C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Perverseness
To so perverse a sex all grace is vain.
Perverseness is your whole defence.
The perverseness of my fate is such that he’s not mine because he’s mine too much.
We have all a propensity to grasp at forbidden fruit.
Virtue hath some perverseness, for she will neither believe her good nor other’s ill.
Opposition always inflames the enthusiast, never converts him.
Best friends might loathe us, if what things perverse we know of our own selves they also knew.
Some men, like spaniels, will only fawn the more when repulsed, but will pay little heed to a friendly caress.
When once a man is determined to believe, the very absurdity of the doctrine confirms him in his faith.
Perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart—one of the indivisible, primary faculties or sentiments which give direction to man.
For so remarkably perverse is the nature of man that he despises whoever courts him, and admires whoever will not bend before him.
The strength of the donkey mind lies in adopting a course inversely as the arguments urged, which, well considered, requires as great a mental force as the direct sequence.