Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?

The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursue him.

The heart prefers to move against the grain of circumstance; perversity is the souls very life.

Man is neither angel nor beast, and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the beast.

Few people want the pleasures they are free to take.

Look round the habitable world: how few Know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.

We trifle with, make sport of, and despise those who are attached to us, and follow those that fly from us.

What rapture, oh, it is to know A good thing when you see it And having seen a good thing, oh, What rapture 'tis to flee it.

The good that I would do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do.

There is in the human race some dark spirit of recalcitrance, always pulling us in the direction contrary to that in which we are reasonably expected to go.

Man never knows what he wants; he aspires to penetrate mysteries and as soon as he has, wants to re-establish them. Ignorance irritates him and knowledge cloys.