The whole history of society is the history of the perversion of institutions originally beneficent.

" In this perversion of the courts lay, as I understand it, the foulest horror of the French Revolution.

Thus had the perversion of British commerce carried misery instead of happiness to one whole quarter of the globe.

the corruptions introduced into the Roman Catholic Church, in later ages, on the pretended basis of their authority; the legends and miracles interpolated with the narratives of their lives and deaths, and the perversion or exaggeration of their opinions.

Yet, notwithstanding her strange misapplication or perversion of what the world calls "female honor," her world had nothing but the most profound respect and admiration for her.

[unorthodox sexual activity] perversion, deviation, sexual abnormality; fetish, fetishism; homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality; sodomy, buggery; pederasty; sadism. masochism, sado-masochism; incest.

To impute these disastrous circumstances to Kossuth alone, is to render one's self guilty of the greatest perversion of generally acknowledged and incontrovertible facts.

This, the Viceroy assures me, is an absolute perversion of the facts.

Vergil is, of course, not greatly concerned in deriding Atticism itself: to this school Vergil must have felt less aversion than to Antony's flowery style; it is the perversion of the doctrine that amuses the poet.

A notion that habits of industry must be established, has, however, been the means, I regret to state, of a sad perversion of the system in these respects.

If the latter are neglected, and the former only retained, no greater perversion of the plans could occur, and a more fatal error could not be committed.

Similar incidents carrying apprehension (as Lord Macaulay would say) to the breezy interiors of a thousand shanties on the same fatal morning, the domestic circle would know no name so expressive as hrac for that fatal tube through which man, ingenious in illegitimate perversion, daily compels the innocent breath to discharge a plumbeous hail of rhetoric.

This perversion of Christianity is a chief element in the difficulty of tracing the real influence of true Christian teaching upon character.

Why this perversion of nature?

The legislative, executive, and judicial authorities are all in their handsthe preservation, propagation, and perpetuation of the black code of slaveryevery law of the legislature becomes a link in the chain of the slave; every executive act a rivet to his hapless fate; every judicial decision a perversion of the human intellect to the justification of wrong.

Every law of the legislature becomes a link in the chain of the slave; every executive act a rivet to his hapless fate; every judicial decision a perversion of the human intellect to the justification of wrong.

To construe this provision so as to enable the citizens of the District to hold as property, and in perpetuity, whatever they please, or to hold it as property in all circumstancesall necessity, public welfare, and the will and power of the government to the contrary notwithstandingis a total perversion of its whole intent.

An extraordinary perversion, truly, which he could only account for by the fact that he had always looked upon her as being more like what the primitive woman must have been than anybody else in the world; and the first instinct of the primitive woman would be to revenge any slight on her sexual pride.

"That girl's artist-sense is pure, and her religion, down under the perversion and ignorance of her brain.

Yet, to this general rule for the verb, the author of a certain "English Grammar on the Productive System," (a strange perversion of Murray's compilation, and a mere catch-penny work, now extensively used in New England,) is endeavouring to establish, by his own bare word, the following exception: "Every is sometimes associated with a plural noun, in which case the verb must be singular; as, 'Every hundred years constitutes a century.

He was not educated to the thought of taking lifehe was trained to consider its perversion.

He had often seen the girls carry it about in their arms; and while it seemed a strange perversion to caress a kitten when there were puppies about, or even babies, still the peculiarities of your Master's Family must be respected.

For all thatdespite his prejudices, despite even his often deliberate perversion of the truth, it is difficult to avoid a certain kindliness for him.

It is a shameful perversion of the truth, as all the intelligent and unbiassed evidence of observers from the earliest time proves.

The perversion of all ordinary rules is consistently carried out in this, too, that "if the old people refuse they can be beaten into compliance!"