United States or Greenland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But such a man has challenged his own equality by the perversity of his inimical and hurtful actions, and if he suffers at the hands of a superior force he only reaps the recoil of his own actions."
In spite of these great honours, however, the undoubted perversity of her nature made her an easy accomplice to the duplicity of Tung Fel, who, by means of various disguises, found frequent opportunity of uttering in her presence numerous well-thought-out suggestions specially designed to lead her imagination towards an existence in which this person had no adequate representation.
So that in practice we agree with him, while parting with him in theory. Carlyle evidently has in mind usually the thought that it is one's own happiness only that is put up as the end by the moralists he opposes. This was pure misunderstanding, however, or perversity. To this point we must return, merely mentioning here the fact that no reputable moralist now preaches the selfish theory.
His family had shown a perversity of taste in preferring the sea, and he had perforce been content with a visit of a month or so every other summer, accompanied usually by his daughter, Helen. On such occasions, he stayed with his sister, Mrs. Whitely. The Whitely mills were significant of the new Bremerton, now neither village nor city, but partaking of the characteristics of both.
Tyrants and wicked princes, whose consciences continually reproach them with negligence or perversity, far from fearing their God, had rather deal with this invisible judge who never opposes any thing, or with his priests who are always condescending to the rulers of the earth, than with their own subjects.
We know as well as we know anything, that in doing this and in not doing that we are going every day right in the teeth both of God's law and God's grace; and yet in the sheer obstinacy and perversity of our heart we still go on in what we know quite well to be the suicide of our souls.
Serenely, supremely, she lived. Her old biting temper was now righteous indignation. Her dislike for household work was only an evidence that, like beautiful Mary, she had chosen the better part. What her mother had always called obstinacy and perversity were now stead-fastness in the Lord. Oddly, her tart, sarcastic, even flaying tongue was not softened by any gentleness of divine inspiration.
In each, whatever the quality of the plot, there are always two or three personages who talk and act as real men and women do now rationally or in obedience to custom, now passionately or with that perversity which, as the author once describes it, 'is like a natural law, independent of other laws, the only one that persistently defies our calculations. They are mostly big people with big appetites.
You know well to what extremes passion can lead when circumstances favor its fierce, its all-invading growth. "What is most bitter to me is the thought of having employed artifice, deceit, and base concealments I who was truth itself. I am humiliated in my own estimation. But is this the greatest perversity into which the soul can fall? Am I beginning now, or have I ended? I cannot tell.
Perversity and viciousness of will are too often treated as constitutional disease; and insubordination or obstinacy, especially in school, are secretly admired as strength, instead of being vigorously treated as crampy disorders of will, and the child is coddled into flaccidity.
Word Of The Day