"Irretrievable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this a time for Frenchmen and fellow-soldiers to fall out? We are in the midst of our enemies; a quarrel, a loud word, may suffice to plunge us back into irretrievable distress. Monsieur le Commandant, you have been gravely offended. I make it my request, I make it my prayer—if need be, I give you my orders—that the matter shall stand by until we come safe to France. Then, if you please, I will serve you in any capacity.—And for you, young man, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... amounted to the vast sum of L102,000, for which Sir Walter was individually responsible. To a mind less balanced by native intrepidity and fortified by principle, the apparent wreck of his worldly hopes would have produced irretrievable despondency; but Scott bore his misfortune with magnanimity and manly resignation. He had been largely indebted to both the establishments which had unfortunately involved him in their fall, in the elegant production of his works, as well as in respect of pecuniary accommodation; and he felt bound ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... the shore at the highest tide. All efforts to float her again were unavailing. The calamity was irretrievable. The Aimable contained all the ammunition, the mechanic tools, and the farming and household utensils. But La Salle, ever rising superior to the blows of misfortune, still retained his firmness. Diligently he engaged in removing the stores from the ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... later years, equally disastrous to the invaders. As for the despots of Ionia, who had through selfishness lost the chance of freeing their native land, they were to live to see, before many years, Ionia desolated by the Persian tyrant whom they had saved from irretrievable ruin. We shall tell how this came about, as a sequel to the story of ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... up the dead man from the earth which covers him, nor that the executioner should now brand the mouldering bones with dishonour. No; the beloved of my soul will weep for me as one who has fallen innocent, and time will soften her sorrow; but how irretrievable a shock would it be if she learnt of the fearful and diabolical ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... He judged Noel's conduct to be headlong and undisciplined, and the vein of stubbornness in his character fortified the father and the priest within him. Thirza disappointed him; she did not seem to see the irretrievable gravity of this hasty marriage. She seemed to look on it as something much lighter than it was, to consider that it might be left to Chance, and that if Chance turned out unfavourable, there would still be a way out. To him ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the little army of their enemies come on directly to their habitation, and, in a moment more, could see all their huts and household stuff flaming up together, to their great grief and mortification; for this was a great loss to them, irretrievable, indeed, for some time. They kept their station for a while, till they found the savages, like wild beasts, spread themselves all over the place, rummaging every way, and every place they could think of, in search of prey; ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... office, whistling a low tune; out at the street door and down the walk; out into the gay world of dissipation, down into the treacherous depths of crime; one more of the many who have chained bright intellects to the chariot wheels of vice, and have been dragged through dust and mire to final and to irretrievable disaster. ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... guard of rangers were too perfect in their knowledge of woodcraft to lead the whites into any situation that shut off escape. The Shawanoes knew enough of Kenton, Boone and their rangers to hold them in respect, and not presume upon their committing any irretrievable error. ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... thus to fuse together our divisive impulses and march with one mind through life, there is plainly one thing more unrighteous than all others, and one declension which is irretrievable and draws on the rest. And this is to lose consciousness of oneself. In the best of times, it is but by flashes, when our whole nature is clear, strong, and conscious, and events conspire to leave us free, that we enjoy communion with our soul. At the worst we are so fallen and passive ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Therefore this world is his paradise. He would not know what to do with himself in a world where matters were sorted and folded and laid away ready for you when you wanted them. He likes to see human affairs mixing themselves up in irretrievable confusion. If he detects a symptom of straightening, it shall go hard but he will thrust in his own fingers and snarl a thread or two. He is delighted to find dogged duty and eager desire butting each other. All the irresistible forces crashing against all the immovable bodies give him no shock, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... showman had fallen short of his printed promise. The hurricane had come by night, and with one fell swash had made an irretrievable sop of everything. The circus trailed away its bedraggled magnificence, and the ring was cleared ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... to select my pleasures with care, that I may not plunge into joyful moments that are irretrievable. May I indulge in the pleasures that bring happiness and not weariness. Grant that I may have the honor to protect others from harm and loss, as I engage in my pleasures and in ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... taken ill; that her life was absolutely despaired of, and that, before the letter reached England, she would, in all human probability, be dead. It conveyed the impression of a soul resigned indeed, and humble, but crushed down to the very earth with the load of mysterious bereavement, and irretrievable sorrow. ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... gazing vaguely about and not seeking a seat, slowly drew off her gloves while her mother's sad eyes considered her from top to toe. "Tea's gone," Mrs. Brook then said as if there were something in the loss peculiarly irretrievable. "But I suppose," she added, "he gave you ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... peoples who have inherited any share in Christian civilization are effectively united chiefly by national habits, traditions, and purposes; and perhaps the most effective way of bringing about an irretrievable division of purpose among them would be the adoption by the class of wage-earners of the programme of international socialism. It is not too much to say that no permanent good can, under existing conditions, come to the individual and society except through the preservation and ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... pen dropped from his hand and he sat inert, almost pulseless, in the desolation of a despair known only to those who, at a blow, have sunk from the height of public applause into the depths of irretrievable ignominy. ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... 18th of June, 1815, marshaled his magnificent army around the plains and hills of Waterloo, defying the Austrian, Prussian, Russian and British allied armies to the death grapple of the century, and went down to irretrievable defeat. ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... transient gleam over the darkening fortunes of his master's cause; but the surrender of Bristol to the Parliamentary army, and the dispersion of the last force Charles could gather from Wales in an attempt to relieve Chester, were followed in September by news of the crushing and irretrievable defeat of the "Great Marquis" at Philiphaugh. In the wreck of the royal cause we may pause for a moment over an incident which brings out in relief the best temper of both sides. Cromwell, who was sweeping over the southern ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... that was new to it. Of the wounds of his body he was never healed; died of them gradually, with clear-eyed resignation; of his wounded pride, we knew only from his silence. He returned to that city where he had lorded it in his ambitious youth; lived there alone, seeing few; striving to retrieve the irretrievable; at times still grappling with that mortal frailty that had brought him down; still joying in his friend's successes; his laugh still ready but with kindlier music; and over all his thoughts the shadow of that ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hear it. But, speak to me freely, Charles: do not conceal the real state of your affairs from your best friend. What tendency could this have but to plunge you into irretrievable ruin?" ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... abandon the pleasing delusion, and talked over the old plans for redress of grievances, and a constitutional union with the mother country. With little or no belief in the possibility of either, they stood shivering on the banks of the Rubicon, that mythical river of irretrievable self-committal, hesitating to enter its turbid waters. A few of the bolder "shepherds of the people" tried to urge them onward; but no one was bold enough to dash in first and lead them through. Paine seized the opportunity. He had a mind whose eye always saw a subject, when it could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... countenance was that of a penitent. It is probable that the idea quickened his drooping hopes; for Ludlow believed it might not yet be too late to rescue the woman, he so sincerely loved, from the precipice over which she was suspended. The seemingly irretrievable step, already taken, was forgotten; and the generous young sailor was about to rush back to la Cour des Fees, to implore its mistress to be just to herself, when the hand fell from her polished brow, and Alida raised her face, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... Burke withdrew in order that he might read "Evelina," and be rested and refreshed thereby; but long enough to permit of the notion that immunity from buffetings is a possible condition of existence,—of all errors, the most irretrievable. ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... Gaston—better than that. By means of the duke I will discover the place of your exile, and instead of joining you there, I will be there to meet you. As you step from the carriage which brings you, you shall find me waiting to soften the pain of your adieux to France; and then, death alone is irretrievable; later, the king may pardon you; later still, and the action punished to-day may be looked upon as a deed to be rewarded. Then we will return; then nothing need keep us from Bretagne, the cradle of our love, the paradise of our memories. Oh!" continued she, in an accent of ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... vanity, that we bestow more light upon earth than any ten, and that the eyes of all terrestrial stargazers are upon us. Adventurers, pretenders, and quacks, are our meteors, our aurorae, our comets, our falling-stars, shooting athwart our hemisphere, and exhaling into irretrievable darkness: our tuft-hunters are satellites of Jupiter, invisible to the naked eye: our clear frosty atmosphere that sets us all a-twinkling is prosperity, and we, too have our clouds that hide us from the eyes of men. The noonday of our own bustling time beholds ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... Sitgreaves, to convince a member of a rival school. Nothing shall ever tempt me willingly to submit to be divided in this irretrievable manner." ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... princess whose life had been as yet unsullied by any considerable violations of faith, justice, or humanity: but it must not escape remark, that the first steps taken by her in this business were strong, decided in their character, and almost irretrievable. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... nuisance. Although they were not carved in the very deep relief like those one sees in Bavaria, they collected the dirt, and a papal brief was issued to forbid them—ut in ecclesiis nihil indecens relinquatur,[107] and the existing slabs were ordered to be removed. Irretrievable damage must have resulted from this edict, but fortunately it was disobeyed in Rome and ignored elsewhere. Nowadays it has become the custom to place these slabs upright against the walls, thus preventing further ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... disappointment, which happen almost every day, are dreadful to relate; and no punishment can be too great for those whose wilful conduct becomes the occasion of such catastrophes. Parents are deeply laden with guilt, who by this means plunge their children into irretrievable ruin; and lovers are deserving of no forgiveness, whose treacherous conduct annihilates the hopes and even the existence of ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... style, over the Lilliputian difficulties and petty disappointments it has to encounter, gives way to all the fretfulness of grief and all the turbulence of resentment, makes a fuss about nothing because there is nothing to make a fuss about—when an impending calamity, an irretrievable loss, would instantly bring it to its recollection, and tame it in its preposterous career. A man may be in a great passion and give himself strange airs at so simple a thing as a game at ball, for instance; may rage like a wild ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the Austrian peace proposal evidently greatly disturbed the German leaders. The continued German reverses, and the surrender of Bulgaria had taken away all hope. They were anxious to conclude some kind of peace before meeting irretrievable disaster. They therefore determined to appoint as Chancellor of the Empire some statesman who might be represented as a supporter of an honest peace, and Count von Hertling, whose previous utterances might ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... storekeepers of Monterey are as lax as Mexicans; I mean that American farmers in many parts of the State expect unlimited credit, and profit by it in the meanwhile, without a thought for consequences. Jew storekeepers have already learned the advantage to be gained from this; they lead on the farmer into irretrievable indebtedness, and keep him ever after as their bond-slave hopelessly grinding in the mill. So the whirligig of time brings in its revenges, and except that the Jew knows better than to foreclose, you may see Americans bound in the same chains with which ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his ruin was irretrievable. That would be too monstrous and absurd. Because, except for this expanding trouble, everything inside him, all the main component parts that made up the vast and still solid thinking organism which had been labeled for external observers by the name of ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... well his great military skill. But disunion in his ranks did what the Tartar sword could not effect. Many of his adherents deserted him, and the Chinese warrior who had never known defeat was brought to the brink of irretrievable disaster. From this dilemma death extricated him, he passing away at the head of his men without the stigma of defeat on his long career of victory. In the end his body was taken from the tomb and his ashes were scattered through the eighteen provinces of China, to testify that no trace ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... removed. Are we entitled by nature and compact to a free participation in the navigation of the Mississippi? Spain excludes us from it. Is public credit an indispensable resource in time of public danger? We seem to have abandoned its cause as desperate and irretrievable. Is commerce of importance to national wealth? Ours is at the lowest point of declension. Is respectability in the eyes of foreign powers a safeguard against foreign encroachments? The imbecility of our government ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... was crushed by the awful, the irretrievable defeat, and he appeared before his conqueror speechless in the extremity of his woe. Louis had the pride of magnanimity and ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... would not you have gone where your more impressionable acquaintances and friends were gathered together in the greatest numbers, informing them of the position and doing, on the strength of it, a quiet but irretrievable swank? No ostentation, mark you, and nothing approaching a boast, but just a suspicion of a brave careless laugh, a voice just slightly choked with emotion and but a formal reluctance to accept the numerous and costly gifts proffered by relatives ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... but might have yielded, if the Duke of York had not stepped forward. "Your majesty had better not act too precipitately," said the duke. "Listen to the counsels of your prudent advisers. A false step in such a case will be irretrievable." ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... effigy imaginary, imaginative impending, approaching imperious, imperial imply, infer in, into inability, disability ingenious, ingenuous intelligent, intellectual insinuation, innuendo instinct, intuition involve, implicate irony, sarcasm irretrievable, irreparable ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... on the same principle that you are silent about it in your letter; that it was not the time for speaking; and I only felt, what I hinted at when I wrote last, a bitter grief, which prompted me, when the act was irretrievable, to hide myself from you. However, I have spoken, with whatever pain to myself, the first opportunity ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... proper age I had not embraced the lucrative pursuits of the law or of trade, the chances of civil office or India adventure, or even the fat slumbers of the church; and my repentance became more lively as the loss of time was more irretrievable. Experience shewed me the use of grafting my private consequence on the importance of a great professional body; the benefits of those firm connections which are cemented by hope and interest, by gratitude and emulation, by the mutual exchange of services and favours. From the emoluments of ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... board is cleared, Alsace and Lorraine were added to Germany, and the mistake is irretrievable. A fact accomplished cannot be blotted out. But hopeless as it all is, there are watchdogs who, on moonlight nights, call across the Vosges for revenge—for honor, for War, War, War. And the German watchdogs cry War, War, War. The word sounds the same in all languages. The watchdogs ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... incapacity. Bazaine was no match as a military commander for the powerful genius of Von Moltke and the persistency of Frederick Charles and the more than two hundred thousand resolute Germans who surrounded him, and brought him and his army to irretrievable ruin. ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... be good proof of accuracy of aim. The investigation which followed would be a feather in the cap of the officer in charge, whatever the verdict. De Plonville, with something like a sigh, more than suspected that his untimely death would not cast irretrievable gloom ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... and of my actions may be of use to you. It may teach you to avoid the shoals on which my virtue and my peace have been wrecked; but to the rest of mankind it can be of no use. The ruin of my fame is, perhaps, irretrievable; but the height of my iniquity need not be known. I perceive in you a rectitude and firmness worthy to be trusted; promise me, therefore, that not a syllable of what I tell you shall ever ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... to acknowledge or deny the burden, for he could do neither, he stood silent, staring at her, not so much in weakness as in positive mental division. No, would be false; and Yes, not less false; and if the step was irretrievable, to say Yes would be to plunge a dagger in her bosom; but No was a vain deceit involving a double wreck. Assuredly a man standing against the world in a good cause, with a runaway wife on his hands, carries a burden, however precious it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Difficult to see how even by most masterly management that can be accomplished. Apart from Education Bill, enough work in hand, if Supply be fairly dealt with, to carry us on to last week in July. Every moment precious; every quarter of an hour lost an irretrievable misfortune. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... moment she let another thought find harbour in her mind. Was the past irretrievable, the future predetermined? A woman's word had an old right to be broken. If she went to him, would not he welcome her gladly, and the future might yet be ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... said Psmith. 'Things in the Postage Department are tolerably quiescent at present. Naturally I shall be missed, if I go out. But my absence will not spell irretrievable ruin, as it would at a period of greater commercial activity. Comrades Rossiter and Bristow have studied my methods. They know how I like things to be done. They are fully competent to conduct the business of the department in ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... his game there, while admirers and friends watched his far-seeing moves. He had lost; and now, after checkmate, he must resign his place. How he struggled against the idea! He could not bring himself to acknowledge that the past was irretrievable. His spirit seemed in prison, shut in as by the bars of a dungeon, against which he might ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... and the boast and wonder of the hop-growing county. The neglect and scant food of the lean years had cost them their reputation. Each season they had needed smaller bands of "hoppers," and their standard had been lowered. It had been his habit to think of them gloomily, as of hopeless and irretrievable loss. Because this morning, for a remote reason, the pulse of life beat strong in him he was taking a new view. Might not study of the subject, constant attention and the application of all available resource to one end produce appreciable results? The idea presented itself in the ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... inevitable.[96] If Russia was the first to mobilize, she took this step in consequence of German threats. We repeat that in spite of the three empires taking this action, discussion was still possible between Russia and Austria,[97] and might have had good results. In fact, the situation was not irretrievable, if Germany had not rendered it so by issuing her ultimatum to Russia. Once again we may ask, was this ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... of your school days; your neighbor, if so be he is allied against you when the great day comes. We must not weaken; we must keep our eyes fixed upon the ultimate good that will come out of the turmoil. But we must know! We must not make the irretrievable error of taking anything for granted. Keeping that in mind, gentlemen, we will hear first the report ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... sorrow was now become too intense for outward shew; he stood dumb and motionless, with his eyes fixed and rivetted upon her, in whose death he felt that he had sustained an irretrievable loss. We had both still hold of her hands; his mute, immovable figure looked like a statue; and I fancied that his heart was breaking. I seized him by the hand, and in the most supplicating manner implored him to leave the room. ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... It is that terrible "NEXT MORNING," when reason is wide awake, upon which remorse fastens its fangs. Has a man gambled away his all, or shot his friend in a duel—has he committed a crime or incurred a laugh—it is the next morning, when the irretrievable Past rises before him like a spectre; then doth the churchyard of memory yield up its grisly dead—then is the witching hour when the foul fiend within us can least tempt perhaps, but most torment. At night we have one thing to hope for, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mrs. Frankland. "Your break with Mr. Millard may not be so irretrievable as you think it. Providence will direct. If, on the whole, it is thought best, I have no doubt things may be replaced on their old footing. I am sure Mrs. Hilbrough and I could manage that. You ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... damage that one may do to his system through the practice of masturbation may not be very serious, in many cases that have come under the author's observation in which the habit has reached extreme limits, very serious, sometimes irretrievable damage has been done, yet the encouraging feature of this whole matter is, that if the adolescent youth, who is practicing this habit, is warned of its danger and stops at once absolutely, nature comes ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... exposed my person to the horror of his children. I ought to have familiarized the old De Lacey to me, and by degrees to have discovered myself to the rest of his family, when they should have been prepared for my approach. But I did not believe my errors to be irretrievable, and after much consideration I resolved to return to the cottage, seek the old man, and by my representations ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... of military art, to attack Prince Karl's army, which is nearly thrice our own. This risk I must run, or all is lost. We must beat him or die, all of us, before his batteries." He burst unawares upon the Austrian left, and rolled their whole host together, corps upon corps, in a tumult of irretrievable ruin. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... interested in some large gold producers. That chapter of her life would be closed. She told herself that it was best so. Her love for a man of this stamp could bring no happiness to her. Moreover, she had taken an irretrievable step in betrothing herself to Captain Kilmeny. Over and over again she went over the arguments that marshaled themselves so strongly in favor of the loyal lover who had waited years to win her. Some day she would be glad of the course she had chosen. She ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... the Catholic religion in all the provinces being the only common ground on which Spaniards and Belgians could meet. It was, nevertheless, a breach of the Pacification of Ghent, and was destined to link Belgium with Spain for many years to come. It was also a definite and irretrievable step ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... of its reality made them seem a soft reminder of what life had been. Alvan had gone. Her natural blankness of imagination read his absence as an entire relinquishment; it knelled in a vacant chamber. He had gone; he had committed an irretrievable error, he had given up a fight of his own vain provoking, that was too severe for him: he was not the lover he fancied himself, or not the lord of men she had fancied him. Her excessive misery would not suffer a picture of him, not one clear recollection of him, to stand before her. He who ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... summer-warmth of his romantic passion, Lawrence Bury had not yet grown so utterly cold toward his beautiful wife that he could see that trial approach without some slight sympathetic dread; but his miserable egoism forbade him to wish her success; in his secret heart he even hoped that an utter, irretrievable failure would wither at once and forever her pretty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... Sydney—to my great sorrow—I have gone in as a candidate for a Professorial chair at the other end of the world, Toronto in Canada. In England there is nothing to be done—it is the most hopeless prospect I know of; of course the Service offers nothing for me except irretrievable waste of time, and the scientific appointments are so few and so poor that they ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... hearth. There sat her bread and pies, in the most lamentable half-baked, sticky, doughy condition imaginable. She opened the oven, and peered in. There were Grandma's loaves, all a lovely brown. Out they came, with a twitch. Luckily, they were done. Her own went in, but they were irretrievable failures. ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... father was too ill to go to his office. A cold, caused by the exposure of two nights previous, and accompanied by a rising temperature, kept him confined to his room, though not to bed. The occurrence, by maintaining the situation where it was, rendered it impossible to take any irretrievable step that day. This was ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... not yet taken the irretrievable step. Until he was actually married, a hope remained to him. He might postpone the fatal day; his purse was not yet empty. Why should he be too strict in the report of his election expenses to Constance? Every pound in his pocket meant a prolongation of liberty, a new ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... of sympathy which had bound them. In this respect, he dreaded her own future as much as his own. What might she do? For he felt, in her, a potential element of desperation; a capacity to commit, at any moment, an irretrievable act. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... followed by a full acknowledgment. Nothing but this hostile conduct would have afforded so indubitable a proof of the thing impugned. While the ancient patriarchates which had formed the substructure of the triple dais on which the Apostolic See rested were falling into irretrievable confusion, while the new State-made patriarch at Constantinople was trying to nominate and, if he could, to consecrate his elders and superiors at Alexandria and Antioch, who descended from Peter, the essential prerogative of the Apostolic See itself came forth ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... followers. His kindness as their ealdorman, his skill and bravery as a leader, his cheerfulness and brightness under every danger and peril had immensely endeared him to their hearts, and each man felt that he had sustained an irretrievable loss, and that with their chief the spirit which had animated the Dragon and directed their enterprises ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... the love of Heaven, before you go!' exclaimed Eugene. 'Is there any mode, any means whereby Edouard may be rescued from this frightful, this unmerited calamity—this irretrievable ruin?' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... narrow limits of the Aztec empire, were great impediments in the way of erecting a magnificent city. On a small scale, he resembled Santa Anna in the activity with which he could organize an army after defeat, or resuscitate affairs when apparently irretrievable. He knew how to improve the most slender means to the accomplishment of ulterior purposes. Perseverance is not one of the leading characteristics of the Spanish race, yet it is surprising to see how much they will often accomplish with what would appear to us totally inadequate means. Such ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... impression that Lawrence's eagerness prevented his making due allowance for the way of the "Chesapeake," causing him to overshoot his aim; an error of judgment, which the accidents to the headsails converted into irretrievable disaster. The general testimony agrees that the crew, though dissatisfied at non-receipt of pay and prize money, behaved well until the moment of boarding. Four witnesses, all officers, stated as of their own observation that the "Shannon" received several shot between ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... to fulfil the Governor's instructions, while Basilivitch remounted his horse and returned to his kretschma, to serve, with smiling countenance and friendly mien, the men whom he had devoted to irretrievable ruin. ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... Herbart says: "Here (in nature) lies the abode of real truth, which does not retreat before tests into an inaccessible past (as does history). This genuinely empirical character distinguishes the natural sciences and makes their loss irretrievable. It is here (in nature) that the object disentangles itself from all fancies and opinions and constantly stimulates the spirit of observation. Here then is found an obstruction to extravagant thinking ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... 22, 1862, Jefferson Davis committed the one irretrievable mistake of his administration. He consented to his inauguration as permanent President of the Confederacy under the strict ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... perhaps, be slow with impunity; but a statesman who is slow—whatever the force of his character and the strength of his judgment—can hardly escape unhurt from the hurrying of Time's winged chariot, can hardly hope to avoid some grave disaster or some irretrievable mistake. The fate of General Gordon, so intricately interwoven with such a mass of complicated circumstance with the policies of England and of Egypt, with the fanaticism of the Mahdi, with the irreproachability of Sir Evelyn Baring, with Mr. Gladstone's mysterious passions— was finally ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... in no haste—Fabius Cunctator about to be named—with 60,000 men; does come to Kolin. Frederick attacks; but a blunder of too-impetuous Mannstein fatally overturns the plan of battle; to which the resulting disaster is imputed: disaster seemingly overwhelming and irretrievable, but Daun does not follow up. The siege of Prag is raised and the Prussian army—much smaller—retreats to Saxony. And on the west Cumberland is in retreat seawards, after Hastenbeck, and French armies are advancing; Cumberland very soon mercifully to disappear, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... it is not to lament the irretrievable that I intrude myself upon your leisure. There is something to be done, to save, at least to spare, that lady. You did not fail to ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... his seat perhaps opposite a young lady whom he thought pretty and interesting. When he arrived at Cuckfield he began to be in love; at Crawley he was desperately smitten; at Reigate his passion became irretrievable, and when he gave her an arm to ascend the steep ridges of Reigate Hill—a just emblem, by the way, of human life—he declared his passion, and they were married soon after. Nothing of this sort ever occurs on railroads. Sentiment never blooms on the iron soil of ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Germany alone, but as well the excesses of the iconoclasts, and the imprudence of the authors of the famous placards of 1534, although their acts were distinctly repudiated by the vast majority of the French reformers, inflicted irretrievable damage, by furnishing plausible arguments to those who accused the Protestants of being authors or abettors of riot ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... troops we had still in line without making the least attempt to impede its progress. The reason of Kellerman's not charging it sooner was that it was too serious a movement, and the consequences of failure would have been irretrievable: that charge, therefore, could only enter into a general combination of plans, to which he was necessarily a stranger" (Memoirs of the Duke of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... had erred three times in as many seconds. He had switched on the light prematurely, and his ready banter had warned the parricide that a well-built scheme was crumbling to irretrievable ruin. Moreover, he had underrated the nervous forces of the man thus trapped and outwitted. Fenley knew that when his feet touched the earth he would begin a ghastly pilgrimage to the scaffold. Two yellow orbs of light were already springing up the slight incline from the rock, betokening ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... institution is not to be considered a place of punishment, or its subjects as criminals. It is to be an inviting refuge, into which the exposed may be gathered to be saved from a course which would inevitably end in penal confinement, irretrievable ruin, ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... man who is ignorant of Arabic or Sanskrit can write Hindustani or Bengali with elegance, or purity, or precision, and that the condemnation of the classical languages to oblivion would consign the dialects to utter helplessness and irretrievable barbarism."—H. H. Wilson, Asiatic Journal, Jan., 1836; vol ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... feeling of distrust in the candor and sincerity of Lincoln's personality and of his Cabinet has sprung up. It was the imbecility of this administration which culminated in the catastrophe of Bull Run. Irretrievable misfortune and National disgrace never to be forgotten are to be added to the ruin of all peaceful pursuits and National bankruptcy as the result of Lincoln's running the machine for five months. Jefferson Davis will soon be in ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... Napoleon's retreat from Moscow could there have been a more terrible picture of hopeless and irretrievable defeat. In this area alone, eighty-seven guns of various calibres, and fully a thousand horse and oxen-drawn vehicles, nearly a hundred motor-lorries, cars, field-kitchens, water carts, and a mass of other impedimenta blocked ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... I want to lie down and cry. Everything seems to me so impossible. I do not make things go very well, and I feel that my life is an absolute and irretrievable failure. Perhaps I am thankless, but I so often feel that I should like to give it up and die. However, I presume that if I could have the opportunity I should at once ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... blood. The heavy masses of Grant and his powerful artillery were prevailing. The strongest portion of the Southern army was being forced back, and a gap was cut between Hill and Longstreet. Had Hancock perceived the gap that he had made he might have severed the Southern army, inflicting irretrievable retreat, but the smoke and the dusk of the Wilderness hid it, and the moment passed into one of the great ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... should depute the great and solemn duty of determining what amount shall be expended for military purposes. There is not a country in the world that would not have been bankrupt long since, and plunged into irretrievable ruin, if the military authorities had been allowed to determine the amount of military force to be kept up, and the amount of revenue to be ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... incredible height, many buildings were destroyed, and the havoc amounted to 100,000 livres. All this was painfully disquieting. To quote Mother Marie again: 'If M. Talon has been wrecked, it will be an irretrievable loss to the colony, for, the king having given him a free hand, he could undertake great things without minding the outlay.' In the meantime M. Patoulet, Talon's secretary, who had left France on another ship and had ...
— The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 • Thomas Chapais
... him not to insist any longer on what he perceived so deeply affected her husband. She said trade could not be carried on without credit, and surely he was sufficiently justified in giving it to such a person as the count appeared to be. Besides, she said, reflections on what was past and irretrievable would be of little service; that their present business was to consider how to prevent the evil consequences which threatened, and first to endeavour to procure her husband his liberty. "Why doth he not procure bail?" said ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... of the night a pang of emptiness, of vast, irretrievable loss, possessed her. She and Love had touched each other for a space—then had flung violently apart, and were speeding each in their eternally separate direction. Life for her might be rich and full of honour and achievement, ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... for an instant, then recovering himself as he looked upon her and marked the nature of her emotion, he said: "There can be no false step that you could ever have taken that cannot be retrieved. There can have been nothing that is irretrievable, except falsehood." ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... darkness from the day, Waves o'er a warrior's tomb. I see thee shrink, 70 Surpassing Spirit!—wert thou human else? I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet Across thy stainless features: yet fear not; This is no unconnected misery, Nor stands uncaused, and irretrievable. 75 Man's evil nature, that apology Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, set up For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood Which desolates the discord-wasted land. From kings, and priests, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... bellows of the diplodoci rose above the shouts of the soldiery to fill the dust-laden air with a dreadful clamor. The battle now swayed critically; a feather's weight on either side and one army would roll back in red, irretrievable ruin. It was the psychological instant. ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... loss of my father hath placed me in a situation wherein, from the magnitude and delicacy of the concern, every hour may afford an important crisis; and in which a single omission, a momentary absence, may entail consequences irretrievable, in matters wherein the result to me and mine is to be conjoined reputation and affluence, or disgrace and penury. I cannot, under impression of such alternatives, delegate an iota of conduct to a second person. ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... so far as its operation upon men's hearts is concerned, to that small minority who have gone through the process of conversion as recognised by Edwards' sect. All others, heathens, infants, and the great mass of professed Christians, are sentenced to irretrievable perdition. The simplicity with which he condemns all other forms even of his own religion is almost touching. He incidentally remarks, for example, that external exercises may not show true virtue, because they have frequently proceeded ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... which were safe from their attacks, perished from age, seems clearly made out. Goats were introduced in the year 1502; eighty-six years afterwards, in the time of Cavendish, it is known that they were exceedingly numerous. More than a century afterwards, in 1731, when the evil was complete and irretrievable, an order was issued that all stray animals should be destroyed. It is very interesting thus to find, that the arrival of animals at St. Helena in 1501, did not change the whole aspect of the island, until a period of two hundred and twenty years ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... shall be evil, unutterably evil, with the wicked. That there is a mysterious and awful malignity attaching to sin—that to be in sin means to be in misery and ruin in this life or any other life—and that sin persisted in tends to utter and irretrievable ruin. No arguments about the love and power of God to save to the uttermost can cancel the fact of the free-will of man or the plain statements of Scripture confirmed beyond question by the loving Lord Himself as to the awful fate of ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... of vast undertakings; but men closely associated with him have assured me that Rhodes was a very indifferent "business man." We may, I think, take it for certain that if Rhodes had been condemned to conduct a retail grocery he would have conducted it to speedy irretrievable disaster. We are probably all agreed that the conduct of a small grocery does not require fineness of intellect; most English readers, I think, will follow me in believing that success in such a sphere of life implies at ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... however explained, can hardly be carried to a man's credit; but his after course, by wresting success out of seemingly irretrievable disaster, has merited the highest eulogium. Maintaining both courage and energy unimpaired, every effort was instantly made to get the ships once more into fighting condition, that the attack might be renewed. "Tell the Admiralty," said he to the bearer of his despatches, "that ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... not fall. The grey-haired monk believed that, in his great knowledge of mankind. But she would suffer terribly, and it might be that others would suffer also. It was the consequence of an irretrievable error in the beginning, when it had seemed to the young girl just leaving the convent that the best protection against the world of evil into which she was to go would be ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... tried to stem the current of affairs, but she had proved as powerless to deflect it as a dried stick tossed on to a river in spate. And now, whether the end were ultimate happiness or hopeless, irretrievable disaster, Michael and Magda must still fight their way towards it, each alone, by the dim light of that "blind Understanding" which is ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... commanders precluded any confidence as to their superior numbers and resources effecting their natural result, and although Gordon himself declared that the Taeping cause was a lost one before he assumed the command, no cause could be pronounced irretrievable with a leader so expert and resolute as Chung Wang, and opponents so incapable and craven as his were. But another thing was certainly incontestable, and that was that the Taepings could not in any sense be regarded as patriots. Their regular mode of conduct stamped ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... justice and truth, on which our enterprise is grounded; and these, I am certain, can only be furthered by measures in themselves true and just. To operate upon your present feelings, my dear Mr. Waverley, to induce you to an irretrievable step, of which you have not considered either the justice or the danger, is, in my poor judgement, neither the ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... There is nothing so irretrievable as a posted letter. This came home to Vernon as the envelope dropped on the others in the box at the Cafe du Dome—came home ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... usually sit down on the pavement and adulterate the milk with their tears. They pass on. Such passing on is termed callous and cold-hearted in the rest of England, which loves to sit down on pavements and weep into irretrievable milk. ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... str. 1. Whom the Gods o'ershadow In dangerous trial, With certainty of favour! As erst they shadow'd Your race's founders From irretrievable woe; When the seed of Lycaon Lay forlorn, lay ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... to enforce peace would have to begin its regime with enforcing peace on terms of the unconditional surrender of the formidable warlike nations; which could be accomplished only by the absolute and irretrievable defeat of these Powers as they now stand. The question will, no doubt, present itself, Is the end worth the cost? That question can, of course, not be answered in absolute terms, inasmuch as it resolves itself ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... which death seems to menace irretrievable and final disaster. But it is personal love to which comes the divinest presage. Some voice says to our yearning heart, "Fear ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... to him now that there had never been a time when he had not known her and talked with her, and yet with this was also a consciousness of all the joys that he had missed because he had not known her before. As he thought of it the hard irretrievable fact of those earlier empty years struck him physically with a sharp agonising pain—toothache, and no possible way of healing it. The irony of her proximity, of her desire for him as he, all unwittingly, had in reality desired her, hit him like a blow. The picture ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... an island reeking with blood, and the sword at our throat, directed by an administration in the best and in the worst of times hostile to Ireland, we call upon you to assist in rescuing our country from utter and irretrievable ruin—we implore you to interfere for us with our common Sovereign—to solicit at his paternal hand the removal of those wicked men, who by abusing the confidence of their Sovereign, and sacrificing their duty to his people, to the gratification of ambitious views ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... Congress against polygamy, but rather would they make, enforce, and maintain such laws themselves if absolutely free to regulate the subject? We can not afford to experiment with this subject, for when a State is once constituted the act is final and any mistake irretrievable. No compact in the enabling act could, in my opinion, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... Malarial fever, of course! Doctors don't admit—do they?—that it's possible for strong men to die of miserable marriages. And yet I was dying in Rome, I truly believe, from my bitter, crushing disappointment, from the consciousness of my wretched, irretrievable—[FORTUNE enters, carrying LUCAS' hat, gloves, overcoat, and silk wrap, and upon a salver, a bottle of medicine and ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... days—he had yielded to temptation, when in distress for money wherewith to save his estate; and sold his vote. His crime was discovered, and his fall followed instantly. Nothing could reinstate him in the confidence of the people, his ruin was irretrievable—his disgrace complete. All doors were closed against him, all men avoided him. After years of skulking retirement and dissipation, death had relieved him of his troubles at last, and his funeral ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner |
