In " Proust's Complaint, " for example, he probes what Proust called an " infirmity in my nature, " and what Shattuck calls " this distressing perverseness that dogs the most enterprising activities of the human mind and seems to deprive it of satisfaction ."
22.
:This obviously isn't it ( hence why I am I referring to it ?-sheer innate antipodean perverseness, I guess ), but Leroy Anderson's piece " The Typewriter " has a typewriter playing throughout it .-- JackofOz 03 : 11, 18 September 2007 ( UTC)
23.
In the formal instrument of renunciation, he recited as the causes moving him to the step : " The desire for humility, for a purer life, for a stainless conscience, the deficiencies of his own physical strength, his ignorance, the perverseness of the people, his longing for the tranquility of his former life ".
24.
In the Book of Proverbs, the tree of life is associated with wisdom : " [ Wisdom ] is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her, and happy " [ is every one ] " that retaineth her . " ( ) In the tree of life is associated with calmness : " A soothing tongue is a tree of life; but perverseness therein is a wound to the spirit ."
25.
It seemeth that no one ought to be found guilty there of without clear proof, that the false oath alleged against him was taken with some degree of deliberation; for if, upon the whole circumstances of the case it shall appear probable, that it was owing rather to the weakness than perverseness of the party, as where it was occasioned by surprise, or inadvertency, or a mistake of the true state of the question; it cannot be hard to make it amount to voluntary and corrupt perjury
26.
The officers of the army were not at all pleased with this election, perceiving they should not be permitted to act arbitrarily, as they desired, and therefore seldom came to the council; and when they condescended to come, carried themselves with all imaginable perverseness and insolence . . . These men all took an oath to be true and faithful to the Commonwealth, in opposition to Charles Stuart, or any single person, which the Parliament had appointed to be taken by every member of the council before he took his place, excepting Lieut.
27.
Merchant cites Francis Bacon's use of female metaphors to describe the exploitation of nature at this time was telling : " she is either free, . . . or driven out of her ordinary course by the perverseness, insolence and forwardness of matter and violence of impediments . . . or she is put in constraint, molded and made as it were new by art and the hand of man; as in things artificial . . . nature takes orders from man and works under his authority " ( Bacon in Merchant 1990 : 282 ).
28.
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.
29.
Reviewing " After the Lost Generation ", Malcolm Cowley noted Aldridge's hostile judgments on the novelists of World War II . Aldridge himself said, " Perhaps for reasons of innate perverseness, I seem always to have functioned best in an adversary position & . This has been especially true of my evaluations of various writers whose reputations seemed to me to have become inordinately enlarged and upon whom I saw it as my sacred duty to perform a deflating operation . " No one came in for more deflation than William Styron, whose work Aldridge regarded as derivative and clich?ridden.
