Perversity Quotes

• Perversity is the muse of modern literature.

  Susan Sontag

  Literature, Muse, Modern

  1966 Against Interpretation,'Camus' Notebooks'.

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• In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Sad, World, Dominion

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2007). “The Art of Controversy”, p.69, Cosimo, Inc.

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• They who do not understand that a man may be brought to hope that which of all things is the most grievous to him, have not observed with sufficient closeness the perversity of the human mind.

  Anthony Trollope

  Men, Mind, Literature

  1869 Of Trevelyan's paranoia about his wife's fidelity. He Knew He Was Right, ch.38.

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• National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Country, Character, Names

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “The Wisdom of Life”, p.44, Cosimo Classics

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• The human race was in need of salvation because of the perversity of sin. For when people who are ill are cured from their illness, they are called "saved." Therefore, the Lord says: "Your faith has saved you.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Race, People, Needs

  Saint Thomas (Aquinas) (2010). “The Academic Sermons (The Fathers of the Church, Mediaeval Continuation, Volume 11)”, p.47, CUA Press

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• Misgovernment is of four kinds, often in combination. They are: 1) tyranny or oppression, of which history provides so many well-known examples that they do not need citing; 2) excessive ambition, such as Athens' attempted conquest of Sicily in the Peloponnesian War, Philip II's of England via the Armada, Germany's twice-attempted rule of Europe by a self-conceived master race, Japan's bid for an empire of Asia; 3) incompetence or decadence, as in the case of the late Roman empire, the last Romanovs and the last imperial dynasty of China; and finally 4) folly or perversity.

  Barbara Tuchman

  War, Ambition, Race

  Barbara Tuchman (2015). “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam”, p.11, Crux Publishing Ltd

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• The heart prefers to move against the grain of circumstance; perversity is the souls very life.

  John Updike

  Moving, Heart, History

  JOHN UPDIKE (1965). “ASSORTED PROSE”

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• We are all victimized by the natural perversity of inanimate objects...and the assorted human beings who perpetuate and maintain this perversity.

  Isaac Asimov

  Inanimate Objects, Natural, Assorted

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• Therefore, not only are their passions satanic, but their lives are diabolic. So I say to you that these are even worse than murderers, and that it would be better to die than to live in such dishonor. A murderer only separates the soul from the body, whereas these destroy the soul inside the body..... There is nothing, absolutely nothing more mad or damaging than this perversity.

  Saint John Chrysostom

  Passion, Mad, Soul

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• Profanation and violation are part of the perversity of sex, which never will conform to liberal theories of benevolence. Every model of morally or politically correct sexual behavior will be subverted by nature's daemonic law.

  Camille Paglia

  Sex, Law, Abuse

  Camille Paglia (2018). “Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism”, p.54, Canongate Books

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• If you tell me that there are obstacles in the way of your ambition that make it impossible to pursue, then I know it's not a real ambition. There are always obstacles. The 'perversity of events,' as someone once called it, is always ready to lick us. Events are never right for achieving what we most want to achieve. If this were not so, there would be no real fun in being 17 -- or even in being alive.

  Helen Gahagan Douglas

  Fun, Real, Ambition

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• The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum.

  Larry Niven

  Maximum, Universe

  "Ringworld". Book by Larry Niven (p. 142), 1970.

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• The appearance in nineteenth-century psychiatry, jurisprudence, and literature of a whole series of discourses on the species and subspecies of homosexuality, inversion, pederasty, and "psychic hermaphroditism" made possible a strong advance of social controls into this area of "perversity"; but it also made possible the formation of a "reverse" discourse: homosexuality began to speak in its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or "naturality" be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was medically disqualified.

  Michel Foucault

  Strong, Psychics, Vocabulary

  "The History of Sexuality, Volume I: The Will to Knowledge". Book by Michel Foucault, 1978.

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• The death sentence is a necessary and efficacious means for the Church to attain its end when rebels act against it and disturbers of the ecclesiastical unity, especially obstinate heretics and heresiarchs, cannot be restrained by any other penalty from continuing to derange the ecclesiastical order and impelling others to all sorts of crime ... When the perversity of one or several is calculated to bring about the ruin of many of its children it is bound effectively to remove it, in such wise that if there be no other remedy for saving its people it can and must put these wicked men to death.

  Pope Leo XIII

  Wise, Children, Mean

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• A man would still do something out of sheer perversity - he would create destruction and chaos - just to gain his point...and if all this could in turn be analyzed and prevented by predicting that it would occur, then man would deliberately go mad to prove his point.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Men, Mad, Humanity

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• Prior to Valentinus, those who follow Valentinus had no existence. Nor did those from Marcion exist before Marcion. Nor, in short, did any of those malignant-minded people, whom I have listed above, have any existence previous to the initiators and inventors of their perversity.

  Irenaeus of Lyons

  Sarcastic, People, Existence

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• Life is extraordinarily suave and sweet with certain natural, witty, affectionate people who have unusual distinction and are capable of every vice, but who make a display of none in public and about whom no one can affirm they have a single one. There is something supple and secret about them. Besides, their perversity gives spice to their most innocent occupations, such as taking a walk in the garden at night.

  Marcel Proust

  Witty, Sweet, Night

  Marcel Proust (1957). “Pleasures and days: and other writings”

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• The nearer she came to death, the more, by some perversity of nature, did she enjoy living.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Death, Enjoy

  Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1938). “Works”

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• It [will-making] is the latest opportunity we have of exercising the natural perversity of the disposition. This last act of our lives seldom belies the former tenor of them for stupidity, caprice, and unmeaning spite. All that we seem to think of is to manage matters so (in settling accounts with those who are so unmannerly as to survive us) as to do as little good, and to plague and disappoint as many people, as possible.

  William Hazlitt

  Exercise, Opportunity, Thinking

  "Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners". Book by William Hazlitt. Chapter: "On Will-Making", 1822.

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• The evil effect of science upon men is principally this, that by far the greatest number of those who wish to display a knowledge of it accomplish no improvement at all of the understanding, but only a perversity of it, not to mention that it serves most of them as a tool of vanity.

  Immanuel Kant

  Men, Numbers, Vanity

  Immanuel Kant (1904). “The Educational Theory of Immanuel Kant”

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• I hate Gucci,' said Francis. 'Do you?' said Henry, glancing up from his reverie. 'Really? I think it's rather grand.' 'Come on, Henry.' 'Well, it's so expensive, but it's so ugly too, isn't it? I think they make it ugly on purpose. And yet people buy it out of sheer perversity.' 'I don't see what you think is grand about that.' 'Anything is grand if it's done on a large enough scale,' said Henry.

  Donna Tartt

  Hate, Thinking, People

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• Scripture points out this difference between believers and unbelievers; the latter, as old slaves of their incurable perversity, cannot endure the rod; but the former, like children of noble birth, profit by repentance and correction.

  John Calvin

  Children, Differences, Noble

  John Calvin (2004). “Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life”, p.57, Baker Books

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• If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.

  Richard Dawkins

  Thinking, Years, Doubt

  Richard Dawkins (2009). “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution”, p.85, Simon and Schuster

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• Today, writing seems to me like an incredible luxury, almost a perversity, something which hardly exists in the world anymore, where you get to see the fruits of your actions in a daily way.

  Zadie Smith

  Writing, Luxury, World

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Men have their virtues and their vices, their heroisms and their perversities; men are neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but possess and practice all that there is of good and bad here below. Such is the general rule. Temperament, education, the accidents of life, are modifying factors. Outside of this, everything is ordered arrangement, everything is chance. Such has been my rule of expectation and it has usually brought me success.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Men, Practice, Expectations

  Napoleon Bonaparte “Napoleon in his own words from the French of Jules Bertaut”, Рипол Классик

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