Famous quotes containing the word perverse:
“The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Tell a scoundrel, three or four times a day, that he is the pink of probity, and you make him at least the perfection of “respectability” in good earnest. On the other hand, accuse an honorable man, too petinaciously, of being a villain, and you fill him with a perverse ambition to show you that you are not altogether in the wrong.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“It is perverse that a nation so rich should neglect its children so shamefully. Our attitude toward them is cruelly ambivalent. We are sentimental about children but in our actions do not value them. We say we love them but give them little honor.”
—Richard B. Stolley (20th century)