"Undoing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... was dear. 'Twas his gold was my undoing. When he spoke to me, aye, or e'en drew near, My spirit writhed ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... 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
... 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 which had ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... 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
... 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
... 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 |
