The heart prefers to move against the grain of…

“Like symbolism, decadence puts forth the idea that the function of literature is to evoke impressions and 'correspondences', rather than to realistically depict the…

— Asti Hustvedt

We are all victimized by the natural perversity of inanimate objects...and the assorted human beings who perpetuate and maintain this perversity.

— Isaac Asimov

Man's sense of values is so degraded that he does not revere the Geetha, as much as he values and scans the pages of…

— Sathya Sai Baba

“Writing turns you into somebody who's always wrong. The illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws you on.”

— Philip Roth

“The perversity of woman!' thought Julien. 'What pleasure, what instinct leads them to betray us?”

— Anonymous

The evil effect of science upon men is principally this, that by far the greatest number of those who wish to display a knowledge…

— Immanuel Kant

Scripture points out this difference between believers and unbelievers; the latter, as old slaves of their incurable perversity, cannot endure the rod; but the…

— John Calvin

Envy is the deformed and distorted offspring of egotism; and when we reflect on the strange and disproportioned character of the parent, we cannot…

— William Hazlitt

To offer the complexities of life as an excuse for not addressing oneself to the simpler, more manageable (trivial) aspects of daily existence is…

— Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

“Woman, thy name is perversity!”

— Margaret Way

It seems to me a measure of the true perversity of the human race, that one of its very few reliably pleasurable activities should…

— Otto Gross

Drawing is one of those things which sit on the uneasy bending line between instinct and instruction, where seeming perversity eventually trumps pleasure as…

— Adam Gopnik

Misgovernment is of four kinds, often in combination. They are: 1) tyranny or oppression, of which history provides so many well-known examples that they…

— Barbara Tuchman

“Let us not neglect the forbidden. Let us not sophisticate ourselves out of the cheap thrill and chill of it: the story told for…

— Clive Barker

The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum

— Larry Niven