But though there was some evidence of cruelty, there was none of murder; and the aunt and her husband had sought to palliate cruelty by alleging the exceeding stubbornness and perversity of the child, who was declared to be half-witted.
A strange perversity dominated the currents of our thought.
Whatever in days gone by hath been the cause of the denial and opposition of those people hath now led to the perversity of the people of this age.
So great is the folly and perversity of the people, that they have turned their face toward their own thoughts and desires, and have turned their back upon the knowledge and will of God—hallowed and glorified be His name!
The spirit of perversity seized upon Beauchamp again in a moment; and he was not satisfied.
But it is also clear that his aim is to write nonsense rather than sense and perhaps to put forward under a film of absurdity a certain natural perversity which would not be welcomed if it were more lucidly expressed.
It may not be wholly due to perversity if the characteristics of these long biographical novels should overshadow the sharp merits of, say, Carnival.
I also suspect that the essentially pathoformic lie has some relation to sex, perhaps to perversity or impotence, or exaggerated sexual impulse.
How far the perversity of the inanimate can lead I saw in a criminal case in which a big isolated hay-stack was set on fire.
Vischer, there is an excellent portrait of the perversity of things; the author asserts that things rather frequently hold ecumenical councils with the devil for the molestation of mankind.
The moment that Alice saw him wearing that shallow veneering of pleasantness on his never prepossessing visage, she felt a mood of perversity come over her.
It was a standing grief to the good old priest, this strange perversity of the girl in the matter of religious duty, as he saw it.
This perversity disturbs the peace of the body, and is therefore painful.
The perversity of man is therefore chargeable to God.
There is an instructive illustration of theological perversity in the watchful energy with which these provisions were enforced to the suppression of heresy while yet the pagan temples and ceremonies remained undisturbed.
There is something grotesquely horrible in the contrast between this crowning exhibition of human perversity and the cool business calculation of the cost of thus sending a human soul through flame to its Creator.
With the exception of the case of the total inanity and perversity of view, our judgment must never be indiscriminate or rigorous.
He might have lived elsewhere; but nowhere else could he have gratified his perversity with such completeness.
One would need to have a bent towards perversity to say after this that it is more malicious to leave to someone the whole trouble and the whole blame of his destruction.
But such is the perversity of this unfortunate man's talent that he has erected a structure on the limestone crag, of almost miraculous hideousness.
The name I will not give, lest any of my fair readers, in that spirit of delightful perversity that characterises the sex, should go there and spoil the credit of the pension.
And what seemed to him her stubborn perversity drove him to despair.
It was difficult to be angry with one whose perversity made her so evidently wretched.
She avowed that she ought to have understood the perversity of man.
The elder ladies talked a little, moralizing upon theperversity of human nature, which sent them home like this in their finery on the bonnie bright morning, when working folk were going out to their day's darg.
If it was Lilias, as the other ladies said, then all was well: but the mother of a man recognizes a perversity in that article which is never to be calculated upon.
It would seem as though the natural perversity of this abandoned woman, having till then slumbered, was suddenly awakened, and developed itself with fearful energy.
The innateperversity of his character marred all these high qualities.
Her faith might have perished, but the sense of her own old deepperversity remained.
I ask myself with vain rage how you ever came into such a world, and why the perversity of fate never let me know you before.
Longmore turned away with the feeling that women were indeed a measureless mystery, and that it was hard to say in which of their forms of perversity there was most merit.
But this perversitymight be cured, and if it were cured an earthly Elysium seemed a thing not wholly unreasonable to expect.
Byron looked upon the evils from which he and others suffered as due largely to the perversity of society.
True, she had written him on her arrival, but, with feminine perversity of logic, thought it a trifle inconsiderate of him to come so soon after that trying railroad journey.
And yet, in this wilderness that was famishing for woman’s love and tears and laughter, by a very perversityof fate she walked alone.
Only, in the house, owing to some unnatural perversity of circumstances, he did not see much of Evelyn, never alone for more than a moment.
The fact is, there is a spirit of moral perversity in the plant, which makes it grow the more, the more it is interfered with.
