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Perversion   /pərvˈərʒən/   Listen
Perversion

noun
1.
A curve that reverses the direction of something.  "Perversion also shows up in kinky telephone cords"
2.
An aberrant sexual practice.  Synonym: sexual perversion.
3.
The action of perverting something (turning it to a wrong use).






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Perversion" Quotes from Famous Books



... loathsome disease. And methinks, sweet Una, even our slumbering sense of the forced and of the far-fetched might have arrested us here. But now it appears that we had worked out our own destruction in the perversion of our taste, or rather in the blind neglect of its culture in the schools. For, in truth, it was at this crisis that taste alone—that faculty which, holding a middle position between the pure intellect and the moral sense, could never safely have been disregarded—it was now that taste alone ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, 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 so horrible ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... like our moral and physical likes and dislikes, is, as I have elsewhere said, perverted by the fall. I will not say that our moral, intellectual and physical tastes are perverted in an equal degree; for I do not think so. Still there is a perversion, greater or less, of the whole man—in all his functions, faculties and affections. As a general rule, when left to our own course, we choose that food, for body, mind and soul, which, though it may be pleasant at first, is bitter afterwards. "There is a ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott

... through the Gospel a doctrine countenancing evil? Though the wisdom of the Gospel is a higher gift than human reason, it does not alter or nullify the God-implanted intelligence of the latter. Hence it is a perversion of our doctrine to say it does not teach us to love good works and practice them. "Now, if you cannot understand this truth from my explanation," Paul would say—"that through faith you have, by baptism, ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... instruction. When a knowledge of the mysteries became lost, the words "Sab-bath," "rest" and "seven" began to have a very wrong meaning in the minds of people; and much injury has been done to the world through this perversion. ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... time, or the acquittal that gave the lie to his slanderers in after years. The events occurred forty years ago—the story was only half known then, and like all such stories formed the basis for every kind of exaggeration and perversion.' ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... Herd's version knew the English, and altered at pleasure, or the Englishman knew a Scots version, and altered at pleasure. The perversion is of ancient standing, undeniably. But when Scott's original text exhibits the same phenomena of perversion, in a part of the ballad missing in Herd's brief lay, Colonel Elliot supposes that NOW the exchanges are by a modern ballad- forger, shall we say Sir Walter? ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang

... friends, that even those who wished to express to her their gratitude for the good they had received from her books were constrained to be silent. "While," says her publisher, "she was very sensitive to any criticism based on a misconception or a perversion of her purpose, never, in all my intercourse with her, did I discover the slightest evidence of a spirit of literary ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... publication of "A Scriptural View of Woman's Rights and Duties," clearly demonstrating the equality of man and woman in the creation, as well as the independent, self-reliant characteristics sanctioned in woman, by the examples of the sex given in the Bible. As woman has ever been degraded by the perversion of the religious element of her nature, the scriptural arguments were among the earliest presentations of the question. When opponents were logically cornered on every other side, they uniformly fell back on the decrees of Heaven. The ignorance of women in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... perversion! Since the playing of those melancholy minor strains in that red sunset so long ago, which had touched so responsive a chord in Laurelia's grief-worn heart, the crazy old fiddle had been naturalized, as it were, and had exchanged its domicile under the ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... could be given this extension of meaning is seen when we know the possibilities of its transformation and sublimation, a matter which will be treated later.] Now if the libido symbol raised up for an ideal is placed too nakedly before the seeker, the danger of misunderstanding and perversion is always present. For he is misled by his instincts to take the symbol verbally, that is, in its original, baser sense and to act accordingly. So all religions are degenerate in which one chooses as a libido symbol the unconcealed sexual act, and therefore also a religion must degenerate, ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... misery and suffering, but the world in itself is really a perfect work of Divine wisdom and goodness. "The root of evil is not in the nature of the world, but in moral wrong—in a desertion from God." Sin and wickedness arise from the misuse and perversion of things which are not in themselves evil. Christianity calls for a break from the wickedness of the world. It calls upon man to give up his sin, to deny, or break with, the evil of which he is guilty. But it does not expect man to do this in his own strength alone—God ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones

... as a writer that I had made his acquaintance; I took him on his own 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, I please myself with thinking, of less temper and justice, the difference ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... which, if good, would have been let alone—a clever device of throwing dust into our eyes. Another produces what appears to be a pencil drawing, and a very good imitation some of them are, but at best a deception. To make something look like something else is a perversion of a brilliant discovery in photographic processes, which offers the means for securing unity (and in this word lies every principle of composition) by adding to or ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... 'Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind, Which flattery fooled not, baseness could not blind, Deceit infect not, nor contagion soil, Indulgence weaken, or example spoil, Nor mastered science tempt her to look down On humbler talent with a pitying frown, ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... crime. He is rewarded by a cure as miraculous as was his harm; recovers his fortune, and marries the maiden. A later termination separates them again; but this is simply the folly and bad taste of a certain, and only a certain, perversion of mediaeval sentiment, the crowning instance of which is found in Guy of Warwick. Hartmann himself was no such simpleton; and (with only an infinitesimal change of a famous sentence) we may be sure that as he was a good lover so he made a ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... conscience of righteousness which, thank God, are still alive among us. "My dear," he says, "you are the incarnation of morality, your conscience is clear and your duty done when you have called everybody names." Similar, and no less unfortunate, is his perversion of that instinct of patriotism which, however mistaken in some of its expressions, has yet proved its moral and practical worth during many a century of British history. There is the less need to dwell upon this, because those who discard patriotism ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... to make very considerable allowance for his period and his circumstances, not disposed to think him so much a renegado and deliberate knave as a fickle, needy, and childish changeling, in the matter of his "perversion" to Popery; although we yield to none in admiration of the varied, highly-cultured, masculine, and magnificent forces ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... polygamy and suicide; for the same reason that they subject the wife utterly to the husband or his parents; for the same reason that they serve their temples with prostitutes for priests; for the same reason that they sometimes seem to make no distinction between sexual passion and sexual perversion. They do it, that is, because they are Heathens; men with traditions different from ours about the limits of endurance and the gestures of self-respect. They may be very much better than we are in hundreds of other ways; and I ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... and Spencer in the Cabinet. Lord Granville came in finally, and said in his sweetest manner (which is a very disagreeable one) that he had vast experience, and had "never known a man stand on his extreme rights and gain by it." This I felt to be a monstrous perversion of the case, and I was glad on the morning of the 9th to find that my reasons were very fairly stated in the Standard, the Telegraph, and the Daily News. Chamberlain had seen Escott of the Standard, and Lawson ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... somewhat confused, "it is perhaps the essence of perversion that a person feels compelled to hoodwink people by doing things and making statements the very reverse of what is natural and what is to be expected. Miss Burns, I wish, I heartily wish, you would look out a little for that poor creature drifting about ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... Americanism. The last two chapters, on "Frenzied Liberty" and "The Myth of a 'Rich Man's War,'" should be called to the especial attention of the persons who, not daring to be openly treasonable, try to serve Germany by advancing the cause of Bolshevism in this country, and by downright and shameless perversion of the truth as to the part played by the men of means in this war. The chapter on "Frenzied Liberty" is an acute and fearless exposition of the damage done to liberty by the men here who are trying to play the part ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn

... the whole Narrative is such a Misrepresentation of Facts, such a Perversion of Truth, as you will, I am perswaded, agree, as soon as you have perused the Papers I now inclose to you, that I hope you or some other well-disposed Person, will communicate these Papers to the Publick, that this little Jade may not impose ...
— An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews • Conny Keyber

... sermons, in the first year of the reign of King James; and Tom returned but once, a year afterwards, to Castlewood for many years of his scholastic and collegiate life. Thus there was less danger to Tom of a perversion of his faith by the Director, who scarce ever saw him, than there was to Harry, who constantly was in the Vicar's company; but as long as Harry's religion was his Majesty's, and my lord's, and my ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... 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, ye ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary

... disgusting and degrading thing I ever heard talked about on a man o' war was the perversion of the sex instinct—the unnatural use of it! This, too, is a joke and laughed at and talked lightly about; but the records of the British Navy, and I think of other navies, would reveal something along this ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... 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 ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... ruins body and soul, destroying the former by hunger and the latter by a terrified conscience. It makes of God the devil, and of the devil God. It makes hell of heaven and heaven of hell; righteousness of sin, and sin of righteousness. This I call perversion—where strictest justice is the ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... of this biographical fable are facts, rumors, and poetry. They are connected together and harmonized by the help of suggestion, conjecture, innuendo, perversion, and semi-suppression. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... thousands of young men from industrial, commercial and professional pursuits into the barren negative life of the barracks. They might go further and lay stress upon the loss of moral sensibility, the destruction of romantic love, the perversion of the longing for wife and child. The very stability and refinement of the social order depend upon the preservation of ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams

... a Queen and a subject, by those who never felt the existence of such a feeling as friendship, could only be considered in a criminal point of view. But by what perversion could suspicion frown upon the ties between two married women, both living in the greatest harmony with their respective husbands, especially when both became mothers and were so devoted to their offspring? This ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... the search for methods in the Reign of Terror, the applause for revolutionary models? Such inexcusable perversion of a writer's meaning for an evanescent political object—and a very shabby object too—is enough to make one think that George III. knew what he was talking about, when he once delivered himself of the saying that "Politics are a trade ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... writes like a partisan, and yet like an honest one, who is no further warped from a correct judgment of passing affairs than must necessarily come from preconceived opinions. There is no management to work a conviction in his reader on this side or the other, still less any obvious perversion of fact. He evidently believes what he says, and this is the great point to be desired. We can make allowance for the natural influences of his position. Were he more impartial than this, the critic of the present day, by making allowance ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... by M. Paul Bert, as contained in a cable dispatch from Paris, is not only a perversion of facts, but a falsehood cut from whole cloth. I never certified, wrote, or said that dead hogs are shipped to packing-houses, or that these carcasses are shipped abroad. All I ever said in regard to transportation of diseased ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... in South Sea stock, by which, contrary to the custom of the adventure, he realized 100,000l. proves that the talent of making money, at least, had not deserted him. But it seems an idle as well as an uncalled for perversion of truth to contend, that from the date of his first attack he ever was the man he had been previously. If 'the tears of dotage' did not flow from his eyes, it is certain that much of the vigour of mind which once belonged to him was lost, and even his speech continued embarrassed in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various

... are just like every one else, and that you are different 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 you with a sense of your strangeness, ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... in mere self-will, but to gain their freedom, the most precious possession of mankind. Remember, too, that to shew mercy is better than to shed blood; the sword killeth, but the favor of the ruler bringeth joy and happiness. Conclude the war as speedily as possible, for war is a perversion of nature; in peace the sons outlive the fathers, but in war the fathers live to mourn for their slain sons. Farewell, my young heroes, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... because I would make his fall the greater, and deepen the wound I meant to inflict upon his mother. From this night I shall pursue a different course; from this night his ruin may be dated. He is in the care of those who will not leave the task assigned to them—the utter perversion of his principles—half-finished. And when I have steeped him to the lips in vice and depravity; when I have led him to the commission of every crime; when there is neither retreat nor advance for him; when ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... followed the big city's biggest shame, its most ancient and rotten surviving canker, its pollution and disgrace, its blight and perversion, its forever infamy and guilt, fostered, unreproved and cherished, handed down from a long-ago century of the basest barbarity—the Hue and Cry. Nowhere but in the big cities does it survive, and here most of all, where the ultimate perfection of culture, citizenship and alleged superiority joins, ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... 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 to that continent! We had obtained as yet only so much knowledge of its ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... This monstrous decision, a perversion of all law, natural and civil, filled the people with astonishment. Could the maker of the laws of Rome thus himself set them at defiance? They stood as if stunned, until Claudius approached to lay hands on the maiden, when the women and her friends gathered ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... father's Case, when he distinctly pronounced his opinion that it could end but in failure. Though a strict Constitutionalist, he had words of disgust for princes, acknowledging, however, that we were not practical in our use of them, and kept them for political purposes often to the perversion of our social laws and their natural dispositions. He spoke of his son's freak in joining the Navy. 'That was the princess's doing,' said Temple. 'She talked of our naval heroes, till she made me ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... communicated to his imagination, the reader may perhaps anticipate, in the following tale, an imitation of the romance of Cervantes. But he will do my prudence injustice in the supposition. My intention is not to follow the steps of that inimitable author, in describing such total perversion of intellect as misconstrues the objects actually presented to the senses, but that more common aberration from sound judgement, which apprehends occurrences indeed in their reality, but communicates to them a tincture ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... Individual, child as, See also Freedom Infant Schools, early Infant Schools, formalism, causes, etc., Kindergarten system, perversion of, present-day schools, buildings, furniture, etc., change in spirit since the 'eighties, effect of child study movement, etc., curriculum, lack of clear aim and continuity, discipline, formalism, promotion and uniformity, ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... that the senses are the greatest source of information to the child's mind, the method of teaching by means of objects has arisen. Rightly used, there is great value in this mode of instruction, but a serious perversion of its legitimate use has developed in connection with religious instruction of little children. Though the discussion of this may be a possible digression, it seems necessary in order to safeguard nurture ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux

... Kentucky, fill more than twenty-two pages—reserving a line or two of text at the top. To say nothing of the sentiments, such notes are a shameful abuse of the reputation and work of Mr. Wheaton, and a perversion of the duties and rights of an editor. But a word of the sentiments. He exhausts himself and the records of the past in accumulating precedents to condemn the policy of freeing slaves as a war measure, or of arming them in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... these doctrines exercise any influence for the perversion of public morals? Much; their influence is disastrous. And do the men who profess them believe them, taking the word 'believe' in its real and deep meaning? No; they often do mischief which they do not mean to do, and do ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... me, or led me the way. An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... any such perversion or inaccuracy in the cautious course of reasoning which has assisted ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... nations in regard to belligerents. The Chesapeake seems to have been selected to make up a cause of war with Great Britain, by the warlike proceedings of the President before communicating with the British Government on the subject. The American people had nothing but a complete perversion of the facts of the case until ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... deceive. A mansion on a valuable corner lot does not constitute 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

... doth my jealous mind connect these men with every perversion and corruption of Gospel truth. They are at this moment as well the plotting mind as the executing arm of the rotten Church of Rome. The spirit of Loyola would seem lately to have left Hades, to animate his followers upon earth. Be sure, Sir Christopher, that where error and mischief ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... of a dendroidal captivity flashed into Seymour's mind with the phrase, and stimulated his curiosity as to some quaint rural perversion ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... have been free in the nineteenth, for she had no power to choose her own lot. All widows were wards of the Crown; and it was not at all usual for the Crown to concern its august self respecting their wishes, unless they bought leave to comply with them at a very costly price. By a singular perversion of justice, the tax upon a widow who purchased permission to remarry or not, at her pleasure, was far heavier than the fine exacted from a man who married a ward of the Crown without royal licence. The natural result of this arrangement was that the ladies who were ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt

... Nothing else about her mattered—one knew her all when one knew that. She's indeed in one particular, I think, sole of her kind—a person whom vanity has had the odd effect of keeping positively safe and sound. This passion is supposed surely, for the most part, to be a principle of perversion and of injury, leading astray those who listen to it and landing them sooner or later in this or that complication; but it has landed her ladyship nowhere whatever—it has kept her from the first moment of full consciousness, one feels, exactly in the same place. It has protected her from every ...
— The Beldonald Holbein • Henry James

... to him, "O dear my son,[FN122] there is no man can tell thee other but tints I have said, except he twist the words handed down to us of the Holy Law and turn the truths thereof from their evident meaning. And such a perversion is their saying that the Word hath inherent and positive power and I take refuge with Allah from such a mis-belief! Nay, the meaning of our saying that Allah (to whom belong Might and Majesty!) created the world with His Word ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... number of sexual offences has been the subject of frequent and serious judicial comment, especially in cases where young children were the victims, or the very serious nature of the charge connoted a perversion dangerous to the moral well-being of society; and, as the experience of the Board in dealing with prisoners of this class accords, as far as it goes, with the now generally accepted opinion that, with certain exceptions, persons committing unnatural offences labour under physical disease or disability, ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews

... part of Spiritualists to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, concerning marvelous phenomena, it is extremely difficult to do so. Be it distinctly understood that we do not for an instant impute wilful perversion of the truth. All that we mean is that, for two reasons, it is likely that the marvels of Spiritualism will be, by believers in ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission

... other's absence in uncontrollable agony, the conditions are serious enough for the consultation of a physician. It is an abnormal state of affairs, and if probed thoroughly might be found to be a sort of perversion, a sex mania, needing immediate and perhaps ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... not surprising that temperance reformers appeal in vain on this question, and that their facts and arguments are viewed with plausible indifference, or insidious opposition, by persons whose appetites and instincts have been undergoing debasement, and perversion from the very dawn of their lives. My own deliberate conviction is that nothing but harm comes to nursing mothers, and to the infants who are dependent upon them, by the ordinary use of alcoholic beverages of ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... reason may be mentioned for regarding a knowledge of the undifferentiated stage of the sexual impulse as of great importance. In works on the pathology of the sexual impulse we are frequently assured that in this or that specific instance the perversion was inborn, because perverse sensations have existed since the days of childhood. But the existence of the undifferentiated stage teaches us that we are not justified in inferring, from the mere fact of the primary occurrence of a "perverse" ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... Britain is not disposed to redress our grievances after proper application, the people have nothing more to do, but to gird the sword on the thigh and shoulder the musket." Doubtless this report was a perversion of ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... Being moral as well as intellectual supremacy, which acknowledges an outward world distinct from Him, and which represents Him as causing the changes in that universe by the acts of an intelligent volition, can only by a strange perversion of ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... I 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 ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt

... a wretched 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 before such pageants of wickedness as have clothed the famous name of Wittenberg ...
— No. 4, Intersession: A Sermon Preached by the Rev. B. N. Michelson, - B.A. • B. N. Michelson

... Smoothly and pleasantly Mr. Stackpole went on compounding this cup of entertainment for himself and his hearers, smacking his lips over it, and all the more, Fleda thought, when they made wry faces; throwing in a little truth, a good deal of fallacy, a great deal of perversion and misrepresentation; while Mrs. Evelyn listened and smiled, and half parried and half assented to his positions; and Fleda sat impatiently drumming upon her elbow with the fingers of her other hand, in the sheer necessity of giving some expression to her feelings. Mr. Stackpole at last ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... have tried and tried things. Isn't that the way one leaves the normal and gets into the byways of perversion? ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell

... worship a shade of hypocrisy, a practical deception: for how 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 ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... be denied in words; or in works; or by a perversion of the gospel, causing it to become another gospel. We will treat ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee

... there were copies of letters to country-sheriffs ordering the release of convicted heretics and the imprisonment of their accusers; there were evidences of enormous bribes received by him for the perversion ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... attempt to represent that movement as artificial, the work of scheming capitalists or professional agitators, I regard it as a wilful perversion of the truth. The defenceless people who are clamouring for a redress of grievances are doing so at great personal risk. It is notorious that many capitalists regard political agitation with disfavour because of its effect ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... even our clothes go back on us when we are down. Weston I had always known as a lanky man, but about his loosely fitting garments there had been an air of careless distinction. Now that he was broken, they hung with such an odd perversion as to bring from its hiding-place every sharp angle in the thin frame. The best nine tailors living could not have clothed him better for that little journey, nor lessened a whit the pathos of the thin arms that lay limply across the shoulders ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... disapproved by the Commissioner of the General Land Office and the Secretary of the Interior. The successors of these officers oppose the present bill on the ground that in its operation it would open the door to fraud and to a perversion of the intentions of the Government in relation to the ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland

... me less than justice. All I wish to impress upon your mind is, that you are not in any way picked out by Providence to be specially unhappy—that there is no perversion of ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... 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 ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... hurry, but the sculptor was. He drummed on the table, he made angry faces at his neighbors—contented looking Germans who whistled themes from "Rheingold"—and when Herr Sammett saluted his guests with a crazy trombone and crazier perversion of the Donner motive, Arthmann jumped up and excused himself. The two hours and a half in the theatre had made him nervous, restless, and he went away saying that he would be back presently. Mrs. Fridolin was annoyed. It did not seem proper ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... discovering and teaching the truth, to the less appropriate work of determining how much of it comes within "the sphere of practical politics." Comte, indeed, by organizing them as an independent power apart from, and outside of, the State, would make such a perversion extremely probable. A hierarchy of priests, under a despotic Pope, would soon cease to be, in any sense, a spiritual power; and this would be only the more certain if, by the Comtist denunciation of specialism, they were prohibited from any division of labour according to capacity ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... language of Mrs. Jameson, "whatever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable and grave, whatever hath passion or admiration in the changes of fortune or the refluxes of feeling, whatever is pitiful in the weakness, grand in the strength, or terrible in the perversion of the human intellect," be the domain of tragedy, this correspondence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... joint debates of 1858, the latter accused Lincoln of having, when in Congress, voted against the appropriation for supplies to be sent the United States soldiers in Mexico. In reply, Lincoln said: "This is a perversion of the facts. I was opposed to the policy of the administration in declaring war against Mexico; but when war was declared I never failed to vote for the support of any proposition looking to the comfort of our poor fellows who were maintaining the dignity ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... forbade the satisfaction of their natural desires to all but a privileged few, and of the general visible coercion which came of those laws. All that cause of violent crime is gone. Again, many violent acts came from the artificial perversion of the sexual passions, which caused overweening jealousy and the like miseries. Now, when you look carefully into these, you will find that what lay at the bottom of them was mostly the idea (a law-made idea) of the woman being the property of the man, whether he were husband, ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... aged, of the innocent, of the defenceless sex, of the ministers of religion, and of the faithful adherents of a fallen monarch.' What! have you so little knowledge of the nature of man as to be ignorant that a time of revolution is not the season of true Liberty? Alas, the obstinacy and perversion of man is such that she is too often obliged to borrow the very arms of Despotism to overthrow him, and, in order to reign in peace, must establish herself by violence. She deplores such stern necessity, but the safety of the people, her supreme law, is her consolation. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... people of Italy, reacted to the crime against Belgium, to the atrocities committed on priests and women and children, to the murders of the Lusitania,—all deeds of that ancient enemy whose barbarism had now reappeared, after centuries, under an intellectual and sophisticated mask with a blasphemous perversion of religious sanction. They reacted also, it might be, to their own sense of personal danger from an unprotected frontier dividing them from this unscrupulous enemy, to the wrongs of some thousands of Italians condemned to live under Austrian rule and fight ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... all, it must needs possess a social character; this is founded not only in the nature of man, but still more in the nature of religion. You will acknowledge that it indicates a state of disease, a signal perversion of nature, when an individual wishes to shut up within himself anything which he has produced and elaborated by his own efforts. It is the disposition of man to reveal and to communicate whatever is in him, in the indispensable relations and mutual dependence not only of practical life, but ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... This maxim, that the safety of the people is the supreme law, might, by a similar perversion, be claimed by any mob or party constituting the majority of a city, town, or neighbourhood, as well as by the Colony of Massachusetts, against the Parliament or supreme authority of the nation. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... seemed the surest way of gathering strength to denounce it; but behind me, all the while, I felt Mrs. Fontage's shuddering pride drawn up in a final effort of self-defense. I hated myself for my sentimental perversion of the situation. Reason argued that it was more cruel to deceive Mrs. Fontage than to tell her the truth; but that merely proved the inferiority of reason to instinct in situations involving any concession to ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... throat. "We mustn't let the babies pay the penalty of their parents' sins; and there's one thing that may soften your anger a little, Letty: Eva's not right; she's not quite responsible. There are cases where motherhood, that should be a joy, brings nothing but mental torture and perversion of instinct. Try and remember that, if it helps you any. I'll drop in every two or three hours and I'll write David to come at once. He must take his ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... and noble lady, and to know her is to love her," replied Barbara, her brown, affectionate eyes swimming in tears at the wilful perversion of her words. "May I beg, Lady Frances, that you will condescend not to question so poor and simple a girl as myself on what I know ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... no embarrassment, no hesitation, no shamefaced looks, no recoiling from the arms that were stretched out to her, or from the lips that begged; none of those delightful little pieces of awkwardness which show a virgin soul free from all perversion, in her manner of sitting on my knees, or putting her bare arms round my neck, and of offering me the back of her neck and her lips to kiss, but she laughed nervously, and her supple form trembled when I kissed her passionately on various places, and she said things to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... which met in the revolt of the peasants: their longing for a right rule, for plain and simple justice; their scorn of the immorality of the nobles and the infamy of the court; their resentment at the perversion of the law to the ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... friend, can give. In some of his biographical sketches, with what force has he brought out the moral resolution which animated, or ought to have animated, the man of whom he is writing! We shall have occasion, by and by, to notice what, to our mind, appears a mere perversion of thought, and a mischievous exaggeration in our author, who, in his love of a certain energy of character, has often made this energy (apart from a moral purpose) the test and rule of his admiration. But at present turn to his admirable estimation of Dr Samuel Johnson, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... washing-days, and at impromptu suppers, of superior spiced-beef, which flattered their palates more than the cold remnants they had formerly been contented with. Every housewife who had once "bought at Freely's" felt a secret joy when she detected a similar perversion in her neighbour's practice, and soon only two or three old- fashioned mistresses of families held out in the protest against the growing demoralization, saying to their neighbours who came to ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot

... heard, and placed fairly before the world their respective statements. Had Mr O'Connell alluded to the charges, he must have also adverted to the explanations, and this would not have suited him; for with all his talent for perversion, and, until the appearance of Lord Devon's report, we thought that in this respect he was unequalled, he never could have made so good a thing out of the same materials as he found left cut and dry to his hand, in the passage of the report which he so often appeals ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... is one thing and perversion of fact is another. When you stated, in answer to my sermon, that I knew the identity of the anonymous writer, you made a mistake,—I do not accuse you of wilful falsehood,—and stated what was untrue. I am to this day quite ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich

... absorbed manic state, the patient may be objectively in the same condition as a typical stupor. The histories of the two psychoses differentiate the two reactions which may be indistinguishable at one interview. The keynote of one reaction is indifference, while that of absorption is distraction, a perversion of attention to an inner, ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch

... literary labours with the production of this book. Nor let any reader imagine that I here put into his hands a mere work of idle recreation. It will be found pregnant with deeper uses. The wildest extravagances of human fancy, the most deplorable perversion of human faculties, and the most horrible distortions of jurisprudence, may occasionally afford us a salutary lesson. I love in the foremost place to contemplate man in all his honours and in all the exaltation of wisdom and virtue; ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... possible for one who has a false opinion of God, to know Him in any way at all, because the object of his opinion is not God. Therefore it is clear that the sin of unbelief is greater than any sin that occurs in the perversion of morals. This does not apply to the sins that are opposed to the theological virtues, as we shall state further on (Q. 20, A. 3; Q. 34, A. 2, ad 2; Q. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... 1882 war in Egypt as well as most of the campaigns in the Soudan. I am therefore in a better position than he to declare, that his allegations are a perversion of the truth. It was neither the practice at Tel-el-Kebir nor subsequent thereto for British led troops to kill wounded men. The insinuation that they did so, or connived at such slaughter, is a stupid or a malicious falsehood. In every battle within ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... a single abstract notion of language of which all existent languages may be supposed to be the perversion. But we must not conceive that this logical figment had ever a real existence, or is anything more than an effort of the mind to give unity to infinitely various phenomena. There is no abstract language 'in rerum natura,' any more than there is an abstract ...
— Cratylus • Plato

... despatched. Elizabeth and Mary Stuart tried to do the same to each other. The way was paved for absolute monarchy to triumph over the spirit and institutions of a better age, not by isolated acts of wickedness, but by a studied philosophy of crime and so thorough a perversion of the moral sense that the like of it had not been since the Stoics reformed the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... rid of a hated presence, but her play—which she had meant to make the closing event of the season, and by which she had hoped to conquer one or two of the remaining rungs of the social ladder—her play was rendered impossible; this affair would get into the society papers, with every perversion which wit or malice could supply—she would be ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... of all peoples contains this physiological perversion. Birds do not sing hymns; the song of the male is simply to call the female and when the pairing-season ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... impressions of the many: now we live in towns: and posterity will be astounded at us! It isn't only that we get our impressions for the most part as imaginary pictures called up by printer's ink—that would be bad enough; but by some curious perversion of the modern mind, printer's ink ends by actually preventing one from seeing things that are there; and sometimes, when one says to another who has not travelled, "Travel!" one wonders whether, after all, if he does travel, he will see the things before his eyes? If he does, he will find a new ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... time to time with a witty sally, or probably with what was more in keeping with his character—a coarse jest. And he watched the spectacle attentively from end to end. Firstly the play in verse on the subject of the judgment of Paris, a perversion of the legend favoured by the Greeks—a travesty wherein Paris—renamed Parisia—was a woman, and three gods were in rivalry for the golden apple, the emblem of her favours. Then the naval spectacle over the flooded arena, ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... shall perhaps best convey to the reader an idea of the entire perversion of thought which exists among this extraordinary people, by describing the public trial of a man who was accused of pulmonary consumption—an offence which was punished with death until quite recently. It did not occur till I had been some months in the ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... 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 ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... an action in order to produce the reality—which dominates so large a proportion of early religious ceremonialism. Among many nations the mysterious aspects of woman's fertility lead to rites that by a perversion of their original import appear to be obscene.[908] In the reference to the three classes of sacred prostitutes, we have an evidence that the Babylonian worship formed no exception to the rule. But with this proposition that the prostitutes were priestesses attached to ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... questions of taste—and if these poems were to be arraigned for errors of what may be called taste, they might be convicted of occasional affectation in metaphor, as where the hills are 'as a stallion stal- wart, very-violet-sweet', or of some perversion of human feeling, as, for instance, the 'nostrils' relish of incense along the sanctuary side ', or 'the Holy Ghost with warm breast and with ah! bright wings', these and a few such examples are mostly efforts to force emotion ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... last night, your new French play, Le Comte de Warwick(427) which we hear has succeeded much. I must say, it does but confirm the cheap idea I have of you French: not to mention the preposterous perversion of history in so known a story, the Queen's ridiculous preference of old Warwick to a young King; the omission of the only thing she ever said or did in her whole life worth recording, which was thinking herself ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... 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

... thousand who sign this petition, therefore it is fair to suppose that the larger part of the women of the State have consented to the present form of government. Now, this is assuredly a willful and unworthy perversion of the truth. These women are simply ignorant, simply supine. They have neither affirmed nor denied. They have not thought at all upon the subject. But there are two thousand women in Massachusetts who think and act, to say nothing of the thousands of intelligent men there who believe in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... reason why high seasonings leads to intemperance, is in the perversion of the use of the sense of taste. Certain senses are given us to add to our pleasure as well as for the practical, almost indispensable, use they are to us. For instance, the sense of sight is not only useful, but enables us to drink in beauty, if among beautiful ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... ascribed to the Virgin Mother is purity of heart and life. Gradually in the history of the Christian church, the recognition of this became idolatry. The works of early Christian art commonly exhibit the progress of this perversion. They show how Mariolatry grew up. The first pictures of the early Christians simply represent the woman. By and by we find outlines of the mother and the child. In an after age, the Son is seen sitting on a throne, with the mother crowned, ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton

... No. 148, entitled 'The cruelty of parental tyranny,' Johnson, after noticing the oppression inflicted by the perversion of legal authority, says:—'Equally dangerous and equally detestable are the cruelties often exercised in private families, under the venerable sanction of parental authority.' He continues:—'Even though no consideration should be paid to the great law ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... The perversion of so many of these once sacred chants to the service of the street ballad, suggests the trite remark ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various

... artist-sense is pure, and her religion, down under the perversion and ignorance of her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... is possible that the emotion I allowed to appear may have introduced some glimmering of the truth into his mind, that he may have faintly perceived how disgusted I was with his narrative; but such is the perversion of feeling among a portion of the colonists, that they cannot conceive how anyone can sympathize with the black race as their fellow men. In theory and practice they regard them as wild beasts whom it ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... but her cold, green eyes were quivering in accordance with the smile that stretched her thin lips to a line of mocking mirth. One glimpse of sympathy would have carried me to her arms for refuge—distasteful as she was to me in every way save one. She, like myself, was a woman. But such perversion of all natural feeling estranged me from her irreconcilably ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... account, to claim all the benefits of that law which was made to screen mankind from the excesses of power: such a claim, I will venture to say, is a monster that never existed, except in the wild imagination of some theorist. It cannot be admitted, because it is a perversion of the fundamental principle, that every power given for the protection of the people below should be responsible to the power above. It is to suppose that the people shall have no laws with regard to him, yet, when he comes to be tried, he shall claim the protection of those ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... ophthalmology in a diagnosis of optical diseases, tell us of a symptom of infirmity which they call pseudoblepsis, or 'false sight.' Legal vision exhibits, now and then, a corresponding phase of unconscious perversion of sight, whereby objects are perceived that do not exist, and objects present become transformed, distorted; and such an instance of exaggerated metamorphosia is presented to-day, in the perverted vision of the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... in the way are the result of a perversion of civilization, and the cause of much contraction ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call

... inducement to make any change. The study of human nature suggests this awful truth, that, as in the trials to which life subjects us, sin and crime are apt to start from their very opposite qualities, so there are no limits to the hardening of the heart, and the perversion of the understanding to which they may carry their slaves. During my long residence in France, while the Revolution was rapidly advancing to its extreme of wickedness, I had frequent opportunities of being an eye-witness of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... of his spirit and give them forth as a significant and harmonious whole. The "poetry" of Goethe's autobiography—by far the best of autobiographies in the German language—must not be taken to imply concealment, perversion, substitution, or anything of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... faith. For faith desires to be the only service of God, and will grant this name and honor to no other work, except in so far as faith imparts it, as it does when the work is done in faith and by faith. This perversion is indicated in the Old Testament, when the Jews left the Temple and sacrificed at other places, in the green parks and on the mountains. This is what these men also do: they are zealous to do all works, but this chief work of faith they ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther

... the wife's reply. "And what is more, I never will consent to such a perversion of ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur

... philosophical. The first two are simple enough and partially true, like the first thoughts of an intelligent youth; the third, which is a real contribution to ethical philosophy, is perverted by the ingenuity of Socrates, and hardly rescued by an equal perversion on the part of Critias. The remaining definitions have a higher aim, which is to introduce the element of knowledge, and at last to unite good and truth in a single science. But the time has not yet arrived for the realization of this vision of metaphysical philosophy; ...
— Charmides • Plato

... let that go with open hands. She wanted, more than ever, the 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, in the intervals of arranging it, at the idea that ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... the fact,—at once interesting and important,—that if a traveler in the central regions of that continent could be accompanied by his wife, the chances of his success would be greatly improved? In the apparent celibacy of explorers, barbarous races perceive simply an absence or perversion of the masculine instinct, which at ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... 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

... when captured by man, that St Hilaire makes two great classes of animals useful to man:—the tame, which will not breed, and the domestic which will breed in domestication. From certain singular facts we might have supposed that the non-breeding of animals was owing to some perversion of instinct. But we meet with exactly the same class of facts in plants: I do not refer to the large number of cases where the climate does not permit the seed or fruit to ripen, but where the flowers do not "set," owing to some imperfection of the ovule or pollen. The latter, which alone can be ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin

... Elaps. Two species are known; the harlequin snake, which ranges throughout the Gulf states to Texas and up the Mississippi River to Ohio, and the Sonoran coral snake, found in the Southwest only. By a strange perversion of facts, while the harmless hog-nosed snake enjoys a repute of terror, the Elaps, most dangerous of all American reptiles, is commonly regarded as harmless. Partly this is due to its slight and graceful prettiness, partly to its ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... Majesty's authority according to the Constitution of his Royal Charter;" and with attempting to overthrow the rights of the colony under the charter by bringing in a military force to overawe and suppress the civil authorities. They denounced them as guilty of a perversion of their trust, and as having committed a breach upon the dignity of the crown, by pursuing a course "derogatory to His Majesty's authority here established," and "repugnant to His Majesty's princely and gracious intention in betrusting ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... yet frame an impartial judgment and the danger is not seen by all, there is one thing that cannot be denied or disputed, and that is that the treaties are the negation of the principles for which the United States and Italy, without any obligation on them, entered the War; they are a perversion of all the Entente had repeatedly proclaimed; they break into pieces President Wilson's fourteen points which were a solemn pledge for the American people, and to-morrow they will be the greatest moral weapon with which the conquered of to-day ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti

... premisses of this argument are true, and so also is the conclusion, strictly as it stands. It is true that the Fathers accuse Marcion of tampering with the text in various places, both in the Epistles and in the Gospels where the allegation can be tested, and where it is found that the supposed perversion is simply a difference of reading, proved to be such by its presence in other authorities [Endnote 217:2]. But what is this to the point? It is not contended that Marcion altered to any considerable extent (though he did slightly even in the Epistles [Endnote 217:3]) the text which he retained, ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... whom those articles were framed were educated in the Church of Rome, and opposed themselves rather to the perversion of its power than ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... old departmental hand. They have their own morality. My line of inquiry would appear to him an awful perversion of duty. For him the plain duty is to fasten the guilt upon as many prominent anarchists as he can on some slight indications he had picked up in the course of his investigation on the spot; whereas I, he ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... go through your correspondent's letter, otherwise "I could hardly reprehend in sufficiently strong terms" (and all that sort of thing) the perversion of what I said about Giordano Bruno. But "ex uno disce ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler

... sad to contemplate such a perversion of a really excellent brain. They have power, even as you have, and they have the will to destroy, which is a thing that I cannot understand. However, if it is graven upon the Sphere that we are to pass, it means only that upon the next plane we shall continue our searches—let ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... What horrible perversion of manliness! Nothing can account for such inhumanity but the sanguinary madness of the Revolution which has tainted a whole generation," mused the returned emigre in a low tone. "Who is your adversary?" ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad

... instruction for the protection of the youth of both sexes. The Chicago Vice Commission concluded that "the lack of information, education and training with reference to the function and control of the sexual instinct, and the consequences of its abuse and perversion, appears at every point of our inquiry for the sources of the supply of the victims of vice, either as the cause of the perversion of children and youth or as a complication of all other causes."[6] Of course, we dare not dream that any sex-instruction that now seems possible ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow

... these people live, is limited, and we are outside it. But can we not observe the same phenomenon when the rich boast of their wealth, i.e., robbery; the commanders in the army pride themselves on victories, i.e., murder; and those in high places vaunt their power, i.e., violence? We do not see the perversion in the views of life held by these people, only because the circle formed by them is more extensive, and we ourselves are moving ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... business" had any share in influencing our Government's decision to enter the war is an insult to the President and Congress, a libel on American citizenship, and a malicious perversion or ignorant misconception of the facts. Those who continue to circulate that insinuation lay themselves open to just suspicion of their motives and should receive neither ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn

... the full maturity of his talent. He denies that the prevailing discontents are due to some factious libellers exciting the people, who have no interest in disorder, but are only roused by the impatience of suffering. The discontents were real, and their cause was a perversion of the true principles on which the Constitution rested. As hitherto, business had gone alternately through the hands of Whigs and Tories, the opposition controlling the government; but now a court faction had sprung ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... milk often fails. We may also attribute to the disturbance of the sexual functions the frequent occurrence of that monstrous instinct which leads the mother to devour her own offspring,—a mysterious case of perversion, as it ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... organized natures see or create something gross and prurient in things intrinsically sweet and pure, and it happens that when the dance has fallen to their shaping and direction, as in religious rites, then it has received its most objectionable development and perversion. But the grossness of dances devised by the secular mind for purposes of aesthetic pleasure is all in the censorious critic, who deserves the same kind of rebuke administered by Dr. Johnson to Boswell, who asked the Doctor if he considered ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... eminent unbelievers. It is curious to read their own accounts of themselves, the rather as they accord so exactly with the result of our own observation.—We find that they once perhaps gave a sort of implicit hereditary assent to the truth of Christianity, and were what, by a mischievous perversion of language, the world denominates believers. How were they then awakened from their sleep of ignorance? At what moment did the light of truth beam in upon them, and dissipate the darkness in which they had been involved? The period of their infidelity is marked by no such ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... no grace of God; or those who deny to them the name of saints forget the words of Him Who said: By their fruits ye shall know them; of Him Who said, too: That the unpardonable sin, the sin which shewed complete moral perversion, the sin against the Holy Spirit of God, was to attribute good deeds to bad motives, and say: He casteth out devils by Beelzebub, the prince of ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... sublimity, 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 vein constantly discernible in him; with ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless



Words linked to "Perversion" :   wrongdoing, curve, sex activity, oral sex, paraphilia, head, sex, anal intercourse, anal sex, buggery, sexual practice, curved shape, pervert, sexual activity, sexual perversion, wrongful conduct, misconduct, actus reus, sodomy



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