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Perversely   /pərvˈərsli/   Listen
Perversely

adverb
1.
Deliberately deviant.
2.
In a contrary disobedient manner.  Synonyms: contrarily, contrariwise.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Perversely" Quotes from Famous Books



... it sounds conceited,' said Mark, 'but the real truth is, that when I hear such kind things said about a work which—which gave me so very little trouble to produce, it makes me a little uncomfortable sometimes, because (you know how perversely things happen sometimes), because I can't help a sort of fear that my next book, to which I really am giving serious labour, may be utterly ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... Some trifle, no doubt, which she had not cared to lose, and yet had not wished to leave behind. He failed to find anything in the search, which he could not make very thorough, and he was going guiltily out when his eye fell upon an envelope, perversely fallen beside the door and almost indiscernible against the white paint, with the ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... unroped, unlocked, and their contents scattered about. One might have thought that a great fair was about to begin, or that a great Industrial Exhibition was to be opened on the banks of the Ticino. The hunt was especially for books,—bad books, which England will perversely print, and Englishmen perversely read. My little stock was collected, bound together with a cord, and sent in to the chief douanier, who sat, Radamanthus-like, in an inner apartment, to judge books, papers, and persons. There is nothing there, thought I, to which even an Austrian official can take ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... that's all!" Claude smiled perversely and took up his paper again. "I wonder how it will look to people here if you go off and leave ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... Wigan! The stories that have been told about her would fill a book! She was exceedingly plain, rather like a toad, yet, perversely, she was more vain of her looks than of her acting. In the theater she gave herself great airs and graces, and outside it hobnobbed with ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... "Poema del Cid" that I was writing. He confesses, however, that he did his best to draw me—examining the English girl as a new specimen for his psychological collection. As for me, I can only perversely remember a passing phrase of his to the effect that there was too much magenta in the dress of Englishwomen, and too much pepper in the English cuisine. From English cooking—which showed ill in the Oxford of those days—he suffered, indeed, a good deal. Nor, in spite of his great literary ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... that height of sublime contemplation which reacheth to the apprehension of the mysteries and wonders of Dame Nature. And here be pleased to condemn yourself, by a renouncing of those errors which you have committed very grossly and somewhat perversely in expounding the prophetic sayings of the holy sibyl. Yet put the case (albeit I yield not to it) that, by the instigation of the devil, my wife should go about to wrong me, make me a cuckold downwards to the very breech, disgrace me otherwise, steal my goods ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... spite of all, she perversely hoped. If he would only make any sign, the least in the world, that he was sorry—that he still loved her—she could forgive him everything. When he drove away without another word, she could not believe ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... being content to accept something like thirty in a hundred. It was speedily very clear that Lavender's heart was not in the contest. He kept forgetting which ball he had been playing, missing easy shots, playing a perversely wrong game, and so forth. And yet his spirits were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... Persistently, perversely, Bennett stopped his ears to every consideration, to every argument. She wished to hazard her life. ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... Our fine schemes stood blocked for the want of so vulgar a thing as money; such fate waits often on fine schemes, but surely never more perversely. Yet, I know not why, I was glad that she had none. I was a guinea the better of her; the amount was not large, but it served to keep me still her Providence, and that, I fear, is what man, in his vanity, loves to be in woman's eyes; he struts and plumes himself in the pride ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... sentences!—written so innocently and interpreted so perversely! And yet the fierce and blind bewilderment with which Phoebe read or misread them was natural enough. She never doubted for a moment but that the bad woman who wrote them meant to offer herself to John. ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... no proof that Antoine Minard's murder was wrought by a Protestant hand. An address of Du Bourg, in which he reminded the unrighteous judge of the coming judgment of God, was, after the event, perversely construed as a threat of assassination. A Scotchman, Robert Stuart, a kinsman of the queen, was charged with firing the fatal pistol-shot, but even under the torture revealed nothing. Public opinion was divided, some attributing the catastrophe to Minard's well-known immorality ("d'autant," ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... Perversely enough the times when you did NOT see deer are more apt to remain vivid in your memory than the times when you did. I can still see distinctly sundry wide jump-marks where the animal I was tracking had evidently ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... made the other shore, he succeeded in breaking his halter; and, leaping over the stern, perversely struck out for the shore they had left. Cy and Caspar, horses of no character, blindly leaped after him. For a moment a dire disaster threatened; for Timoosis, borne down by the weight of his pack, could scarcely ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... next lifting of the latch there entered a person with his hat awry upon his head, his clothes perversely ill-suited to his form, his eyes staring in directions opposite to their intelligence, and a certain odd unsuitableness pervading his whole figure. Wherever he might chance to be, whether in palace or cottage, church ...
— The Intelligence Office (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... did think was that he had never seen a smile transform a face so agreeably. And having begun to smile, Rachel perversely continued it. She walked to the gate with her visitor, talking with irrelevant animation, inviting him to come the following day to help in the "carrying," asking questions about the village and its people, and graciously consenting to fix a day when she and her friend ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... a little obstinacy and some agility in shifting his ground, makes the fortune of an opponent. While one party is worried in disentangling a meaning, and the other is winding and unwinding about him with another, a word of the kind we have mentioned, carelessly or perversely slipped into an argument, may prolong it for a century or two—as it has happened! Vaugelas, who passed his whole life in the study of words, would not allow that the sense was to determine the meaning of words; for, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... said to have been such a smart journeyman blacksmith that he might, if Fate had not perversely placed a crown on his head, have earned a couple of louis every week by the making of locks and keys. Those who will may see the workshop where he employed many useful hours: Madame Elizabeth was at prayers meanwhile; the queen was making ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... Perversely, she caught up the field glasses from the table, drew them from their case, and, letting down the upper window sash with a slam, focused the glasses upon the river. "He usually crosses right at the mouth ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... perverse people," so runs the act De Heretico comburendo, "of a certain new sect, damnably thinking of the faith of the sacraments of the church, and of the authority of the same, against the law of God and of the church, usurping the office of preaching, do perversely and maliciously, in divers places within the realm, preach and teach divers new doctrines, and wicked erroneous opinions, contrary to the faith and determination of Holy Church. And of such sect and wicked doctrines ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... laws does not demonstrate progress," perversely insisted Mr. Tutt. "The more statutes you pass the more it indicates that you need 'em. An ideal community would ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... very well I never wanted to go," Billy answered. And because, being now committed to the Villalonga visit, she perversely dreaded it, she pursued aggrievedly, "I'd EVER so much rather have gone to ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... had permitted himself this qualification of the unfortunate persons she so perversely cherished, he repented of his roughness—and partly because he expected a flash from her. But it was one of her finest sides that she sometimes flashed with a mere mild glow. "I don't see why you don't make out a little more ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James

... along the waters of the Cumberland, the lair of moonshiner and of feudsman. The knight is a moonshiner's son, and the heroine a beautiful girl perversely christened "The Blight." Two impetuous young Southerners' fall under the spell of "The Blight's" charms and she learns what a large part jealousy and pistols have in the love making ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... to be perversely frivolous about the most exclusive metropolitan society in the world. But Uncle Peter was a crabbed old man, lingering past his generation, and the young people made generous allowance for ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... see the Republic thus perversely occupying its energies. It is melancholy to see the great soldier becoming gradually more ardent for battle with Barneveld and Uytenbogaert than with Spinola and Bucquoy, against whom he had won so many imperishable laurels. It is still sadder to see the man ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... me," he remarked perversely, "that windows will be a superfluous luxury. One can see out at a dozen places already; and as for ventilation, there is plenty ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... time for all things, and I must feel it unworthy of thy womanhood to so perversely jeer and flout at a good man's love, when 't is ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... eternal tongue, For ever most divinely in the wrong. Naked in nothing should a woman be; But veil her very wit with modesty: Let man discover, let not her display, But yield her charms of mind with sweet delay. For pleasure form'd, perversely some believe, To make themselves important, men must grieve. Lesbia the fair, to fire her jealous lord, Pretends, the fop she laughs at, is ador'd. In vain she's proud of secret innocence; The fact she fains were scarce a worse offence. ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... sometimes speak of "my church." I occasionally read of Mr. So-and-So's church! I know that the phrase is colloquially used, but nevertheless, it is unfortunate. Words that are perversely used tend to pervert the spirit. And this phrase tends to displace the Bridegroom. It helps to make us obtrusive, unduly aggressive, when we ought to be reverently hiding our faces with our ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... individuals who have contributed to the establishment of this institution, is to secure a home and a school for such girls as may be presented to the magistrates of the state, appointed for that purpose, as vagrants, perversely obstinate, deprived of the control and culture of their natural guardians, or guilty of petty offences, and exposed to a life ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... that the wave of self-condemnation suddenly burst upon and submerged the young clergyman. It passed again, leaving him staring fixedly at the pile of books he had taken down from the shelves, and gasping a little, as if for breath. Then the humorous side of the thing, perversely enough, appealed to him, and he grinned feebly to himself at the joke of his having imagined that he could write learnedly about the Chaldeans, or anything else. But, no, it shouldn't remain a joke! His long mobile face grew serious under ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... was not the proper thing to do in a public place—he embraced the majestic figure in the splendid sable cloak. Deb said, "Bother the proper thing!" and kissed him readily—charily, however, because conscious of teeth that were not Pennycuick teeth, and perversely objecting to the faultless costume. But, looking at the frock-coat, she perceived mourning-band upon the sleeve. Another ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... they triumph, if success Their thriving crimes attend; And sordid wretches, whom God hates, Perversely ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet

... again many days when one evening I went upstairs into my own room to take a peep over Charley's shoulder and see how she was getting on with her copy-book. Writing was a trying business to Charley, who seemed to have no natural power over a pen, but in whose hand every pen appeared to become perversely animated, and to go wrong and crooked, and to stop, and splash, and sidle into corners like a saddle-donkey. It was very odd to see what old letters Charley's young hand had made, they so wrinkled, and shrivelled, and tottering, it so plump and round. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... was now kindled in their eyes, and their cheeks glowed with indignation at the wrongs that threatened them; they were no longer disposed to act upon the principles of fatality, as they had perversely understood them; and they argued at once like reasonable and free beings, whose actions were in their choice, and who had no doubt but that their actions would produce adequate effects. They recollected that OMAR had, in the reign of Solyman, often rescued ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth

... sat there scowling out across the wide spaces, while romance and adventure, and something more, rode steadily nearer, heralded by the small gray cloud. When she was sure that a horseman was coming, she perversely removed herself to another spot where she would not be seen. And there she sat, out of sight from below and thus fancying herself undiscovered, refusing so much as a sly glance around her ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... that there is a female point of view. The woman's wisdom stands partly, not only for a wholesome hesitation about punishment, but even for a wholesome hesitation about absolute rules. There was something feminine and perversely true in that phrase of Wilde's, that people should not be treated as the rule, but all of them as exceptions. Made by a man the remark was a little effeminate; for Wilde did lack the masculine power of dogma and of democratic cooperation. But if a ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... also, and caused them to be fitted unto several times; which hereupon began to be sung in private houses, and by degrees to be taken up in all the churches of the French, and other nations which followed the Genevian platform. Marot's translation is said by Strada to have been ignorantly and perversely done, as being but the work of a man altogether unlearned; but not to be compared with that barbarity and botching, which everywhere occurreth in the translation of Sternhold and Hopkins. Which notwithstanding being first allowed for private ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various

... as distinct as Spanish or Italian. It is French, with merely a dialectical difference from "French of Paris." But the Normans, in this resembling the Gascons, have no special objection to a final consonant, and most vulgarly and perversely still sound divers s's and t's which the politer tongue of the capital dooms to an existence on ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman

... I should be unhappy if I did not. And I am—most perversely hoping for happiness. I have told myself that what I saw over John Graham's ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... do more for him!" Pothier's imagination fell into a vision over a consideration of his favorite text—that of the great sheet, wherein was all manner of flesh and fowl good for food, but the tongue of the old notary would trip at the name of Peter, and perversely say, "Rise, Pothier; ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... victoria, and the footman was already sounding the knocker. It had been no part of the arrangement that she should come to fetch her; it had been out of the question—a stroke in such bad taste as would have put Rose in the wrong. The girl had never dreamed of it, but somehow, suddenly, perversely, she was glad of it now; she even hoped that her grandmother and her aunt ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James

... set them successively in motion. She had MADE his marriage, quite as truly as his papal ancestor had made his family—though he could scarce see what she had made it for unless because she too was perversely romantic. He had neither bribed nor persuaded her, had given her nothing—scarce even till now articulate thanks; so that her profit-to think of it vulgarly—must have all had ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... dictum, bread was all right up to a certain point, and, according to another, all wrong. This man here held a brief for beans, especially the succulent baked bean; that man yonder served solemn warning upon me that if perversely I persisted to continue to eat baked beans the fat globules would form so fast I would have the sensation that a little boy was inside of me somewhere blowing bubbles. The writer didn't exactly say this, but it was the inference I drew ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb

... a slate-colored and maternal-appearing biddy, seemed to realize that something unusual was afoot. She refused to be driven into the coop, perversely diving about the yard and circling the out-buildings until even Young Pete's ambition flagged. Out of breath he marched to the house. Annersley's rifle stood in the corner. Young Pete eyed it longingly, finally picked it up and stole gingerly to the doorway. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... mighty stately, mighty mannish, mighty coy, if you please! And then must I be very humble, very submissive, and try to insinuate myself into his good graces: with downcast eye, if not by speech, beg his forgiveness for the distance I have so perversely kept him at?—Yes, I warrant!—But I shall see how this behaviour will sit upon me!—You have always rallied me upon my meekness, I think: well then, I will try if I can be still ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... not try to play the part of judge; for a man is sufficiently judged by his own writings. And, after all, it is rather interesting to meet people who are sincere and not afraid to speak their minds. I will admit that I rather enjoy—a little perversely, perhaps—some of these extreme opinions, where the writer's personality ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... all, if we sat down with some propensities toward evil, and walk away with much stronger toward good, in the midst of a world which we never had entered and of which we never had dreamed before—shall we perversely put on again the old man of criticism, and dissemble that we have been conducted by a most beneficent and most potent genius? Nothing proves to me so manifestly in what a pestiferous condition are its lazarettos, as when I observe how little ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... men with whom he had slight dealings on which he could bestow no thought. This is common with men who have risen from poverty; if they have not become hard and suspicious, they are generally obtuse to the minor indications by which shrewd men of education know the impostor, and they are perversely indulgent to little meannesses in their fellows which they are incapable of committing themselves. In Lincoln this was aggravated by an immense good-nature—as he confessed, he could hardly say ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... that it is only in respect of its supposed humour that this story shakes its readers' faith in the gifts of the narrator. As a mere piece of story-telling, and even as a study in landscape and figure-painting, it is quite perversely skilful. There is something almost irritating, as a waste of powers on unworthy material, in the prettiness of the picture which Sterne draws of the preparations for the departure of the two religieuses—the stir in the simple village, the co-operating labours of the gardener and the tailor, the ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... you to gain from me? Can the thoughts that my sight recalls to you be brighter, or more peaceful, than those which start upon me, when I gaze on you? Does not a ghastly air, a charnel breath, hover about us both? Why perversely incur a torture it is so easy to avoid? Leave me—leave these scenes. All earth spreads before you—choose your pursuits, and your resting place elsewhere, but grudge me ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... as a dripping-pan to a cluster of wax-lights; a china shepherdess, having been brought into violent collision with the tail of a raging lion on the mantel-piece, has reduced the noble beast to the short-cut condition of a Scotch colley. A broken candle has perversely fallen the only way in which it could have done any damage, and has thrown the quicksilver on the back of a large looking-glass into an alarming state of eruption. The return of "cracked and broken" presents a fearful list of smashage and fracture: the best tea-set is rendered ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... glad? Glad that Marion Kent was living out, perversely, this poor side of her—making a mistake? Losing, perhaps, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... in the mind, but I have had my compting-house duties to attend, my sick master to watch, my little children to look after, and how much good have I done in any way? Not a scrap as I can see; the pecuniary affairs have gone on perversely: how should they chuse [an omission here] when the sole proprietor is incapable of giving orders, yet not so far incapable as to be set aside! Distress, fraud, folly, meet me at every turn, and I am not able to fight ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... opinions on which it rested and of which it was the necessary completion; secondly, from rationalistic speculations, which, leading men to discredit the truth of the doctrine, led them arbitrarily to deny its existence in the Scripture, making them perversely force the texts that state it and wilfully blink the texts that hint it. Whether this be a proper and sound method of proceeding in critical investigations any one may judge. To us it seems equally unmanly and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... come to one of the crowd to inquire?" Cornelia asked. Up to that moment she had been flattered, too, by his serious appeal to her, and generously pleased. But the chance offered, and she perversely seized it. ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells

... animals. They are endowed with natural weapons of defence, with horns, with tusks, with hoofs, and talons; but man has to depend on his superior sagacity. In all his encounters with these, his proper enemies, he resorts to stratagem; and when he perversely turns his hostility against his fellow-man, he at first continues the same subtle ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... of himself and his finitude, can be nothing but the fulfilment of his own initial idiosyncrasies. Whatever other wills and other glories may exist in heaven lie not within his universe of aspiration. Even his most perversely metaphysical envy can begrudge to others only what he instinctively ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... Mr. Middleton's expression, no man, either horse or foot, ever marched to quell. The Chief Justice was the only man who took the field against it,—the force against which it was raised, instantly withdrew to give it elbow-room,—and, even then, it was a rebellion which perversely showed itself in acts of hospitality to the Nabob whom it was to dethrone, and to the English whom it was to extirpate;—it was a rebellion plotted by two feeble old women, headed by two eunuchs, and suppressed ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... irritation between them, but it did not affect their love. The jealousy was a part of their general discontent—a jealousy that would grow more intense as each remained frustrate and unhappy. Neither understood the forces at work within herself; each saw these perversely illustrated in the other's faults. In each case the cause of unhappiness was unsatisfied love, unsatisfied craving for love. It was more acute in Emmy's case, because she was older and because the love she needed was under her eyes being wasted upon Jenny—if it were love, and ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... to be Christian. I have seen piety and purity only in the images of Fra Angelico, although they are very pretty. The rest, those figures of Virgins and angels, are voluptuous, caressing, and at times perversely ingenuous. What is there religious in those young Magian kings, handsome as women; in that Saint Sebastian, brilliant with youth, who seems merely the ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... that be really so," Chia Lien rejoined, "it will after all do! But there's only one thing; all I was up to last night was simply to have some fun with you, but you obstinately and perversely wouldn't." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... and understanding and the like are gifts of the Holy Ghost, according as they are quickened by charity, which "dealeth not perversely" (1 Cor. 13:4). Consequently wisdom and understanding and the like cannot be used to evil purpose, in so far as they are gifts of the Holy Ghost. But, lest they depart from the perfection of charity, they assist one another. This is what ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... not bear malice for that. He discriminates between the generosity of your intention towards the children, and what he probably mistook for a will to rule himself. He acted very perversely in going ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... her feelings. She thought: "This must be love. This is love!" And yet her conscience inarticulately accused her of obliquity. But she did not care, and she would not reflect. She thought that she wilfully, perversely, refused to reflect; but in reality she was ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... Books are, of course, incomparably the commonest of all illuminated manuscripts. They vary from loveliness to contemptibility. Perversely, they figure in catalogues, and are lettered on their backs, as Missals; our ancestors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries forgot that a Missal must contain the service of the Mass, and that none ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James

... Pollux, 'fratres Helenae, lucida sidera,' and held that its appearance was an omen of safety, as everybody who has read the 'Lays of Ancient Rome' must surely remember. The modern name, St. Elmo's fire, is itself a curiously twisted and perversely Christianised reminiscence of the great twin brethren; for St. Elmo is merely a corruption of Helena, made masculine and canonised by the grateful sailors. It was as Helen's brothers that they best knew the Dioscuri ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... with dusk. The room slowly lost its sombre color and the sense of the confining walls; it became grey and apparently limitless; as monotonous, Lee Randon thought, as life. He was disturbed by a new feeling: that perversely, trivially, he had spoiled what should have been a priceless afternoon. It would never come back; what a fool he had been to waste in aimless talk any of the few hours ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... house," as it was variously termed, must not be confounded with the press-room at Newgate, where persons indicted for felony, and perversely refusing to plead, were pressed beneath weights till they complied with that necessary legal formality. From that historic cell the rendezvous press-room differed widely, both in nature and in use. Here ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... single scar. Halfdan had been killed by his rivals; and Starkad, after quelling certain rebels, set up Siward as the heir to his father's sovereignty. With him he sojourned a long time; but when he heard—for the rumour spread—that Ingild, the son of Frode (who had been treacherously slain), was perversely minded, and instead of punishing his father's murderers, bestowed upon them kindness and friendship, he was vexed with stinging wrath at so dreadful a crime. And, resenting that a youth of such great parts ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... with inward excitement and she carried her head proudly, but her face was white. And he, sensible that she had suddenly hardened towards him and strove, he could not divine why, to keep him at arm's length, turned perversely teasing again. He would not await a more convenient season. Here and now he would satisfy his curiosity—and at her expense—regarding one at least of the queer riddles Deadham ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... unfavorable interpretation of his doctrine:—"When we say that pleasure is a chief good, we are not speaking of the pleasures of the debauched man, or those which lie in sensual enjoyment, as some think who are ignorant, and who do not entertain our opinions, or else interpret them perversely; but we mean the freedom of the body from pain, and the soul from confusion" ("Epicurus to Menaeceus," in Diogenes Laertius, "Lives," bk. x. ch. xxvii.). The most obvious tendency of this doctrine is to extreme selfishness, rather than extreme ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... high" it cannot be denied that the former was eclipsed by the easy elegance of Mrs. Woffington, and the latter overborne by the majestic stature and deportment of Barry. The first appearance of Miss Smith last night in lady Macbeth, could not fail to conjure up, perversely to our mental view, the comparative superiority of Mrs. Siddons's person; the effect was strong, but it was momentary; a delicate yet powerful and distinct varied voice, a pure, correct, and exemplary enunciation, guided ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... admit," he continued, perversely pursuing the subject, "that you are rather mysterious yourself. Why, you appeared so suddenly and noiselessly beside me at the opera ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... tiresome piece of prudence, I don't," said Rose perversely. "And what's more, I won't, as Uncle Luke has ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... to-morrow, or, what equals the same, that I and the toothbrush exist so that the stellar dust and the exceedingly long consequence of natural events should have a final purpose, an ultimate end—even if not an ideal fulfillment. Now only when causality, as in the latter case, is perversely teleological is determinism fatalistic. Fatalism is the result only when the ends of activity are necessarily but arbitrarily determined. But when causality is not arbitrarily teleological, or when only the natures of things, the instruments or ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... course of events tended! In spite of the honourable intention which involved a frequent absence from his place of commerce, those who journeyed thither with the set purpose of possessing one of his justly-famed opium pipes so perversely regarded the matter that, after two or three fruitless visits, they deliberately turned their footsteps towards the workshop of the inelegant Ming-yo, whose pipes are confessedly greatly inferior to those produced by the person who is now speaking. Nevertheless, the rapacious ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... murdered while the squire and his sons were drinking deep in the Stag Inn at Wychford four miles away. Mark did not feel much inclined to blunt his impression of the chapel by perambulating Rushbrooke Grange under the guidance of Mrs. Honeybone, the old housekeeper; but Esther perversely insisted upon seeing the garden at any rate, giving as her excuse that the Rector would like them to pay the visit. By now it was a pink and green May dusk; the air was plumy with moths' wings, heavy with ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... said Gerard thoughtfully. "I know thy goodness and thy wisdom too well to reason thus perversely. Also I know that I love thee as dear as thou, I think, lovest me. Yet am I happier than thou. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... men are any better off now than they were when they never troubled themselves about such things. I think it was a far better life when men were heathens; and now I want my food, and no nonsense.' The good-wife answered: 'I am sure you will come to sorrow to-day if you act thus perversely'. ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang

... the genial intent fairly to adjust the relations between life above and life below stairs. Accordingly, Punch sees no reason why Angelina may have a lover in the parlor, whilst Bridget's engagement forbids her to entertain a fond "follower" in the kitchen; and he perversely refuses to see how it can be right for Miss Julia to listen to the soft nonsense of Captain Augustus Fitzroy in the drawing-room, and entirely wrong for Molly, the nursery-maid, to blush at the blunt admiration ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... perversely enough, I grew indifferent. Or was it only feigned—not consciously, but unconsciously? Whatever it was, it did not endure long. Nothing could have endured, under the circumstances. Nothing ever endures—with Jerry on ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter

... said: "I loved you; and you did not love me. It is the most commonplace of tragedies, the heart of every man alive has been wounded in this identical fashion. A master-poet is only that wounded man—among so many other bleeding folk—who perversely augments his agony, and utilizes his wound as an inkwell. Presently time scars over the cut for him, as time does for all the others. He does not suffer any longer. No, and such relief is a clear gain; but none the less, he must ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... progress took the form of a veritable unmasking which, perversely enough, only fixed the mask tighter upon Julien Tenney. By way of loosening up his wrist for the open season, Peter Quick Banta had taken advantage of an amiable day to sketch out a composite floral and faunal scheme on the flagging ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... supplying them with pure unadulterated orthodox Calvinism, fresh from the Saybrook Platform. Nor did he confine his usefulness to beating the "drum ecclesiastic;" during the long winters in the country, he "kept school," as it is somewhat perversely called; whereas, in nine cases out of ten, it is the school that "keeps" ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... somewhat querulous and peevish tone. Both of the pair were still young, and their ideas of education were adverse to the received doctrines of the day, rather than substantive; and their own principles in this matter were exemplified somewhat perversely by little William. Even at that early age the child called forth frequent and poignant remonstrances from his gouvernante, and occasionally drew perplexed exclamations or desponding looks from his father, who took the child's little perversities ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... of Umber, who was called after the celebrated navigator Cook. These two words when united soon became corrupted, and the magnificent sheet of water was designated 'the Cucumber Lake,' while its splendid cataract, known in ancient days by the Indians as the 'Pan-ook,' or 'the River's Leap,' is perversely called by way of variation 'the Cowcumber Falls;' can anything be conceived more vulgar or more vexatious, unless it be their awkward attempt at pronunciation, which converts Epaigwit into 'a pig's ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... Perversely blended with that vision of the blooming peach is a glimpse of a pet deer in the kitchen of the same little house, with its head up and its antlers erect, as if he meditated offence. My boy might never have seen him so; he may have had the vision at second hand; but it ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells

... had been one of her childish superstitions always "to wish at the new moon." How often, her desire seeming perversely to lift itself towards things unattainable, had she framed one sole wish that she might be ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... father had been petulant and reminiscent. He had seemed perversely bent on committing a righteous suicide by forcing her to make him angry. He had cast into damnation all the "fads" and "isms" of an ungodly present and, since he judged the time had come to point a moral, he had buried Stuart Farquaharson at the ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... help thinking of people who jar upon my nerves. If only Kromitzki and Pani Celina came under that category, I might think those antipathies were hatred in the disguise of aversion. But it is not so. There are others who have roused at some time or other an aversion in me that clings quite as perversely to my memory. As I cannot ascribe it to the state of my health,—I never felt better in my life,—I explain it in this way: The world has robbed me of my love, time has dried up hatred, and as the living individual must feel something, I live ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... claims to Christ's claims and relationships, and to our duties to Him, lifts them up, and does not lower them; exalts, and does not degrade, the earthly affections. They are nobler and loftier, being second, than when perversely, and, in the literal sense, preposterously, they assume to be first. The little hills in the foreground are never so green and fair as when they are looked at in connection with the great white Alps that tower behind them; and all earthly loves and relationships catch a tinge of more ethereal ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... powerful ally. The plain truth was—three men wanted the same woman; and vaguely, it seemed to Ringfield as if he—the worthiest—had chief right to her; he feared not Poussette, the married and the marred, the uneducated, the inferior one of her own race, but he still feared the perversely cultured, doubtlessly gifted, decadent "Oxford man," the social superior of every one ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... you are then perversely stupid! But it is impossible that you do not realize what justice, honour, gratitude and generosity demand from you! When your uncle wrote me that pitiful letter which informed me of the death of his last son, my first thought was that his daughter must be assured her right in ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... degree than they have ameliorated the condition of the lower classes, and it is therefore not surprising that the latter seem to take little or no pride in their nationality, and sometimes even act perversely in opposition to ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... dark postern of time long elapsed Led softly, by the stillness of the night,— Led like a murderer (and such it proves!) Strays (wretched rover!) o'er the pleasing past,— In quest of wretchedness, perversely strays; And finds all desert now; and meets the ghosts ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... consummate: In Friendship—noble and sincere." It was in his preface to this selection that he wrote the often-quoted words: "Nor do I apprehend any more charges of being wilfully obscure, unconscientiously careless, or perversely harsh." At or about the date of these "Selections" the poet wrote to a friend, on this very point of obscurity, "I can have little doubt that my writing has been in the main too hard for many I should ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... who had perversely pleased herself by thwarting the designs of Mr. Larkspur, had hurried those of Victor Carrington towards fulfilment with incredible speed. He had ridden at a speed, and for some time in a direction which would, he calculated, bring ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... exertions of Admiral Simpson, and the more enlightened views of the present Government, Chili is now beginning to appreciate the advantage of a steam marine, which, at the period of her liberation, she so perversely rejected by refusing to honour the comparatively trifling pecuniary engagements of her minister in London. The probable reason why the Chilian Government refused to acknowledge these obligations was—that ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... perversely she persevers so. What might we do to make the girl forget The love of Valentine, and love Sir ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... consists merely in feeling and speaking, but a charity that is active, and which penetrates the entire life by its divine, influence; that charity which is patient and beneficent, not envious, dealing not perversely, not puffed up. True charity is not ambitious seeks not its own, is not provoked to anger, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity but for the good it beholds everywhere, it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi

... or Shelley not to sing. His instrument is a trumpet of challenge; and he lived, as he appropriately died, in the progress of an unaccomplished campaign. His work is neither perfect architecture nor fine mosaic; but, like that of his intellectual ancestors, the elder Elizabethans whom he perversely maligned, it is all animated by the spirit of ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... warmly your wishes to have me with you. I know not any body in this world, out of our own family, in whose company I should be happier; but my papa won't part with me, I think; though I have secured my mamma in my interest; and I know Nancy would be glad of my absence, because the dear, perversely envious, thinks me more valued than she is; and yet, foolish girl, she don't consider, that if her envy be well grounded, I should return with more than double advantages to what I now have, improved ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... passers-by, the sidelong looks of approval that followed her through the busy streets. The land baron expanded into his old self; he strode at her side, gratified by the scrutiny she invited; assurance radiated from his eyes like some magnetic heat; he played at possession wilfully, perversely. "Why not," whispered Hope. "A woman's mind is shifting ever. Her fancy—a breath! The ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... of a common letter into sane prose.... Ten thousand times I have confessed to you, talking of my talents, my utter inability to remember in any comprehensive way what I have read. I can vehemently applaud, or perversely stickle, at parts; but I cannot grasp at a whole. This infirmity (which is nothing to brag of) may be seen in my two little compositions, the tale and my play, in both which no reader, however partial, can find ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... admonition—like much of the excellent admonitions in this world—affected me perversely: it made me more restless than ever. I felt that I could not rest properly until I found out who wanted me to rest, and why. It opened indeed a limitless vista ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... innocence among the shells; to be obliged to think of Ursula Dearmer's mother when you would much rather not think of her; to be profoundly and irrevocably angry with the guileless Commandant, whom at the moment you regard (it may be perversely) as the prime agent in this fatuous sacrifice of women's lives; to want to stop it and to be unable to stop it, and at the same time to feel a brute because you want to stop it—when they are enjoying the adventure—I can only say of the experience ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair

... in the Church, that is, in his own place, with no one above him, except as, for the sake of ecclesiastical order and expedience, arrangements had been made by which one was put over or under another. So much for our own claim to Catholicity, which was so perversely appropriated by our opponents to themselves:—on the other hand, as to our special strong point, Antiquity, while, of course, by means of it, we were able to condemn most emphatically the novel claim of Rome to domineer over other Churches, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... inequalities? The answer is obviously (and it is an answer drawn by other reformers) that these inequalities are the work of wicked and unscrupulous men. Financial or political pirates of one kind or another have been preying on the guileless public, and by means of their aggressions have perversely violated the supreme law of equal rights. These men must be exposed; they must be denounced as enemies of the people; they must be held up to public execration and scorn; they must become the objects of a righteous popular vengeance. Such ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... to embody the assumption that ASCII is the universal character set and that characters have 7 bits; this is a a major irritant to people who want to use a character set suited to their own languages. Perversely, though, efforts to solve this problem by proliferating 'national' character sets produce an evolutionary pressure to use a *smaller* subset common to all ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... limit and can now go on to say at last that it was because she seemed to be loved by man and brute alike that a big man of her own town, whose body, big as it was, was yet too small for his heart and from whose brain things went off at queer angles, always christened her perversely as—"The Blight." ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.

... his jealousy, as it had been the shadow of his love, presented him with the complement, with the converse of that new smile with which she had greeted him that very evening,—with which, now, perversely, she was mocking Swann while she tendered her love to another —of that lowering of her head, but lowered now to fall on other lips, and (but bestowed upon a stranger) of all the marks of affection that she had shewn to him. And all these voluptuous memories which he bore ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... would have suspected him to be a dishonest man, if he had not perversely chosen to assume a style which (as he himself confesses) the ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... Black Hill letter. It dropped from Ian's hand; he sat with blankness of mind in the sunlight. Presently he shivered slightly. He leaned his elbows on his knees and his forehead in his hands and sat still. Alexander! He felt no hot straining toward meeting, toward fighting, Alexander. Perversely enough, after a year of impatient, contemptuous thought in that direction, he had lately felt liking and an ancient strong respect returning like a tide that was due. And he could not meet Alexander in April—that was impossible! ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... very word "aims" is a wrong one; there is no longer any aim or effort, except the effort to feel which way the gentle guiding hand would have us to go; the only sorrow that is possible is when we rather perversely follow ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... does, it will be beaten by America on its own line, and by the Continental nations on the European line. I see this as plain as I see the paper before me.' Since this was written in 1865, England has been perversely holding her own course, nor has she yet fulfilled Arnold's melancholy foreboding, by which he was 'at times overwhelmed with depression' that England was sinking into a sort of greater Holland, 'for want of perceiving how the world is going and must ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... with him so strangely? Why had she used him with such cruel caprice? Was ever a man treated so perversely by a woman who loved him? Miss Ludington could only shake her head as he poured out his complaints to her. Ida's contradictory behaviour was as much a puzzle to her as to him, and she deplored it scarcely less. But she insisted that he should not trouble the girl by demanding ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy

... hold, and she crossed the room to the door, out of which she went with a set face, and into the highway. Here she began to saunter up and down, perversely pulling her hair into a worse disorder than he had caused, and unfastening several buttons of her gown. It was a fine Sunday morning, dry, clear and frosty, and the bells of Alfredston Church could be ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... she could not help expressing to Doctor Dummerar her surprise and sorrow, that all which she had done and attempted, to establish peace and unanimity betwixt the contending factions, had been perversely fated to turn out the very reverse of what ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... esquire, "their minstrels and principal servants sit at the same table and eat from the same dish." The interpreters employed all their eloquence in vain to dissuade them from this lewd habit, which they perversely called "a praiseworthy custom," till at last, to get rid of importunities, they consented to have it ordered otherwise, during their stay as ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... one thing, and facts are another," snapped out the other perversely; "and as to your constructions, what construction can you put upon a rascal, but that a ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... half the day indoors, let it be ever so comfortably, or in merely turning out in the evening to shop in the puny town, whilst we bemoaned the want of a circulating library and a brass band. It was even more intolerable, as the Post had been built perversely with its back to the fine view of the glaciers. Moreover, the whole establishment was in the hands of bricklayers, painters and glaziers, who were enlarging and repairing it for the comfort and convenience of future but certainly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... mysteriously garnered and thence dispensed bounteously to all comers? It was useless, as he fretted and chafed at these untoward omissions, to urge in his own behalf that he did not know of the existence of the mill, and that the miller, being an ungenial and choleric man, might have perversely lent himself to resisting his demand for the custody of the young runaway. No, he told himself emphatically, and with good logic, too, the miller's acrimony rose from the fact of a stranger's discovery of the still and the ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... not nice now, and you make me as jealous as possible!' she exclaimed perversely. 'I know you will never speak to any third person of me so warmly as you do to ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... of disorder, financial and otherwise, in building his house. When I look back to the conditions that existed on this bit of Lake-front three years ago—the frog-hollows, tiling, the wasting bluffs, excavation, thirty-five cords of boulders unloaded perversely—the mere enumeration chafes like grit upon surfaces still sore.... I have sadly neglected the study of house-building in this book. It would not do now. The fact is, I don't know how to build a house, but one ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... it, for her sake. He had to recollect that she was in a sharp-strung mood, bitterly surexcited; moreover he reminded himself of her many and memorable phrases of enthusiasm for England—Shakespeareland, as she would sometimes perversely term it, to sink the country in the poet. English fortitude, English integrity, the English disposition to do justice to dependents, adolescent English ingenuousness, she was always ready to laud. Only her enthusiasm required ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... celebrated navigator Cook. These two words when united soon became corrupted, and the magnificent sheet of water was designated 'the Cucumber Lake,' while its splendid cataract, known in ancient days by the Indians as the 'Pan-ook,' or 'the River's Leap,' is perversely called by way of variation 'the Cowcumber Falls;' can anything be conceived more vulgar or more vexatious, unless it be their awkward attempt at pronunciation, which converts Epaigwit into 'a pig's ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton



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