at its head. A dismal period of misrule ensued, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... neither beauty, nor worth, nor credibility. Some teach only a very small portion of Christianity, and the portion they teach they often teach amiss. Some doctrines they exaggerate, and others they maim. Some they caricature, distort, or pervert. And many add to the Gospel inventions of their own, or foolish traditions received from their fathers; and the truth is hid under a mass of error. Many conceal and disfigure the truth by putting it in an antiquated and outlandish dress. The language of many theologians, like the Latin ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... Lenine and his followers say that they take their doctrine of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" from Marx, they pervert the truth; they take from Marx only the phrase, not their fundamental policy. It is not to be denied that there were times when Marx himself momentarily lapsed into the error of Blanqui and the older school of Utopian, conspiratory Socialists who believed ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... energy, colour, and vast prodigality of ineffaceable pictures place it undoubtedly at the head of all the pictorial histories of modern times. And the dramatic rapidity of its action, and the inexhaustible contrasts of its scenes and tableaux—things which so fatally pervert its truthfulness as authentic history—immensely heighten the effect of the poem on the reader's mind. Not that Carlyle was capable of deliberately manufacturing an historical romance in the mendacious way of Thiers and Lamartine. But, having resolved to cast ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Walter. "If a book be a good book, the worst of us can not do it much harm; nor do I believe there are more than a few in the profession who would condescend to give a false opinion upon the work of a rival; though doubtless personal feeling may pervert the judgment." ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... that I could never find it in my heart so to pervert truth as to call the smart villages with the tricksy shadow of their maple ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... army having now become the road to the imperial throne, no person could claim a better title to that elevation than Titus Flavius Vespasian. He had not only served with great reputation in the wars both in Britain and Judaea, but seemed as yet untainted with any vice which could pervert his conduct in the civil administration of the empire. It appears, however, that he was prompted more by the persuasion of friends, than by his own ambition, to prosecute the attainment of the imperial dignity. To render this enterprise more successful, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... say that Dr. Strachan was utterly incapable of seeing more than one side of any question involving the interests of himself and his church. When his cause was a just one, who so fond as he of appealing to the majesty of the law. When he wished to pervert the law to his own purposes, who so apt at enjoining a disregard therefor.[7] There is abundant reason for believing that he was the original instigator of the Gourlay prosecutions. They were at all events carried on by his satellites, and fostered by his fullest concurrence ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... (1) avert, divert, convert, invert, pervert, advertize, inadvertent, verse, aversion, adverse, adversity, adversary, version, anniversary, versatile, divers, diversity, conversation, perverse, universe, university, traverse, subversive, divorce; (2) vertebra, vertigo, controvert, revert, averse, versus, versification, animadversion, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... that government's strength and permanence. That he has not made use of his power to stifle the expression of thought is clear from the numerous works that have been published, some of which were written for the purpose of attacking his dynasty,—authors of eminence choosing to pervert history by converting its volumes into huge partisan pamphlets, in which the subject handled and the object aimed at are alike libelled. He has kept the press, meaning the journals, more sharply reined up than Englishmen and Americans have approved or can ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... on or oppress, ruin, damage, upon, persecute, slander, defame, injure, pervert, victimize, defile, malign, prostitute, vilify, disparage, maltreat, rail at, violate, harm, misemploy, ravish, vituperate, ill-treat, misuse, reproach, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... necessary instruments of labor, except by the intervention of the State?" So that if it becomes necessary to revolutionize the country, I also will force my way into the halls of legislation. I also will pervert the law, and make it perform in my behalf and at your expense the very act for which it ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... matter of duty; he is bound to give it according to his best and most conscientious opinion of the public good. Whoever has any other idea of it is unfit to have the suffrage; its effect on him is to pervert, not to elevate his mind. Instead of opening his heart to an exalted patriotism and the obligation of public duty, it awakens and nourishes in him the disposition to use a public function for his own interest, pleasure, or caprice; the same feelings and purposes, on a humbler scale, ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... not for kings to drink wine, nor princes strong drink, lest they drink and forget the law and pervert the judgment of the afflicted.' Here is abstinence enjoined, and the reason for it plainly given. Again (Lev. x, 8-11), it is required of the priests: 'And the Lord spake unto Aaron, saying, Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... be permitted to abjure her errors, and receive necessary absolution, according to the rules of the Church." The Duchess, while stating her full confidence in the orthodoxy of the Prince, expressed at the same time her fears that attempts might be made in the future by his new connexions "to pervert ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... promiscuous sexuality, but this is a complete mistake, for the Aphrodite Pandemos was purely political and had no sexual significance. The mistake was introduced, perhaps intentionally, by Plato. It has been suggested that that arch-juggler, who disliked democratic ideas, purposely sought to pervert and vulgarize the conception of Aphrodite Pandemos (Farnell, Cults of Greek States, vol. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and, after fully explaining his wants and wishes to his keenly appreciating auditory, made proclamation among them, that the Demon who should invent a new vice, which, under the name and guise of Pastime, should be best calculated to seduce men from the paths of virtue, pervert their hearts, ruin them for earth and educate them for hell, should be awarded a crown of honor, with rank and prerogative second only to his own. He then, with many a gracious and encouraging word to incite in them a spirit of emulation, and nerve them for exertion in the important enterprise ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... to the other, nothing is listened to in the way of music but Rossini and his imitators. The man must have a transcendant genius, who can lead and pervert the taste of his age as Rossini has done; but unfortunately those who have not his talent, who cannot reach his beauties nor emulate his airy brilliance of imagination, think to imitate his ornamented style by merely crowding note upon note, semi-quavers, demi-semi-quavers, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... 'The Catholic Parsonage'?" he asked again; "or, 'Lays of the Apostles'? or, 'The English Church older than the Roman'? or, 'Anglicanism of the Early Martyrs'? or, 'Confessions of a Pervert'? or, 'Eustace ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... are still polite about the whole thing and protectively pervert the original spelling of "Rabbit" to "Rarebit" in their culinary guides. We have heard that once a club of ladies in high society tried to high-pressure the publishers of Mr. Webster's dictionary to change the old spelling in their favor. Yet there is a lot to be said for this more genteel and ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... Hesiod illustrate the certainty with which Justice was believed to overtake and punish those who pervert her ways, while the good are followed by blessings. They also show that the crimes of one ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Martin succeeded Mr. Grosvenor. He said, he had been long aware, how much self-interest could pervert the judgment; but he was not apprized of the full power of it, till the Slave-trade became a subject of discussion. He had always conceived, that the custom of trafficking in human beings had been incautiously begun, and without any reflection upon it; for he never could believe ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... was upon the stage; and that's the reason why your Reflectors would break the glass, which has shewed them their own faces. The business of the theatre is to expose vice and folly; to dissuade men by examples from one, and to shame them out of the other. And however you may pervert our good intentions, it was here particularly to reduce men to loyalty, by shewing the pernicious consequences of rebellion, and popular insurrections. I believe no man, who loves the government, would ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... change. chemistry, alchemy; progress, growth, lapse, flux. passage; transit, transition; transmigration, shifting &c. v.; phase; conjugation; convertibility. crucible, alembic, caldron, retort. convert, pervert, renegade, apostate. V. be converted into; become, get, wax; come to, turn to, turn into, evolve into, develop into; turn out, lapse, shift; run into, fall into, pass into, slide into, glide into, grow into, ripen into, open into, resolve itself ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... loss of faith or apostasy from the true religion. We know that the children of Seth were good till they married the children of Cain, and then they also became wicked; for, remember, there is always more likelihood that the bad will pervert the good, than that the good will convert the bad. Besides the disputes occasioned between husband and wife by the diversity of their religion, their families and relatives, being also of different religions, will seldom be at peace or on friendly terms with one another. ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... die of hunger, or tempting them to steal. When you declare martial law you punish the innocent with the guilty, in one sense; and so you do in a hundred cases. All we have to ask is, if it be not wiser and better to disarm demagogues, and those disturbers of the public peace who wish to pervert their right of suffrage to so wicked an end, by so simple a process, than to suffer them to effect their purposes by the most flagrant abuse ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... good we plant not, vice will fill the place, And rankest weeds the richest soils deface. Learn how ungoverned thoughts the mind pervert, And to disease all nourishment convert. Ah! happy she, whose wisdom learns to find A healthful fancy, and a well-trained mind. A sick man's wildest dreams less wild are found Than the day-visions of a mind unsound. Disordered ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... motion, or a teacher of psalmody, of the art of music. After all, this is better than sending a boy to England, whence he would come back with the notions of Sir William Blackstone to help to overturn or pervert his own institutions, and his memory crammed with second-hand anecdotes of lords and ladies. We labour under great embarrassments on this point of education, for it is not easy to obtain it, suited equally to the right, and to our own ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... obligation, and what is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated. Civil wars strike deepest of all into the manners of the people. They vitiate their politics; they corrupt their morals; they pervert even the natural taste and relish of equity and justice. By teaching us to consider our fellow-citizens in an hostile light, the whole body of our nation becomes gradually less dear to us. The very names of affection and kindred, which were the bond of charity whilst we agreed, become ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... from the negro slave trade; who, while they professed to execrate white man slavery, perpetrated the same barbarities upon their brethren of a different colour and caste. How strangely does sin pervert the understandings of men, who arrogate to themselves the highest grade of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of Paul and Virginia are sold every year in Mauritius. No other book is so popular here except the Bible. By many it is supposed to be a part of the Bible. All the missionaries work up their French on it when they come here to pervert the Catholic mongrel. It is the greatest story that was ever written about ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... must be therein. Such persons pull and hale the Scriptures to prove it, though, indeed, they neither have the knowledge of the true God nor the understanding of Scripture. These justifiers and disputers assist the Devil steadfastly and pervert God's truth and change it into lies."[35] He closed his book with these daring words: "Should Peter or Paul seem to have written otherwise, then look to the essence, look to the heart [i.e. to interior meaning]. ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... those who gave shelter to the false prophet, Rakkeed, when he was here; of the faithless priests who gave ear to his abominable heresies and allowed him to spew out his blasphemies in the temples; of those who sent spies to Krink, to corrupt and pervert my soldiers and nobles; ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... towards this hell-brood of Satan, for the devil lately had become so powerful everywhere, but especially in dear Pomerania-land, that, if not prevented, he would soon pervert the whole people, and turn them away from the pure and blessed evangelical doctrine. Still he must have them all tried fairly before the sheriff's court ere he tortured or burned. His brother of blessed memory had too long delayed the burning, therefore he must now be the more diligent; and, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... but he never gave the smallest encouragement to aristocratical arrogance'; and his son Robert was not less manly and independent. He was too sound in judgment; too conscious of his own worth, to sink into mean and abject servility. But this factor, perhaps more than anyone else, did much to pervert, if he could not kill, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... to the Havre Company has ever been so great as that of its late President, Mr. Mortimer Livingston. An honorable and just man in his dealings, both with individuals and the Government, he eschewed every attempt by which some sought to pervert and deprave the legislation of the country, and presented all of his views in steamshipping on high, honorable, and tenable grounds. He pursued the profession in an enlarged spirit of enterprise, and was not unmindful of his duties to his country, while he endeavored to ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... convent has its own religion, a lay religion. If I possess any other it is through its condescension and under restrictions. It is, by nature, hostile to other associations than its own; they are rivals, they annoy it, they absorb the will and pervert the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Rogers asks on this: "Does Mr. Newman mean that he claims as much as the apostles claimed, whether they did so rightfully or not?" See how acutely a logician can pervert the ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... bitter dislike to the youth, because of some quarrel which Brother Stevens is said to have had with William Hinkley. This dislike hath made him conceive evil things of Brother Stevens and to misunderstand and to pervert some conversation which he hath overheard which Stevens hath had with his companion. Truly, indeed, I think that Alfred Stevens is a worthy youth of whom we shall hear ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... code. We must prevent each of these things being done by either Congresses or courts. The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both Congresses and courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... sightless, earless, voiceless child may teach you lessons you will do well to follow. Let that poor hand of hers lie gently on your hearts; for there may be something in its healing touch akin to that of the Great Master whose precepts you misconstrue, whose lessons you pervert, of whose charity and sympathy with all the world, not one among you in his daily practice knows as much as many of the worst among those fallen sinners, to whom you are liberal in nothing but ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... of unchastity, with which chastity is quickly overcome. [Rom. 13:12 f.] On the other hand, the holy Apostle Paul calls fasting, watching and labor godly weapons, with which unchastity is mastered; but, as has been said above, these exercises must do no more than overcome unchastity, and not pervert nature. ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... consequence of an adequate retribution having failed to overtake her betrayer, and the family, then resident at Waddow, not having dealt out to him the just punishment of his deserts. Thus had she been permitted to pervert the proper influences and benevolent operations of this mystic disturber to her own mischievous propensities; and thenceforth a malignant spirit troubled the house, heretofore guarded by a saint of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... doctors, the pontiffs of science. Who pervert young people by laying down such rules of hygiene? Who pervert women by devising and teaching them ways by ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... before the governor withstood Paul to his face. Then Paul, prompted by his indignation, said, "Oh, full of all subtlety and mischief, child of the devil, enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord? And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season." What wonders Elymas effected to deceive the Roman governor we are not told: but "immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness; and he went about, ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... see every side of every question; To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long; To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose, To use great feelings and passions of the human family For base designs, for cunning ends, To wear a mask like the Greek actors— Your eight-page paper—behind which you huddle, Bawling through ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... councils, nor, as St. Paul saith, upon mortal creature's judgment. And if they which ought to be careful for God's Church will not be wise, but slack their duty, and harden their hearts against God and His Christ, going on still to pervert the right ways of the Lord, God will stir up the very stones, and make children and babes cunning, whereby there may ever be some to confute these men's lies. For God is able (not only without councils), but also, will the councils, ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... wish to pervert my high moral notions in relation to railways, please make it good for thirty days, as it may take me a week or so to mortgage my property and get ready to go in good style. I will let you know on what day I will be in New Orleans, so that you can come and see me at that time. Should you have difficulty ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... benefaction is written in brass, the good man's successors have found enough of the same metal to pervert it; for it is now lost, and no person can give any account of it. It needs not brass to outlive honesty; a mere breath will often destroy her. There are, however, several substantial charities belonging to Lavenham, the disposal of which has ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... be it nowise apprehended, that any personal connexion of ours with Teufelsdroeckh, Heuschrecke, or this Philosophy of Clothes can pervert our judgment, or sway us to extenuate or exaggerate. Powerless, we venture to promise, are those private Compliments themselves. Grateful they may well be; as generous illusions of friendship; as fair mementos of bygone unions, of those nights and suppers of the gods, when, lapped in the symphonies ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... pause and onflow of the verse, or to secure some declamatory effect, than to indicate the structure or elucidate the sense. For this reason the original pointing has been retained, save where it tends to obscure or pervert the poet's meaning. Amongst the Editor's Notes at the end of the Volume 3 the reader will find lists of the punctual variations in the longer poems, by means of which the supplementary points now added may be identified, and the original points, which in this ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... little screw," cried the general; "he drills holes my heart and soul. He wishes me to be a pervert to atheism. Know, you young greenhorn, that I was covered with honours before ever you were born; and you are nothing better than a wretched little worm, torn in two with coughing, and dying slowly of your ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... a convention of all the States to revise the Constitution, and that the Administration abandon the narrow platform of the Chicago convention, expel corrupt men from office, and exclude advocates of abolition from the Cabinet, declaring that it would "regard any attempt to pervert the conflict into a war for the emancipation of slaves as fatal to the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the two preceding. Some of their opinions resembled what we at this day mean by Socinianism. With respect to the Scriptures, they are specifically charged, by Irenaeus and by Epiphanius, with endeavouring to pervert a passage in Matthew, which amounts to a positive proof that they received that Gospel. Negatively, they are not accused, by their adversaries, of rejecting any part of the New Testament. (Lardner, vol. ix. ed. 1788, pp. ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... the ancient privileges of the protestant churches, and the decrees which had been, from time to time, made in favour of the protestants. But the investigation of these things was carried on with the most manifest partiality; old charters were wrested to a wrong sense, and sophistry was used to pervert the meaning of every thing, which tended to favour ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... upon Dick with uplifted sword, "ye would pervert my followers and terrify them into deserting me!" And he aimed a mighty blow at Dick as the pair rushed at each other. But Dick, anticipating something of the sort, had already dropped the bridle upon his charger's neck, ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... There was discipline in that man's camp, as long as he was looking. But Ayisha followed the woman out, and whether she herself found Shammas Abdul, or whether she contrived to pervert the junior wife, Grim presently became aware of that move to summon forth ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... of life, for the purpose of directly connecting this authority with the idea of the Supreme Being. For this would be, not an immanent, but a transcendent use of moral theology, and, like the transcendent use of mere speculation, would inevitably pervert and frustrate the ultimate ends ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... spake, "How long shall these thy words, like eddying winds Fall empty on the ear? Doth God pervert Justice and judgment? If thy way was pure, Thy supplication from an upright heart He would awake and make thy latter end More blest than thy beginning. For inquire Of ancient times, of History's honor'd scroll And ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... not to deliver important opinions; for I do not desire these, but only to pervert the right for my own advantage, ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... perhaps been placed in a false light by the above discussions. It appears that the sexual behavior of the psychoneurotic approaches in predisposition to the pervert and deviates by just so much from the normal. Nevertheless, it is very possible that the constitutional disposition of these patients besides containing an immense amount of sexual repression and a predominant force of sexual impulse also possesses an unusual tendency to perversions in the ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... warned you all now," he said, "and if after this I hear of a single perversion, woe be unto that pervert, for it is better for his miserable soul that he had never been born. Is there a man here base enough to sell his birthright for a mess of Mr. Lucre's pottage? Is there a man here, who is not too strongly imbued with a hatred of heresy, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... stroke of his compass, he might describe or divide a right line, had yet rather do this in a circle or longer way, according to the constituted and forelaid principles of his art: yet this rule of his he doth some- times pervert, to acquaint the world with his preroga- tive, lest the arrogancy of our reason should question his power, and conclude he could not. And thus I call the effects of nature the works of God, whose hand and instrument she only is; and therefore, to ascribe his actions unto her is to devolve ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... be unto them that shall pervert the ways of the Lord after this manner, for they shall perish except they repent. Behold, I speak with boldness, having authority from God; and I fear not what man can do; for perfect love casteth ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... harshly judged," resumed M. Fauvel. "A father not only pardons, he forgets. Do I not know the terrible temptations that beset a young man in a city like Paris? There are some inordinate desires before which the firmest principles must give way, and which so pervert our moral sense as to render us incapable of judging between right and ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... light of his own purposes which so simplified things for Captain Hahn. He was a son of that mesalliance of nations which was Austria-Hungary Slavs, their slipping grasp clutching at eternity, Transylvanians, with pervert Latin ardors troubling their blood, had blended themselves in him; and he was young. Life for him was a depth not a surface, as for Captain Hahn; facts were but the skeleton of truth; glamour clad them and ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... energy, he none the less achieved for himself a mutually helpful relation between a firm will and a luminous intelligence. The training of his mind, the awakening of his imagination, the formation of his taste and style, the humorous dramatizing of his experience,—all this discipline had failed to pervert his character, narrow his sympathies, or undermine his purposes. His intelligence served to enlighten his will, and his will, to establish the mature decisions of his intelligence. Late in life the two faculties became in their exercise almost indistinguishable. ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... is a System of Deception and Hypocrisy.—Has any man a right to pervert the English language, by fixing new meanings to words, entirely different from and contrary to those in common use? If he knows the meaning of the words he uses, and uses them to convey a contrary meaning, he is a deceiver. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... clear Temple Scott before this jury on the spot. And that isn't all, if you accept this story, you say that I haven't done my duty; you say that the man you elected to enforce the law will use his power to pervert the law; will fail to get all the facts before the jury. Because you couldn't imagine that there are such witnesses who came out looking for a pistol and I wouldn't have heard it and known about it. And if I did, and ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... of a good historical ballad is truth. To pervert history—to violate nature, in order to make a fine clatter, has been the aim in too many of the ballads sent us. He who goes to write a historical ballad should master the main facts of the time, and state them truly. ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... artist and philosopher—if it be true that you are a pervert, you deserve a heavier punishment than the scum ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... legitimate duties. Yet, it so happens that we too know a few characters. But, as we can read, it behoves us to choose no other than wholesome works; for these will do us no harm! What are most to be shirked are those low books, as, when once they pervert the disposition, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... representative of the law present. He had been trapped precisely as I had been, except that he had been led further, and shut in a cellar as well as fastened by the wrist. Mayes, it seemed, had wasted very little time in attempting to pervert him, and I have no doubt that, whatever fate might have been reserved for me, Plummer would never have left the place alive had it not been for the timely irruption of Hewitt, ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... excellent distinction between liberty of conscience and liberty of teaching. JOHNSON. 'Consider, Sir; if you have children whom you wish to educate in the principles of the Church of England, and there comes a Quaker who tries to pervert them to his principles, you would drive away the Quaker. You would not trust to the predomination of right, which you believe is in your opinions; you would keep wrong out of their heads. Now the vulgar are the children of the State. If any one attempts to teach them doctrines contrary to what ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... great deal and was known to take bread away from other prisoners at night. He was sentenced for 15 months for swindling. He himself related that in youth he had seen many monks and had become possessed of the idea of being one. He was a sex pervert. ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... spiritual significations, when applied to faith, and that seldom, are laudable; but when they are drawn from the life and conversation, they are dangerous, and, when men make too many of them, pervert the doctrine of faith. Allegories are fine ornaments, but ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... young girls sensibly clad in simple gowns, guiltless of pretence, of steels, or tournures. Gathered bodices and full plain skirts, confined by broad sashes, combined the elements of grace and utility, and exhibited no foolish attempt to distort and pervert nature." ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... his own manners by you.—Always deceived in fact by his own wishes, and regardless of little besides his own convenience.—Fancying you to have fathomed his secret. Natural enough!—his own mind full of intrigue, that he should suspect it in others.—Mystery; Finesse—how they pervert the understanding! My Emma, does not every thing serve to prove more and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... in the fresher incidents of those eventful seas. But the mariner, long after was known to shorten the watches of the night, by recounting scenes of mad enterprise that were thought to have occurred under his auspices. Rumour did not fail to embellish and pervert them, until the real character, and even name, of the individual were confounded with the actors of other atrocities. Scenes of higher and more ennobling interest, too, were occurring on the Western Continent, to efface the circumstances of a legend that many deemed wild and improbable. ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... thy despair; They may veil their eyes, but they cannot hide The sun's meridian glow; The heel of a priest may tread thee down And a tyrant work thee woe; But never a truth has been destroyed; They may curse it and call it crime; Pervert and betray, or slander and slay Its teachers for a time. But the sunshine aye shall light the sky, As round and round we run; And the Truth shall ever come uppermost, And Justice ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... dazzled with his cheats, and stubbornly adhering to his pernicious doctrine, worshipped him even as a deity. Therefore he continually blasphemed the ways of the Lord, and those who were desirous to be converted from idolatry did he labor to subvert in their faith, and to pervert from Christ. And almost in the same manner as Simon Magus resisted Saint Peter did he oppose Saint Patrick. And on a certain time, when he was raised from the earth by the prince of darkness and the powers of the air, and ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... strikes me that a vast deal of mischief is involved in these arbitrary divisions of literature into golden or other epochs; they incite men to admire some mediocre writers and to disparage others, they pervert our natural taste, and their origin ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... me, Stephen answered. But I am curious to know are you trying to make a convert of me or a pervert of yourself? ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... that Prussian despotism was the natural ally of the Russian Bolshevik and the I.W.W. here. Both exist to pervert and enslave the people; both seek to break down the national spirit of the world for their own wicked ends. Both are doomed to failure. By taking our place in the world, America is to become more American, as by doing his duty the individual develops his own manhood. We see now ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... of such persons as do pervert everything, do under-value and find fault with other men's opinions, although they be good and sound; I like not such brains which can dispute on both sides, and yet conclude nothing certain. Such sophistications, said Luther, are nothing but crafty and subtle inventions and contrivances ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... the misfortune to be governed by a Popish Prince. As the King is naturally powerful, he can easily dispose of the places of importance, and trust, so as to have them filled with creatures of his own, who will engage in any enterprise, or pervert any law, to serve the purposes of the reigning Monarch. Had not the nation an instance of this, during the short reign of the very Popish Prince, against whom Settle contended? Did not judge Jeffries, a name justly devoted to everlasting infamy, corrupt the streams of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber |
