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More "Undoing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conquest under Louis XIV., but it was not till a century later that Lorraine became a part of French territory, and the fusion of races, a task so slowly accomplished, has now to be undone, if, indeed, such undoing is possible! ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... pronounced, that in counsel is stability. Things will have their first, or second agitation: if they be not tossed upon the arguments of counsel, they will be tossed upon the waves of fortune; and be full of inconstancy, doing and undoing, like the reeling of a drunken man. Solomon's son found the force of counsel, as his father saw the necessity of it. For the beloved kingdom of God, was first rent, and broken, by ill counsel; upon which counsel, there ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... he told himself, needed nothing further for his utter undoing. And if she did, it lay here in the orchard. He had come in ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... all suspicion. Yes, it was a clever idea! If they had left it alone, it is possible the crime might never have been brought home to them. But they were not satisfied. They tried to be too clever—and that was their undoing." ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... you and I must work together to gain diverse ends. If our fortunes are to be tragic, we are undoing each other in this conjunction. Since I in all frankness prefer it to turn out comedy, let us make no error. Are you weary of John? Do you seek a ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... reformed. They would now systematically scour the fortress, to wipe out any hexans that might still be in hiding; to discover and destroy any possible traps or infernal machines which the enemy might have planted for their undoing. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... other blessed gods that live for ever, verily to my undoing ye have lulled me with a ruthless sleep, and my company abiding behind ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... you tell me of Conscience? Why, what a noise is here—as if the undoing a young Heir were such a Wonder; ods so I've undone a hundred without, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... heed our fatal story; I am Hosier's injured ghost, You who now have purchased glory At this place where I was lost! Though in Porto-Bello's ruin You now triumph free from fears, When you think on our undoing, You will mix your ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... celebrated author's heart with mortification. With his latest gasp he said, "Alas, the books deceived me; they do not tell the whole story. Beware of the struggling young author, my friends. Whom God sees fit to starve, let not man presumptuously rescue to his own undoing." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... light-headed. He could command his faculties at will, he could still reflect and plan, marshal the arguments and perfect the reasons that must convince his foes, that, if they inflicted a lingering death on him, they did but work their own undoing. But at times he found himself confounding the present with the past, fancying, for a while, that he was in a Turkish prison, and turning, under that impression, to address Bale; or starting from a ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... demanded. This offer was received with protestations, tears and voluble demands to know if I 'ad the 'art to rob a lone widow who couldn't protect herself. Finally we compromised on a three-quarter basis and Mrs. Briggs receipted the bill. She said her kind disposition would be the undoing of her and she knew it. She was too silly and soft-'arted to ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... there, engaged in undoing the latch? The whole Chandala hamlet is asleep. I, however, am awake and not asleep. Whoever thou art, thou art about to be slain.' These were the harsh words that greeted the sage's ears. Filled with fear, his face crimson with blushes of shame, and his heart agitated ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... they could now be heard softly opening the window, and pushing the sash carefully back out of the way. While climbing in through the opening thus made, they did not wish to thrust a foot against the glass, and cause a smash that might be their undoing; oh! trust that shrewd general, Nick Lang, for looking out against any such accidents; he had been in this business a long time now, and understood all the ins and ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... how angry I was, and how I tried to find some means of undoing the mischief she had done; but there was no help for it. I could only bring Prince Pink to the place where you were being brought up, hoping that when you grew up he might love you, and by your care be restored to his natural form. And you see everything has ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... more, Priuli's cruel Hand had sign'd it. Here stood a Ruffian with a horrid Face, Lording it o'er a Pile of massy Plate, Tumbled into a Heap for publick Sale. There was another making villanous Jests At thy Undoing: He had ta'en Possession Of all thy ancient most domestick Ornaments: Rich Hangings intermix'd and wrought with Gold; The very Bed, which on thy Wedding Night Received thee to the Arms of Belvedira, The Scene of all thy Joys, was violated By the coarse Hands ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the faith of the Happy Family was shattered and that they mourned as lost the money they had already rashly wagered on the outcome of the contest. The very completeness of their faith in him, their very loyalty, seemed to them their undoing, for to them the case was plain enough. If Andy could not ride the blue roan in their own corral, how was he to ride that same blue roan in Great Falls? Or, if he could ride him, how could any sane man ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... believe," said she to herself, "that I begin to see how it was done. Nay, perhaps I could tie it up again, after undoing it. There would be no harm in that, surely. Even Epimetheus would not blame me for that. I need not open the box, and should not, of course, without the foolish boy's consent, even if the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... he in his rude great brawny strengthy hands the medher of dark strong foamy ale and, uttering his tribal slogan Lamh Dearg Abu, he drank to the undoing of his foes, a race of mighty valorous heroes, rulers of the waves, who sit on thrones of alabaster ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... undoing the bundle that held all the tools of the outfit, and also entailed the unloading of the pack on the back of the remaining pack mule. Ned soon came trotting up with the shovel. He uttered a long-drawn whistle when he saw the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... was in his bed stricken with the long illness that came to be his undoing at the last, and we never let him know that the Baron was dead ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... superhuman task of enforcing order in Ascalon without bloodshed. Sincere as she had been in her desire to have him assume the duties of peace officer, she had acted unconsciously as a lure to entangle him to his undoing. ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... mention of our Roman toils, Gaze on this boat, ponder the Pharian faith; And think upon thy fame and all the years While fortune smiled: but for the ills of life How thou could'st bear them, this men shall not know Save by thy death. Then weigh thou not the shame That waits on thine undoing. Whose strikes, The blow is Caesar's. Men may tear this frame And cast it mangled to the winds of heaven; Yet have I prospered, nor can all the gods Call back my triumphs. Life may bring defeat, But death no misery. If my spouse and son Behold me murdered, ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... sea-roads, had strengthened their belief that during all the centuries of travel it had been lost from man's memory and hidden from his view. Now this very isolation, since they were unable to locate this island, if indeed it existed at all, threatened to be their undoing. ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... now years old, has this day received its crowning victory. This day, when he has faced Nero and Seneca together, may well stand in his mind as undoing centuries of bloodshed ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... caterwauls, and must have a stallion, a champion, she must and will marry again, and betroth herself to some young man, [4744]that hates to look on, but for her goods; abhors the sight of her, to the prejudice of her good name, her own undoing, grief of friends, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... the outer door. Ascending the narrow stairs, they were soon on the floor above, and were happy to find the door of the Tuscarora's prison fastened without, as they had left it; this precaution having been taken as a salutary assistance to O'Hearn's sagacity. Undoing these fastenings, the serjeant stepped aside to allow his superior to precede him, as became their respective stations. The captain advanced, holding the lantern before him, and found an empty room. Both Nick and Mike were gone, though it was not easy to discover by what means they had quitted the ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... that the saloon-keeper never hinted at pay. He poured out drink after drink of the vitriolic whiskey, which Whiskers made in the secrecy of his back-room; and as Wunpost drank and shuddered the waspish Phillip F. Lapham set about his complete undoing. First he went to Dusty Rhodes, who still claimed a full half, and browbeat him until he fell back to a third; and then, when Dusty priced his third at one million, he turned to the disillusioned Billy. Her ideas were more moderate, as far as values were concerned, ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... it? Riding on a razor, to my mind. Come down, and have a lark," said Osmond; while Martin, undoing the gate, proceeded to swing it backwards and forwards, to John's extreme terror; but the more he clung to the spikes, and cried for mercy, the quicker Martin swung it, shouting with laughter at his fright. Henry meanwhile scrambled and tumbled to the ground, and caught the gate and ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the damnable whims which sway me at times to my own undoing, to trust to some chance discovery that which under oath I may never deliberately reveal with my lips. It is the history of certain events which have heavily shadowed my life and brought me up with a tight rein from a life of reckless whim and adventure to one of terrible ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... buggy—she stopped with a little start of surprise, only to look into his clean-cut face, smiling half patronizingly, half humorously, and with a look of command too, and of patronage withal, of half-gallant heart-undoing. ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... help; here in this very letter that was intended to be my undoing. I cannot wait to thank the Holy Mother." She crossed herself and buried her face in her mother's lap while she thanked ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... you see, Lieutenant,—but I see wild pigs rooting up my immature plants, lack of labor, poor transportation, fluctuations of price, typhoons undoing a whole year's work—take my word for ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... afraid of doing what is unladylike. Your mother offered me a maid, but I only thought of not giving trouble, and she seemed so shocked at my undoing my own trunk.' ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... very impersonation of goodness itself, Nanny dear?" said Honor. She was standing with her back to the door, watching her old nurse undoing their valises, ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... decide, and immediately. Assured as to the nature of the visit, the head man then gave Mr. Worcester a white rooster, symbol of peace and amity, and escorted him in. But the accompanying Igorots came very near undoing all of Mr. Worcester's plans. Not only were they shut in during their stay, an obvious and necessary condition of good order and the preservation of peace, but, on Mr. Worcester's asking food for them, they were told ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... daily do chance such sundry high and notorious detriments of the common weal, the subversion of good and politic order in knowledge and distinction of people according to their estates, pre-eminences, dignities and degrees to the utter impoverishment and undoing of many inexpert and light persons inclined to pride, mother ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... cannot live without spiritual opium or alcohol, although that opium or alcohol is killing them by inches. It is absurd to be impatient with them. All one can do is to let them go in peace to their undoing, and hope that their example will be rather a warning ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... their paste of masticated leaves, have piled their cells one above the other; in the deserted chambers and vestibules, Megachiles have arranged their leafy jars; in the live wood, filled with juicy saps, the larvae of the Capricorn (Cerambyx miles), the chief author of the oak's undoing, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... three boys sat down around a wooden block formed of a tree-trunk with a deep groove running through it. The labour consisted in undoing and taking apart old boots and shoes, which arrived at the shop from every direction in huge, badly tied bales and in sacks with paper designations sewed to the burlap. The boot destined to be drawn and quartered was laid upon the block; there it received a stroke or more ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... the memoirs of James Otis one is struck from first to last with the impetuosity, the earnestness, the ardent temper of his nature. This was at once the secret of a great measure of his power and also the partial source of his mental undoing. As a student at Harvard, the last two years of his college life were marked with great assiduity in study, and while at home during the vacations in this period, he devoted himself so closely to his books, that he was seldom seen by his friends, and often it was not ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... you keep the new kind of bottles that have the corks wired down. They are much better than the old, and it's very little trouble undoing the wire." ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... blood-letting; a tale moreover that gives evidence (in spite of that distressing echo) of being written by one who takes his craft with a becoming dignity of purpose. One peculiarity of the Master has not only been borrowed by Mr. BORLEY, but exaggerated to his own undoing: I mean the trick of introducing a character or group of characters so clogged and obscured by the adhesions of the uncommunicated past that not till this has been gradually flaked from them do they emerge as figures in whom it is possible ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... something from his pocket. Like light she flashed out from under the cloud and was at his side in an instant, dimpling, smiling, and twinkling with expectation, her black eyes as quick and restless as her father was deliberate and slow in undoing ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... to increase and multiply at the command of God, so you needn't fear machines will ever lower our power to do so. If that happened, it would be as much as to say God allowed us to produce something to our own undoing." ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... those whom I deem most available for my purpose and competent to carry out my directions as I shall give them, I shall organize them into a Band of Hatred, the sole object of which shall be your undoing and, ultimately, ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... was light as day, with the moon full on the window at the end of it. And wrapped in a shawl, with her back to me, stood my dream girl, undoing the front door as noiselessly as I had come ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... strangled by the arm of the Law above the bridges of Nantes on 26th of October, 1440. Without inquiring, with M. Salomon Reinach, whether the Marshal committed the crimes for which he was condemned, or whether his wealth, coveted by a greedy prince, did not in some degree contribute to his undoing, there is nothing in his life that resembles what we find in Bluebeard's; this alone is enough to prevent our confusing them or merging the two ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... Fellows, money was his undoing. Money can be a curse, or it can be a blessing. All depends upon whether or not you recognize God's ownership, acknowledge it, and act upon it. Some of the saddest lives ever lived are those built ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... critic, now that the tiresome German superstition has passed away which challenged us to a dogmatic faith in the plenary verbal inspiration of every one of Shakespeare's clowns. Like some melodiously contending anthem of Handle's, I said, of Richard's meek "undoing" of himself in the mirror-scene; and, in fact, the play of Richard the Second does, like a musical composition, possess a certain concentration of all its parts, a simple continuity, an evenness in execution, which are rare ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... returning after an interval to find the situation unchanged, save that the woman no longer glanced at the Honourable George. Such were her tactics. Having enmeshed him, she confidently left him to complete his own undoing. I had returned with the serving of the small birds. Observing his own before him, the Honourable George wished to be told why he had not been served with fish, and only with difficulty could be convinced ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... my defeat, of course, Corny," answered the major, smiling. "What I mean, is this—that Anneke is one of your second class, or is better than what fashion can make her; and Scrub has been the means of my undoing. She does not care for fashion, in a play, or a novel, or a dress even, but looks for the proprieties. Yes, Scrub has ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... caught their breath. Poor Captain Lem! Rushing thus to his own undoing! But still they had to gaze and gaze—they could not turn their eyes away; and gazing they beheld a stranger thing than any ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... comes not into their mind to correct them, and bring them to repentance; but presumptuous thoughts, and an hope and faith of the Spiders (the Devils) making, possesseth their soul, to their own eternal undoing. {175a} ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... individual to decide for himself. His every want was supplied by orderly arrangement and for everything he must have an authoritative permit. Had I not been classed as a research chemist, and therefore a man of some importance, this simple business of getting a hair-cut might have proved my undoing. Indeed, as I afterwards learned, the exclusive privacy of my living quarters was a mark of distinction. Had I been one of lower ranking I should have shared my apartment with another man who would have slept in my bed while I was at work, for in the sunless city was ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... preserve it was the question, and he proposed that it should be done by concession and conciliation,—and not by force. The plan he proposed, therefore, to obtain this consummation was, to allow all the claims the Americans had set forth in their petitions and declarations, and by undoing all that the parliament had done respecting America, since the year 1765. His resolutions were briefly these:—That the colonies not being represented in parliament, could in no way be taxed by parliament; that the said colonies ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... with savage men and savage beasts. A bayonet at the end of his rifle is to him of no use. He seldom comes to close quarters with hunted men or beasts till the life is well out of them; and so in this war he has shown himself a not too scrupulous sportsman, rather than a soldier, to the undoing of many a scout; and in this fashion, as well as by white flag treachery, the adventurous Australians have distressingly often been victimised. At Manana, four miles east of Lichtenberg, one of ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... Nyberg, Abr. Reinke, and P. D. Bryzelius (who severed his connection with the Moravians in 1760, became a member of the Pennsylvania Synod, and in 1767 was ordained by the Bishop of London). Unionism paved the way, and naturally led to the final undoing of the Lutheran Swedes in Delaware. It was but in keeping with the unionism advised from Sweden, practised in Delaware, and indulged in to the limit by himself, when Provost Wrangel gave the final coup de grace to the first Lutheran Church ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... forget the good, but never the evil. The tragedies, the sins, the misdeeds of thirty years ago were as fresh in his memory as the scandal of yesterday. No man had ever been tempted beyond his strength but Sam Motherwell knew the manner of his undoing. He extended no mercy to the fallen; he suggested no excuse for ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... his feet & she arose likewise, and Sigrid said, 'This might be thy undoing.' Thereafter were they parted, the King going northward to Vik, and ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... no reply, but went about the rearrangement with swift artistic skill; while Jo, who had changed her mind about being in a hurry, slipped down stairs to the dining room again. At the doorway she discovered the undoing of her work. For a minute or two she watched the pair, then passed unnoticed up stairs again. Leigh Shirley was the only girl who ever dared to oppose Jo, and she did it so quietly and completely that Jo could only ignore ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... faithfully and so well in "Faust" utterly broke down. In "Faust" there were virtually but two characters, Faust and Marguerite, while in "Romeo" the stage was encumbered with Tybalt, Capulet, Mercutio, Laurent; and what would have been Mozart's opportunity was his undoing. He could give none of them pungent or characteristic language; they are the merest Italian operatic puppets; and it is only when they are off the stage that the opera shows any signs of life. In the story of "Romeo" the passion is of a far more fiery quality than in that of "Faust"; and whereas ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... of the rivalry between Hughie and Foxy is preserved in John Craven's second letter to his friend Edward Maitland. The letter also gives an account of the master's own undoing—an undoing which bore fruit to ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... permitted to sketch her countenance in various positions, and I Fondly protracted the study that was undoing me. The more I gazed on her the more I became enamoured; there was something almost painful in my intense admiration. I was but nineteen years of age; shy, diffident, and inexperienced. I was treated with attention and encouragement, for my youth and my enthusiasm ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... early, and have all bright and clean against her lodgers came down; but then, in general, she went to rest before nine o'clock, whereas the last night she had not gone till past twelve. Philip went about undoing the shutters, and trying to break up the raking coal, with as little noise as might be, for he had compassion on the tired sleepers. The kettle had not been filled, probably because Mrs. Rose had been unable to face the storm of the ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... impulse which contrasted very brightly with her recent ennui. She felt that her wish to do something, to exert an influence, had been providentially answered. The task, besides, seemed to her to have a flavour of antique chivalry; it smacked of the princess undoing enchantments, and reminded her vaguely of Camelot. She determined to stop at the house and begin the work at once; so she summoned the footman a second time and gave him the address. So great indeed was the charm which her conception exercised ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... old teacher, Glory Goldie, I shall speak plainly to you. You want to run away from a duty, but that does not say that you will succeed. I have seen others try to do the same thing, but it has invariably resulted in their undoing." ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... uncomprehending. Slowly it dawned upon her that some one had been telling tales and undoing her careful work. "Minty! Minty!" she cried, "how can you ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... for—wiped out. There wasn't any violence or any hysteria about it, only grief, only pity. It was an entirely simple, gentle and beautiful performance, and it took place in my rooms after Jevons had left us. But, as I say, this was long afterwards. The agony of my undoing was a ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... Rebecca Mary's fingers and rolled on the floor, to the undoing of the little, white cat, who had gone to bed in his basket. Rebecca Mary caught him up as he darted after the pencil, and hugged him in an odd little ecstasy. She felt ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... ingredients in the Devil's brew, it passed through the stages of suspicion, espionage, watchings, and searchings, to the formal complaints and indictments which followed the testimony of the witnesses, in their madness and delusion hot-foot to tell the story of their undoing, their grotesque imaginings, their spectral visions, their sufferings at the hands of Satan and his tools, and all aimed at people, their neighbors and acquaintances, often wholly innocent, but having marked personal ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... into the apartment, insolently reminding her of her promise to choose one of them, as soon as the garment, which she has been weaving for so many years for Laertes shall be completed, and wildly upbraiding her with undoing her work during the night Penelope tries to hold them in check, but they only grow more shameless, and at last Antinous tries to embrace her. Quick as thought she draws her dagger, and when it is wrenched from her she snatches his own sword and directs ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... that we live for ever on hostility. Our friends may be the undoing of us; in the end it is our enemies who save us. The views we hate become ridiculous because they adopt them. Their very thoroughness leads to an overwhelming reaction on whose waves we ride to victory. Even their skill calls out our greater skill and our finer achievement. At ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... careless girl—she has ruined me, she will be my undoing! Oh, sir, how can I make you understand? The letter was not intended for you—it was meant for the English Ambassador, an old friend of my mother's, from whom I hoped to obtain assistance—oh, how can I ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... got one in my blanket roll," replied Bert, and before the driver could answer was busily engaged in undoing ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... together on the land. Fresh manure abounds in de-nitrifying bacteria, and these organisms not only reduce the nitrates to nitrites, even setting free nitrogen and ammonia, but their effect extends to the undoing of the work of what nitrifying bacteria may be present also, with great loss. The combined nitrogen of dead organisms, broken down to ammonia by putrefactive bacteria, the ammonia of urea and the results ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... transform the Church. Various forces combined to build its fabric of air-born speculation and though for the time it gave the patristic Church the hardest fight of its existence, the discipline of the Church was too strong for it. Its own weaknesses proved eventually its undoing and Gnosticism remains only as a fascinating field of study for the specialist, only a name if even so much as that for the generality of us and valuable chiefly in showing what speculation may do when permitted at will ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... ripples breaking up the sunshine—only there wasn't any sunshine to break. Not a silver thread was visible; if there had been several the night before, it was nobody's business but my own. My arms were tired with continual undoing; but, sisters, am I one to faint by the way? No, no, a thousand ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... window we could command a view of the avenue gate, and of the inhabited wing of Stoke Moran Manor House. At dusk we saw Dr. Grimesby Roylott drive past, his huge form looming up beside the little figure of the lad who drove him. The boy had some slight difficulty in undoing the heavy iron gates, and we heard the hoarse roar of the doctor's voice and saw the fury with which he shook his clinched fists at him. The trap drove on, and a few minutes later we saw a sudden light spring up among the trees as the ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... places it rose to splendid points of vantage from which to view the delightful valleys. Then again it lost itself under great over-arching trees, and as we came too rapidly down a steep hill on entering Bodmin, the road was so heavily shaded that we were near our undoing. The loose sand had been piled up by the rain and the dense shade prevented the road from drying. The car took a frightful skid and by a mere hair's breadth escaped disastrous collision with a stone wall—but we ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... sombrero hats, flannel shirts, and rather dirty white trousers, with long riding-boots. I remember they were moving along at a wretched pace, which showed that their horses were nearly spent. Once again, notwithstanding all previous bitter lessons, my uncontrollable excitement was my undoing. "Civilisation at last!" I screamed to myself, and then, throwing discretion to the winds, I gave the war-whoop of the blacks and rushed madly forward, yelling myself hoarse, and supremely oblivious ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... black eyes looking into the night and calling him. He could hear her now, and hear that wondrous savage music. Had it been real? Had he dreamed? Or had it been some witch-vision of the night, come to tempt and lure him to his undoing? Where was that black and flaming cabin? Where was the girl—the soul that had called him? She must have been real; she had to live and dance and sing; he must again look into the mystery of her great eyes. And he sat up in sudden determination, and, lo! gazed straight into ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... breakfast so she heroically withstood temptation until her last bite of waffle was swallowed, then munched away till school time. The box with its remaining contents accompanied her to school to her later undoing. ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... sharp flaring-up every single individual pulse in her body seemed to jerk itself suddenly into conscious activity again like the soft, plushy pound-pound-pound of a whole stocking-footed regiment of pain descending single file upon her for her hysterical undoing. "Maybe I've had a good deal more experience than you give me credit for!" she hastened excitedly to explain. "I tell you—I tell you I've been engaged!" she blurted forth with ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... organisation of the Romance nationalities. The Conquest was an inevitable step in the work of severing England from the barbarous North, and binding it once more in bonds of union with the civilised South. It was the necessary undoing of the Danish conquest; more still, it was an inevitable step in the process whereby England itself was to begin its unified existence by the final breaking down of the barriers which divided Wessex from Mercia, and ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... is his mind that is more crooked than his back. He is a perilous man with women, for the Devil hath given him such a tongue and such an eye that he charms them even as the basilisk. Marriage may be in their mind, but never in his, so that I could count a dozen and more whom he has led to their undoing. It is his pride and his boast ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to save your good name. Oh, I know that I shall have the benediction of the church, less fortunate girls will envy me; but I am not a whit better than the poor creature flaunting her shame on the pavement. Nay, I am worse, for she can plead that love was the cause of her undoing. Father, I can't, can't go ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... not so much since the days of apostasy from the Apostles, take heed that thou lose not thy power; but keep Kingship off thy head, which the world would give to thee:" so had Fox written in one letter, ending, "O Oliver, take heed of undoing thyself by running into things that will fade, the things of this world that will change; be subject and obedient to the Lord God." There was something in all this that really reached Cromwell's heart, while it amused him; and, though ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... pushed off first one of his turfs and then another, and rolled two or three of the stones over, and then softly thrust all away and ran with a gush down the dale, filling all the little bights by the way for a minute or two; he laughed softly thereat, and stayed the undoing of his kirtle, and so laid himself down on the grass beside the stone looking down the dale, and fell at ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... up and on to other breaks and splits and cuts, all open, all lifting to the upper world, and all as blind and dangerous to follow as any deathtrap that old Dame Nature ever devised. Here, at any crosscut, any debouching canyon, a man might turn to his undoing, might travel on and up and never reach those beckoning heights, seen clearly from some blind pocket he had wandered into, might never find his way back to the original canyon among the continuous cuts that met and crossed and passed each ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... example, he turned to English, and in 'Confessio Amantis' (A Lover's Confession) produced a series of renderings of traditional stories parallel in general nature to 'The Canterbury Tales.' He is generally a smooth and fluent versifier, but his fluency is his undoing; he wraps up his material in too great ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... that mental memorandum book which was one of her whims. "Once I put a thing in that little blue book of mine," she used to tell her father, "it's there for keeps. And there's the advantage that I never leave it lying around to be lost, or for other people to pick up and read to my everlasting undoing. It's better than cipher—for I don't talk ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... height and girth And all the vast completion of the sphere. I should be proud, to-day, to shed a tear If I could weep. But tears are most denied When most besought; and joys are sanctified By joys' undoing in this world of ours From dusk to dawn and ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... days, trying to discover what had happened—what his real mind was. She did not wish for a daughter-in-law at all, and she had even a secret fear of Letty Sewell in that capacity. But somehow George must be managed, her own needs must be met. She felt that she might be undoing the future; but the present ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Good-in-Darkness, Passing from breast to breast, Reaching easily all men, And the vine in the orchard, And the thick clusters of the grape, And the bending branches of the young peach trees, When the south wind blows death upon their pride,— O intimate undoing! In what form ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... always Leam in the background with whom he had to reckon—Leam, who wandered through the house in her straight-cut, plain black gown, made in the deepest fashion of mourning devisable, pale, silent, feverish, like an avenging spirit on his track; undoing what he had done if he had profaned an embodied memory of her mother, and as impervious to his anger as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... for others; for he himself was overcome by his bashfulness, and granted her one day more, and so was the undoing of his family. And some, when they suspected murder or poison, have failed through it to take precautions for their safety. Thus perished Dion, not ignorant that Callippus was plotting against him, but ashamed to be on his guard against ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... with the thing," said Tom, undoing the piece of buckskin that contained it. "There's ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... affection. One day, while I testified my surprise that a woman of her beauty, good sense, and education (for she had a large portion of each), could be reduced to such an infamous and miserable way of life, she answered with a sigh, "These very advantages were the cause of my undoing." This remarkable reply inflamed my curiosity to such a degree, that I begged she would favour me with the particulars of her story, and she complied ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... body, the humble angle of the cavalier hat, the faint flush underneath, all formed together a challenge and an appeal which were the more irresistible for their sweet shamefacedness. Acute consciousness of the past (I thought), and (I even fancied) some penitence for a wrong by no means past undoing, were in every sensitive inch of her, as she sat a suppliant to the old player of that part. And there are emotions of which the body may be yet more eloquent than the face; there was the figure of Watts's "Hope" drooping over as she drooped, not more lissom and speaking than her ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... of nature thrilling in all she did, even when from the hunting-grounds of poesy she brought back now and then a poor day's capture. She was never without charm in her writing; indeed, mere charm was too often her undoing. She could not be impersonal enough, and therefore could not be great; but she could get very near to human sympathies, to domestic natures, to those who care for pleasant, happy things, to ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... realised how much more he could have done to make her life easier, to smooth the difficulties of their relationship. Instead he had added to them, and under the strain he had broken down, not she. The egoism he had thought conquered had triumphed over him again to his undoing. Crushing shame filled him, but regrets were useless. The past was past—what of the future? He was going back to her. He was to have the torturing happiness of seeing her again—but what would his re-entry into her life mean to her? What had these two years of which he knew ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... urged thereto by some influence malign or fate sinister, the loyal portion of two of the southern tribes, the Creeks and the Seminoles, took in April, 1862, a certain action that, all unbeknown to them, expedited the northern schemes for Indian undoing. The action referred to was tribal reoerganization. Each of the two groups of refugees elected chiefs and headmen and notified the United States government that it was prepared to do business as a nation.[646] ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... comfort his friends who are left? As we read over the story of the sorrow of the Bethany home we find the answer to our question. You say, "He brought back their dead, thus comforting them with the literal undoing of the work of death and grief. If only he would do this now, in every case where love cries to him, that would be comfort indeed." But we must remember that the return of Lazarus to his home was only a temporary restoration. ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... happiest of all mothers, and so would she have remained if she had not believed herself so peculiarly blessed. Her very knowledge of her good fortune was her undoing. ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... was absolutely simple, and yet, had it been carried out as conceived, absolutely effective. It was not his intention to go near any of that entanglement of ditch and wire which had been so carefully erected for his undoing. The weaker party, if it be wise, atones for its weakness by entrenchments. The stronger party, if it be wise, leaves the entrenchments alone and uses its strength to go round them. Lord Roberts meant to go round. ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of John Clarke's was Pa's undoing. Pa Sloane could not have an enemy; but a rival he had, and that rival was John Clarke. Everywhere at auctions John Clarke was wont to bid against Pa. At the last auction he had outbid Pa in everything, not having the fear of his wife before his eyes. Pa's ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... from the forks and the fire. See how the sausages burst and splutter in their different pans. See how stolidly the tough steaks brown, refusing either to splutter, yield fat, or find gravy to assist in their own undoing. ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... That of thy gifts I yet have memory, Wherefore mayst thou depart forewarned and free; Since she that won the golden apple lives, And to her servants mighty gifts now gives To find thee out, in whatso land thou art, For thine undoing; loiter not, depart! For what immortal yet shall shelter thee From her that rose from out the unquiet sea?" Then Psyche moaned out in her grief and fear, "Alas! and is there shelter anywhere Upon the green flame-hiding earth?" said she, "Or ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... why pursuing Ceaseless thus my heart's undoing? Sweet is the song of amorous fire. Sweet the sighs that thrill the lyre; Oh! sweeter far than all the gold Thy wings can waft, thy mines can hold. Well do I know thy arts, thy wiles— They withered Love's young wreathed smiles; And o'er his lyre such darkness shed, I thought ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... would have flashed forth a NO upon you without one moment's hesitation. And now, in my disillusioned middle age what do I feel? Do you know, I almost feel tempted to give way to this Martinmas summer of love, to stultify my past by unsaying and undoing everything. For I love you, Harvey. If I were to give way now, as George Eliot gave way, as almost every woman who once tried to live a free life for her sisters' sake, has given way in the end, I should counteract any little good my example has ever done or may ever do in the world; and Harvey, ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... not even superstitious. Self-vanity and confidence in his own powers, and long impunity in crime, had hardened him, had maddened him, almost to Atheism. Yet he dared not attack the sacred prejudices of the men, whom, but for that occurrence, he had yet hoped to win to their own undoing. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... to find new land upon which men might live, her seasons had become stormy, unbearably cold and dreary: and the very fact of her knowledge of the Secret of Life, in which men numbered their ages by centuries instead of by years, was her undoing. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... was dear. 'Twas his gold was my undoing. When he spoke to me, aye, or e'en drew near, My spirit writhed with ruing. ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... And so thinking, she had accepted him. But now she had begun to fear that were she to marry this man she could not be of service to him. And when the thing should be done,—if ever it were done,—there would be no undoing it. Would not her life be a life of sin if she were to live as the wife of a man whom she did not love,—while, perhaps, she would be unable ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... Maison Fleur, and the hapless Chastelard, celebrated her charms in verse to a later and sadder time when, during her captivity in England her young page, Anthony Babington, was so fascinated by her wit and grace that he made a valiant and desperate effort to save her to his own undoing. ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... forty feet away, now thirty and almost ready to drop. Ten feet more and he would fire, Chris resolved. But that ten feet proved the ambitious little darky's undoing. A concentrated drop of buzzing liquid fire struck him above the eye, while hand and legs seemed splashed with molten fire. Down went the rifle with a thud and with a shrieked "Oh golly, oh golly, oh golly!" a black streak cleared the open ground with kangaroo-like ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... mouthpiece made him look like a demon in, or out of, a pantomime. In taking this ornament off his neck he broke the string, and I supplied him with a piece of elastic band, so that he could put it on and off without undoing it, whenever he pleased; but the extraordinary phenomenon to him of the extension of a solid was more than he was prepared for, and he scarcely liked to allow it to touch his person again. I put it over my head first, and this ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... Blake told him the story of the shocking treachery of Humpy Joe, together with the miserable undoing of the Flying Heart. "Why, those poor fellows are broken-hearted," she concluded. "Their despair over losing that talking-machine would be funny if it were not so tragic. I told them you would win it back for them. And you will, won't you? Please!" She turned her blue eyes upon him appealingly, ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... Markham. 'He has gone down-hill fast enough, since I used to see him in your father's time; but I am glad he had the decency not to be the undoing of you.' ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Her skill as a musician was so great, and so well known by her enemy, that she would probably be traced by it at once. As she looked back at the hour spent at Mrs. Bowman's piano, she shuddered at the realization that it might have been her undoing, had it chanced that her enemy passed the house, with a suspicion that she was inside. She would never dare to seek a position as accompanist, and she knew how futile it would be for her to attempt to teach music in an ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... found his banking-house. Moreover, I have been well rewarded for my kindness. When, at the death of my poor Ahmed, the Mouchir, his brother, ascended the throne, the Hemerlingues, restored to favour, never ceased to work for my undoing with the new master. The Bey still keeps on good terms with me; but my credit is shaken. Well, in spite of that, in spite of all the shabby tricks that Hemerlingue has played me, that he plays me still, I was ready this evening to hold out my hand ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... much," said Prochnow, undoing the roll. "It isn't quite what I would do now. It's the sort of thing I show to ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... relieve me of a part of my baggage, but despite all such assurances of good faith I declined their proffered aid. For how many travellers—thus I inwardly reasoned—how many travellers in times past have been deceived by specious impostors to their own undoing? Ah, who with any degree of accuracy can actually say how many? Certainly, though, a very great number. I for one meant to hazard no single chance. Politely yet firmly I requested these persons to be off. Then, heavily encumbered as I ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... of you. I only know that I owe you and those other gentlemen a very considerable debt, and I have been solemnly warned against you by the young lady whom I met at the Cafe de Paris. I have been assured that association with you is the first step toward my undoing. Monsieur Bartot, for all his bluster, seemed very anxious to ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fortified that day. Towards evening little Heywood Dare, the Taunton goldsmith, who had landed at Seatown and gone out with the news of the Duke's arrival, rode into Lyme with forty horse, mounted, himself, upon a beautiful charger which was destined to be the undoing of him. ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... trembling hands, undoing the door of her apartment, she made her way into the long, dark gallery, with which she was perfectly familiar, and soon gained the apartment already referred to. The door fortunately stood nearly closed, and ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... boat might be the undoing of him. But the worse things looked, the more he tried to ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... brief order, one by one undoing the buttons of her dress, laying bare her poor chest, all flat and formless as a child's. A momentary gentleness came over him as he adjusted the tubes of his stethoscope and began the sounding, backwards and forwards from heart to lungs, and from lungs ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... World History, was a simple enough course to teach, but its very simplicity was its undoing, Forrester thought. The deadly dullness of the day-after-day routine was enough to wear ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... he thought. Her fear to explain to her father the incident of the opening of the safe had given him confidence that no word of the truth regarding the past would ever pass her lips. Yet he saw that his own machinations were now likely to prove his undoing. The web which, with her ladyship's assistance, he had woven about her was now stretched to breaking-point. If it did yield, then the result must be ruin—and worse. Therefore, he was straining every effort to again reinstate ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... God! can man resign thee, Once having felt thy glorious flame? Can rolling oceans e'er prevent thee, Or gold the Christian's spirit tame? Too long we slight the world's undoing; The word of God, salvation's plan, Is yet almost unknown to man, While millions throng the road to ruin. To arms! to arms! The Spirit's sword unsheath: March on! March on! all hearts ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... piny woods, Rocks and lakes and mountain-floods, The warriors come, in armed might Careering, careless of the right! Their leader he who sternly bade Freedom fall; and glory fade, The scourge of nations ripe for ruin, Planning oft their own undoing! But who in yonder swarming host Locust-like from coast to coast, Reluctant move, an alien few, Sullen, fierce, of sombre hue, Who, forced unhallow'd arms to bear, Mutter to the moaning air, Whose curses ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... livelihood and a certain notoriety to some of those who take part in it, and may result in the temporary political success of others, in the long run every such movement will either fail or else will provoke a violent reaction, which will itself result not merely in undoing the mischief wrought by the demagog and the agitator, but also in undoing the good that the honest reformer, the true upholder of popular rights, has painfully and laboriously achieved. Corruption ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... handwriting, accepting him, and also giving personal particulars. The first letter was written; and an answer arrived in due course—two days, the schoolmaster said, after date. No other person knew of this scheme for the undoing of the postmistress, yet in a very short time the schoolmaster's coming marriage was the talk of Thrums. Everybody became suddenly aware of the lady's name, of her abode, and of the sum of money she was to bring her husband. It was even noised abroad that the schoolmaster ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... a bit suspicious of the ultimate ending of the affair. St. Pierre had almost no cause for complaint, for it was his own carelessness, coupled with his opponent's luck, that had been his undoing—and luck and carelessness are legitimate factors of every fight, Carrigan told himself. But with Bateese it was different. He had held up his big jaw, uncovered and tempting, entreating some one to hit him, and Carrigan had yielded to that temptation. The blow would have stunned ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... the absurdities of the paladin or the simple home prattle of her aged father and uncle. Only here and there does one find a touch—and it is never more than that—of the forbidden thing, the burlesque note which was so likely to be Mark Twain's undoing. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... inter-meddle. But the fatal and grotesque alliance with Panda, which culminated in his installation as King of the Zulus by Pretorius in 1840, and which was entirely inconsistent with the attitude hitherto assumed towards the natives, was the undoing of the trekkers ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... selfish reason? Were we not rivals for the same favor? Did one have her and one lose her? Had I killed Lamborn for jealousy, or in self-defense? The single fact that I had shot him stood against the background of all this gossip and village understanding, and was necessarily read into it for my undoing or ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... the terror by night and from the arrow that flieth by day"—from the powers of evil that walk in darkness, from snares of our own evil will. He has kept us even against ourselves, and saved us even from our own undoing. Let us read the traces of His hand in all our ways, in all the events, the chances, the changes of this troubled state. It is He that folds and feeds us, that makes us to go in and out,—to be faint, or to find pasture,—to lie down by the still waters, or to walk ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... high-hearted, and with the Indian's passionate love of nature thrilling in all she did, even when from the hunting-grounds of poesy she brought back now and then a poor day's capture. She was never without charm in her writing; indeed, mere charm was too often her undoing. She could not be impersonal enough, and therefore could not be great; but she could get very near to human sympathies, to domestic natures, to those who care for pleasant, happy things, to the lovers of ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... her trunks and took out a little white package with a red cross scored on it. Undoing the sealed waxed paper she uncovered several neatly cut strips of meat. She regarded them with disgust. It was by no means the first little white package she had opened since her arrival at Grey House, but none of the previous ones had been ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... ignoring us. I was here obliged to leave the table to oversee the serving of the wine, returning after an interval to find the situation unchanged, save that the woman no longer glanced at the Honourable George. Such were her tactics. Having enmeshed him, she confidently left him to complete his own undoing. I had returned with the serving of the small birds. Observing his own before him, the Honourable George wished to be told why he had not been served with fish, and only with difficulty could be convinced that he had partaken of this. "Of course in public places ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... To her everlasting undoing, she paused for one moment to stretch her neck at length and eye the new menace. A fatal delay in which the offending object lighted upon and around her head, shutting her completely into outer darkness, whereupon she stood ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... chiefly self-taught, except in music, was a well- educated woman, and a most conscientious teacher—had been caused a world of trouble in undoing what her predecessor had done; and in the few times that the little Fergusons had met in the street their former instructress, who was a very good-looking and showy girl, she had not been too favorably impressed with Miss Bennett. But when she saw her coming out ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... the result. We must change our lives. Insidiously, while we have called all foreigners brothers and sought foes amongst ourselves, the great force of barbarism, in a new guise and with enormous power of penetration and annexation, has worked for our undoing. This force now stands bared, in the hideous bestiality of Germany's doctrine of Might, and it can be defeated only by an adaptation of its methods that will leave ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... coquette, who cares no more for him—nay, far less—than she does for her little toy terrier. Yet, even as these stern resolves seek vainly to root themselves in his breast, his eyes turn again to the room beyond, and make search for the siren who is his undoing. She is still, of course, with Rossmoyne, and is all smiles and pretty blushes, and is evidently ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... I killed Lamborn for jealousy, or in self-defense? The single fact that I had shot him stood against the background of all this gossip and village understanding, and was necessarily read into it for my undoing or my freedom. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... Railway Loan of 1908 proved the undoing of the Manchus, and the inevitable sequence, the appointing of European and American engineers,—to the American was assigned the important section between Ichang and Chengtu,—was bringing matters to a head before I left China. The Changsha ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... his knuckles a thundering reveille that echoed and re-echoed ghostily through the rumbling old house. In a moment there was a shuffling of footsteps inside, a rattling of a chain, and the noisy undoing of rusty bolts. ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... within, which was so distinctly audible without, that both of them instinctively hemmed, as if to drown the noise which was so much greater than they had expected. In a very few moments they heard some one undoing the fastenings of the door, and the gentlemen looked at one another with an expression of mingled expectation and apprehension. A little old woman at length, with a candle in her hand, retaining the heavy ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... basketful. Methought the more I cast mine eye upon the whole discourse, the more I saw lie in it. Wherefore setting myself to a more narrow search, through frequent prayer to God, what first with doing, and then with undoing, and after that with doing again, I thus did ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... feathers sought were those of the Labrador Duck and the Eider. These adventurous bird pirates secured their booty either by killing the birds or taking the down from the nests. The commercializing of the Labrador Duck meant its undoing. The last one known to have been taken was killed by a hunter near Long Island, New York, in 1875. Forty-two of these birds only are preserved in the ornithological collections of ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... with me after them full tilt, proud as a peacock to be driving two men headlong before me, and one of them an old campaigner. It was my undoing. The road was lined with straggling hedges, and a long pistol shot ahead, a cross-track cut it. The sergeant was giving orders to the spy as they rode, and at the crossway the sergeant, shouting, "Shoot low!" turned sharp to the left while the spy ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... and for everything he must have an authoritative permit. Had I not been classed as a research chemist, and therefore a man of some importance, this simple business of getting a hair-cut might have proved my undoing. Indeed, as I afterwards learned, the exclusive privacy of my living quarters was a mark of distinction. Had I been one of lower ranking I should have shared my apartment with another man who would have slept in my bed while I was at work, for in the sunless city was neither night nor day ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... their apparel from their backs, both of men, women, and children, not sparing, in that kind, infants in their cradles; and, by violent courses and tortures, compelled them to discover whatsoever they had concealed or hid, and after all they imprisoned their persons, to the undoing of the tradesmen, and the ruin of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... decided that neither Katy nor baby would improve so long as they remained together—that for both a separation was desirable—that she had recommended sending the child into the country, where it would be better cared for than it could be at home with Katy constantly undoing all Mrs. Kirby had done, disregarding her orders, waking it from sleep whenever the fancy took her, and in short treating it much as she probably did her doll when she was a little girl. With the child away there would be nothing to prevent Katy's going out as she ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... your majesty's suppliant was the conjurer belonging to the most honourable privy council of your majesty's predecessor, of famous memory, Queen Elizabeth; and that he is, or hath been, a caller or invocater of devils, or damned spirits; these slanders, which have tended to his utter undoing, can no longer be endured; and if on trial he is found guilty of the offence imputed to him, he offers himself willingly to the punishment of death; yea, either to be stoned to death, or to be buried ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... our joy of victory! Our success was our undoing. The very motion of my throwing up my hat, boyish as it was, gave fright to my horse, already startled by the shot. He flung up his head high, snorted, and was off, fast as he could go. I followed him on foot, rapidly as I could, but he would none of that, and was all for keeping away ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... divorce. It is desirable, however, to realize that mismating is the real evil. Divorce in such cases is merely a cure for an improper condition. Social condemnation should stigmatize the wrong of mismating, not the undoing of such a wrong. ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... testified my surprise that a woman of her beauty, good sense, and education (for she had a large portion of each), could be reduced to such an infamous and miserable way of life, she answered with a sigh, "These very advantages were the cause of my undoing." This remarkable reply inflamed my curiosity to such a degree, that I begged she would favour me with the particulars of her story, and she complied in ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... It had left her with a dangerous and destructive appetite for doing good to people. Aside from this, Miss Roberta was a distracting young person. Few looked at her once without wanting to look again, and not a few looked again to their undoing. ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to his own undoing, as though led by some actual command, while but bidden gently by the softest voice in all the kingdom, the young man entered the great drawing-room and waited as the butler lessened the shadows by the aid of candles. He saw the smallest foot in London just peep in and out, suddenly ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... a little packet and laid it on the table. Carefully undoing it, he revealed a lady's handkerchief, pinned through the folds with a pin of discoloured Venetian gold, the stone of which had fallen from the socket. A scent of dried violets rose ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... monarchy that was, rather than the anarchy that was threatening them. The will of the one rather than the wills of the many, the head of the one rather than 'the many-headed.' To effect the change which the time required without 'wrenching all'—without undoing the work of ages—without setting at large from the restraints of reverence and custom the chained tiger of an unenlightened popular will, this was the problem. The wisest statesmen, the most judicious that ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... give up my gyroscope work until you come back from the city of gold, Tom, I can see that," said Mr. Swift, with a faint smile. "And if you go, I hope you come back. I don't want that mysterious image to be the undoing of you." ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton
... laughing until the tears run at the absurdities of the paladin or the simple home prattle of her aged father and uncle. Only here and there does one find a touch—and it is never more than that—of the forbidden thing, the burlesque note which was so likely to be Mark Twain's undoing. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... arms, ye graceful trees, The wind is out a-wooing! Ye may be many, yet he sees A way to your undoing. ...
— Out of the North • Howard V. Sutherland
... crawl into the thicket to sleep. Now, Klingsor who can command her while in that state, has compelled her to him to accomplish the undoing of Parsifal. The idea is to her, all heavy and clogged with sleep, the personality of the Gralsbotin still in the ascendant, one of horror only. With wails of protest at having been waked, and lamentation over what is proposed, she refuses to obey, rejecting Klingsor's ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... horror. Before she recovers her selfpossession the suitors rush into the apartment, insolently reminding her of her promise to choose one of them, as soon as the garment, which she has been weaving for so many years for Laertes shall be completed, and wildly upbraiding her with undoing her work during the night Penelope tries to hold them in check, but they only grow more shameless, and at last Antinous tries to embrace her. Quick as thought she draws her dagger, and when it is wrenched from her she snatches his own sword and directs it against him. But Eurymachus, ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... public, turn to teaching without any practical experience, and, armed only with a few methods, teach these alike to all pupils, ruining many good voices. Should these pupils change teachers, even for the better, then begins the weary undoing of the false method, ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... other poultry lover, had taken no pains to conceal his booty and it was soon located by the keen nose of the fox. He drew it forth, threw it over his shoulder and departed for the ridge, where he paused to gloat over his find. This pause, however, proved his undoing. Upon reaching the poultry house, the skunk had encountered an unexpected difficulty. A man was boarding up the hole by which the thief had so recently entered and departed. Knowing it would be useless to proceed, the skunk had turned back unobserved, just in time to see his first prize ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... who presumes the ways of heaven to scan, Is not a wise, nor yet a happy man: In this firm truth securely we may rest,— Whatever Providence ordains is best; Had man the power, he'd work his own undoing; To grant his will would be to ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... has ever been loved, with the mournful affection one bears to the unforgotten dead and with the unextinguishable fire of a hopeless passion which only a living, breathing, warm ideal can kindle in our breasts for our pride, for our weariness, for our exultation, for our undoing. ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... from her chair, Flung her arms up in the air, Clutched her hair: 'Lizzie, Lizzie, have you tasted For my sake the fruit forbidden? Must your light like mine be hidden, 480 Your young life like mine be wasted, Undone in mine undoing, And ruined in my ruin, Thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden?'— She clung about her sister, Kissed and kissed and kissed her: Tears once again Refreshed her shrunken eyes, Dropping like rain After long sultry drouth; 490 Shaking with aguish fear, ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... again, and found thee wooing Damsel modest, rich and fair; And wicked men sought thy undoing, Ere thou wert ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... learning to walk, and so we sometimes stumble and fall. But mankind is moving toward the light, and such is our faith now in the Divine Intelligence that we do not believe that in our hearts were planted aspirations and desires that are to work our undoing. The same God who created paradise devised the snake, and if the snake had something to do with driving the man and woman out of the Garden into a world of work, it was well. Difficulty, trial, hardship, obstacle, are all necessary factors in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... and tried to make everything agreeable by her encouragement. The dress being settled in all its grander parts—"But what shall you have by way of necklace?" said Miss Crawford. "Shall not you wear your brother's cross?" And as she spoke she was undoing a small parcel, which Fanny had observed in her hand when they met. Fanny acknowledged her wishes and doubts on this point: she did not know how either to wear the cross, or to refrain from wearing it. She was answered by having a small trinket-box placed before her, and being requested ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Waywearer laughed and said: "Sharp are thine eyes to see a sword through all this wrappage of cerecloth; surely they be of the warrior kin. But sooth hast thou said; this is thy sword." And therewith he fell to undoing the cloth, while ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... as she had made out the proper way of nursing it, (which was to twist it up into a knot, and then keep tight hold of its right ear and left foot, so as to prevent its undoing itself,) she carried it out into the open air. "If I don't take this child away with me," thought Alice, "they're sure to kill it in a day or two: wouldn't it be murder to leave it behind?" She said the last words out loud, and the little thing grunted in reply ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll
... Priest slowly advancing and undoing his mantle so that his face became fully visible,—"So truly excellent indeed, that at times it is needful to make war in order ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Souls undone, undoing others,- Long time since the tale began. You would not live to wrong your brothers: Oh lad, you died as fits ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... Scotland, but, alas! the bellows are like to burn, and we not to be purged. Our scum goes not out from us. We satisfy ourselves with some outward exercises of religion. Custom undoes us all, and it was never more undoing than when indignation and wrath are pursuing it. O! that you would ponder what you lose by it,—both the sweetness and advantage of godliness, beside the dishonour of God. You take a formal, negligent, and secure way as the most easy way, and the ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... that he had drawn a weapon against a man who could think faster and act faster in emergencies than Sonntag ever had been able to do. Having drawn it Sonntag should have used it. But having drawn it he had hesitated for a space not to be measured in computable time—and that delay had been his undoing. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... the States where it existed, a guarantee the Republicans had already offered, seemed to Seward, to Weed, to Greeley, to the bulk of the party, a satisfactory means of preserving the Union. What was it but a falling back on the original policy of the party, the undoing of those measures of 1854 which had called the party into being? Was it conceivable that Lincoln would balk the wishes of the party by obstructing such a natural mode of extrication? But that was what Lincoln did. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... with growing pain and indignation—pain at thought of Viola's undoing, indignation that the mother and her physician could so complacently join in the dark proceedings. "Of course, you ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... her, uncomprehending. Slowly it dawned upon her that some one had been telling tales and undoing her careful work. "Minty! Minty!" she cried, "how can you ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... it or not, it was a wish that Abraham Lincoln might have been spared to meet the situation. "I have been wondering where we are going to get a GREAT MAN, that will be tall enough to see over the whole country, and to direct that vast undoing of things which has got to be accomplished in a few years. It is a situation in which mere cleverness will not begin to work. The horizon of cleverness is too limited; it does not embrace enough of the heart of ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... "He ain't stopped lyin' yet. I should never have wed him, but how did I know that my fatal beauty would prove his undoing?" ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... If my lady has been surprised that Sir Blaise Mickleton has made no show of coming to her succor, I, for my part, am woundily surprised that the Cropheads of Cambridge have sent no further levies for our undoing." ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... moreover that gives evidence (in spite of that distressing echo) of being written by one who takes his craft with a becoming dignity of purpose. One peculiarity of the Master has not only been borrowed by Mr. BORLEY, but exaggerated to his own undoing: I mean the trick of introducing a character or group of characters so clogged and obscured by the adhesions of the uncommunicated past that not till this has been gradually flaked from them do they emerge as figures in whom it is possible to take an intelligent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... administration. That army, numerous and formidable as it was, was comparatively limited. There was a much larger and justly influential class who were apprehensive that the return of the Democratic party to power threatened a reactionary policy at Washington, to the undoing of some or all the important results of the war. These apprehensions were inflamed by the party press until they were confined to no class, but more or less pervaded all the Northern States. The Electoral Tribunal, ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... most original work was done in the sphere of imperial relations. The maligned Majuba settlement was an act of justice which came too late to effect a permanent undoing of mischief. All the greater was the courage of the statesman who could throw himself at that time upon the inherent force of national liberty and international fair dealing. In the case of Ireland Gladstone again relied on the ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... faces. The grins were gone. There was no misunderstanding the sentiments which those men entertained toward a woman who had wrought the undoing of a square man. She presented completely then the pathetic spectacle of a baited, cowering, wild creature at bay. She was bitterly alone among them. Even Crowley of the city was against her. In her ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... was forty feet away, now thirty and almost ready to drop. Ten feet more and he would fire, Chris resolved. But that ten feet proved the ambitious little darky's undoing. A concentrated drop of buzzing liquid fire struck him above the eye, while hand and legs seemed splashed with molten fire. Down went the rifle with a thud and with a shrieked "Oh golly, oh golly, oh golly!" a black streak ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... morning a thin, powdery snow was driving about. Had they lost their way in the calendar as well as on the trail, and was it December instead of the 29th of March? The Colonel sat on the packed sled, undoing with stiff fingers the twisted, frozen rope. He knew the axe that he used the night before on the little end of bacon was lying, pressed into the snow, under one runner. But that was the last thing to go on the pack before the lashing, and it wouldn't get lost pinned down under the sled. ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... was vacant, though a splendid mansion; Her conduct had been perfectly correct, As she had seen nought claiming its expansion. A wavering spirit may be easier wreck'd, Because 't is frailer, doubtless, than a stanch one; But when the latter works its own undoing, Its inner crash is like an ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... done by concession and conciliation,—and not by force. The plan he proposed, therefore, to obtain this consummation was, to allow all the claims the Americans had set forth in their petitions and declarations, and by undoing all that the parliament had done respecting America, since the year 1765. His resolutions were briefly these:—That the colonies not being represented in parliament, could in no way be taxed by parliament; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... as he had said. This raid had gone far towards undoing the results of their lawless and perilous enterprise—a portion of his gains were safe, but this last blow was of crippling force. And only a day or so prior to it he had been revelling in the prospect of a speedy return to civilized life, to the enjoyment ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... who ought to spare me, who might advise me and help me to save myself, and yet who is undoing me—is killing me." ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... separate classes and to guarantee 100 guineas for each class. They were not, however, allowed to receive scholarships, to which their work would have entitled them, on the score that they were women. Mrs Thorne states that their "success in the examination lists was their undoing," as, owing to this, and to the fact that they were unjustly debarred from receiving the distinctions that they had gained, a great deal of bad feeling ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... a people about to be enslaved commonly makes them the agents of their own undoing. The time had now come for the destruction of the last vestiges of liberty in Mantua, and the Mantuans, in their assembly of the Four Hundred and Ninety, voted full power into the hands of the destroyer. That Pinamonte Bonacolsi whom ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... discreetly erect on the steps, undoing what those months apart had done with little bursts of shy speech, and long, shy silences that helped them more. In the longest and shyest silence their hands had groped for each other once, met as if they had never touched before, and clung together for a minute as if they never meant to let go, ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... cart, and placing in it some pillows for the wounded man to rest on; and it was only when the driver had mounted to his place, and was starting for the Surgery, that I bethought me of the strange power I possessed of undoing all this harm. ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... high-warp loom, although lacking a bit in convenience to the weaver; and so we can easily imagine the lovely lady at work on her famous web, "playing for time," during Ulysses' absence, when she sat up o' nights undoing her lovely stint of ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... as to be able to make a triumphal entry into the last city left to the King of Belgium, Ypres, and to be on hand when his guards and marines from the Kiel Canal, who were present in large numbers, did the goose-step down the Rue Royale to Calais. The courage of the Canadians proved his undoing. ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... had finished his meal, he stood up, looked around, licked his chops, switched his tail, and called for his mate to come and join him in the feast. But that call was his undoing. His mate could not get out of her cage, but the panther's keeper recognized his voice and hastily calling some men and guards, he started to find the panther by going in the direction of the call. As the moon had come up in full glory, they had no ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... the setting sun Looked to see what the Mill Stream had done In its hour Of unlimited power, And what was left when that had passed by, Behold the channel was stony and dry. In uttermost ruin The Mill Stream had been its own undoing. Furthermore it had drowned its friend: This ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... France by right—rather wrong—of conquest under Louis XIV., but it was not till a century later that Lorraine became a part of French territory, and the fusion of races, a task so slowly accomplished, has now to be undone, if, indeed, such undoing is possible! ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... and north and south from Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico. All former accessions of territory were small beside it, and to his eyes it seemed the fertile Canaan of French enterprise. Yet the very magnitude of this new success made for the undoing of New France, by scattering her feeble forces over the length and breadth of a continent and distending her line of defence so far that it could be easily pierced. La Salle, however, was driven irresistibly forward by the hot ambition which ruled him. His romantic ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... went to him. "My mind is full of great sorrow," he said, "because I denied Jesus Christ. I have not had a moment's peace since Satan made me do that bad work. I did it for revenge. I only want to do one thing with my life: to spend it in undoing this evil that ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... mist is creeping; Fly the startled sunbeams weeping, Up the mountain feebly flying, Paling, waning, fainting, dying. All their cheerful work undoing, Crawls the cruel mist pursuing. Shrouded in a purple dimness, Quenched the sunlight is in shadow; Over hill and wood and meadow Broads ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... in a corner, the trunk he had bought while at college, small and cheap in itself, not in what it held. For here were David's books—the great grave books which had been the making of him, or the undoing of him, according as one may have enough of God's wisdom and mercy to decide whether it were the one ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... guarded with respect to the way things enter. Remember, as the first pathway is cut, subsequent nervous currents will be directed. Consequently if you make a wrong pathway, you will have trouble undoing it. ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... afford an honest heat. This tariff makes even devils cheat! I'm ruined, and my humble trade All rascals may at will invade: Beneath my nose the public press Outdoes me in sulphureousness; The bar ingeniously applies To my undoing my own lies; My medicines the doctors use (Albeit vainly) to refuse To me my fair and rightful prey And keep their own in shape to pay; The preachers by example teach What, scorning to perform, I teach; And statesmen, aping me, all make More promises than they can break. Against such competition ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... bench, as he was undoing Madeleine's skates, he overheard pretty Susie remark, without much care to moderate her voice: "Say, EI'nor Martin, that's the quietest sort of young man I've ever shown round a district. Why, seems to me, he couldn't say 'shoh.' Guess you shouldn't ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... his good-natured desire to meet the heavy expenses of an extravagant household. Money which he could not earn in the legitimate exercise of his profession, nor come by honestly, had been spent. Who had had the spending of it but she—his wife? Of his grievous undoing, then, it was she who was the ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... alimentary harmony sustained by the Church. During the whole year we are authorized to eat terrestrial animals, and in Lent aquatic ones only. Promiscuous as we are, we are undoing the equilibrium between the maritime and the land forces, we are attacking the peaceful rotation of meat ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... 'He has gone down-hill fast enough, since I used to see him in your father's time; but I am glad he had the decency not to be the undoing of you.' ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and the Circe-breasted pillows that supported his head were his undoing. The morning after Shan Tung's visit he awoke to find the sun flooding in through the eastern window of his room, The warmth of it as it fell full in his face, setting his eyes blinking, told him it ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... evil, and by the moon-light, which so etherialises all that it touches, that he found himself forced to recall that other purer, truer face he had left at the honeysuckle porch to keep down a last wild impulse toward her, which would have been his undoing, both in this world and the next, as ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... steamer, finding the night too dark altogether, intended to remain stopped where she was till daylight? He began to think that this, after all, was the real danger. He was afraid that the darkness, which was his protection, would, in the end, cause his undoing. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... though as a rule they were short-lived, for the alternation of the excess of their normal existence and the asceticism of their training undermined their constitution. Their popularity among both men and women was their undoing, and the king of the ring went down at last before that deadliest of light-weights, the microbe of tubercle, or some equally fatal and perhaps less reputable bacillus. The crockiest of spectators had a better chance of life than the magnificent young athlete ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... perfectly well where the brake was, and how to use it. In fact, there were two brakes, operated by different members, and perhaps it was this duplication, intended to insure safety, that was responsible for her undoing. Her first impulse was to use the emergency, but to do so she must remove her hand from the steering wheel, where it was very fully occupied. She did start to put this impulse into effect, but an unusually violent deflection caused her ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... the Constitution. As there set in a reaction against the support of the reconstructed governments as administered by corrupt southerners and interlopers, the support which the United States Government had given this first effort in America toward actual democracy was withdrawn and the undoing of the Negro as a citizen was easily effected throughout the South by general intimidation and organized mobs known as the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... his head, gave a loud snort and blew his breath through his nose with a whistling sound, then crashed off through the forest. This fact led Black Bruin to surmise that he was afraid of him, and nearly resulted in his undoing. ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... and a heavy rain combined to the undoing of the strollers. Majestically the dark clouds rolled up, outspread like a pall, and the land lay beneath the ban of a persistent downpour. People remained indoors, for the most part, and the only signs of life Barnes saw from the windows of the hotel were ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... likeness of Nishadha changed; And, wonder-struck, he gazed upon himself; While from the dust he saw the snake arise A man, and, speaking as Karkotaka, Comfort him thus:— "Thou art by me transformed That no man know thee: and that evil one (Possessing, and undoing thee, with grief) Shall so within thee by my venom smart, Shall through thy blood so ache, that—till he quit— He shall endure the woe he did impart. Thus by my potent spell, most noble Prince! (Who sufferest too long) ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... her eyes, and offered her hand to Kent's kiss of homage. Ay, to her utter misery and undoing, like Elaine— ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... he went, they heard the sound of the door being locked and bolted. On undoing the sails they found that ropes were attached to them, and on examining these they were found ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... artists they belonged entirely to the new era, and they stand at the beginning of the Renaissance as types of two tendencies which were to prevail in Florence throughout the whole of the fifteenth century, partly supplementing and partly undoing the teaching of Masaccio. ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... battle of Torgau was not to be measured by the respective losses of the two armies. It had the effect of entirely undoing all the advantages that the Austrians had gained, throughout the campaign; and left the king in a better position than when it opened in the spring. The Russian army had been attacked and beaten, while the Austrians were shut up in their natural stronghold, near ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... ceased speaking and devoted all his energies to hastily undoing the bundle he had brought in, and sorting out a portion of ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... bade him be seated. But the General remained standing. He alone perhaps of all the men who had to deal with her- -of all those military puppets with whom she played her royal game— had never crossed that vague boundary which many had overstepped to their own inevitable undoing. ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... sweet, seductive, deadly: but Abel Slattin, a plausible rogue, who, in justice, should be immured in Sing Sing, was chosen out, was enslaved by those lovely mysterious eyes, was taking to his soul the lies which fell from those perfect lips, triumphant in a conquest that must end in his undoing; deeming, poor fool, that for love of him this pearl of the Orient was about to betray her master, to resign herself a prize to ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... Language, Scottish Church-politics, and Barbarisms, of John Wallis." Quick was the routing of these fresh forces; not one was to escape alive! for Wallis now took the field with "Hobbiani Puncti dispunctio! or, the undoing of Mr. Hobbes's Points; in answer to Mr. Hobbes's STIGMAI, id est, Stigmata Hobbii." Hobbes seems now to have been reduced to great straits; perhaps he wondered at the obstinacy of his adversary. It seems that Hobbes, who had been used to other studies, and who confesses ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... cried Sir Tristram. "It has been the undoing of many good men and true, who have died for love of her. Her beauty has been a sore curse to ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the woods, and chopped down two beautiful slender trees for tusks. For many a day now, the atmosphere of sacred art had hung about that barn. Brad was a maker, and everybody felt it. Fired by no tradition of the horse that went to the undoing of Troy, and with no plan before him, he set his framework together, nailing with unerring hand. Did he need a design, he who had brooded over his bliss these many months when Tiverton thought he was "jest lazin' round?" Nay, it was to be "all wrought ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... upon my girth buckles, undoing my harness, when of a sudden there came from the street a shouting and a rushing, with the clinking of blades, and my comrade's voice calling upon me for help. Drawing my sword I ran out. Some little way down ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... waited, but Vergilius made no reply. Now, indeed, was he living in a great and memorable moment. He thought of the power offered him—power of doing and undoing, power of raising up and putting down, power ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... fall a man might have turned, might have escaped. But Woodhull had planned his own undoing when he had called it free. Eyeless men, usually old men, in this day brought up talk of the ancient and horrible warfare of a past generation, when destruction of the adversary was the one purpose and any means called fair when ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... on the right side or the wrong. Nature, as I said in "Life and Habit," hates that any principle should breed hermaphroditically, but will give to each an helpmeet for it which shall cross it and be the undoing of it; and in the undoing, do; and in the doing, undo, and so ad infinitum. Cross-fertilisation is just as necessary for continued fertility of ideas as for that of organic life, and the attempt to frown ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... wide-brimmed sugar-loaf hat drawn down upon his brows cast a deep shadow over his features. But his voice was peculiarly melodious and persuasive, and there was a nameless attraction about him that Cuthbert was quick to feel. Others in the days to follow felt it to their own undoing, but of that the lad knew nothing. He only wished to retain the good opinion this stranger seemed to ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Lawless. Ye still smell of the Grey Friars' buttery; greed is your undoing," answered Ellis. "We took twenty pounds from Appleyard. We took seven marks from the messenger last night. A day ago we had fifty from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... detriments of the common weal, the subversion of good and politic order in knowledge and distinction of people according to their estates, pre-eminences, dignities and degrees to the utter impoverishment and undoing of many inexpert and light persons inclined to pride, mother of ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... so young, so young! And now Death comes, and ruin! I, too, was fair, and that was my undoing. My love was near, but now he's far; Torn lies the wreath, scattered the blossoms are. Seize me not thus so violently! Spare me! What have I done to thee? Let me not vainly entreat thee! I never chanced, in all my days, ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... party fired their carabines at random upon the advancing insurgents, and, abandoning all charge of their prisoners, joined the retreat of their comrades. Morton and the old woman, whose hands were at liberty, lost no time in undoing the bonds of Cuddie and of the clergyman, both of whom had been secured by a cord tied round their arms above the elbows. By the time this was accomplished, the rear-guard of the dragoons, which still preserved some order, passed beneath the hillock or rising ground which was ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... savage nations, & I exhorted him also to change at once his policy in regard to my adopted father; not by that consideration, but because that he was, as I said to him, the chief of the nations which inhabited the place where they built the fort, which he promissed me of undoing. After that I went on ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... sorts as the parties assurers and the parties assured can agree, which course of dealing is commonly termed a policy of assurance, by means of which it cometh to pass upon the loss or perishing of any ship, there followeth not the undoing of any man, but the loss lighteth rather easily upon many, than heavy upon few; and rather upon them that adventure not, than upon them that adventure; whereby all merchants, specially the younger sort, are allowed to venture ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... think that perhaps she ought to tell him; she knew how her own words, about the way they were thrusting a sinner down, would stay with him and his wife. They would quite likely grow in the slow mind of the old man until he became uneasy and unhappy about her, and blamed himself for her undoing. At the time that she spoke she wasted the words to so grow and germinate; but now, looking back, she could think differently; after all the Van Heigens had only done what they thought right, and she had done what ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... will you, till I fix me leg," and he handed me the mushrooms and started undoing his puttee where the blood was soaking through. When he had bound up his wound I handed him his dainties and he ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... itself as a flat contradiction in terms. For nature hates that any principle should breed, so to speak, hermaphroditically, but will give to each an help meet for it which shall cross it and be the undoing of it; as in the case of descent with modification, of which the essence is that every offspring resembles its parents, and yet, at the same time, that no offspring resembles its parents. But for the slightly irritating stimulant of this perpetual crossing, we should pass our lives unconsciously ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... reached the station in New York, David and Dick parted company. The shrewd but whimsical scamp presented at considerable length the problem of virtue and vice stalking arm in arm, as it were, through the streets of New York; he pictured, with extreme unction, the doleful undoing of virtue and the practiced escape ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... thank your worship. [Exit Wellborn. How was I cozen'd in the calculation Of this man's fortune! my master cozen'd too, Whose pupil I am in the art of undoing men; For that is our profession. Well, well, Mr. Wellborn, You are of a sweet nature, and fit again to be cheated: Which, if the fates please, when you are possess'd Of the land and lady, you, sans question, shall be. I'll ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... unsolved meditations. Without a word the man laid the neatly folded garments on the bunk—a pair of flannel trousers, cricket shirt, underclothes, and the sweater that had been the cause of the lads' undoing; but in place of his shoes a pair of half-boots, reeking with tallow, ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... suffer or are in distress. Professor Ali Baba, one of the descendants of the Forty Thieves, who has devoted his life to undoing the wrong they did, will give palm readings, star gazings, trance answers, locate the lost, and, by a method learned from an Indian Yogi, double your ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... driven out her finer kinds, she fell back on her lowlier kinds—her reserve of coarser, more generalized species—and gave them increase, and bestowed the vacant places which we had created on them. What she has done she will undo, or assist us in undoing; for we should be going back to her methods, and should have her with and not against us. Much might yet be done to restore the balance among our native species. Not by legislation, albeit all laws restraining the wholesale destruction of bird life are welcome. On this subject the Honourable ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... murderer. That part of the plan had gone astray, so the murderer, in the fanatical resolve of his latent fixed idea, had recourse to a further expedient as daring and original as the scheme which failed. The second instrument had been the means of his own undoing. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... them; or they quite unconsciously ally themselves with it, and find that there is a tide that bears them on. Divine will? Not necessarily. There is no understanding of it. Guardian spirits? There are many who so believe, to their utter undoing. (Witness Macbeth). An unconscious drift in the direction of right, virtue, duty? These are banners of mortal manufacture. Nothing is proved; ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... my brother-in-law, "your venomous bile pollutes the crystal flood of my narration. Did I ride? That was the undoing of the sage. When he recovered consciousness for the second time, it was to discover that the chain was missing and that the back tire was windless. In my endeavours to find the chain I lost myself. That reminds me. I must put an advertisement in The Times to the effect that any one returning ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... Sentence of the Law, They had Commission to seize all thy Fortune: Nay more, Priuli's cruel Hand had sign'd it. Here stood a Ruffian with a horrid Face, Lording it o'er a Pile of massy Plate, Tumbled into a Heap for publick Sale. There was another making villanous Jests At thy Undoing: He had ta'en Possession Of all thy ancient most domestick Ornaments: Rich Hangings intermix'd and wrought with Gold; The very Bed, which on thy Wedding Night Received thee to the Arms of Belvedira, The Scene of all thy Joys, was violated By ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... on his feet & she arose likewise, and Sigrid said, 'This might be thy undoing.' Thereafter were they parted, the King going northward to Vik, and the Queen ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... this world come to? I was used to hear say, in Queen Mary's days, that the great Council to London were busy undoing what had been done in King Harry's and King Edward's time: but I ne'er heard that the Lord had ta'en His Word in pieces, and laid up an ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... of the sun's rays; and in the greatest source of sugar, the cane, the process is the same. A French physician, M. Bernard, has, within the last twelve years, discovered that the liver of animals is constantly making sugar out of all kinds of food, while the lungs are all the time undoing the work of the liver and turning it back into its chemical elements. And although, in the laboratory of the liver, it is discovered that no alimentary substance is quite deficient in sweetness, yet there, as elsewhere, starch ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... Passing from breast to breast, Reaching easily all men, And the vine in the orchard, And the thick clusters of the grape, And the bending branches of the young peach trees, When the south wind blows death upon their pride,— O intimate undoing! In what form walkest ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... was undoing my trousers, I observed that Miss Frankland had quite lifted up her outer frock, and had sat down, evidently intending to flog me across her knee. Both being ready, she told me to put the footstool by her side and kneel upon it, then desiring me to bend forward over her knees she put one hand over ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... with each fresh loss he drinks deeper to smother his fears and conscience. It is the result of the weakness of his nature—a weakness which I have always known would sooner or later lead to his undoing. Jacky, girl, I fear you will one day have to marry Lablache or your uncle's ruin ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... so late as this!' exclaimed the woman, undoing the chain which held the door. As she was about closing it she caught sight of me, and eyeing me for a moment, said: 'Walk in, sir.' As I complied with the invitation, she added, pointing to a room opening from the hall: 'Step ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Casper Blue might be a daring air pilot, but with his companion a perfect greenhorn in all that pertained to the art, he would be more or less handicapped. A sudden incautious movement on the part of the novice might prove the undoing of ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... had suddenly made him grave. His movement had been interpreted by his visitor as an invitation to sink sympathetically into a wicker chair that stood hard by, and while Mr. Morrow so settled himself I felt he had taken official possession and that there was no undoing it. One had heard of unfortunate people's having "a man in the house," and this was just what we had. There was a silence of a moment, during which we seemed to acknowledge in the only way that was possible the presence of universal fate; the sunny stillness took no pity, and my thought, as I ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... They, however, the very moment we had arrived, were, so it seemed to us, on the point of evacuating the fort, and the last of them must have climbed over the palisades while Pat was engaged in undoing the door. We conjectured that their object in coming to the fort was ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... 'The undoing is my daily thought,' said Louis. 'If I could have tried my plan of weaving cordage out of cotton-grass and thistle-down, I think I could have ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... went near undoing me, for had it come to my father's ears, he had broke me without mercy. He was a hard man, my father; a ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... since the moment in which he had beheld that half-breed Piute Indian in the saloon. He remained out of sight even now, dispatching a messenger to Culver, in the afternoon, requesting his presence for a conference for the total undoing ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... in one of these abductions that he worked his own undoing. Near St. John of the Remedies lived the pretty Anita de Pareira, daughter of a frugal and worthy couple and fiancee of a prosperous planter of the district. The time for the wedding having been set, the father and mother were in their little garden discussing ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... souls do lie Tossing continually! O where thy voice doth come Let all doubts be dumb, Let all words be mild, All strifes be reconciled, All pains beguiled! Light bring no blindness, Love no unkindness, Knowledge no ruin, Fear no undoing! From the cradle to ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... fellow into Raffles's place in the pantry, locked the door on him, and put the key through the panel. Now was the moment for thinking of ourselves, and again that infernal mask which Raffles swore by came near the undoing of us both. We had reached the steps when we were hailed by a voice, not from without but from within, and I had just time to tear the accursed thing from Raffles's ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... urchins and curious poor people, and the firing did not cease, but came from every side at once, and a cloud of smoke, and that odor which has the same intoxicating effect as absinthe, blended with the atmosphere. The women were shaking their dresses outside the door, to get rid of the dust, were undoing their cap-strings and pulling their shawls over their arms, and then they went into the house to lay them aside altogether for the time. The table was laid in the great kitchen that would hold a hundred persons; they sat down to dinner at two o'clock; and at eight ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... for his companion on the threshold of the outer door. Ascending the narrow stairs, they were soon on the floor above, and were happy to find the door of the Tuscarora's prison fastened without, as they had left it; this precaution having been taken as a salutary assistance to O'Hearn's sagacity. Undoing these fastenings, the serjeant stepped aside to allow his superior to precede him, as became their respective stations. The captain advanced, holding the lantern before him, and found an empty room. Both Nick and Mike were gone, though it was not easy to discover ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... Law above the bridges of Nantes on 26th of October, 1440. Without inquiring, with M. Salomon Reinach, whether the Marshal committed the crimes for which he was condemned, or whether his wealth, coveted by a greedy prince, did not in some degree contribute to his undoing, there is nothing in his life that resembles what we find in Bluebeard's; this alone is enough to prevent our confusing them or merging the ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... trying to carry out—why he made that will. He sent for Leon, you see, and must have seen at a glance that he had for a son—a mule, of the worst sort. He probably saw that to leave money to Leon was to give it to the Church, which meant that it would be spent for the further undoing of Spain and the propagation ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... ." she hesitated ". . . unpractical mind?" Hadassah's understanding and gentleness made her feel childishly weak. It would have been a relief to give way to weeping. Her nerves were at the point when any rebuke would have braced her sympathy was undoing. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... on St. Paul's door, which reflected on Henry VIII. and these foreigners, who were accused of buying up the wool with the king's money, to the undoing of Englishmen. This tended to inflame the minds of the people. The method adopted to discover the writer of the libel must excite a smile in the present day, while it shows the state in which knowledge must have been in this country. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... undoubtedly happen—each adoptive parent spent his six months in undoing the other's work, it must follow that, at the end of any given period, the child's mind would be a mere tabula rasa. Suppose, on the other hand, we failed to wipe out each other's teaching, the unfortunate youth would be launched upon life with half his guns ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... But Hastings, turning, kneeled down for a better look; then solemnly arose and pointed with his thumb toward the conflict. Back they started for another load, but this last experience had almost been Jeb's undoing. He was obsessed with the idea that it had been the omen of Death reaching for him; he was gasping pitifully, ever alert for shell fire, and cringing at detonations too far off to be of danger. Try as he would to make his feet go forward, his ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... only hope was that the reversal of feeling in Dawsbergen might work ruin for the prince. He was carrying affairs with a high hand, dealing vengeful blows to the friends of his half-brother and encouraging a lawlessness that sooner or later must prove his undoing. His representatives at the conference were an arrogant, law-defying set of men who laughed scornfully at every ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... in his field better than you imagine. Our only protection is that fortunately science always keeps several laps ahead of him in the race—and besides, we have organized society to meet all such perils. It may be that the very cleverness of the fellow will be his own undoing. The unusual criminal is often that much the easier to run down. It narrows ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... favors, and had been perfectly happy, as a child might, with her captor, it would have been a very much more difficult case to prosecute than that when the victim was a boy. In one the sex question would almost certainly have been introduced to the further undoing of ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... gentleman has spoilt some excellent shoemakers, and been accessary to the poetical undoing of many of the industrious poor. Nathaniel Bloomfield and his brother Bobby have set all Somersetshire singing. Nor has the malady confined itself to one county. Pratt, too (who once was wiser), has caught the contagion of patronage, and decoyed a poor fellow, named Blackett, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... is there, engaged in undoing the latch? The whole Chandala hamlet is asleep. I, however, am awake and not asleep. Whoever thou art, thou art about to be slain.' These were the harsh words that greeted the sage's ears. Filled with fear, his face crimson with blushes of shame, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... see an antelope miss its footing and fall from a height, denotes the love she aspires to will prove her undoing. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... perfect system, with a solidly established foundation and with a rigorous logic in its development; and all who feel the truth and the vitality of the principle work day by day for its development, now doing, now undoing, now going forward, now retracing their steps, according as the things they do prove to be in harmony with the principle or to ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... of the Western Policy that he advocated, or in favor of the Eastern Policy, we should have prevented the development of a situation in the politics of the world which ultimately led to our own undoing. If, during the war, however, we had completely abandoned the U-boat campaign, and had made every possible effort to come to an understanding with America, we should, in my opinion, have been able to extricate ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... Pao-y. With precipitate haste, he accepted his gift, and, undoing the dark brown sash he wore, he surrendered it to Ch'i Kuan. But both had just had time to adjust their respective sashes when they heard a loud voice say: "Oh! I've caught you!" And they perceived Hseh ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... fortune. mishap, mischance, misadventure, misfortune; disaster, calamity, catastrophe; accident, casualty, cross, reverse, check, contretemps, rub; backset^, comedown, setback [U.S.]. losing game; falling &c v.; fall, downfall; ruination, ruinousness; undoing; extremity; ruin &c (destruction) 162. V. be ill off &c adj.; go hard with; fall on evil, fall on evil days; go on ill; not prosper &c 734. go downhill, go to rack and ruin &c (destruction) 162, go to the dogs; fall, fall from one's high estate; decay, sink, decline, go down in the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... before thee have not so much since the days of apostasy from the Apostles, take heed that thou lose not thy power; but keep Kingship off thy head, which the world would give to thee:" so had Fox written in one letter, ending, "O Oliver, take heed of undoing thyself by running into things that will fade, the things of this world that will change; be subject and obedient to the Lord God." There was something in all this that really reached Cromwell's heart, while it amused him; and, though he would begin ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... year and of enfranchising the slave, even power over the lives of his fellow-citizens, were rightly given to a man to whom the Republic owed so much. He received the axe—the power of life and death—but bound up in the bundle of rods, in order that the necessary delay in undoing these might prevent him from striking the irrevocable stroke without due consideration. Whence also he received the name of Consul, because it was his duty to consult for the good of his country. He was bound to spend money freely; and thus he who had shed ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... those mounts pursued Which Pisa 'twixt and Lucca's domes obtrude. Hounds had he with him, lank and shrewd and keen, And in their front Gualandi's sword had place, Sismondi's lash and sour Lanfranchi's mace. Father and sons' undoing soon was seen; Methought the sharp fangs on them closed, and tore Their flanks, which now ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
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