Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'



Pervert   /pˈərvərt/  /pərvˈərt/   Listen
Pervert

noun
1.
A person whose behavior deviates from what is acceptable especially in sexual behavior.  Synonyms: degenerate, deviant, deviate.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Pervert" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 ...
— 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

... 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 king and the people beheld him as if ascending ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... for this Mastership a constitution, designed for the sole purpose of accomplishing the liquidation of the Masterly class and race. They have endeavored to force this planetary constitution upon us by threats of force, and by a shameful attempt to pervert the fidelity of our chief-slaves—I will not insult these loyal servitors with this disgusting new name, freedmen—so that we might, a second time, be tricked into voting assent to our own undoing. But in this, they have failed. Our chief-slaves ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper

... to pervert the exhortation of Karl Marx, and unite under the banner of envy and greed every ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... fly. When weapons clash and heroes bleed, With elephant and harnessed steed, Ne'er, like the good, be his to fight Whose heart allowed the prince's flight. Though taught with care by one expert May he the Veda's text pervert, With impious mind on evil bent, Whose voice approved the banishment. May he with traitor lips reveal Whate'er he promised to conceal, And bruit abroad his friend's offence, Betrayed by generous confidence. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... "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

... time over this. Can't you manage to get some articles in the other papers hinting that at the last election we bribed all the voters in the county, and that we gave out enough contracts to simply pervert the whole constituency. Imply that we poured the public money into this county in bucketsful and that we are bound to do it again. Let Drone have plenty of material of this sort and he'll draw off every honest unbiased ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... thought, would be a secure retreat, for there science, religion, and philanthropy, PROFESSEDLY, go hand in hand. Like many other deluded parents, he thought that "Holiness to the Lord" was inscribed upon those walls, and that nothing which could pervert or defile the youthful mind, was permitted to enter there. With these views and feelings, he was undoubtedly sincere when he told me, "I would have a good home, and the nuns would take better care of me than he could." Rash his ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson

... for those things which will come to pass, and ponder upon the oaths which thou didst take when thou didst carry away the money, and consider that if, after that, thou wrongly dishonour them by some tricks or sophistries, thou wouldst not be able to pervert them; for Heaven is too mighty to be deceived by any man." When Chosroes saw this message, he neither made any immediate answer nor did he dismiss Anastasius, but he compelled ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius

... currency] conversion of currency, exchange of currency; exchange rate; bureau de 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 into, settle into, merge into, emerge ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... use of ciphers and abbreviations was rigorously proscribed; and as Justinian recollected, that the perpetual edict had been buried under the weight of commentators, he denounced the punishment of forgery against the rash civilians who should presume to interpret or pervert the will of their sovereign. The scholars of Accursius, of Bartolus, of Cujacius, should blush for their accumulated guilt, unless they dare to dispute his right of binding the authority of his successors and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... the treatment of Cuba. "It is," he said, "the Spanish peninsula alone that is ignorant of events in Cuba. But it is not ignorance only of which I complain. From those remote possessions comes the blood of the negro converted into gold to pervert the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... basely do the wrong to ask for bond or pledge? Or, if they wanted the virtue to charm, could they still more basely ask rewards they did not merit? Could they, with the wretched selfish jealousy of a modern marriage-maker, seek to cadaverate affection and to pervert each other into a utensil, a commodity, a thing appropriate to self and liable with other lumber to be cast aside? No, Fairfax; she played fairly and deeply into my hand. She created exactly such a pair of lovers as I could have desired: for with respect to the truth ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... with witches and wizards, that they shall be the instruments by whom he may more secretly affect and afflict the bodies and minds of others; and, if he can prevail upon those that make a visible profession, it may be the better covert unto his diabolical enterprise, and may the more readily pervert others to consenting unto his subjection. So far as we can look into those hellish mysteries, and guess at the administration of that kingdom of darkness, we may learn that witches make witches by persuading one the other to subscribe to a book or articles, &c.; ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... such a combination—that is the Greek conception of well-being; and it is because labour with the hands or at the desk distorts or impairs the body, and the petty cares of a calling pursued for bread pervert the soul, that so strong a contempt was felt by the Greeks for manual labour and trade. "The arts that are called mechanical," says Xenophon, "are also, and naturally enough, held in bad repute in our cities. For they spoil the bodies of workers and superintendents alike, ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... Carse's letter from Vienna. He had just discovered sensational evidence in a famous criminal case—one of recurrent human decapitation—and his consequent enthusiasm was so rabid that I was afraid the morbidity of such matters was beginning to pervert his senses. For several years I had become progressively aware of Carse's melancholic attitude, and I had often recommended that he take a vacation from criminal cases. His indefatigable enthusiasm for ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce

... the following particulars: 1. A modest covering for our bodies. 2. A defence against the hostile elements. 3. An acknowledgment of our spiritual nakedness and exposure to the wrath of God; and our need to be clothed with the righteousness of Christ. Whenever we pervert it from these ends, to the gratification of our pride or vanity, we not only do not glorify God therein, but ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb

... Nabonidus, and all other decadent races threatened by ruin, they attributed their decline, not to their own vices, but to the machinations of an angry god, and they looked on favours granted to strangers as a sacrilege. Had not the Greeks brought their divinities with them? Did they not pervert the simple country-folk, so that they associated the Greek religion with that of their own country? Money was scarce; Amasis had been obliged to debit the rations and pay of his mercenaries to the accounts of the most venerated Egyptian ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... which conveys to the soul all the varied harmonies of sound, from the choirs of spring, and the other innumerable minstrelsies of nature, as well as from the higher art of man, that soothe, elevate, and solemnise. It is true, indeed, that there are grosser appetites of the body which many pervert so as to enslave the spirit; thus abusing by gluttony, drunkenness, and every form of sensuality, what God the merciful and wise has intrusted to man to be used for wise and merciful ends. But even here there is already perceptible a marked difference between those appetites ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... and 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, but the responsibility of an utter failure would have ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... am in a nest of conspirators," he remarked, dryly. "There is no longer any doubt about it. I do not know, Baron Domiloff, what magic you use to pervert honest men, but your success is certainly astounding. ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

... 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Christian land must expect to be governed, or to be held 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. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... the license and 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 under the influence ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... was a great lake full of flaming mire in which were certain men that pervert righteousness, and ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... in Connecticut was composed of Philistines, as not to believe that the red men were the lost tribes, and that Peter, in particular, was not especially and elaborately described in the Old Testament. He had become so thoroughly possessed by this crotchet as to pervert everything that he saw, read, or heard, into evidence, of some sort or other, of the truth of his notions. In this respect there was nothing peculiar in the good missionary's weakness, it being a failing common to partisans of a theory, to discover proofs of its truths in a thousand things ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... solace of her children's love. Let us care for them meanwhile. They have no other kindred. Think of our sweet Henriette—so rich, so beautiful, so over-intelligent—growing from child to woman in the care of servants, who may spoil and pervert her even by their ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... said, I trust, without offence; Let no court sycophant pervert my sense, Nor sly informer watch these words to draw Within the reach ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... Anecdote is perhaps the one book in the room which comes within measurable distance of Frost. I should probably try this book first, but it has a fatal objection in its too seductive title. "I am not curious," as Miss Lottie Venne says in one of her parts, "but I like to know," and I might be tempted to pervert the book from its natural uses and open it, so as to find out what kind of a thing a moral and religious anecdote is. I know, of course, that there are a great many anecdotes in the Bible, but no one thinks of calling them either moral or religious, though some ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... mind of Ned Hinkley a 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 ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... as an independent nation. We have 'hoisted the mainsail' of the ship of state and started her about the world. While heeding Washington's warnings and the popular interpretation of the Monroe doctrine to keep the people of other nations from getting a foothold on this continent, we shall not pervert their spirit by stubbornly refusing to improve an opportunity to extend and increase our power and our commerce. Every extension of our territory hitherto made has been resisted by a spirit the same in essence as that which now timidly ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall

... show how many persons strive to pervert praiseworthy enterprises, I will instance again the people of St. Malo and others, who say that the profit of these discoveries belongs to them, since Jacques Cartier, who first visited Canada and the islands of New Foundland, was from their city, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain

... 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 would thicken in ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... among them for a bastard to become king, when there is a son born of a true marriage, and secondly that Cambyses was the son of Cassandane the daughter of Pharnaspes, a man of the Achaimenid family, and not the son of the Egyptian woman: but they pervert the truth of history, claiming to be kindred with the house of Cyrus. Thus ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... one is careless about little things; they will right themselves: persons of the baser sort pervert the freedom of the country to their own uses; they make 'corners' and 'rings' and steal the money of the municipality; never mind; some day, when we have time, we will straighten things out. In youth, also, one is tempted to gallant apparel, bravery of show, a defiant bearing, ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant

... From the pangs of 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 shall ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... a different gospel from that preached by Paul, who says: "I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ, unto another gospel: which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed," Gal. 1:6-9. "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema, ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... program, was already on the way to defeat Another, nationalism, as the President interpreted it, had alienated the Abolitionists. The third, his argument for himself as tribune, was just what your crafty politician might twist, pervert, load with false meanings to his heart's content. Men less astute than Chandler and Wade could not have failed to see where fortune pointed. Their opportunity lay in a combination of the two issues. Abolition and the resistance to executive "usurpation." Their problem was ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... the inclosed commas are so closely connected grammatically with the immediately preceding words or phrases, that they should be read without a perceptible pause, or with only a slight one for breath, without change of voice. Some of the commas would grossly pervert the meaning if strictly construed. Thus, from No. 3 it would appear that the people of the United States in general lived adjacent to the frontier; from No. 4, that all observers have recently investigated ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... 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 of the grey-hair'd fathers, if our ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... might be mitigated, or forgotten for a season, by giving up the soul to delusions, even by summoning before the mind repulsive and horrible images, that would be to put to an unlawful use, and to pervert, the brightest faculties our Father has given us: therefore we seek no other support in all sufferings and calamities but that of reason only. If you wish for my affection, you will not speak of such things again, but will endeavor to purify yourself from a mental vice, which may sometimes, ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... together, But we cannot speak when absent, Cannot send our voices from us To the friends that dwell afar off; Cannot send a secret message, But the bearer learns our secret, May pervert it, may betray it, May reveal it unto others." Thus said Hiawatha, walking In the solitary forest, Pondering, musing in the forest, On the welfare of ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow

... swarms of Jesuits, who had settled in England an episcopal jurisdiction to pervert the people. At the same time the naval war with Holland absorbed all the pecuniary resources, while a commercial war with France and Portugal cramped the industry of the nation. He then bade them contrast this picture with the existing state of ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... been deceived—shamefully deceived and wronged—by wealthy and powerful men. I had appealed to the law of my country, and the law refused to right me. No, not the law, but those who sat on the judgment-seat to pervert the law. It matters not now; I was driven mad at the time, for the wrong done was not done so much to me as to those whom I loved. I vowed ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... Rye" give Borrow's character and soul by direct and indirect means. Their truth and fiction produce a consistent picture which we feel to be true. Dr. Knapp has shown, where the facts are accessible, that Borrow does not much neglect, mislay or pervert them. But neither Dr. Knapp nor anyone else has captured facts which would be of any significance had Borrow told us nothing himself. Some of the anecdotes lap a branch here and there; some disclose a little rotten ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... to this page for the exact word, my eye is caught by one of the sentences of Londonian[4] thought which constantly pervert the well-meant books of pious England. "We see also," says the Dean, "the union of innocent fiction with worldly craft, which marks so many of the legends both of Pagan and Christian times." I might simply reply ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin

... 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

... enacting by Congress of a Territorial slave 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

... 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, the ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... majority of a nation may be more than sufficient to-day to counteract the folly of the unit; but there is always the chance that the folly of the individual may in time prevail against the experience of the wise, and pervert the nation. At all events, we ought to consider such possibilities before we hold ourselves free to do as we please in contempt of ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... in jest or earnest, only do temporary harm for the moment, but those who injure the character by their praise, aye, and by their flattery undermine the morals, act like those slaves who do not steal from the bin, but from the seed corn.[393] For they pervert the disposition, which is the seed of actions, and the character, which is the principle and fountain of life, by attaching to vice names that belong properly only to virtue. For as Thucydides says,[394] ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... body 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

... last words of Francesco Spira, an Italian lawyer and a pervert, whose terrible death, in the agonies of remorse and despair, made a deep and lasting impression on the ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt

... 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 ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach

... insane, whose crimes spring from inherited perverse instincts. These unfortunate beings cannot be consigned to ordinary prisons, since, owing to their state of mental alienation, they do not possess even the modesty of the vicious—hypocrisy—and they never fail to pervert those criminaloids with whom they come in contact. Malcontents by nature, they distrust everybody and everything, and as they see an enemy in every warder and official, they are the centres of ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... 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 of the honest ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... impose 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, wrong. ill-use, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... divine providence he would not act in freedom according to reason, nor would anything appear to be his own doing. It would be the same if he foreknew events. ii. If man saw divine providence plainly, he would inject himself into the order and tenor of its course, and pervert and destroy them. iii. If man beheld divine providence plainly he would either deny God or make himself god. iv. Man can see divine providence on the back and not in the face; also in a spiritual, not a ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... the creature and friend of Cranmer, like his protector a secret pervert to the Protestant doctrines of Germany, and the first arch-plotter for the destruction of Catholicity in the British Isles, undertook to save the English power in Ireland by forcing on that country the supremacy of the king in religious ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... riches, or pleasures; should be suffered to confront and contest as it were, with that which is rational, and operatively good. For all these things, if once though but for a while, they begin to please, they presently prevail, and pervert a man's mind, or turn a man from the right way. Do thou therefore I say absolutely and freely make choice of that which is best, and stick unto it. Now, that they say is best, which is most profitable. If ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius

... of law and order and of public and private morals. Like all great callings, from which even the sacredness of the pulpit is not exempt, there are those who bring persistent dishonor upon journalism, and pervert its powers to ambition and greed; but discounted by all its imperfections, it is to-day the greatest of our great factors in maintaining the best attributes of our civilization and preserving social order and the majesty of law; and the duties of the journalist to-day in our great cities ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... and devices, of those who call themselves gentlemen, yet pervert the design of Providence, in giving them ample means to do good, to their own everlasting perdition, and the ruin of ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... Seward. France invites 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 the use to deny it now? ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... Age grows fairer when viewed from a distance. Besides, and as a general consideration, it 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 is academic ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... careful statement of it. If the world read the gospel wrongly, and wrest it to its own destruction, those who set forth gospel principles are not responsible, unless, as has too often been the case with reference to this subject, the trumpet give an uncertain sound. And the world is too ready to pervert this truth, and does pervert it. Christians, if properly instructed, are so far from being disqualified to use amusements safely, the best qualified of all others to develop their highest uses, and to enjoy without abusing them. The world regards only the permission to enjoy, and ignores ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.

... room from Mr. Durham to the provost, craving his assistance to apprehend Mr. Durham as a Jesuit, assuring the provost, that if ever there was a jesuit in Rome he was one, and that if he were suffered to remain in the town or country, he might pervert many from the faith.——Upon which the provost, going along with him to the house where the pretended jesuit was, and entering the room, he immediately knew Mr. Durham, and saluted him as laird of Easter Powrie, craving his pardon for their mistake, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... Christ dependeth not upon 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, nill the councils, to ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel

... the form of art, is acceptable and even longed for. This is the allurement of war, its persistent illusion, perhaps. The aesthetic forms of war take war out of the field of reason, and on occasion make it transcend or pervert reason. So we may understand why it is true that sometimes those who but little understand why they are to die on the field of battle may display the greatest courage and the greatest enthusiasm for war, and we ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... both of these proceed in harmony with natural order, and therefore with these the spirits associated with man have nothing in common. Animals also are governed by means of this general influx from the spiritual world, because they are in the order of their life, and animals have not been able to pervert and destroy that order because they have no rational faculty.{1} What the difference between man and beasts is may be seen ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... stir up to lust, to wantonness, such as teach idle, wanton, lascivious discourse, and such as has a tendency to provoke to profane drollery and Jesting; and lastly, such as tend to corrupt, and pervert the Doctrine of Faith and Holiness. All these things will eat as doth a canker, and will quickly spoil, in Youth, &c. those good beginnings that may be putting forth ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan

... 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. The name God, used as a proper name, in the English tongue, means "the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... colony 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, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... accurately expressed the conviction in my mind. The narrative related by Ambrose had all the appearance, in my eyes, of a fabricated story, got up, and clumsily got up, to pervert the plain meaning of the circumstantial evidence produced by the prosecution. I reached this conclusion reluctantly and regretfully, for Naomi's sake. I said all I could say to shake the absolute confidence which she felt in the discharge of the prisoners at ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins

... she returned, 'to leave him, I am afraid to leave any of them. When I am gone, they pervert—but they don't ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... he was absent at the land sales at Fort Leavenworth, Judge Lecompte a second time set this wretch at liberty. Mr. Geary was provoked beyond endurance, and wrote to the President that he would not remain in office and allow such a scoundrel to be kept in a position to pervert the ways of justice. President Pierce nominated C. O. Harrison, of Kentucky, to take Lecompte's place, but for some unexplained cause the appointment was not confirmed in the Senate, and Judge Lecompte retained his place, and in unspeakable disgust Gov. Geary ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... creature: incapable, of observing, just capable of taking an impression here and there; and in such cases the impressions that come are stamped on hot wax; they keep the scene fresh; they partly pervert it as well. Temple's version is, I am sure, the truer historical picture. He, however, could never repeat it twice exactly alike, whereas I failed not to render image for image in clear succession as they had struck me at the time. I could perceive that the figure ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... of the testimony of my own feelings, the miseries of Clithero appeared in some degree fantastic and groundless. A thousand conceivable motives might induce him to pervert or conceal the truth. If he were thoroughly known, his character might assume a new appearance; and what is now so difficult to reconcile to common maxims might prove perfectly consistent with them. I desire to restore ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... all." And she gave him a history of Isadore's efforts to pervert her, and their effect upon her; also of the conversation of that afternoon, in which Mr. Daly had answered the questions of Isadore, that had most perplexed and ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley

... Lesbia's campaign began in real earnest—a life of pleasure, a life of utter selfishness and self-indulgence, which would go far to pervert the strongest mind, tarnish the purest nature. To dress and be admired—that was what Lesbia's life meant from morning till night. She had no higher or nobler aim. Even on Sunday mornings at the fashionable church, where the women sat ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... an article, 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

... unequaled by any other athletic sport. While the game has advanced with marvelous rapidity it has experienced short periods of depression and stagnation during its career of thirty years. It has had enemies who have sought to pervert it for their own uses. It has been all but torn asunder by civil war. But each time it has bravely met the issue and in the end triumphed. It is just now recovering from the effects of a civil war which all but destroyed ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick

... skilful geometrician, who when more easily, and with one stroke of his compass, he might describe or divide a right line, had yet rather to do this in a circle or longer way, according to the constituted and fore-laid principles of his art: yet this rule of His He doth sometimes pervert, to acquaint the world with His prerogative, 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, ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte

... help. Second, everyone who can distinguish between license and liberty must agree that we should limit the influence of individuals and institutions which suppress minority opinion, and distort facts in the effort to pervert Public Opinion. ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... punishment and their own reward, the one bitter, the other sweet enough to secure in a natural way increased strength, care, prudence, and endurance. It is completely unnecessary for the educator to use, besides these, some special punishments or special rewards, and so pervert the conceptions of the child that failure seems to him to be a wrong, success on the ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key

... 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 ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... 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 ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... which we enjoyed aforetime. Shall we receive those at the hands of the Lord, and not bear to receive hard things likewise? But I perceive now why thou so speakest. Come forth, thou that standest behind her to pervert her heart and make her speak as one of the foolish women. Hide thyself no longer; come forth and withstand me to the face." Then Satan came forth from behind my wife, and stood before me ashamed, and even weeping in the bitterness ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James

... 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

... cautiously adopted. Every patriot will rejoice to see its authority so exerted as to advance the prosperity and honor of the nation, whilst he will watch with jealousy any attempt to mutilate this charter of our liberties or pervert its powers to acts of aggression or injustice. Thus shall conservatism and progress blend their harmonious action in preserving the form and spirit of the Constitution and at the same time carry forward the great improvements of the country with ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... own belief. She would not secede with her father; but remained in the Church of the mother she was never to see again, and this in spite of extraordinary and dogged efforts on the part of Lord Rens to pervert her to his own Atheism. His mind had been so warped by the agony of his heart that he had come to feel as if by tearing his only child from the religion he had been led to by the greatest sinner he had known, he would be, in some degree at least, purifying his life tarnished by his wife's conduct, ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... staring him in the face from the Independent American, the judge denies, or sanctions a denial, that he ever ordered an advertisement to be printed in that paper at all. Unblushing impudence indeed!—Thus to ask the public to pervert the eternal principles of truth and justice by giving credit to ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector

... 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

... does for men of genius. It admits them to political 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 circumstances, have been the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... for it, to be selfishly engrossed in it, but not mean to enjoy it when it comes, or even to seek it, if we neglect no higher interest in doing so. All that God made us to feel is dignified and pure, unless we pervert it." ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... hell is opened, saith the Lord; its jaws are gaping wide, to swallow up all those that oppress the afflicted and pervert judgement in the cause of the ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... it nowise apprehended, that any personal connection of ours with Teufelsdrockh, 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 ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... from 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

... Isab. You pervert my meaning: I would not keep my actions from his knowledge; your bold attempts I would: But yet henceforth conceal your impious flames; I shall not ever be thus indulgent to your shame, to keep ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... the *great *assembly stands *Bagnadath-el Of Kings and lordly States, Among the gods* on both his hands. *Bekerev. He judges and debates. 2 How long will ye *pervert the right *Tishphetu With *judgment false and wrong gnavel. Favouring the wicked by your might, Who thence grow bold and strong? 3 *Regard the *weak and fatherless *Shiphtu-dal. *Dispatch the *poor mans cause, 10 And **raise the man in deep distress ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... arrogance and cruelty; whereas all the facts of the case prove directly the reverse. We give the account of the affair from one American writer, who, though partial, was too honest to omit essential facts, much less to pervert them; we refer to Dr. Holmes, author of American Annals, and quote at length his account of the affair. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... old noble's good-humored rhapsody, but, much as she loved her native land, she could not pervert the truth by pretending that the sight was one to be often ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... repeat the experiments before the public, to descend from the professional chair in order to practise the part of a butcher or of an executioner, is painful to the feelings and disgusting to the sentiments of the student.... Such public exhibitions are ignoble, and of a kind which pervert the generous sentiments of youth. An end should be put to them. Ought we to allow the e'lite of our French youths to feed their eyes with the sight of the flowing blood of living animals, and to have their ears stunned with their groans, at this time when society is ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... 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 ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead

... Wingate," answered the Dame; "but is that a good reason why he should pervert the king's liege ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... about the animals, you must do so unequivocally, as Kipling does and as AEsop did; the fiction must declare itself at once, or the work is vicious. To make literature out of natural history observation is not to pervert or distort the facts, or to draw the long bow at all; it is to see the facts in their true relations and proportions ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs

... A pervert whom I can trust told me that he had made advances to upward of one hundred men in the course of the last fourteen years, and that he had only once met with a refusal (in which case the man later on offered himself spontaneously) ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... probably also represented by Asmodeus, to whom lustful qualities are assigned (Tobit vi. 14); Gen. iii. is probably referred to in Psalms of Solomon xvii. 49, "a serpent speaking with the words of transgressors, words of deceit to pervert wisdom." The Book of the Secrets of Enoch not only identifies Satan with the Serpent, but also describes his revolt against God, and expulsion from heaven. In the Jewish Targums Sammael, "the highest angel that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... 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 make you beat your wives and children; ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... grant these facts: corruption sways, Self-interest does pervert man's ways; That bribes do blind; that present crimes Do equal those of former times: Can I against plain facts engage To vindicate the present age? I know that bribes in modern palm Can nobler energies encalm; ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... is the work of the devil; "the soul that sins shall die." If you will read the whole chapter and seriously consider it, and pray to God through Jesus Christ to open your understanding, that you may understand the scriptures, you would not misappply and pervert them as I fear you do. In your speaking at the house of mourning, you began and spake very eloquently at first upon death; then you brought forward the same ideas, with respect to death, as you did before at the ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou

... was going to talk to you about that, Marshal," said Queen Selina. "There are many reasons why it is undesirable that Miss Heritage should remain here any longer. After the underhand and ungrateful manner in which she has tried to pervert Prince Mirliflor from his attachment to Princess Edna, I feel it my duty ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... poor insignificant wretches," said Sir Geoffrey, "whose very life is a lie—and whose bread is perjury—would you pervert my innocent words almost as soon as they have quitted my lips? I tell you the country is well weary of you; and should Englishmen come to their senses, the jail, the pillory, the whipping-post, and the gibbet, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... encourages cruelty or calumny. Let them seek for it amongst the members of the Church of Rome, and more especially amongst those who have renegaded to it. There is nothing, however false and horrible, which a pervert to Rome will not say for his Church, and which his priests will not encourage him in saying; and there is nothing, however horrible—the more horrible indeed and revolting to human nature, the more eager he would be to do it—which he ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... familiar to the people, first began to speak on the anti-slavery question, I felt that if the diffidence and modesty and delicacy of woman had not been sacrificed, it had, at any rate, been put in peril; and that, although a few might survive, the perilous example would pervert and destroy the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... that 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 of men, and forcing them to such ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... 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 ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... speeches of any trouble you, who pervert the truth, that they may draw you aside from the truth of the ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... to many the longest part of life, and to almost all the most innocent and happy, is yet unthankfully neglected, except by those who pervert her gifts. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... therefore the conclusion naturally follows, that the author also took the divine days of creation as such earthly days of twenty-four hours. A simple reference of the same to periods, so that we should again think of fixed periods of the earth or of the world, would especially pervert the literal sense—would entirely remove from the account the idea of "day" which is so essential to the author of the record, and thereby render obscure the archetype of the divine week of creation for ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... entirely another affair. He could neither stifle nor deaden that. It was always jabbing him with white-hot barbs, waking or sleeping. But it never said: "Tell someone! Tell someone!" Was he something of a moral pervert, then? Was it what he had lost—the familiar world—rather than what ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... among the gods who dwell on Olympus, and whenever anyone hurts her with lying slander, she sits beside her father, Zeus the son of Cronos, and tells him of men's wicked heart, until the people pay for the mad folly of their princes who, evilly minded, pervert judgement and give sentence crookedly. Keep watch against this, you princes, and make straight your judgements, you who devour bribes; put crooked ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... 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 ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters

... which superstition, united with politics, exert their efforts to pervert, abuse, and poison the heart of man; the generality of human institutions appear to have only for their object to abase the human character, to render it more flagitiously wicked. Do not then let us be at all astonished if morality is almost every where a barren ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... white 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 ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... difficult to fittingly characterize this scandalous effort to pervert a great State trial into an instrumentality for the successful exploitation of a commercial venture which was by no means free from the elements of ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross

... snake, a venomous viper! It is his business, his only aim in life, to destroy my peace, to pervert my daughter from the wholesome views I have tried to teach her, to turn you aside from the narrow path of austere Italian virtue, to draw you away from following in the footsteps of Brutus, of Cassius, of the great Romans, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... wealthy class have it in their power so to mould this change as to render it peaceful, gradual and universally beneficent; or they can turn a deaf ear to the calls of humanity, and let the demagogue, the envious, the selfishly discontented, pervert it into an engine of convulsion, destruction and desolation. As in the days of King John, the barons laid the foundations of English political liberty, so in our day the intellectual and philanthropic may guide the car of progress, and in establishing industrial ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... it true that a church, or any body corporate, whose very existence as such is professedly to cultivate and disseminate the principles of sound morality and true religion, does fall so far short of the faith delivered to the saints—does so far forget its origin, and pervert its aims, as to violate common law and common honesty, and persist in its violation, deliberately, against repeated remonstrances, by sheer force? Yet we see no convulsion in the community. Nothing intimates that a great grief is fallen upon Israel. Everybody eats, drinks, and sleeps ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... is a gentleman. He took his degree at Oxford, and then became what we call a pervert, and what I suppose they call a convert. He has not got a shilling in the world beyond what they pay him as a priest, which I take it amounts to about as much as the wages of a day labourer. He told me the other day that he was absolutely forced to ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... as to eat an apple. That is my religion, and I feel that our platter is pretty near clean of some things, and we calculate to keep it clean from this time henceforth and forever .... And if men and women will not live their religion, but take a course to pervert the hearts of the righteous, we will 'lay judgment to the line and righteousness to the plummet,' and we will let you know that the earth can swallow you up as did Koran with his hosts; and, as Brother Taylor says, you may dig your graves, and we will ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... predestinate purpose that men should be and 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]. If you lay hold of the heart of God you have ground enough."[36] ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... 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. ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther

... the worse appear the better cause, and only requires money in return for his services. Such an art will be forbidden by the legislator, and if existing among us will be requested to depart to another city. To the disobedient let the voice of the law be heard saying:—He who tries to pervert justice in the minds of the judges, or to increase litigation, shall be brought before the supreme court. If he does so from contentiousness, let him be silenced for a time, and, if he offend again, put to death. If he have acted from a love of gain, ...
— Laws • Plato

... 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 hashish, ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... pervert the king's true bent, The white crow's part who play, Have slain their thousands innocent, And slay, and ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka

... 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 ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... 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, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis

... 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

... own old process of education, is this development of the powers of so-called self-expression in a child. Let us beware of artificially stimulating his self-consciousness and his so-called imagination. All that we do is to pervert the child into a ghastly state of self-consciousness, making him affectedly try to show off as we wish him to show off. The moment the least little trace of self-consciousness enters in a child, good-by to ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... 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 to ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... of Montmorency. The old verbal tyranny of the French Academy, the painted wreaths sold at cemetery-gates, the colored plates of fashions, powdered hair, and rouged cheeks, typify and illustrate this irreverent ambition to pervert Nature and create artificial effects; they are but so many forms of the theatrical instinct, and proofs of the ascendency of meretricious taste. It is this want of loyalty to Nature, and insensibility to her unadulterated charms, which constitute ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various



Words linked to "Pervert" :   lech, miscreant, sodomist, nymphomaniac, carnalise, bastardize, fetishist, bastardise, sensualize, lead off, perversive, satyr, letch, change, masochist, lead astray, alter, perversion, infect, sod, modify, fracture, sadomasochist, suborn, use, vitiate, nympho, paedophile, paederast, poison, lecher, sadist, child molester, sodomite, pedophile, reprobate, bugger, sensualise, carnalize, take in vain, denote, expend, pederast, refer



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com