"Unmake" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upon her, "I should almost prefer not to have you take my affairs into your consideration. I doubt if they're worth it. I can't deny that I shrink from becoming a factor in your life, as well as from feeling that you must make your decisions, or unmake them, with ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... you nothing concerning the execution of Ramiro d'Orco, except that Caesar Borgia is the prince who best knows how to make and unmake men according to their ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... world. It has nothing in Christ. Meekness and charity have divine 270:24 authority. Mortals think wickedly; consequently they are wicked. They think sickly thoughts, and so become sick. If sin makes sinners, Truth and Love alone can 270:27 unmake them. If a sense of disease produces suffering and a sense of ease antidotes suffering, disease is mental, not material. Hence the fact that the human mind alone 270:30 suffers, is sick, and that the divine ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... the senses and that with the modification or cessation of the senses it is changed or comes to an end. In other words (for this doctrine like most of the Buddha's doctrines is at bottom ethical rather than metaphysical) the saint can make or unmake his own world and triumph over pain. But the theory of sensation may be treated not ethically but metaphysically. Sensation implies a duality and on the one side the Buddha's teaching argues that there is no permanent sentient self but merely different kinds of consciousness ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... immutable being of God, who was, and is, and is to come, without succession, without variation, or shadow of turning, and then the almighty power of God, by which without difficulty by the inclination and beck of his will and pleasure, he can make or unmake all,—create or annihilate—to whom nothing is impossible. Which three, if they were pondered by us till our souls received the stamp of them, they would certainly be powerful to abstract and draw our hearts from the vain changeable, and empty shadow of the creature, and gather our scattered ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... good time indeed, Sir Thomas," the queen said, with a smile; "but methinks there is but little chance of its coming about, for at present it seems to me that the vassals are better able to make or unmake kings, than kings are able to deprive the great vassals of power; and never since Norman William set foot in England were they more powerful than they are at present. What does my chance of recovering our throne rest ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... can unmake or materially change himself (at least none can annihilate himself) so God is unchangeable, for no Being God made can change him and no other Being can ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner
... "Do you consider, Sir, that a House of Commons is to the people as a Creature is to its Creator[107]?" To this question, said Dr. Johnson, I could have replied, that—in the first place—the idea of a CREATOR must be such as that he has a power to unmake or ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... covers all but the whole of the domain of human government. And within this enormous expanse of political control the competence of the chambers knows, in neither theory nor fact, any restriction. "The British Parliament, ..." writes Mr. Bryce, "can make and unmake any and every law, change the form of government or the succession to the crown, interfere with the course of justice, extinguish the most sacred private rights of the citizen. Between it and the people ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... abused because she thinks I think that in family strains the woman is more at fault. In a sense I do. Women cannot only make and unmake empires but they DO make or fail to make harmony at home. Why, men with all their power are mere rag babies in the hands of women of tact. Women are the real power in the world—the power behind the throne. If only they would develop ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... never said, "There is a God,"—nor even, "God is our Father,"—nor even, "Man is immortal"; he took all this as implicit basis of labor and prayer. Implicit assumptions rule the world; they build and destroy cities, make and unmake empires, open and close epochs; and whenever Destiny in any powerful soul has ripened a new truth to this degree,—made it for him an inevitable assumption—then there is in history an end and a beginning. Goethe's homage to Personality, to the full spiritual being of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... the eyes of many who do not think for themselves, Mark Twain was only the author of these genuine specimens of American humor. For when the public has once made up its mind about any man's work, it does not relish any attempt to force it to unmake this opinion and to remake it. Like other juries, it does not like to be ordered to reconsider its verdict as contrary to the facts of the case. It is always sluggish in beginning the necessary readjustment, and not ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... made me. I defy that Power to unmake me from a free woman! You are his slave, and I defy you! You may be able to torture me—I do not know, but you shall not compel me ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... we have no such desire." A little later the desire comes, and it is to be carried out; that of Holbach is proposed, then that of Rousseau, and they dare go much farther. In the name of Reason, of which the State alone is the representative and interpreter, they undertake to unmake and make over, in conformity with Reason and with Reason only, all customs, festivals, ceremonies, and costumes, the era, the calendar, weights and measures, the names of the seasons, months, weeks and days, of places and monuments, family ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... primitive home, the power of heaven upon earth to slip away from among us? Let us not build outsides which have no insides, let us not put a face upon things which has no reality behind it. Beware lest we make the confusion that we need the suffrage to help us unmake; lest we tear to pieces that we may patch again. Crazy patchwork that ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... Tocqueville and Miss Martineau, had sympathy and admiration for us, the revealed lawlessness came as an astonishment, because it seemed to upset all sorts of pretty theories about democracy. The doctrinaires had worked out to perfection the idea that a people who could freely make and unmake their own laws would, for that plain reason, respect the laws. Of course, a people who had laws thrust upon them from above would hate them and disobey them. But a democracy would escape ...
— The Conflict between Private Monopoly and Good Citizenship • John Graham Brooks
... Union, who make and unmake constitutions, and upon whose will hang the destinies of our governments, can transmit their supreme authority to no successors save the coming generation of voters, who are the sole heirs of sovereign power. ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VIII.: James A. Garfield • James D. Richardson
... terrors o'ertake us We'll not be afraid. No power can unmake us Save that which has made. Nor yet beyond reason Or hope shall we fall— All things have their ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... after the time of Harun al Raschid:—suddenly they rebelled against their master, burst into his apartment at the hour of supper, murdered him, and cut his body into seven pieces. They got possession of the symbols of imperial power, the garment and the staff of Mahomet, and proceeded to make and unmake Caliphs at their pleasure. In the course of four years they had elevated, deposed, and murdered as many as three. At their wanton caprice, they made these successors of the false prophet the sport of their insults and their blows. ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... people had formed a rational opinion upon a question which offers so many difficulties to the most experienced statesmen. The bank is a great establishment which enjoys an independent existence, and the people, accustomed to make and unmake whatsoever it pleases, is startled to meet with this obstacle to its authority. In the midst of the perpetual fluctuation of society, the community is irritated by so permanent an institution, and is led to attack ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... my lower Nature; learn the higher, Whereby, thou Valiant One! this Universe Is, by its principle of life, produced; Whereby the worlds of visible things are born As from a Yoni. Know! I am that womb: I make and I unmake this Universe: Than me there is no other Master, Prince! No other Maker! All these hang on me As hangs a row of pearls upon its string. I am the fresh taste of the water; I The silver of the moon, the gold ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... the monarchical the people are subjects, helpless, powerless, bound to obey laws made by superiors—while in the republican, the people are citizens, individual sovereigns, all clothed with equal power, to make and unmake both their laws and law makers, and the moment you deprive a person of his right to a voice in the government, you degrade him from the status of a citizen of the republic, to that of a subject, and it matters very little to him whether his monarch be an individual tyrant, as is ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... the planter collapsed into his chair, breathing heavily, but his terrors swept over him and left him with a savage sense of triumph. This passed, he sprang up, intending to recall Hicks and unmake his bargain. What had he been thinking of—safety lay only in flight! Before he reached the door his greed was in the ascendant. He dropped down on the edge of his bed, his eyes fixed on the window. The sun sank lower. From where he sat he saw it through the upper half of ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... either by persuasion or force. Its belief is not subject to the will. Aurelia, if I have heard aright, is a Christian from conviction. Evidence made her a Christian—stronger evidence on the side of her former faith can alone unmake her.' ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... sons of noblemen in which he will forget it," said the friar bitterly; "where they teach disloyalty to princes and unmake men to make machines—and the mainspring is at Rome. Gentle women are won to believe in them by the subtle polish of those who uphold them, and the marvelous learning by which their teachers fit themselves for office. And among them ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... and power of dispensing the word, sacraments, and discipline, which was given in ordination, so none have power to depose who have not power to ordain. It belongeth not to the magistrate either to make or unmake ministers. Therefore, in the ancient church, the bishops had power of the deposition as well as of the ordination of presbyters, yet they were bound up that they might not depose either presbyter or deacon without ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... "I was made queen for the purpose of ruling. They told me they had confidence in my judgment, not in my readiness to carry out their wishes. If my judgment, coupled with that of my advisers, does not suit them, it is open to them to unmake me as they made me, and appoint a king or a president, but ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... 'the God you believe in could have made me for a minute or two. He can, I suppose, unmake ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... mischief of thus suffering society to repose on conventions which the human will had made, lay in the corollary that the human will is competent at any time to unmake them, and also therefore to devise all possible changes that fell short of unmaking them. This was the root of the fatal hypothesis of the dictator, or divinely commissioned lawgiver. External circumstance ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... and instruct and carry us into the kingdom of heaven in spite of ourselves; their labours call for response and correspondence. What about those who are now leaving childhood behind and will be in the front ranks of the coming generation? Their influence will make or unmake the religion of their homes, and what they will be for the whole of their life will depend very much upon how they take their first ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... would do it with a conscientious use of opportunities, good or bad. An eye that is trained to detect the values of circumstances, and a hand that is quick to adjust them, have produced the mental forces that make or unmake ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... fountainhead of great events. Power! power! The absolute power of the soldier in the saddle, with premier and government and all the institutions of peace only a dim background for the processes of war! Opposite her was a man who could make and unmake not only generals but even the destinies of peoples. By every sign he enjoyed his power for its own sake. There must be a chief of the five millions, which were as a moving forest of destruction, and here was the chief, ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... favor of the giver of pleasure. Men make works of art: but women make men,—(except when they tamper with the work of the men, as happened in France at that time):—and it would be more just to say that they unmake what they make. No doubt the Eternal Feminine has been an uplifting influence on the best of men: but for the ordinary men, in ages of weariness and fatigue, there is, as some one has said, another Feminine, just as eternal, who drags them down. This other Feminine ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... foundation upon which our Constitution rests being the people—a breath of theirs having made, as a breath can unmake, change, or modify it—it can be assigned to none of the great divisions of government but to that of democracy. If such is its theory, those who are called upon to administer it must recognize as its leading principle ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... time, no shred of responsibility to any organ of the State, they are a deadly peril. The chief of these men are more powerful to-day than any Minister. Nay, they do, as I have said (and it is now notorious), make and unmake Ministers, and they may yet in our worst hour ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... the gardens," grumbled old Sapt, still resentful of the queen's reproof and scornful of the woman's agitation. He was also out of temper with Rudolf himself, because the moon took so long in deciding whether she would make or unmake a king. ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... thought there are some which we can make and unmake at our pleasure; there are others which come and go without our wish; there is also a third class which is of the very essence of our thinking, and which dominates our conceptions. We find that all our ideas of limits, sorrows and weaknesses presuppose an infinite, perfect and ever-blessed something ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... side-paths, which lead nowhere; and they never will confess, either, that they need help. They always think they are doing what they call "making up their mind." But, whichever way they make it, they wish they had made it the other; so they unmake it directly. And by this time the crisis of the first hour which they lost has become complicated with that of the second hour, for which they are in no wise ready; and so the hours stumble on, one after another, ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... that "there is no medium between a Vice-Christ and Anti-Christ;" for "it is not the acts that make the difference between them, but the authority for those acts." This of course was a new mode of viewing the question; but we cannot unmake ourselves or change our habits in a moment. It is quite clear, that, if I dared not commit myself in 1838, to the belief that the Church of Rome was not a type of Antichrist, I could not have thrown off the unreasoning prejudice and suspicion, which I cherished about her, ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... spavined white horse cannot be expected to carry two men a four days' journey. I hate white horses, but this time it cannot be helped. You begin to understand me? I perceive that you are minded, on the strength of what you have seen and fancy, to taint my reputation. It is men of your sort who unmake kings. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the ultima ratio," said the stranger. "He is one of Gigonnet's lambs, a spy for Palma, Werbrust, Gobseck, and the rest of those crocodiles who swim in the Paris money-market. Every man with a fortune to make, or unmake, is sure to come across one of them ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Antichrist, and be stigmatized as such, because a resemblance must ever exist between an original and a forgery; and thus the fact of such a calumny was almost one of the notes of the Church. But we cannot unmake ourselves or change our habits in a moment. Though my reason was convinced, I did not throw off, for some time after,—I could not have thrown off,—the unreasoning prejudice and suspicion, which I cherished about her at least ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... whatever why he should not be so styled, as, by virtue of his high office, he possesses almost as much power as the most aristocratic ruler of any nation. Secondly, it would clearly demonstrate the sovereign power of the people; a people who could make and unmake an Emperor, would certainly be highly respected. Thirdly, the United States sends ambassadors to Germany, Austria, Russia, etc. According to international law, ambassadors have what is called the representative character, that is, they represent ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... course of this decision that Marshall asserted in unmistakable language the sovereignty of the National Government. "The people made the Constitution and the people can unmake it.... But this supreme and irresistible power to make or to unmake resides only in the whole body of the people; not in any subdivision of them. The attempts of any of the parts to exercise it is usurpation, ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... of rage Elizabeth leaned over and slapped his face with her long glove. "Death of my life, but I who made you do unmake ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not a single one among them who believed as his father did that the South was sure to fail in her efforts to dissolve the Union. They all thought as Rodney did—that the Northern people belonged to an inferior race, that there was no fight in them, and that the States having made the nation could unmake it whenever they felt like it. He learned also, to his no small indignation, that his father did not stand as high in the estimation of his neighbors as he might have done if he had not expressed his opinions with so much freedom. ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... touch my bell if I want anything. No—no tea, thank you," responded Bessie; and the waiting-woman felt herself dismissed. Bessie chose to make and unmake her toilette alone. It was easy to see that her education had not been that of a young lady of quality, for she was quite independent of her maid; but Mrs. Betts was a woman of experience and made allowance for her, convinced that, give her ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... lover of men, And turn abhorring as from fat slug or snake? Lives obstinate in me too Something the power of angels could not unmake?" ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... the army return to London. It is now that the Commonwealth is to be really put upon its trial. Hitherto the army, that had made and could unmake it, had been occupied first in Ireland, then in Scotland; and the minds of people at home had been equally occupied in watching its achievements. The Commonwealth has lived upon the expectations of men. It has been itself an expectation. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... it could make and unmake laws in defiance of the Executive went mad. Taxation soared to undreamed heights, while the currency was depreciated and subject to the ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... just as indisputable as ever, that public affairs do have an enormous and intimate effect upon our lives. They make or unmake us. They are the foundation of that national vigor through which civilizations mature. City and countryside, factories and play, schools and the family are powerful influences in every life, and politics is directly concerned with them. If politics ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... it's natural. But—not a pretty butterfly, Hugh. A woman nearer your own age, dear boy, some one to be a restful companion for you, able to appreciate your work, and fit in with your angles instead of your having to attempt to unmake yourself at your ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... James, and he insisted that his subjects ought to see how clearly God had predestined him to rule over them! But he could not tolerate the necessary logical inference of Calvinism that all men must be equal before God, and so men can make and unmake kings as they need to do so, the matter of king or subject being purely an incidental one. He remembered the time when Andrew Melville, one of the Scotch ministers, had plucked him by his royal sleeve and called ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... think of something to do that will vary the monotony of this routine existence? We rise in the morning, make a toilet, go to her Majesty, make a toilet, breakfast, read to her Majesty, make a toilet, dine, walk with her Majesty, sup, unmake a toilet and go to bed! Of all the awful existences I really believe ours ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... effect is traceable even in that produced by our different and changeful moods. We make and unmake a world more than once in the space of a single day. In trifling moods all seems trivial. In serious moods all seems solemn. Is the song of the nightingale merry or plaintive? Is it the voice of joy or the harbinger of gloom? Sometimes ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... And arm our British soldiery with bows. Dirt and disease shall rule us as of yore, The Plague's grim spectre stalk from shore to shore. Proceed, brave BALFOUR, whom no flouts appal, Collect stupidities and do them all. Uneducate our men, unplough our land, Bid heathen temples rise on every hand; Unmake our progress and revoke our laws, Or stuff them full of all their banished flaws. Let light die out and brooding darkness reign, And in a word call Chaos back again. Then, as we perish, we can shout with glee, "Hail, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... father is a great fool, very much like Tom. It is easier to save ten knaves than one fool. A leopard is a leopard; a nigger is a nigger. God can change the spots of the one and the color of the other, but I'm blessed if I believe even God can unmake a fool. Now my dear girl, don't throw away your happiness for life in a hopeless effort to save your father from ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... Student. May you never Regret those hours which make the mind, if they Unmake the body; for the sooner we Are fit to be all mind, the better. Blessed Is he whose heart is the home of the great dead, And their great thoughts. Who can mistake great thoughts They seize upon the mind; arrest and search, And shake it; bow the tall soul ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... legislates and acts, or else it can dissolve. It is a creature, but it has the power of destroying its creators. It is an executive which can annihilate the legislature, as well as an executive which is the nominee of the legislature. It was made, but it can unmake; it was derivative in its origin, but it is destructive in its action. This fusion of the legislative and executive functions may, to those who have not much considered it, seem but a dry and small matter to be the latent essence and effectual secret of the ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... every attempt to find him," said Curran. "Colette has her own ideas, but she has kept back all the details that make or unmake a case. She is so sure of her instincts! No doubt ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... that there should be such when we remember what have been the teachings of the priesthood through long series of ignorant centuries. Every age has to shape the Divine image it worships over again,—the present age and our own country are busily engaged in the task at this time. We unmake Presidents and make new ones. This is an apprenticeship for a higher task. Our doctrinal teachers are unmaking the Deity of the Westminster Catechism and trying to model a new one, with more of modern humanity and less of ancient barbarism in his ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... once more I dreamed of finality in change I deceived myself, forgetting that God Himself cannot unmake the past or undo what is done. A year had hardly gone by in this new apprenticeship to life, when at moments of weariness or overstrain sharp doubts shot through me and were gone again, like twinges of sudden pain recalling old disease to one who has lulled ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... wants to tax the people!—that's all the thanks we get for helping him," said the grumbling Cecco. "What would he have been without us?—we that make, can unmake." ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... book to be really tasted—not thrust aside because crammed down—no, it would not be desirable, as I was going to say, we should only do double mischief. We are not sent into the world to mould people, but to let them mould themselves; and the internal elasticity will soon unmake all the shapes that just now seem to form ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rule he keeps himself very far from the negro, and says things about him that are not pretty. There are six million negroes, more or less, in the States, and they are increasing. The American, once having made them citizens, cannot unmake them. He says, in his newspapers, they ought to be elevated by education. He is trying this, but it is likely to be a long job, because black blood is much more adhesive than white, and throws back with annoying persistence. When the negro gets religion he returns directly as a hiving ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... soil rests solely upon force until society takes it in hand, and espouses the cause of the possessor;" [62] and, a little farther, "The right of property is not natural, but social. The laws not only protect property: they give it birth," &c. Now, that which the law has made the law can unmake; especially since, according to M. Laboulaye,—an avowed partisan of the historical or pantheistic school,—the law is not absolute, is not an idea, but ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... beautiful villa near Misenum into the receptions of Caesar, and be wholly uninfluenced by what he saw there of kings, princes, ambassadors, hostages, and delegates, suitors all of them from every known land, waiting humbly the yes or no which was to make or unmake them? As mere assemblages, to be sure, there was nothing to compare with the gatherings at Jerusalem in celebration of the Passover; yet when he sat under the purple velaria of the Circus Maximus one of three hundred and fifty thousand spectators, he must have been visited by the thought that ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... campaign; to have forced a confession from the prisoner, and have dishonored King Charles. This blow struck, he would recover Louviers, secure Normandy and the Seine, and then repair to Basel to begin another war—a theological war—to sit there as arbiter of Christendom, and make and unmake popes. At the very moment he had these high designs in view, he was compelled to cool his heels, waiting upon what it might please this ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... perceive that his fortune would return to him, when he became aware that he was knocked about like a shuttlecock from a battledore, that his pride came by its first fall. Mollett was in truth the great man,—the Warwick who was to make and unmake the kings of Castle Richmond. A month ago, and it had pleased Earl Mollett to say that Owen Fitzgerald should reign; but there had been a turn upon the cards, and now he, King Herbert, was to ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... worthy sire, when guile hath strong intrenched, Guile of a firmer mould, should countermatch, And beat the bulwarks down; 'twere easy done. In sooth so easy that no glory crowns The working of a scheme so patent to An eagle eye, which hath discernment keen. To unmake offices, were quickly done. To lower stipends till the hungry mouth Shall to the belly say: "We must go hence Or else we perish," were a shrewd device. 'Twere he who holds the money bags, must rule And we the golden ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... in the neighbouring town, who, wishing to make his son a gentleman, sent him to college. Having never been at college myself, I cannot say whether he took the wisest course; I believe it is more easy to unmake than to make a gentleman; I have known many gentlemanly youths go to college, and return anything but what they went. Young Mr. Platitude did not go to college a gentleman, but neither did he return one; he went to college an ass, and returned a prig; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... term, but one of divine origin. Of the Brahman it may be said as of no other privileged mortal except perhaps the Levite of the Old Testament: Nascitur non fit. No king, however powerful, can make or unmake a Brahman, no genius, however transcendent, no services, however conspicuous, no virtues, however pre-eminent, can avail to raise a Hindu from a lower caste to the Brahman's estate. In early times the caste ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... thing. Thou too, the bitter mother and mother-plague Of this my weary body—thou too, queen, The source and end, the sower and the scythe, The rain that ripens and the drought that slays, The sand that swallows and the spring that feeds, To make me and unmake me—thou, I say, Althaea, since my father's ploughshare, drawn Through fatal seedland of a female field, Furrowed thy body, whence a wheaten ear Strong from the sun and fragrant from the rains I sprang and cleft the closure of thy womb, Mother, I dying ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... its very existence, were granted for certain uses. As regards your State's connection with that Government, no other State has the right to interfere; but as for another State's connection with it, the power that made it can unmake." ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... was immense. Take for instance, Sheffield, which was subject, in the reign of Elizabeth, to the Earl of Shrewsbury. The cutlery trade, even in those days, was the main-stay of the town, and yet the earl could make and unmake the rules and ordinances which governed the Cutlers' Company, and could claim one half of the fines imposed on ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... of his death is not properly known" ("non si sa bene la cagione della sua morte") "beyond the fact that such was the pleasure of the prince, who shows us that he can make and unmake ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... to me miserable! And shall I find myself thus every time, in every place, and in every state? Shall I always close with my faithlessness the way to Thy providence? Yes, truly, if indeed Thou by Thy mercy do not unmake me, and make me anew. Then, Lord, unmake me, and break the hardness of my heart, that I be not a tool ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... well to occasionally have such reminiscent thought; it makes us less pessimistic and gives life to strive and spirit and hope. We cannot unmake human nature, but can certainly improve conditions by self-denial, earnest ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... slipped from thee. The choice was thine to rule the Church or be ruled by it. Thou hast chosen, and art lost, and thy Empire with thee." Was this prophetic? What did it mean? And by and by he found a meaning. The first Constantine made the Church; now the Church will unmake the last Constantine. How many there are who spend their youth yearning and fighting to write their names in history, then spend their old age shuddering ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... not that "I come like water and like wind I go." I am here today, and the moment and the place are real, and my will is itself one of the fates that make and unmake all things. "Every meanest day is the conflux of two eternities," and in this center of all time and space for the moment it is I that stand. Great is Eternity, but it is made up of time. Could we blot out one day in the midst of time, Eternity could be no more. The feebleness ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... charity of God; the boundless love by which all things consist; and, like all love, becomes more rich by spending, and glorifies himself by giving himself away; and has sworn by himself—that is, by his own eternal and necessary character, which he cannot alter or unmake—'This is the new covenant which I will make with my people. I will write my laws in their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; and I will dwell with them, and be ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... Twilight and he were not to live the life of the others. He had not known why they were set apart for unusual experiences, but to-night he dared to think. With the words of the wise men still in his ears—the rulers who could make and unmake—he knew that no other boy had ever heard the praise and promise he had heard. He knew they thought they were giving words to one who would be a leader in the years to come—and this first night under the peace of the stars, ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... opportunity for requesting it. It is always the way with me. I get a thing into my head, and out it comes at the most unseasonable moment. It is almost as important that what is said should be relevant as that it should be true. Well, the mistake is made, and I cannot unmake it. I will not trouble you with another syllable—directly at any rate—about Latin and Greek, but I do want to know what you think about the exclusion of theology and metaphysics from the education of the young. I must have DEBATE, so that before publication my ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... means, without formality—by a mere letter! Nor was that enough. Fearing that love might outweigh reason and calculation in the young, the law granted to the father the right to give notice of divorce to the daughter-in-law, instead of leaving it to the son; so that the father was able to make and unmake the marriages of his sons, as he thought useful and fitting, without ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... always friendly,—but never more than that on Hawthorne's side,—with one exception, where he thanks Longfellow for a complimentary review of "Twice-Told Tales" in the North American. At that time the North American was considered an authority which could make or unmake an author's reputation; and Longfellow may be said to have opened the door for Hawthorne into the great world. Hawthorne's friendship for President Pierce proved an advantage to him financially, but it also became a barrier between him and the other literary men of his time. Of course he believed ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... out, father spake: "This Bundle of Sticks you can't break; Take them singly, with ease, You may break as you please, So, dissension your strength will unmake." ...
— The Baby's Own Aesop • Aesop and Walter Crane
... according to your own account, you will protect your tailoress and unmake your country. I am sorry for your ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... one which had just collapsed—one of those modern edifices, all, whatever may be the name with which they are decorated, tainted with the same original weakness—"What the majority has made, the majority has the right to unmake." In fact—as somebody said in a speech—a perpetually provisional arrangement Under these ephemeral forms of rule, our national inferiority in face of other stable and far-sighted governments is flagrantly evident. ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... made it what it is, and may unmake it again," replied the general. "The earthquake is the father of the desert, as the Indians say; and it may some day become the father of a ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... epigrams. Stern need compels. Frenchmen and Germans, in congress assembled, and looking about them for a means of intercommunication, might indeed agree to accept Italian then and there as an international compromise. But congresses don't make or unmake the habits of everyday life; and the growth or spread of a language is a thing as much beyond our deliberate human control as the rise or fall ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... Arthur from a race that he had trusted and defended. In Greeley's defeat for the Presidency all theorists who had dwelt upon the so-called "Power of the Press" received a shuddering blow. The men who had affected to believe that the press could make and unmake destinies began to count on their fingers the few newspapers that had opposed Horace Greeley. To their amazement they found that, excepting one journal in the metropolis, every daily paper in the land whose editor or chief stockholder did not hold a public ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... Premier,—and in the search the old Duke had been the foremost. The Duchess had hardly said more than the truth when she declared that her husband's promotion had been effected by their old friend. But it is sometimes easier to make than to unmake. Perhaps the time had now in truth come, in which it would be better for the country that the usual state of things should again exist. Perhaps,—nay, the Duke now thought that he saw that it was so,—Mr. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... said Deodonato, "I unmake. Henceforth let men and maidens in my Duchy marry or not marry as they will, and God ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... sword was drawn, resolved to throw away the sheath, and his hits were keen and "damaging," as those things are now termed. In this style he said to little Colonel M'Mahon, the Prince's secretary—"I made him, and I shall unmake him." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... pretty bit of strategy and came very near being successful. The plan was neatly frustrated by one of those apparent accidents of war which make or unmake men, according as ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... governs, if the States are sovereign, only by the will of the State, and she is as competent to revoke the powers she has delegated as she was to delegate them. The Union, as far as she is concerned, is her creation, and what she is competent to make she is competent to unmake. ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... the same hand that punishes," she answered, enigmatically, lifting her lashes again and looking into his eyes with a love at last unmasked. "He gives me a man to love and denies me happiness. He makes of me a woman, but He does not unmake me a princess. Through you, He thwarts a villain; through you, He crushes the innocent. More than ever, I thank you for coming into my life. You and you alone, guided by the God who loves and despises me, saved me ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... exclaimed Trot. "I'll make the Laws myself from now on, and I'll unmake every Law you ever ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... real Church—it might be of but 200 men—was confronting the Kirk of the malignants, and alone was genuine. The State did not make and could not unmake 'the Trew Church,' but was bound to ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... side to this daily intercourse, with its sweet and gracious courtesies. The women who discuss grave questions and make or unmake literary reputations in the salon, are capable of rare sacrifices and friendships that seem quixotic in their devotion. Cousin, who has studied them so carefully and so sympathetically, has saved from oblivion many private ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... sense-compelling spirit; the depths glow, The heights flash, and the roots and summits shake Of earth in all her mountains, And the inner foamless fountains And wellsprings of her fast-bound forces quake; Yea, the whole air of life Is set on fire of strife, Till change unmake things made and love remake; Reason and love, whose names are one, Seeing reason is the sunlight shed ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... say that many of these things that I have mentioned are insignificant and only trifles, but, after all, it is such things as these that in a large degree make or unmake our human lives; and a human life is no trifle. But lest some hard-headed business man shall shake his head and say, "The fools will bankrupt themselves," I must add, that aside from the beauty and grace of this thoughtful business philanthropy, the enterprise has been entirely ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... that of no other man in the solid and enduring esteem of the people of the Commonwealth. He has been content to do a service, and has left the other men who sought for it the credit of doing it. His official action has tended to make or unmake great industries. Great fortunes have depended upon it. He has affected values of millions upon millions, and yet he retires from office with unstained hands, without fortune, and without a spot upon his integrity. He has no children ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... a statesman a phrase will often make or unmake his future. In the height of the slavery excitement and while the enforcement of the fugitive-slave law was arousing the greatest indignation in the North, Mr. Seward delivered a speech at Rochester, N. Y., which ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... very top, for advertising is the great power these times. You will make and unmake kings ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... Hence, we see, a prophet is born, not made. No consecration can make one any more than installing a scene painter in the studio of a Raphael could ensure a reproduction of a Transfiguration, or the Madonna di Foligno. And no desecration, no excommunication from church, chapel or sanhedrin can unmake him. The prophet is one of those royal beings who are kings by right Divine, aye and human too, for all fall down instinctively before him. It is the verdict of history that all that is most blessed we owe to the prophets—not to the priests—to Moses, Confucius, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... privately,—only just one regiment, you know, and he built to that. The first thing the Strelitzes knew, the regiment was an army, their position was turned, and they had to take a walk. Just that little idea made the biggest and worst of all the despotisms the world has seen. The same idea can unmake it. I'm going to prove it. I'm going to get out to one side and work my scheme ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Department, is under the control of a member of Parliament, elected by the people. But we are more interested in social reform, in labour legislation, and in constitutional reform than in foreign politics; and so it is on questions of home policy that we make and unmake Governments, and when we discuss whether a Conservative or a Liberal Government ought to be in power, we never think what effect the change would have on foreign policy. If the democracy is to take a real part in foreign politics, it must recognise that great responsibilities mean great sacrifices. ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... were smelted in a pot Than the South more fierce and hot; These the siroc could not melt, Fire their fiercer flaming felt, And the meaning was more white Than July's meridian light. Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know. Have you eyes to find the five Which five ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... to shut your eyes at me now—though I might go blind, you could not unmake me:—"The gods themselves cannot recall their gifts." Also that I am yours is a gift of the gods, I will trust: and ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... the colonel. "You know, monsieur, with what assurance the public, both in Paris and the provinces, talk of fortunes that they make and unmake. People exaggerate both happiness and unhappiness; we are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people say we are. There is nothing sure and certain in business except investments in land. I am awaiting the accounts of my agents ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... enforce the celibacy of the clergy, to cleanse the bishoprics and abbeys, to wrest the privilege of conferring benefices from lay potentates and feudal seigneurs who bartered them for money, and to make and unmake kings. ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... like Sophy Viner, had the kind of face which seems less the stage on which emotions move than the very stuff they work in. In moments of excitement his odd irregular features seemed to grow fluid, to unmake and remake themselves like the shadows of clouds on a stream. Darrow, through the rapid flight of the shadows, could not seize on any specific indication of feeling: he merely perceived that the young man was unaccountably surprised at finding him with Miss Viner, and that the extent ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... present. But, to employ a figure of speech, the fly-paper beckons to the insect toothsomely, and, thinks he; 'Shall I give it a try? Shall I? Shall I give it a try?' The future is in his own hands to make or unmake. The past, the voice of Providence, has counselled him: 'Leave it alone, leave it alone, little fly. Go away from there.' Does he heed the warning? Does he heed it, ladies and gentlemen? Does he? Ah, no! He springs into the air, decides between the two ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... looking at me with a fierce light in his eyes. 'You remind me in season, I may still make and unmake! I am still King of France? That is so ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... terrible downfall; but, of course, there was no use my arguing against the skipper's decision, the master of a merchant ship being lord paramount on board his own vessel, and having the power to make and unmake his officers, like a nautical Warwick, the ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... those present seized him by the foot and threw him on one side, so that Henry found himself uppermost. Popular tradition says that it was Du Guesclin's hand that did this act, and that he cried, "I neither make nor unmake kings, but I serve my lord;" but some writers say it was the Viscount ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... granting equal understanding and experience, the tradition of the race must count for much; and it would seem that at every stage of growth, boys and girls alike should feel the impulse to imitate men who have an instinct to make and unmake, to trade and carry. It is no justification of existing conditions to say that the men now in the teaching profession lack these qualities; if they do, let us get rid of them and have real men. And for purposes of political life, does it not ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... Montreuil; "and whenever you embrace the offer of my friendship made to you more than two years ago,—whenever, too, your ambition points to a lofty and sublime career,—whenever to make and unmake kings, and in the noblest sphere to execute the will of God, indemnifies you for a sacrifice of petty wishes and momentary passions,—I will confide to you schemes worthy of ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... shall he fulfill His malice, and thy goodness bring to nought, Or proud return, though to his heavier doom, Yet with revenge accomplish'd, and to Hell Draw after him the whole race of mankind, By him corrupted? or wilt thou thyself Abolish thy creation, and unmake For him, what for thy glory thou hast made? So should thy goodness and thy greatness both Be question'd and blasphem'd without defence. To whom the great Creator thus replied. O son, in whom my soul hath chief delight, Son of my bosom, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... can be read by every intelligent being. Pitiless storms of outrage may have beaten upon his defenseless head and he may have descended through ages of oppression, yet he is a man. God made him such, and his brother cannot unmake him. Woe, woe to him who attempts to ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... a part of this terrible power, which can make and unmake at its mysterious will and pleasure. Early in 1902 warning had been publicly uttered in the State against the continued manifestation of church power in politics. The period of unsettled conditions during which I was elected had ended and we had opportunity to see the manner ...
— Conditions in Utah - Speech of Hon. Thomas Kearns of Utah, in the Senate of the United States • Thomas Kearns
... by ideas which cannot be obliterated by any effort of the will and steadily refuse to make way for others. But what I desire to point out is that if Gautama was equally confident that he could "make and unmake" ideas—then, since he had resolved self into a group of ideal phantoms—the possibility of abolishing self ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... degraded a being as a sailor. So, indeed, it would seem. But when all the circumstances are considered, it will not appear extraordinary that some of them should thus cast discredit upon the warrants they wear. Title, and rank, and wealth, and education cannot unmake human nature; the same in cabin-boy and commodore, its only differences lie in the different modes ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... triumphant; yet the fact will speak for itself. The government can not go to the halves. It would be another, a worse government, if the mob, or the leaders of the mob in Congress,[92] can stop the lawful acts of the president, and unmake a treaty. It would be, either no government, or instantly a government of usurpation and wrong.... I think we shall beat our opponents in the end, but the conflict will light ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... as now practised, seems to be expressly constituted to unmake what God had made disease to be, ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... It gives you an idea of the Majesty of God, who could in one short second turn it all into confusion. There is nothing to me more beautiful than the raising one's eyes to Heaven, and thinking with adoration who made this scene, and who could unmake it again.' ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the electors. I think that the representatives have not the right of taking the place of the sovereign power. I think that the Commune cannot create a single one of its own members, neither make them nor unmake them; and, therefore, that it cannot of itself furnish that which is wanted ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... what He wishes to give, and the praise of Himself, the Giver. This is true of all visions without exception: we can contribute nothing towards them—we cannot add to them, nor can we take from them; our own efforts can neither make nor unmake them. Our Lord would have us see most clearly that it is no work of ours, but of His Divine Majesty; we are therefore the less able to be proud of it: on the contrary, it makes us humble and afraid; for we see that, as our Lord can take ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... however much they help one to fame. Such a question is almost too dreadful, and though I have asked it, I will not attempt to answer it. I would much rather consider the question whether if the newspapers can make an author they can also unmake him, and I feel pretty safe in saying that I do not think they can. The Afreet once out of the bottle can never be coaxed back or cudgelled back; and the author whom the newspapers have made cannot be unmade by the newspapers. They consign him to oblivion ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... office of Constable. On this opposition, according to Sir Anthony Weldon, "the Duke peremptorily accosted Coventry, 'Who made you Lord Keeper, Coventry?' He replied, 'The King.' Buckingham replied, 'It's false; 'twas I did make you, and you shall know that I, who made you, can, and will, unmake you.' Coventry thus answered him, 'Did I conceive that I held my place by your favour, I would presently unmake myself, by rendering up the seals to his Majesty.' Then Buckingham, in a scorn and fury, flung from him, saying, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... subject to his influence. And that ruler neither was, nor is, always the head of the nation; but just as in the days of the Normans he might have been a powerful earl whose influence could make or unmake a judge, so to-day he may be none the less a ruler if he exists in the person of a political boss who has created the judge before whom his political enemy is to be tried. The writer has seen more than one judge openly striving to influence a jury to convict or to acquit a prisoner ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... The temporal possessions include such things as his house, revenue, etc. But what is meant by doing homage for spiritual possessions? Does not this admit the claim that the King can, as Queen Elizabeth is reported to have said, make or unmake a Bishop? No. Spiritual possessions do not here mean spiritual powers,—powers which can be conferred by the Episcopate alone. {129} The "spiritual possessions" for which a Bishop "does homage" refer to fees connected ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... I've exaggerated the whole thing some. But if a thing is so, thinking it ain't won't unmake it." ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells |
