Deliberately deviating from what is good

Usage examples of perversity.

It was planned by one of the autochthonous inhabitants with the most ingenious combination of inconveniences that the natural man could educe from his original perversity of intellect.

Out of a mixture of altruism, curiosity, and perversity, Julie takes Penny under her wing and insists that Andy help Penny set her own unbuilt House in order.

Beneath the city streets, the warrens of rooms and corridors, the fences and the networks of steel track, the Argentine heart, in its perversity and guilt, longs for a return to that first unscribbled serenity .

And in the meantime, with a perversity to confound the Franks, she secured the future of the Angevin empire and supplied the instruments of a diplomacy which, no less than force of arms, was to solidify the whole.

But whether out of perversity or not, Bernardine never would be avoided by her, never let her pass by without a: few words of conversation, and always went to her for information, much to the amusement of Mrs.

That he, who never subscribed to the perversities which condemned his faith, was tarred with the same brushstroke is a tragedy.

I preferred him without hirsute adornment, but I suspected it was only another example of Emersonian perversity.

He turned once more to look upon the chaste, cosmopolitan promise of Chandigarh, sullied only by the base, imperfect beings infesting the city with their perversity and ingratitude.

But Mrs Lopez never for a moment forgot that she had done the mischief,--and that the black enduring cloud had been created solely by her own perversity and self-will.

Nay, the pang would be scarcely less to believe that a fair intellect like that of Alfred Stevens, or a wild, irregular genius, like that of Margaret Cooper--because of its erring, either through perversity or blindness, is wholly to become defunct, so far as employment is concerned--that they are to be deprived of all privilege of working up to the lost places--regaining the squandered talents--atoning, by industry and humble desire, the errors and deficiencies of the past!

My attitude was still one of absolute materialism, as l wish it still were, and I discounted with almost inexplicable perversity the coincidence of the dream notes and odd cuttings collected by Professor Angell.

My attitude was still one of absolute materialism as I wish it still were, and I discounted with a most inexplicable perversity the coincidence of the dream notes and odd cuttings collected by Professor Angell.

There was a perversity in human nature which gloried at the bestialization of its own kind.

The loss of her son, the childlessness to which she was condemned, all threw her into a state of morbid perversity, fraught with dreams of some monstrous vengeance which she dared not even confess to herself.

Then, with that perversity of character of which she was wholly conscious, she was humble, submissive, reverent, and fearful even while she gloried in the grandeur of the dark, cloud-shadowed crags and canons, the stupendous strife of sound, the wonderful driving lances of white fire.