"Irrevocable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rarely practiced. It is set aside to become dusty and dirty in some obscure corner. Only at some opportune moment is it brought forward from its hiding place to serve as a cover for some vile deed. We can no longer believe that beyond and above us there is some irrevocable, irresistible Fate, whose duty it is to punish all evil and wrong and to reward all goodness; an idea so ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... homage to Him. And there existed, on the other hand, at the time of Solomon also, the foundation for the doctrine of the final restoration of the people. For, even in the Pentateuch, the election of Israel by God is represented as irrevocable and absolute, and which, therefore, must at last triumph over all apostasy and covenant-breaking on ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... never go back, none of them, to the old smug, complacent, luxurious days. They could no more go back than Joey could return to life again. War was the irrevocable step, as final as death itself. And he remembered something Nolan had said, just ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... as fly the irrevocable hours Futile as air, or strong as fate to make Your lives of sand or granite. Awful powers, Even as men choose, they either give ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... friends, hope smiles in his tears; the fortune that drives away can bring back; but the farewell of death leaves no fissure in its cloud for the gleam of hope—it is final, terrible, and, on this side the grave, irrevocable. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... in my soul. Or was it mortification? In any event, I had come to an irrevocable decision: I would ship the whole lot of them, without notice, ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... Sainte-Beuve and the Princess Mathilde, and I know thoroughly the story of their break, which seems to me irrevocable. Sainte- Beuve was outraged against Dalloz and has gone to le Temps. The princess begged him not to do anything about it. He did not listen to her. That is all. My opinion on it, if you wish to know it, is this. The first wrong was done by the princess, ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... her back at once to her true and irrevocable self, and she was filled instantly with fierce determination and a cold intense anger. Jimmy was forgotten. He was dead to her at that moment. She leaned forward, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... which Hilda was passing with such supreme confidence! Would she feel as Hilda felt when she came to stand with Trevor before the altar? Would that thrill of deep sincerity be in her voice also as she repeated the vows irrevocable which were even now leaving Hilda's lips? Would her eyes meet his with the same pure gladness of love ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... feel the same exultation, the same pleasure mingled with bitter sadness, the same perception of the irrevocable passing of beautiful things, and the equally inexorable coming on of care and trouble, as filled my heart that night. Whether any of the other members of my class vibrated with similar emotion or not I cannot say, but I do recall that ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Snaffle was not especially prepossessing. His face would have been more attractive had the first edition of his chin been larger and the succeeding ones smaller, while the days when he could still boast of a waist were so far in the irrevocable past that the imagination refused so long a flight as would be required to reach it. His eyes were small and heavy-lidded, but in them smouldered a dull gleam of cunning that at times kindled into a pointed flame. ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... mind, took the assault, melting like an ice-castle in the sun—but before the tempting surrender could become irrevocable alarms rang through his being and his mind gathered in on itself in confusion, holding its isolation intact and inviolate. Through the opposing desires to yield and to withhold, to break barriers down and to raise them up, he detected from the Other a reaction both of pity and ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... your domestic felicity, and returning your affection, even to the height of romance. To a man of less keen sensibility, and less enthusiastic tenderness of disposition, Flora Mac-Ivor might give content, if not happiness; for were the irrevocable words spoken, never would she be deficient in the duties which ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... future depended upon this hasty act of a moment. The happiness of the mature man was risked by the thoughtless act of a boy. If in after-life this truth came home to him, it was only that he might see that the act was irrevocable, and that he must bear the consequences. But so it is ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... me to the altar without a name—in short to suspend her curiosity (that is all) till the moment the priest shall pronounce the irrevocable charm, which makes ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... impassioned pleading had touched her heart. At a time when she was crying out for something to satisfy her need, in an unguarded moment, she had mistaken an awakened, fleeting impression for love, and passed what was now in her eyes an irrevocable word. She was no coquette, who gives a promise the one day to be carelessly withdrawn the next. George Fordyce had been fortunate in gaining the promise of a woman whose word was as her bond. There are circumstances in which even such ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... les incidents de ce jour qui a fixe le sort de l'humanite. L'opinion que Jesus etait ressuscite s'y fonda d'une maniere irrevocable. La secte, qu'on avait cru eteindre en tuant le maitre, fut des ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... efficient supervision. So what do you think I've done? Telegraphed to Helen Brooks to chuck the publishers and take charge of my girls instead. You know she will be wonderful with them. She accepted provisionally. Poor Helen has had enough of this irrevocable contract business; she wants everything in life ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... were defeated and scattered, and the Americans proceeded to lay waste their villages and cornfields in the valley of the Au Glaize. The blow to Indian power was irrevocable. On August 3 of the following year, 1795, was concluded the Treaty of Greenville, by which large tracts of Indian territory in what are now the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan were surrendered to the Americans. The treaty was ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... better, if possible, to seek an interview with the person who has wronged or affronted you. Spoken recrimination or reproof is forgotten; but when you have once written down and issued your angry thoughts, they are irrevocable, and a sure source ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... 'Nor deem the irrevocable past As wholly wasted, wholly vain, If rising on its wrecks at last To something nobler ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... With a beautiful confidence it put the few familiar questions to him, and nodded to his replies: then stamped the bond, and took the fee. It must be an old vagabond at heart that can permit the irrevocable to go so cheap, even to a hero. For only mark him when he is petitioned by heroes and heroines to undo what he does so easily! That small archway of Doctors' Commons seems the eye of a needle, through which the lean purse has a way, somehow, of slipping ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... convalescence hungrily. She knew she must face life, that she must have some word for her friends about her tragedy. She felt that in going away, in suing for the divorce himself, her husband had made the break irrevocable. There was no resentment nor malice toward him in her heart. Yet the future seemed hopelessly ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... rises higher and higher, alone in the night, urged on by the darkness. He accepted the decree of fate, that allotted slavery to the bulk of mankind. Sorrowfully but with full conviction, did he submit to the irrevocable law; wherein he once again gave proof of his piety and his virtue. He retired into himself, and there, in a kind of sunless, motionless void, became still more just, still more humane. And in each succeeding ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... wife, but now after all she seemed to be a very ordinary human being. He had begun life with high hopes—and life was commonplace. He was to grow fretful and restless. His discontent was to lead to some action, some irrevocable action; but upon the nature of that action I do not think the Note Book was very clear. It was to carry him in such a manner that he was to forget his wife. Then, when it was too late, he was to see her at an upper window, stripped and firelit, ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... and left poor Maggie to that bitter sense of the irrevocable which was almost an everyday experience of her small soul. She could see clearly enough, now the thing was done, that it was very foolish, and that she should have to hear and think more about her hair than ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... unhappy every day, as she realised all that her marriage with San Miniato would mean during the rest of her natural life. She had quite changed her mind about him, and with natures like hers such sudden changes are often irrevocable. She could not now understand how she could have ever liked him, or found pleasure in his society, and when she thought of the few words she had spoken and which had decided her fate, she could not comprehend the state of mind which had led her into such a piece of folly, and she was ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... something in his father's tone that warned Alphonso to press the matter no more. He knew that when Edward thus spoke his word was final and irrevocable; and all he ventured now to ask was, "What will become of Wendot and his brother? You will not take their ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... voyage out I wrote a long blaze letter to Barty, and poured out all my grief, and my resignation to the decree which I felt to be irrevocable. I reminded him of that playful toss-up in Southampton Row, and told him that, having surrendered all claims myself, the best thing that could happen to me was that she should some day marry him (which I certainly did ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... for you, such as I am, if I could be of any use, if I would not be a hindrance rather than a help, if our union were right, if, in short, God Himself had not already answered to all such questionings and beseechings, His great; unalterable, irrevocable No! ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... unhappy persons who are fit for nothing better, it does not follow that marrying without money is to be justified in others; and again, that the negotiations and transactions connected with marriage-settlements are eminently useful, as searching character and testing affection, before an irrevocable step be taken; and again, that when two very young persons are joined together in matrimony, it is as if one sweet-pea should be put as a prop to another. The essay on Wisdom is elevated and thoughtful, like most of the essayist's papers, but somewhat too heavy for miscellaneous ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... the non-commissioned officer, responsible for his detachment, from devotion to his trade; in the commanding officer, from supreme responsibility! It is in battle that a military organization justifies its existence. Money spent by the billions, men trained by the millions, are gambled on one irrevocable moment. Organization decides the terrible contest which means the triumph or the downfall of the nation! The harsh rays of glory beam above the field of carnage, destroying the vanquished ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... had been performed at Turin. The definitive espousals, it was settled, should be accomplished at Figuieras, on Spanish soil, in order that Marie-Louise might not enter into the country, where she was destined to reign, save with the irrevocable titles of wife and queen. Thither was to come, on an appointed day, King Philip V. He did not keep his bride waiting for him, for, impatient to behold her to whom, by procuration, he had already given his hand, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... because their direct grievances were fewer, and up to this moment they had hoped that the quarrel was one which a change of ministry in Great Britain might adjust. In the earlier stages of the quarrel they had been ready enough to join hands with Massachusetts and Virginia. It was only on this irrevocable decision as to independence that they were ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... a great, epochal resurrection, as a reply to the inquiry, What is to become of the soul? a dogma is next encountered which we shall style that of a local and irrevocable conveyance. The disembodied spirit is conveyed to some fixed region,7 a penal or a blissful abode, where it is to tarry unalterably. This idea of the banishment or admission of souls, according to their deserts, or according to an elective grace, into an ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... beauty," he said to himself, "was my mistress." He felt honestly pleased to think this, at the same time being anxious to show off before Volochine, while yet bitterly conscious of an irrevocable loss. ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... clergyman's position. He has considered all of them himself, and has been shown how small they are, when they are faced boldly, but he wishes you, too, to feel them as strongly and completely as possible before committing yourself to irrevocable vows, so that you may never, never have to regret the ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... shift upon the innocent shoulders of fellow-men, or on the hazy outlines of that clouded form which ancient schools and modern plagiarists call sometimes "Circumstance," sometimes "Chance," sometimes "Fate," all the guilt due to his own wilful abuse of irrevocable hours. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... action taken or legislation since enacted. From that day to this no charge of crookedness or dishonesty has been made against a professional ball player. Repeated attempts have been made to reinstate these men or those of them now living, but their expulsion was final and irrevocable. ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... succeeds a greater, the greatest, the other's end and crown. To the "weak" mortal priesthood of the law, never warranted by the vow of God to abide always in possession, succeeds One who is Priest, and King, and SON, sealed for His office by the irrevocable vow, "consecrated for evermore." ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... stones together. The question was not now with him, What can I represent? but, How high can I build—how wonderfully can I hang this arch in air, or weave this tracery across the clouds? And the catastrophe was instant and irrevocable. Architecture became in France a mere web of waving lines,—in England a mere grating of perpendicular ones. Redundance was substituted for invention, and geometry for passion; tho Gothic art became a mere expression of wanton ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... sonorous exhortation was water in her ears. The sound of it reached her confusedly, in a jumble. She was drowning and it was unconsciously, in this condition, that poked by Paliser, she heard herself uttering the consenting words that are so irrevocable and so fluid. ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... father had gone into a passion, had accused us, reproached us, and stormed at us with all the ill-language that men of the world use! but that quiet, cold, irrevocable, "I have been mistaken in thee!" was ten ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... regarded by me as a settlement in principle and substance—a final settlement of the dangerous and exciting subjects which they embraced. Most of these subjects, indeed, are beyond your reach, as the legislation which disposed of them was in its character final and irrevocable. It may be presumed from the opposition which they all encountered that none of those measures was free from imperfections, but in their mutual dependence and connection they formed a system of compromise the most ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... struck by an irrevocable decree of destiny, was born blind, while the other enjoyed all the delights of sight. The latter, proud of his own advantages, laughed at his brother's blindness, and disdained him as a companion. One morning the blind boy wished to go ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... of the persons present, with the exception of Arnoux, had ever seen either of them engaged in the exercise of his profession. None the less, everyone formulated an irrevocable judgment ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... by the hand, urged him to restrain his useless anger, and calmed and quieted him with soothing words. "It is not Helen," said she, "that has caused the destruction of Troy. It is through the irresistible and irrevocable decrees of the gods that the city has fallen. It is useless for you to struggle against inevitable destiny, or to attempt to take vengeance on mere human means and instrumentalities. Think no more of Helen. Think of your family. Your aged father, your helpless wife, your little ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... as if Peter were desperately anxious to choke the man into silence. He had the air of wanting to stop some irrevocable word from being said, of urging, explaining, almost entreating. "What can it mean?" I asked myself, determined, however, to keep my faith in the Stormy Petrel ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... that "it would be useless for the Queen-mother to send her confessor, or any other individual, to the French Court, unless they brought with them her consent to the condition upon which his Majesty had insisted; as the King had come to an irrevocable determination never to yield upon that point, and to refuse to listen to any other envoy whom she might despatch to him, until she had afforded by her obedience a proof of submission which was indispensable alike to her own reputation, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... joined him; they drank deep, bantered, reasoned, got angry, reasoned themselves calm again, and still all would not do. The Laird was conscious that he had seen the beautiful apparition, and, moreover, that she was the very maiden, or the resemblance of her, who, in the irrevocable decrees of Providence, was destined to be his. It was in vain that M'Murdie reasoned of impressions ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... what to do far better than I ever could! Besides, you understand men; you know how to deal with them by nature—I never could. I see through them too well. I merely wanted to warn you—being myself a cool looker-on—to be prudent, not to say or do anything irrevocable. If you find you can't help making a scene, well, make one. It can't do much harm. It's only that making oneself unpleasant is apt to destroy one's influence. Naturally, people won't stand being ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... the tank-sinker's story; and silence fell on our camp. Doubtless each one of us recalled actions of petty tyranny toward leal, loving, helpless dependents, or inferiors in strength—actions which now seemed to rise from the irrevocable past, proclaiming their exemption from that moral statute of limitations which brings self-forgiveness in course of time. For an innate Jehovah sets His mark upon the Cain guilty merely of bullying or terrifying any brother whose keeper he is by virtue of superior strength; ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... revolution for evolution. In this latter error they are in very good company—hardly one of the great and the good has not made it, at some time and in some way. Revolution is always the outcome of a mistake. The mistake may be antecedent and irrevocable, and the revolution therefore necessary, but this is rarely the case. The revolutionist runs a risk common to all who are in a hurry—he may break the object of his attention instead of moving it. When he wants to hand you a dish he hits it with a ball-bat. Taking a reasonable ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... what he said was irrevocable, but he was desperate. It seemed to him that in a moment more he would have told her his whole secret. But the young girl drew back from him with a slight start of surprise. There may have been something in the tone of his voice and ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... a memorable subject for consideration, with what unconcern and gaiety mankind pricks on along the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The whole way is one wilderness of snares, and the end of it, for those who fear the last pinch, is irrevocable ruin. And yet we go spinning through it all, like a party for the Derby. Perhaps the reader remembers one of the humorous devices of the deified Caligula: how he encouraged a vast concourse of holiday-makers on to his bridge over ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with the infinite pity due to weakness—that is to say, it alone preserves and defends the Idea of holiness, while it allows full scope to that of love. The gospel proclaims the ineffable consolation, the good news, which disarms all earthly griefs, and robs even death of its terrors—the news of irrevocable pardon, that is to say, of eternal life. The Cross is the guarantee of ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... suddenly flashed across her mind that the mistake was natural. As this Lozcoski had seen them together in close companionship, and intimate counsel, he had a right to believe what he did. Such personal business relations, without marriage or betrothal, nearly as sacred and irrevocable, would be an impossibility between two of their age and social standing in his ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... that his heart misgave him, that his conscience condemned him, and that, do what he would, he could not shut out the fact that his taking so hasty and irrevocable a step was a poor return for all the care and anxiety of his parents in years gone by. But, as we have said, or hinted, Miles was one of those youths who, when they have once made up their minds to a certain course ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... forgetfulness; but I had something to do in the interim—a little auto-da-fe to perform, by which, with that faith in ceremonial, so deep laid in human nature, I meant once for all to lay the ghost that haunted me—the ghost of a delightful but irrevocable past, with which ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... conflict between this earthly passion and his heavenly calling and election. But the author has taken pains to make the obstacle between Andrea and Ilaria absolutely unreal. The fact that Andrea has as yet taken no irrevocable vow is not the essence of the matter. Vow or no vow, there would have been a tragic conflict if Andrea had felt absolutely certain of his calling to the priesthood, and had defied Heaven, and imperilled his immortal soul, because of his overwhelming passion. That would have ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... reflected; the alabaster, it is true, had lost its whiteness; the basin beneath, overrun with weeds, had become the lurking-place of the lizard, but there was something in the very decay that enhanced the interest of the scene, speaking as it did of the mutability, the irrevocable lot of ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... passed all forwards. If he keeps his wits a base is certain. The full back alone lies between him and triumph. But this is the moment, the psychological moment, when one tiny mistake will prove irrevocable. The Head of Damer's whispers as much to Damer, ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... maligned husband in the house of one of her female neighbours, and Mopsa to await the coming of Apollo in the wishing-tree. Musidorus and Pamela make for the coast, while Pyrocles goes to fetch his mistress Philoclea. While, however, he is endeavouring to persuade her to take the final and irrevocable step, they are both overcome by a strange drowsiness and are discovered by Dametas, who, disappointed of his treasure, has missed his charge Pamela and comes to give the alarm. Musidorus and his mistress on their side have been captured by outlaws, who, discovering their identity, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Harold. What we have said is agreed upon—that is, of course, as things appear now: if anything turns up to disturb this arrangement it is not irrevocable in the least degree, and we can lay out more suitable plans. Four years will not be long, and I will be more sensible at the end of that time—that is, of course, if I ever have any sense. We will not write or have any communication, so you will be perfectly free if you ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... principalement caracterise par l'irrevocable preponderance de l'histoire, en philosophie, en politique, et meme en poesie.—COMTE, Politique ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... will cast no blame. Perhaps some other woman would have called out a different side of you, or would have minded things less. It is enough that we do not belong together, because we are we and cannot change. We are not only ruining each other's happiness—that is already irrevocable,—we are ruining each other, and the children, and their futures. It is a question of the least wrong. And I ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... regard for their welfare, and the sole means to attain his object, consisted in a full and entire assent on his part to the conditions of separation which the courts of Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia, had declared to be unalterable and irrevocable." His majesty, therefore, declared his readiness to accept the twenty-four articles which had been agreed upon in the year 1831. Belgium, however, now refused to accede to the arrangement, by resolving not to cede Luxembourg. But the conference insisted peremptorily ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and irrevocable blasting of her ideal was a shock upon many shocks that the young girl had experienced within the course of a few hours and that she reached the den on her feet was due more to Bateato's strength and agility than to any nervous or physical ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... spirits were endowed with marvelous powers. They could resuscitate the dead, restore the sick to health, discern the future, impart invulnerability and other wondrous qualities, and in the moment of final dissolution rescue their faithful worshipers from the irrevocable vengeance of the ancient tribal divinities. Many and many a Manbo told me, when I suggested to him the possibility of error or of deception in the whole system, that it was better to be sure than sorry, and that it was well worth the loss of the worldly goods to be sure of securing ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... theoretically ended by the so-called "October Diploma" of 1860, conferring on Austria a constitution which in many respects granted self-government to Hungary, but ignored Bohemia, although formally admitting her historical rights. This "lasting and irrevocable Constitution of the Empire" was revoked on February 26, 1861, when Schmerling succeeded Goluchowski, and the so-called "February Constitution" was introduced by an arbitrary decree which in essence was still more dualistic than the October ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... parts, having the interest of each separate part in his mind, as well as the general interest of the whole novel. Thus, however desirable in the development of the story, he dared not risk a comparatively tame and uneventful number. Moreover, any portion once issued was unalterable and irrevocable. If, as sometimes happened, any modification seemed desirable as the book progressed, there was no possibility of changing anything in the chapters already in the hands of the public, and so making them ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... a living lie, and they knew it. For behind them stood the irrevocable Past, who for good or evil had bound them together in his unchanging bonds, and with cords that never can ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... the Great Hospital, three days of the most delightful converse. At first, Lorrimer had rebelled, not realising that Ideala's last decision was irrevocable. ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... day, after patient waiting, which might have been shortened by mutual consent, if they had thought it wise, and after full preparation, they came together in the presence of friends and before a man of God, and in the most solemn and irrevocable manner gave themselves to each other to become one, and were pronounced man and wife. That was the second blessing, an epochal experience, unlike anything which preceded, or anything to follow. And now their peace and ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... nothing but misfortune herself, and been the innocent cause of so much to others, she determined to renounce it for ever, and seek a shelter in the peaceful shades of the cloister. She accordingly entered the convent of Santa Clara at Coimbra, where, in the following year, she pronounced the irrevocable vows, which divorce the unhappy subject of them for ever from her species. Two envoys from Castile, Ferdinand de Talavera, Isabella's confessor, and Dr. Diaz de Madrigal, one of her council, assisted at this affecting ceremony; and the reverend father, in a copious ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... has conciliated veneration to the religious orders. When we behold a man abdicating the hope of terrestrial possessions, and precluding himself, by an irrevocable vow, from the pursuit and acquisition of all that his fellow-beings consider as worthy of wishes and endeavours, we are immediately struck with the purity, abstraction, and firmness of his mind, and regard him as wholly employed in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... of such a word in a language argues an acute sense of style, of the manner of doing things. Like all words of real import its meaning is a gamut, a section of a spectrum rather than something fixed and irrevocable. The first implication seems to be "according to Hoyle," following tradition: a neatly turned phrase, an essentially Castilian cadence, is castizo; a piece of pastry or a poem in the old tradition are castizo, or a compliment daintily turned, or a cloak of the proper fullness with the ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... used of our elder philosophers, Manum a tabula: withhold thy hand from the paper, and thy papers from the print or light of the world: for a lewd word escaped is irrevocable, but a bad or base discourse published in print ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... are an eminently practical people, and are easily taught to accept "the irrevocable," if not without regret, at least with a philosophy which repudiates all superfluous methods of showing it. DECENT is the usual and appropriate term applied to our churchyard solemnities, and we are not only "content to dwell in ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... than any other mortuary employment, this disinterment of the person you have been, and are not any longer; and so did Perion find his cataloguing of irrevocable old ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... more concerned than if the submission had been grudging. She debated with herself whether she should consider her resolution irrevocable. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as irrevocable youth, those days when, in the wake of that love-compelling emissary, he moved from intrigue to intrigue among the emigres in London, and their English sympathisers, to bustling yet secret activity ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the cankerous envy, the evil discontents, indigenous only to the soul of man. Plainly, Caliban is man, not beast; for his proclivities, while bestial, are still human. In a beast is a certain dignity, in that action is instinctive, irrevocable, and so far necessary. Caliban is not so. He might be other than he is. He is depraved, but yet a man, as Satan was an angel, though fallen. The most profligate man has earmarks of manhood on him that no beast can duplicate. ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... exclaimed Catherine. "Too far!—Is to warn you that you are about to take a wanton to your bed—and that you will bitterly repent your folly when too late, going too far? It is my duty, Henry, no less than my desire, thus to warn you ere the irrevocable step be taken." ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the truth in your face yesterday. I could not make you happy. I should set jarring a discord in your life for which it was never meant. You did right, absolutely right, to separate yourself from one whose inmost and irrevocable convictions repelled and shocked you. I may be narrow and cold; but I am not narrow enough—or cold enough!—to let you give yourself back to one you cannot truly love—or trust. But that you offered it, because ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... passing from the circle to which he had belonged as long as the circle had existed. All through that dreary day he had known that he could never go back to it. Just why he could not say, but he felt that that decision was irrevocable. And for that whole day he had been alone—more utterly, absolutely alone than he had ever been in his whole life—yet here was a place awaiting him, needing him. For some reason it was not quite ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... those irrevocable bygone years—was striking up and down the sand, and the girl was still weeping without a sound, when the Exile's thought flew back to them. It was as if a curtain had descended for an instant only, and had risen again to reveal the same actors in ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... unwise to have it definitely hardened into a Constitutional prohibition. It is not desirable ordinarily that a man should stay in office twelve consecutive years as President; but most certainly the American people are fit to take care of themselves, and stand in no need of an irrevocable self-denying ordinance. They should not bind themselves never to take action which under some quite conceivable circumstances it might be to their great interest to take. It is obviously of the last importance to the safety of a democracy that in time of real peril ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... expression changed. A kind of wildness—fanaticism—invaded it, as of one recalling a mission. "Oh, well, nothing is irrevocable nowadays," she said, almost with violence. "Still I hope ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this church. Concerning the cause of it I require none of you to judge. I enter no plea against any man. Another will judge, who said, 'Destroy this temple and in three days I will rear it up.' But He spake of the temple of His body; which was destroyed and is raised up; and its living and irrevocable triumph I, or some other servant of God, will celebrate at this altar, Sunday by Sunday, that whosoever will may see, yes, and taste it. The state of this poor shell is but a little matter to a God whose majesty once inhabited a stable; yet the honour of this, too, shall ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... accompanying words, produced upon my mind a more solemn and depressing effect than I believed possible to have been caused by the course which I had determined to pursue; it struck upon my heart with an awe and heaviness which WILL accompany the accomplishment of an important and irrevocable act, even though no doubt or scruple remains to make it possible that the agent ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... as a standard to measure all emotions by—it made this new passion of the imagination a thing of flesh and blood. No wonder that she would not announce her engagement. At the best of times her fluent nature shrank from everything that was fixed and irrevocable—above all from the act of will that trammelled her wandering fancy, the finality that limited her outlook upon life. And now it was impossible. The three weeks in which she had known Wyndham had shown her that, compared with that ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... lengthened preparation of fasting, prayer, and night-watching that a resolution so appalling had been formed. Yet it was easier to consent to the proposal, abstractedly placed before them, than to yield themselves to all its undefined and irrevocable consequences, when the awful surrender of what is most precious to man—his individuality—was to be made, not to a chief unnamed, but to this or that one among themselves. To whose hands could the ten consign the irresponsible disposal of their souls and bodies? They had, however, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... powder magazine. The Lusitania was a goodly sized match. If the King and his ministers were waiting for the country to declare itself, if they wanted the excuse of national emotion before taking the final irrevocable steps into war, they had their desire. From the hour when the news of the sinking of the Lusitania came over the wires, Italy began to mutter and shout. The months of hesitation were ended. There were elements enough of hate, and Germany had given them all focus. "Fuori i ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... Pharaoh therefore was inclined to grant Joseph's wish, to give them the pasture land of Goshen for their sojourning place, the land that was theirs by right, for the Pharaoh that took Sarah away from Abraham by force had given it to her as her irrevocable possession.[325] ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... upon my engagement as irrevocable! I have asked Mab to be my wife, I have given her a ring, I have won her heart; I should be a mean hound,' cried George, lashing himself into a rage, 'if I gave her up for the lying gossip of an old ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... remained for ever unmixed, at the bottom of which I found this son-in-law for my poor daughter, my innocent Dora, then unborn; but she must make the best of him for me and herself, since the fates and my word, irrevocable as the Styx, have bound me to him, the purse-proud grazier and mean man—not a remnant of a gentleman! as the father was. Oh, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... of the whole Moslem world and still is where uncorrupted by Christian uncharity and contempt for all "men of God" save its own. But the change in such places as Egypt is complete and irrevocable. Even in 1852 my Dervish's frock brought me nothing but ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... entrusted with the command of such an important expedition, and envious of the least token of favour which had been accorded to Magellan and Rey Faleiro, who had been named commanders of the order of St. James. But Charles V. had given his consent by a public act, which seemed to be irrevocable. They tried, however, to make the Emperor alter his decision by organizing, on the 22nd of October, 1518, a disturbance paid for with Portuguese gold. It broke out on the pretext that Magellan, who ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... his society. To behold this hateful sneak, this mocking fiend, place himself between me and my beloved, between our torn and bleeding hearts, was too revolting an idea to be entertained for a moment. I considered the past as irrevocable, my own misery as inevitable; and turning to the gray man, I said: "I have exchanged my shadow for this very extraordinary purse, and I have sufficiently repented it. For Heaven's sake, let the transaction ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... chiefest hope of Christendome, He should not live for this presumption: Use no excuse, Alenso, for thy life; My doome of death shall be irrevocable. ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... each particular State; to settle its revenue, its civil and military establishment, and to exercise a perfect freedom of legislation and internal government; so that the British States throughout North America, acting with us in peace and war under one common sovereign, may have the irrevocable enjoyment of every privilege that is short of total separation of interests, or consistent with that union of force on which the safety of our common religion and ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... gentleman was quite aghast, And made a loud and pious lamentation; Repented all his sins, and made a last Irrevocable vow of reformation; Nothing should tempt him more (this peril past) To quit his academic occupation, In cloisters of the classic Salamanca, To follow Juan's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... faith, brought out in the Burlington a very handsome "obituary" on Jack—one of those showy articles stocked with random technicalities that I have heard (I won't say by whom) compared to Gisburn's painting. And so—his resolve being apparently irrevocable—the discussion gradually died out, and, as Mrs. Thwing had predicted, the ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... currency of any country should bear to the whole value of the annual produce circulated by its means is a question upon which political economists have not agreed. Nor can it be controlled by legislation, but must be left to the irrevocable laws which everywhere regulate commerce and trade. The circulating medium will ever irresistibly flow to those points where it is in greatest demand. The law of demand and supply is as unerring as that which regulates the tides of the ocean; and, indeed, currency, like ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable. ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... call my words back, worthy Sir, Ask something else, bury my life and right In one poor grave, but do not take away my life and fame at once. King. Away with him, it stands irrevocable. ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... "there is an even more evil malady than the sorrow of bereavement, and that is—remorse. You are both troubled by the bitter memories of an irrevocable past. You did not always love your children, your grandchildren, as you do now that they are both dead—and this is the ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai |
