Perverseness Quotes
As the origin and basis of all religions, it cannot be the antagonist of any: it is indeed their purifier, revealing the valuable inner meaning of much that has become mischievous in its external presentation by the perverseness of ignorance and the accretions of superstition; but it recognises and defends itself in each, and seeks in each to unveil its hidden wisdom.
Annie Besant
The French symbolists had a special term to express their love for things that had lost their objective significance, namely, ‘spleen.' The conscious, challenging arbitrariness in the choice of objects, its ‘absurdity' and ‘perverseness,' as if by a silent gesture discloses the irrationality of utilitarian logic, which it then slaps in the face in order to demonstrate its inadequacy with regard to human experience. And while making it conscious, by this shock, of the fact that it forgets the subject, the gesture simultaneously expresses the subject's sorrow over his inability to achieve an objective order. Twentieth-century society is not troubled by such inconsistencies. For it, meaning can be achieved in only one way-service for a purpose.
Max Horkheimer
When the honoured month of Ramazdn, 588 H., the season of mercy and pardon, arrived, fresh intelligence was received at the auspicious Court, that the accursed Jatwan, having admitted the pride of Satan into his brain, and placed the cup of chieftainship and obstinacy upon his head, had raised his hand in fight against Nusratu-d din... The armies attacked each other "like two hills of steel, and the field of battle became tulip-dyed with the blood of the warriors."... The Hindus were completely defeated, and their leader slain." Jatwan, who was the essence of vice and turbulence, and the rod of infidelity and perverseness, the friend of grief, and the con- panion of shame, had his standards of God-plurality and ensigns of perdition lowered by the hand of power;" "and the dust of the field of battle was commingled with the blood of that God- abandoned wretch, and the whole country was washed from the filth of his idolatry.'"
Muhammad of Ghor
Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not?
Edgar Allan Poe
I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.
Abraham Lincoln
