"Irrevocable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be only a ruin, and Hope but another name for deception and disappointment; but Youth is supreme happiness in itself, because all possibilities lie in it, and nothing in it is as yet irrevocable. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... Erastus Snaffle was not especially prepossessing. His face would have been more attractive had the first edition of his chin been larger and the succeeding ones smaller, while the days when he could still boast of a waist were so far in the irrevocable past that the imagination refused so long a flight as would be required to reach it. His eyes were small and heavy-lidded, but in them smouldered a dull gleam of cunning that at times kindled into a pointed flame. His dress was in keeping ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... until it was finally assimilated and became part of my being; the reader will also remember how the mere mention, at a certain moment, of the word "France" awoke a vital impulse, even a sense of final ordination, and how the irrevocable message was obeyed, and how it led to the ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... to the dancing little figure in purple-striped pyjamas. She had a scared sense of irrevocable breaches. What would he do to-morrow? What should she do to-morrow? Would he speak to her at breakfast or should she speak first to him?... She wished she had some money. If she could have foreseen all this she would have got ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... pleased with my answer, and ordered them to be sent me. They expected the money, which I was in no haste to give, and even hoped it had been forgotten. But the king's words are all written down[217], and are as irrevocable decrees. Seeing that I sent not for the malefactors, his officers delivered them into the hands of my procurator, in my absence this day, taking his note for the sixty rupees, which I paid at my return, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... manner, my forebodings were realized. That night I was destined to meet a sorrow surpassing any which my troubled life had known. Even now I experience great difficulty in relating the matters which befell, in speaking of the sense of irrevocable loss which came to me. Briefly, then, at about ten minutes before the dining hour, whilst all the passengers, myself included, were below, dressing, a faint cry arose from somewhere aft on the upper deck—a cry which was swiftly taken up by other voices, so that presently a deck steward echoed ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... duchess's ball at the other end of the palace, the things that still bound that man to life—power, honors, wealth, all the magnificence that surrounded him—must have seemed to him to be already far away in an irrevocable past. It required courage of a very exceptional temper to resist such a blow without the slightest outburst of self-love. No one was present save the friend, the physician, the servant, three intimate acquaintances, who were familiar ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Demeter sterilized the earth. To assuage her, Zeus undertook to have Persephone recovered, provided that in Hades, of which Pluto was lord, she had eaten nothing. But the girl had—a pomegranate grain. It was the irrevocable. Demeter yielded, as the high gods had to yield, to what was higher than they, to Destiny. Meanwhile, in the shadows below, Persephone ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... being robbed of their guardian angels, that they are "orphans"—a mournful word greatly beloved of the Russian masses under multiform circumstances, both material and spiritual—and orphaned in a peculiarly distressing and irrevocable way. They might even feel when their saints' days came around quite correctly the next year that some spurious adventurer—Angel of Darkness—was being foisted ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... my dear fellow! That's my advice: never marry till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing—or all that is good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles. Yes! Yes! Yes! Don't look at me with such surprise. If you marry expecting anything from yourself in the future, you will feel at every ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... just about one minute before he spoke, and during that minute each man there realized that what was coming would be quite irrevocable. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... life, to see the sky—to be sure there was a sky. It is then his privilege, looking up at this horizon of steel and iron and running belts, to read in a paper book the literary definition of what this heaven is, that spreads itself above him, and above the world, walled in forever with its irrevocable roar of wheels. ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... great-uncle Ralph's letter with him, as he had promised Graciella. When she read it, she would see the reasonableness of his hope, and might be willing to wait, at least a little while. Any delay would be a point gained. He shuddered to think that he might lose her, and then, the day after the irrevocable vows had been taken, the treasure might come to light, and all their life be spent in vain regrets. Graciella was skeptical about the lost money. Even Mrs. Treadwell, whose faith had been firm for years, had ceased to encourage his hope; while Miss Laura, who at one ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... excuse even if he forced likelihoods, and suborned witnesses in the court of his own judgment. To conclude it false was to think his father in heaven, and his mother not an adulteress, not a murderess! At once to kill his uncle would be to seal these horrible things irrevocable, indisputable facts. Strongest reasons he had for not taking immediate action in vengeance; but no smallest incapacity for action had share in his delay. The Poet takes recurrent pains, as if he foresaw hasty ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... those leafy solitudes where one "might walk with God." And now there rushed upon me a memory of Diana—Diana as she once had been—my Goddess of the Silent Places; and I yearned passionately for the irrevocable past and despaired in bitter hopelessness of the present and ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... the scenes just following the catastrophe, the horror of that long-past day, and the slow, irrevocable decay of all the monuments of ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... she hastily exclaimed: "That is exactly what forces the decisive irrevocable 'No' to my lips. Do you think that because I am as proud as my mother, and resolute like my father, that I wish for a husband whom I could govern and lead as I would? How little you know me! I will be obeyed by my dogs, my servants, my officers, if the Gods ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... baskets of roses, on the steps of porticoes, a fragrance floated up like incense round the limbs of statues, which were bathed in a golden light by the lamps of the piazza. Those marble countenances were placid with an eternal youth, beneath the same stars that had embellished irrevocable nights, that recalled some excursions into an enchanted world, some romantic gestures the knack for which ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... as Heirs-male of Karl's body would have been." A Pragmatic Sanction is the high name he gives this document, or the Act it represents; "Pragmatic Sanction" being, in the Imperial Chancery and some others, the received title for Ordinances of a very irrevocable nature, which a sovereign makes, in affairs that belong wholly to himself, or what he reckons his own rights. [A rare kind of Deed, it would seem; and all the more solemn. In 1438, Charles VI. of France, conceding ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... go back, none of them, to the old smug, complacent, luxurious days. They could no more go back than Joey could return to life again. War was the irrevocable step, as final as death itself. And he remembered something Nolan had said, just before ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... I shall have become your avenger, Binding Tiamat and saving your life, Then come in a body, In Ubshu-kenna,[716] let yourselves down joyfully, My authority instead of yours will assume control, Unchangeable shall be whatever I do, Irrevocable and irresistible, be the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... monasticism, but also from the true spirit of Christianity. The minds of the Italians assimilated paganism. In their hatred of mediaeval ignorance, in their loathing of cowled and cloistered fools, they flew to an extreme, and affected the manner of an irrevocable past. This extravagance led of necessity to a reaction—in the North, of Puritanism; in the South, to what has been termed the Counter-Reformation effected under Spanish influences in the Latin Church. But Christianity, that most precious possession of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of holiness, while it allows full scope to that of love. The gospel proclaims the ineffable consolation, the good news, which disarms all earthly griefs, and robs even death of its terrors—the news of irrevocable pardon, that is to say, of eternal life. The Cross is ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Aphrodite, who all at once stood in the way before him. She stopped him, took him by the hand, urged him to restrain his useless anger, and calmed and quieted him with soothing words. "It is not Helen," said she, "that has caused the destruction of Troy. It is through the irresistible and irrevocable decrees of the gods that the city has fallen. It is useless for you to struggle against inevitable destiny, or to attempt to take vengeance on mere human means and instrumentalities. Think no more of Helen. Think of your family. Your aged father, your helpless wife, your little son,—where ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... shrubbery. He was arrested and tried for the crime, but was acquitted on the evidence of Martha Kawa. When, shortly after the trial, Samuel and Martha disappeared simultaneously, every one felt that Samuel was surely guilty, and that his acquittal, which was irrevocable, had involved a terrible ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... The end of the miserable rag-dealer been told to me briefly and brutally enough—yet somehow I was moved to a sense of regret and pity. Abjectly poor, half crazy, and utterly friendless, he had been a brother of mine in the same bitterness and irrevocable sorrow. I wondered with a half shudder—would my end be like his? When my vengeance was completed should I grow shrunken, and old, and mad, and one lurid day draw a sharp knife across my throat as a finish to my life's history? I walked more rapidly to shake off the morbid ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... Rousseau's rather hazy creed was the duty of universal philanthropy, and Rousseau fancied himself to be the object of all men's hatred. Similarly, Cowper, who held that the first duty of man was the love of God, fancied that some mysterious cause had made him the object of the irrevocable hatred of his Creator. With such fancies, reason and creeds which embody reason have nothing to do except to give shape to the instruments of self-torture. The cause of the misery is the mind diseased. You can no more raze out its rooted troubles by arguing against the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... the morning, just to coax you forth without your cloak, and then came up a villanous, horrible wind, exactly like the worst east wind of Boston, breaking the heart, racking the brain, and turning hope and fancy to an irrevocable green and yellow hue, in lieu of their ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... elbow on the table near which he had seated himself, leaned his head upon his hand, and looked at the floor. From Brandon's tone he perceived that this resolution was irrevocable. The deep dejection which he felt could not be concealed. He was silent ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... implore your forgiveness for neglecting to obey as to the advertisement, but the truth is——" and he hesitated—"I have a plan. It may not meet with your concurrence," he added, "but I wished to submit it before you made other and irrevocable arrangements." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... years are capable of producing! I am told that even respectable characters speak of a monarchical form of government without horror. From thinking proceeds speaking; thence to acting is often but a single step. But how irrevocable and tremendous! what a triumph for our enemies to verify their predictions! what a triumph for the advocates of despotism, to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... don't excuse it. The thought of it burns like fire. But it wasn't done maliciously; it wasn't done falsely; it was done inconsiderately; and when it was done, it seemed irrevocable. But it wasn't; I could have prevented, I could have stooped the mischief; and I didn't! ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... architects be employed in fitting certain soils for the growth of vegetable substances? There seems, indeed, to exist in our world a living spirit, or principle, continually operating in the production of creatures, and places suitable for them, to compensate the loss of those which an irrevocable law of the great Fabricator has doomed to successive destruction, as if He chose to manifest the glory of His wisdom and power, by creating new existences, rather than by preserving the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... heart with a presence too dangerously dear. He must direct her gaze up those mystical heights where an unearthly marriage awaited her, its sealed and spiritual bride; he must hurry her footsteps onward to the irrevocable issue. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... l'Auteur.—C'est mon intention irrevocable de finir ma vingtaine de romans sur la famille OGWASH, et je compte avec plasir offrir les dix-neuf a suivre a mon ami ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... into despair, until one morning he came to me, his face white as a sheet, and held out to me, with tremulous hands, a tiny sheet, pointing with his finger to one particular notice. It was not much, apparently, but it was the verdict, final and irrevocable, of insolvency and bankruptcy. It was a list of judgments, marked in the Superior Courts, against those who are unable to meet their demands; and ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... from the irrevocable past was not altogether confined to herself. It is one evil attached to chronic and domestic oppression, that it draws into its vortex, as unwilling, or even as loathing, coperators, others who either see but partially the wrong they are abetting, or, in ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... foes. The tossing breakers of the bar throw their spray high over bulwarks and guard. In grim determination he watches the last American flag he ever will see in friendship, till it fades away from sight. He has now taken the irrevocable step. When he steps on Mexican soil, he will be "a man without a country." Prudential reasons keep him aloof from his companions until Guaymas is reached. Once ashore, the comrades openly unite. Without delay the party plunges into the interior. Well armed, splendidly mounted, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... in all good faith, brought out in the Burlington a very handsome "obituary" on Jack—one of those showy articles stocked with random technicalities that I have heard (I won't say by whom) compared to Gisburn's painting. And so—his resolve being apparently irrevocable—the discussion gradually died out, and, as Mrs. Thwing had predicted, the ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... others who, like myself, come to regard the ostensible existence more and more as a mere experimental feeder and agent for that greater personality behind. And this back-self has its history of phases, its crises and happy accidents and irrevocable conclusions, more or less distinct from the adventures and achievements of the ostensible self. It meets persons and phrases, it assimilates the spirit of a book, it is startled into new realisations by some accident that seems altogether irrelevant to the general tenor ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... there would remain in his pocket hardly more than cab fare. Supremely self-confident, he harboured no doubts of a smiling future—now that the dark pages in his record had been turned and sealed by a resolution he held irrevocable. ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... grandees, the princes, and the satraps have been assembled before us, we have taken counsel together, and we have resolved an irrevocable resolution, according to the laws of the Medes and Persians, to extirpate the Jews from among the inhabitants of the earth. We have sent the edict to the hundred and twenty-seven provinces of my empire, to slay them, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... indeed quite new, for she has only recently taken the veil; but I am sure that her resolution, like my own, is irrevocable. Do not therefore seek to detain me any longer, but embrace me, as you love me. Permit me to thank you for all your kindness, for all your patience, and for your unceasing affection for a ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... in recording this saying; but, at all events, I venture to take a liberty with it which I should not do if it were a word of God's, or if it were given for our instruction. So I take it now as expressing in a vivid way, and irrespective of Pilate's intention, the thought of the irrevocable past. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... that prince of evils—a troubled mind: for the Desmonds a haunting anxiety, and for Lenox the harassing realisation that his own strength or weakness during the next few months stood for no less than the happiness or misery of the only woman on earth. It is this irrevocable fusion of two lives, and the network of responsibilities arising from an act less simple than it seems, that constitute the strength, the charm, the tragedy of marriage: and a dim foreknowledge of its complexity dawned upon Lenox during his ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... non-commissioned officer, responsible for his detachment, from devotion to his trade; in the commanding officer, from supreme responsibility! It is in battle that a military organization justifies its existence. Money spent by the billions, men trained by the millions, are gambled on one irrevocable moment. Organization decides the terrible contest which means the triumph or the downfall of the nation! The harsh rays of glory beam above the field of carnage, destroying the vanquished without ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... diagrams, were it not that, in addition to being generally in a hurry, he is preoccupied. He is preoccupied by the sense of doom, by the sense that he has set out on the appointed path and dare not stray from it. The train or the tram-car or the automobile (same thing) is waiting for him, irrevocable, undeniable, inevitable. He wrenches himself away. He goes forth to his fate, as to the dentist. And just as he would enjoy his breakfast in the home, so he would enjoy his newspaper and cigarette in the vehicle, were it not for that ever-present ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... in Galliard's mind, and the scales fell now on one side, now on the other. But against his scruples rose the memory of the treatment which the lad had meted out to him that night; the harshness of the boy's judgment; the irrevocable contempt wherein he had clearly seen that he was held by this fatuous milksop. All this aroused his rancour now, and steeled his heart against the voice of honour. What was this boy to him, he asked himself, that he should forego for him the accomplishing ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... talkative man beside me, my own father's little brother, a traveller in distant countries, and a most innocent man, and with all the inveterate habits of thirty years' honourable bachelorhood and all the mellowness of life upon him, should, without consulting me, have taken the first irrevocable step towards becoming a ratepayer, a pew tenant, paterfamilias, a fighter with schoolmasters, and the serf of a butler, that I scarcely knew what to say ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... park, the children in the sandpit and everyone, she bent forward and seized his shoulder and kissed him on the lips. Something lit up in Mr. Polly at the touch. He put an arm about her and kissed her back, and felt an irrevocable act was sealed. He had a curious feeling that it would be very satisfying to marry and have a wife—only somehow he wished it wasn't Miriam. Her lips were very pleasant to him, and the feel of ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... this tale will sigh and murmur something about Paradise.) Ruth still teaches in the little school. Though she is the first lady of the land, she supports herself, she earns her daily bread. It is the law irrevocable. There are no distinctions. Nor ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... dare offer to anxious mourners grieving over sinful friends departed is that God only is the judge of what constitutes irrevocable rejection of good, that we cannot tell who has irrevocably "done despite to the Spirit of grace," and that the deep love and pain of Christ for sinful men remains for ever and ever. We may tell the poor ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... I honour you; a thousand times better that you should separate now than find out your mistake afterwards when it is irrevocable. Thank God, He has given you such courage! But you must have suffered—I know you must;' and ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... with bitter hearts on either side of the mangled body, overwhelmed by this sudden and irrevocable disaster which had brought all our long and weary labours to so piteous an end. Then, as the moon rose we climbed to the top of the rocks over which our poor friend had fallen, and from the summit we gazed out over the shadowy moor, half silver and half gloom. Far away, miles off, in ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... may bear a rich harvest. It often, indeed, passes an irrevocable sentence on weakness and misery, but often, too, it leads to a healthy revival, and lays the foundation of a new and vigorous constitution. "I recognize in the effect of war upon national character," said Wilhelm von ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... pictures, and Canova's Hercules and Lycus, which I do not admire. In the evening to the Convent of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, which is remarkably clean and well kept. There are forty-five friars (Passionisti), whose vows were not irrevocable, and, though the cases do not often occur, they can lay aside the habit if they please. They live on charity. In their garden is a beautiful palm, one of three which grow in Rome. They have several apartments for strangers who may like to retire to the convent for a few days, which ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... emigrant, torn by cruel fate from country and friends, hope smiles in his tears; the fortune that drives away can bring back; but the farewell of death leaves no fissure in its cloud for the gleam of hope—it is final, terrible, and, on this side the grave, irrevocable. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... is—I mean I admire her, and I told her—" He stopped, feeling himself on the verge of the irrevocable. "She's a splendid girl," he went on. "I like her exceedingly, but I've known her ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... servant also; he should have done all things otherwise. Poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... that wasted of his irrevocable day that was to set him on Elise's track once more! The first post had been delivered by this time. Elise must either return to her studio or remove her possessions; anyhow, sooner or later the Merichats must have ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... last to speak. I believe he watched his moment. The passions, Louisa, however disturbed, are always cunning. He demanded a promise, solemn and irrevocable, to be his. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... or could have loved, Though accident, blind contact, and the strong Necessity of loving, have removed Antipathies—but to recur, ere long, Envenomed with irrevocable wrong; And circumstance, that unspiritual god And miscreator, makes and helps along Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod, Whose touch turns hope to dust—the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... back she was baffled. She tried to disentangle the events between that moment when Grace, holding the lamp in her hand, blinked at them as they came across the lawn, and that other most awful moment when, in Paul's study, Grace declared final and irrevocable war. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... he had received a letter from his father which he was allowed to read, in which Sir James half hinted at the advisability of postponing the irrevocable step until things were quieter, and his heart had leaped at the possibility of escape. He did not know till then how strong had grown the motive of appearing well in the eyes of his relatives and of fearing to lose their respect by drawing back; and now that his father, too, seemed ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... not follow that marrying without money is to be justified in others; and again, that the negotiations and transactions connected with marriage-settlements are eminently useful, as searching character and testing affection, before an irrevocable step be taken; and again, that when two very young persons are joined together in matrimony, it is as if one sweet-pea should be put as a prop to another. The essay on Wisdom is elevated and thoughtful, like most of the essayist's papers, but somewhat too heavy for miscellaneous ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... by themselves. That red turret is one of the last of the temples. Posting a letter and getting married are among the few things left that are entirely romantic; for to be entirely romantic a thing must be irrevocable. We think a pillar-box prosaic, because there is no rhyme to it. We think a pillar-box unpoetical, because we have never seen it in a poem. But the bold fact is entirely on the side of poetry. A signal-box is only called a signal-box; it is a house of life ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... hour of isolated wandering in a garden of tombs; the witchery of the moment; the word too much; the glance that lingered to a look;—and the irrevocable was upon them. Desmond had returned to the Frontier, to a circle of silently amazed brother officers; and in less than three months from their time of meeting the two had become ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... should be subjected to, and also the medicine to cure them. And also to tell them the predictions of their fate and doom. Said he could not withhold the water from his eyes, or keep from quaking when he thought of their irrevocable doom to which they were destined, and said: "There is a habitation beyond these great waters towards the sun-rising, which are inhabited by beings of very pale faces, and are looking only to themselves, have pity for nobody, and make their delight ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... suddenly we must go—though I hadn't dreamed till then that we had been half as long. I shook hands with Mr. Brett for good-bye, and so did Sally; but nobody spoke about our meeting again, as perhaps we should if he were in Mrs. Ess Kay's set. It seemed very sad, and irrevocable, somehow, and I had a heavy sort of feeling that life can be ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... common usages, more particularly as to marriage, food, and questions of ceremonial pollution, and ruling its members by the sanction of certain penalties of which the most signal is the sentence of irrevocable exclusion or out-casting. The Census of 1901 was the first to attempt a thorough classification of Indian castes, and the number of the main castes enumerated in it is well over two thousand, each one divided up again into almost endless sub-castes. ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... here to chase the animal away. Thus the crime was discovered...."—"Crime!" thundered Daihachiro[u]. "Ah! This intermeddler must certainly die. By the word of a samurai...." In his terror Densuke almost put his hand over the irrevocable sentence. He spoke with life at stake. "Deign, master, to pardon Densuke. He has committed no offence; knows of no offence in others. Densuke has seen nothing. Life is a jewel, to be kept at any cost. Densuke is far too insignificant to deserve the anger of Takahashi Sama." He ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... the object of his choice. After the usual preliminaries, the ill-fated pair were united, at Seaham House, on the 2nd of January, 1815. Byron was married like one walking in his sleep. He trembled like a leaf, made the wrong responses, and almost from the first seems to have been conscious of his irrevocable mistake. ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... martial spirit. For the rest, to make a revolution is a matter that may well give the strongest-minded pause. What wonder if, reckless, obstinate, and unscrupulous as he was, M. Venizelos, when faced with the irrevocable, felt the need to weigh his position, to reconsider whether the momentous step he was taking was necessary, was right, ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... but now after all she seemed to be a very ordinary human being. He had begun life with high hopes—and life was commonplace. He was to grow fretful and restless. His discontent was to lead to some action, some irrevocable action; but upon the nature of that action I do not think the Note Book was very clear. It was to carry him in such a manner that he was to forget his wife. Then, when it was too late, he was to see her at an upper window, stripped and firelit, a glorious thing of light ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... words. The sense of something irrevocable and unfathomable was overpowering her. The mystery of these sudden alterations of voice, now near, now far off, was intolerable. Here were hands claiming her, fervent, eager breathings close upon her, and ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... daughter, will you tell me how it has come to pass that you have been led to feel it right to take this irrevocable step, renouncing your vows, and keeping your troth to Hugh? When last we spoke together you declared that naught would suffice but a clear sign, vouchsafed you from our Lady herself, making it plain that your highest duty was to Hugh, ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... my lord. But, for all that, your highness is a Necessitarian, yet no Fatalist. Confound not the distinct. Fatalism presumes express and irrevocable edicts of heaven concerning particular events. Whereas, Necessity holds that all events are naturally linked, and inevitably follow each other, without providential interposition, though by the eternal ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... within these five, or ten, or twenty years, for every one of us the judgment will be set, and the books opened.[254] If that be true, far more than that must be true. Is there but one day of judgment? Why, for us every day is a day of judgment—every day is a Dies Irae,[255] and writes its irrevocable verdict in the flame of its West. Think you that judgment waits till the doors of the grave are opened? It waits at the doors of your houses—it waits at the corners of your streets; we are in the midst of judgment—the insects that we crush are our judges—the ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... to the direct course—to see Madeleine, put the problem to her, ask her to marry him and come out of it all. But there were terrible objections to this plan, not the least of which was that if he made a blunder it might be irrevocable. She might not hear him at all. She might be displeased by his SUGGESTION that she and her father were in danger from such a cause. She might decide not to leave her father for the very reason that he was in danger. And all these possibilities were, of course, in addition to the much ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... President, "by a great majority of this Court we have come to an irrevocable decision upon the matter that has been laid before it by our brother Ithiel. It is, for reasons which I need not explain, that on this point our rule may be stretched so far as to admit the child Miriam ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... felt not the least hesitation at taking the last irrevocable step; I was filled with joy and impatience. Never did a betrothed lover count the slow hours with more feverish ardour; I slept only to dream that I was saying mass; I believed there could be nothing in the world more delightful than to be a priest; I would have ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... independence, rights, and enjoyments. Not only does this object of his hopes appear to him of immense importance, but he is never sure of reaching it till it is actually his own; the grade he fills is by no means irrevocable; he is always entirely abandoned to the arbitrary pleasure of his commanding officer, for this is imperiously required by the necessity of discipline: a slight fault, a whim, may always deprive him in an instant of the fruits ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the warm wonderful sense that had been with her all those precious days—of love that knew secretly of its approaching triumph and fulfilment; the delicious sense of giving every minute of her time, every thought, and movement; and all the sweet unconscious waiting for the divine, irrevocable moment when at last she would give herself and be his. The remembrance too of how tired, how sacredly tired she had been, and of how she had smiled all the time with her inner joy of being tired ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... exertions against "social order" were now destined to be forever ended. Irrevocable was the doom, and the lowering aspect of the proud dame of Waddow, as the door unclosed, and a faint light from the loophole opposite revealed her enemy in all the mockery of repose—grim, erect, and undisturbed—showed the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... come too, young brother; for the days pass, and never return, and the South still waits for you. Take the adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes! 'Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of the old life and into the new! Then some day, some day long hence, jog home here if you will, when the cup has been drained and the play has been played, and sit down by your quiet river with a ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... an even more evil malady than the sorrow of bereavement, and that is—remorse. You are both troubled by the bitter memories of an irrevocable past. You did not always love your children, your grandchildren, as you do now that they are both dead—and this is the greatest ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... act of will, an inchoate volition, how is it that we can desire the unattainable, a sufficiently common experience? I may bitterly regret some act of my own in the past; I may earnestly wish that I had not performed it. But the past is irrevocable. Hence, the desire for the attainment of what is in this case the object, a different past, can hardly be regarded as even a preparatory step ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... wants to very much, or unless, in other words, one has a great love. Mr. Abbey has evidently the tenderest affection for just the old houses and the old things, the old faces and voices, the whole irrevocable human scene which the genial hand of Goldsmith has passed over to him, and there is no inquiry about them that he is not in a position to answer. He is intimate with the buttons of coats and the buckles of shoes: he knows not ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... with the first acts of resistance taken in common by the colonies, and is thus, in a sense, older than the state governments, which were not formed until after the Declaration of Independence. Also, that when the States gave in 1788 their consent to the constitution, their consent was irrevocable. Two quotations from decisions rendered by the Supreme Court of the United States will make clear the arguments and theory of ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... this old and equal friendship. Jonathan had entertained the Ordinary with discourse so familiar, they had cracked so many a bottle together, that when the irrevocable sentence was passed, when he who had never shown mercy, expected none, the Great Man found the exhortations of the illiterate Chaplain insufficient for his high purpose. 'As soon as I came into the condemned Hole,' thus he wrote, 'I began to think of making a preparation for ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... should they be allowed to expiate their misdeeds by a manufactured penalty, to subscribe to a charity, or to compensate the victims. If there is to be no punishment there can be no forgiveness. We shall never have real moral responsibility until everyone knows that his deeds are irrevocable, and that his life depends on his usefulness. Hitherto, alas! humanity has never dared face these hard facts. We frantically scatter conscience money and invent systems of conscience banking, with expiatory penalties, atonements, redemptions, salvations, ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... my right to speak on this painful subject on its now irrevocable publicity, brought up afresh as it has been by Mr. Moore, to be the theme of discourse to millions, and, if I err not much, the cause of misconception to innumerable minds. I claim to speak of Lady Byron in the right of a man, and of a friend to the rights of woman, and to liberty, and to ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... long before the storms of war swept across the plains of Manchuria, come into conflict with the imperialistic policy of the United States, although invisibly at first. Prior to that time the Asiatic races had looked upon the dominion of the white man as a kind of fate, as an irrevocable universal law, but the fall of Port Arthur had shattered this idol once and for all. And after the days of Mukden and Tsushima had destroyed the belief in the invincibility of the European arms, the Japanese agents found ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... the prodigious consequences of complete victory at sea, which were more immediate, more decisive, more far-reaching, more irrevocable than on land. The sea became during the continuance of the war the territory of Great Britain, the open highway along which her ships could pass, while it was closed to the ships of her adversaries. Across that secure sea a small army was sent ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... always ready to serve either of you whenever it lies in my power. Only—well, I feel that I'm in your wife's company far too much, both here and in Lincolnshire. People are talking. Therefore, I have decided to leave her, and my decision is irrevocable." ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... the struggle, and her heart not at all, I think I should have abandoned my comfortable self-deception that my own pride forbade discussion with her. As it was, I was able to say: "Don't try to spare me, Carlotta, I'm glad you had the courage and the good sense not to let us both drift into irrevocable folly. I thank you." I opened the door into the hall. "Let us talk no more about it. We could say to each other only the things that sting or the things that stab. Let us be friends. You must give me your friendship, at least." I ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... will establish," the word will has no foundation; the Lord will reject him, cast him away, and break him in pieces like a worthless vessel. With his mother, he shall be carried away from his native land, and die in exile and captivity. Irrevocable is the Lord's decree, that none of his sons shall ascend the throne of David, so that he, having begotten children in vain, is to be esteemed as one who ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... Phyllis felt, with her substitute in her place, her own wraps on, and her feet taking her swiftly towards her goal, as if she were offering herself to be made a nun, or have a hand or foot cut off, or paying herself away in some awful, irrevocable fashion. She packed, mechanically, all the pretty things Mrs. De Guenther had given her, and nothing else. She found herself at the door of her room with the locked suit-case in her hand, and not even a nail-file of the things belonging to her ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... daughter's hand, although unquestionably a son of the wealthy banker Van Haubitz, is excluded beyond redemption from the good graces of that respectable pillar of Dutch finance, who has further announced his irrevocable determination to take not the slightest notice of him in his testamentary dispositions. The excellent Herr Bratenbengel, whose succulent dinner we are now digesting, and whose very laudable Rudesheimer stands before ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... he, his voice low and shaken, because he knew that now he touched the decisive minute, after which there could only be an irrevocable fate. "Messieurs, in order to continue my experiment I am obliged to go through movements that might suggest to you the idea of an attempt at escape, or evasion. I hope you don't regard me as fool enough to ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... by his music the stern Persephone that she has suffered him to lead back his wife to the upper air, provided only he will not look upon her on the way. But love has overcome him. He has turned and looked, and the doom of an irrevocable parting is sealed. In no unseemly paroxysm of grief, but tenderly, sadly, they look their last at one another, while Hermes, guide of departed spirits, makes gentle signal for the wife's return. In the chastened pathos of this scene we have the quintessence of ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... Fifteen further years of that incessant unaffirmative affirmative, accompanied by the perpetual flicking of ash-mushrooms from thirty-two thousand cigars, had broken her. To this husband of hers she made the last concession of married life, which is more complete, more irrevocable, than the first—she listened to him. She told herself that the years had brought her tolerance—actually they had slain what measure she had ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Emperor of India, the King of Great Britain and Ireland, the Mikado and the President of the French Republic—to say nothing of those minor potentates who like Voltaire's minor prophets seem capable de tout—should now be pledged, by irrevocable pact, to her ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... the skazkas and legends upon the terrible power of a parent's curse. The "hasty word" of a father or a mother will condemn even an innocent child to slavery among devils, and when it has once been uttered, it is irrevocable. It might have been supposed that the fearful efficacy of such an imprecation would have silenced bad language, as that of the Vril rendered war impossible among the Vril-ya of "The Coming Race;" ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... not come out of that dark adventure as well as you imagine. It would have been far better to have died. The aureole of a martyr is worth more than to enter a dungeon a man and come out of it a limp rag. I am very ill, Esteban, my sentence is irrevocable. I have no stomach left, my lungs are gone, and this body that you see is like a dislocated machine that can hardly move, creaking in every joint, as though all the bits intended to fall apart. The Virgin who saved me at your recommendation ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... calculation of Science, the all-wise Omnipotence forbids. One may not appear twice in simultaneity upon the Time-scroll. It is an eternal, irrevocable record. ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... to settle on him when he considered that he might lose everything that made life worth while. And it would be an irrevocable loss. He would never again have courage to weave the threads of his existence into another such goodly pattern. Even if he had the courage, he would never have the chance. No such fortuitous circumstances would ever again throw him into the arms of a ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... that a single one Of His own creatures, in His image made, Should die, and in irrevocable shade Lie evermore—neglected and undone. It is not thus a father treats his son, And those whose folly credits it, degrade God's love and fatherhood, that never fade, By lies as base as devils ever spun. Man's love is but a pale reflex of God's, And God is love, and never will condemn ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... although my sight was clear, my spirit calm. But he who beholds only the aerial pathway of an ideal right may stumble and fall on the stones of the world. It was only given me later to realise, through grief too terrible for words, that, given the world as the world is, there are wrongs that are irrevocable, lies that, once lied, no truth can ever ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... supereminence of pain,—and the majority of his species, doomed to penury, disease, and crime, have reason to curse the untoward event, that, by enabling him to communicate his sensations, raised him above the level of his fellow animals. But the steps that have been taken are irrevocable. ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... at MIT, 'Mash Until No Good'; sometime after that the derivation from the {{recursive acronym}} 'Mung Until No Good' became standard; but see {munge}] 1. To make changes to a file, esp. large-scale and irrevocable changes. See {BLT}. 2. To destroy, usually accidentally, occasionally maliciously. The system only mungs things maliciously; this is a consequence of {Finagle's Law}. See {scribble}, {mangle}, {trash}, {nuke}. Reports ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... cosmical manufacture, appeared to be demonstrated by the division and disappearance of one amongst their number, as well as by the singular and rapid changes in appearance undergone by many, and the seemingly irrevocable diffusion of their substance visible in nearly all. They might then be defined, according to the ideas respecting them prevalent fifty years ago, as bodies unconnected by origin with the solar system, but encountered, and ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... he worked assiduously in the laboratory of an eminent analytical chemist, whose practice in connection with the coroner was of a flourishing and increasing kind, owing to the growing taste for suicide, and the preference given to poisons over any other means for accomplishing that irrevocable wrong. In this chamber of horrors,—a court of which the tests were the stern, incorruptible ordinances of Nature,—he had already gone steadily through a course which gave him a mastery over the secrets of the relative poisons, with which he laughed secretly now, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is not enough; behind the functionary he claims the man. "All that may well be," he replies, to whatever may be said in praise of him,[1260] "but he does not belong to me as I would like." It is devotion which he exacts, and, by devotion, he means the irrevocable and complete surrender "of the entire person, in all his sentiments and opinions." According to him, writes a witness, "one must abandon every old habit, even the most trifling, and be governed by one thought alone, that of his will and interests."[1261] For greater ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... to murmur against fate. What was irrevocable had to be accepted, and welcome made to the daughter, who, instead of the expected heir, would now lay claim to the rights of primogeniture. As an inheritance reserved for him who had not come, the daughter received the name which had been destined to the son. ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... equipped the punt, in which, after lunch, he proposed to take them on the river. Placing those Chinese-looking cushions, he could not tell whether or no he wished to take Annette alone. She was so very pretty—could he trust himself not to say irrevocable words, passing beyond the limits of discretion? Roses on the veranda were still in bloom, and the hedges ever-green, so that there was almost nothing of middle-aged autumn to chill the mood; yet was he nervous, fidgety, strangely distrustful of his powers ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Jefferson's counsels when I am so fortunate as to be offered them! He advises me," continued Monsieur de Lafayette, turning to Mr. Morris, "to burn my instructions from the noblesse, which engage me absolutely to favor the vote by orders and not by persons, and, should this produce an irrevocable rupture with my electors, boldly to take my stand with the tiers etat. I have seen Necker to-day and he is as far as ever from a solution of this great and first question which must come up before the States-General. Indeed, there ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... displeasure to a body which is after all very illustrious, and that you will attempt to make it manifest to all the earth. I am quite willing to believe that you had good reasons for acting as you have done." The Academy from that moment regarded the title it conferred as irrevocable: it did not fill up the place of the Abbe de St. Pierre when it found itself obliged to exclude him from its sittings, by order of Louis XV.; it did not fill up the place of Mgr. Dupanloup, when he thought proper to send in his resignation. In spite of court intrigues, it from that moment maintained ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Paul Armstrong of those irrevocable bygone years—was striking up and down the sand, and the girl was still weeping without a sound, when the Exile's thought flew back to them. It was as if a curtain had descended for an instant only, and had risen again to reveal the same actors ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... the person of your niece. But I will have no part in them. It may be that I lack a like nobility of soul; it may be that I am all unworthy of the high station to which I was born, through no fault of my own. And so, my lord," she ended, her voice, her face, her gesture, all imparting an irrevocable finality to her words, "I will not wed this Duke of Babbiano—no, not to cement ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... or single thread about him unmarried.[140] Pardon me, that the melancholy object still dwells upon me so far, as to reduce me to punning. However, we attended to the chapel, where we stayed to hear the irrevocable words pronounced upon our old servant, and made the best of our way to town. I took a resolution to forbear all married persons, or any, in danger of being such, for four-and-twenty hours at least; therefore ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... repudiate, now and forever, these assaults upon the masses of the people and upon the fundamental principles of popular rights. I accept in their full force and effect the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and by constitutional amendment and law of Congress I would stamp them with irrevocable power upon the political escutcheon of the new and regenerated republic. I would avoid the mistakes of the past, and I would spurn that cringing timidity by which, through all history, liberty has been sacrificed and ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... risk with his eyes wide open. He had done the best he could do, and now he had lost. True, he had not received the final, irrevocable word that he had been expelled from the medical service of Hospital Earth, but he was certain now that it was waiting for him when he arrived at Hospital Seattle the ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... me but one course to take, and I replied, "We have pronounced our destiny, Astraea, for good or for evil. We ought to have no choice but to abide by it. If you do not fail in your faith, mine is irrevocable." ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... the Militarist theory, not by a hypothetical future, but by the accomplished and irrevocable past. Is it true that nations must conquer or go under, and that military conquest means prosperity and power for the victor and annihilation for the vanquished? I have already alluded in passing to the fact that Austria has been beaten repeatedly: ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... time to reflection before determining on the course I shall pursue with one who has been so dear to me. You know me well enough to be aware that when once I do arrive at a decision, that decision is irrevocable. I wish to act with justice, even towards a scoundrel. I have brought you up with the habits of a rich man, and it is my duty to save you from absolute poverty. I have, therefore, ordered my solicitors to prepare a deed by which an income of two hundred a year will be secured to you for ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... What caused this irrevocable breach was a bill introduced into the House by Ethelbert Barksdale of Mississippi, an old friend of President Davis. This bill would have invested the President with authority to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in any part of the Confederacy, ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... through which Hilda was passing with such supreme confidence! Would she feel as Hilda felt when she came to stand with Trevor before the altar? Would that thrill of deep sincerity be in her voice also as she repeated the vows irrevocable which were even now leaving Hilda's lips? Would her eyes meet his with the same pure gladness of love ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... cause of so much to others, she determined to renounce it for ever, and seek a shelter in the peaceful shades of the cloister. She accordingly entered the convent of Santa Clara at Coimbra, where, in the following year, she pronounced the irrevocable vows, which divorce the unhappy subject of them for ever from her species. Two envoys from Castile, Ferdinand de Talavera, Isabella's confessor, and Dr. Diaz de Madrigal, one of her council, assisted at this affecting ceremony; and the reverend ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... letter to Mrs. Beale from your father, my dear, written from Spa and making the rupture between them perfectly irrevocable. It lets her know, and not in pretty language, that, as we technically say, he deserts her. It puts an end for ever to their relations." He ran his eyes over it again, then appeared to make up his mind. "In fact it concerns you, Maisie, so nearly and refers to you so particularly that I really ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... with the situation she had accepted, was growing more impatient and unhappy every day, as she realised all that her marriage with San Miniato would mean during the rest of her natural life. She had quite changed her mind about him, and with natures like hers such sudden changes are often irrevocable. She could not now understand how she could have ever liked him, or found pleasure in his society, and when she thought of the few words she had spoken and which had decided her fate, she could not comprehend the state of mind which ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... naively remarks, "It would have been taken for a picture by Giorgione if Titian had not written his name on the dark ground (in ombra)." Hinc illae lacrimae! Let us look into this question of signatures, the ultimate and irrevocable proof in the minds of the innocent that a picture must be genuine. Titian's methods of signing his well-authenticated works varied at different stages of his career. The earliest signature is always "Ticianus," and this is found on works dating down to 1522 (the "S. Sebastian" ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... gone into a passion, had accused us, reproached us, and stormed at us with all the ill-language that men of the world use! but that quiet, cold, irrevocable, "I have been mistaken in thee!" ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... difficult. He had striven to make things easy for her. He had no second thought. And now he realised the thing he had done. His words had only served to fling an irrevocable challenge, and thus, finally and definitely, made the longed-for approach ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... ever came it was certain disgrace. When their names were in any way mentioned, "I do not know them," the King would reply haughtily. Those who presented themselves but seldom were thus Characterise: "They are people I never see;" these decrees were irrevocable. He could not bear people who ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... departure, the troops were indulged in licentious festivity. At the hour of midnight, the impetuous multitude, with swords, and bows, and torches in their hands, rushed into the suburbs; encompassed the palace; and, careless of future dangers, pronounced the fatal and irrevocable words, Julian Augustus! The prince, whose anxious suspense was interrupted by their disorderly acclamations, secured the doors against their intrusion; and as long as it was in his power, secluded his person ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... had gained over the Abbe and Jean a complete ascendancy. They let her say what she liked, they let her do as she liked, they felt that the hour was supreme; they understood that what was happening would be decisive, irrevocable, but neither was ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... disappearing form looked like the moping spirit of guilt and regret, haunting the scene of the irrevocable. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... great favorites with the Silesians, particularly with the women, who, heart in hand, advanced to meet them; received the handsome and well-made soldiers as lovers, and hastened to have these tender ties made irrevocable by the blessing of the priest. Hundreds of marriages between the Prussians and the maidens of the land were solemnized during the six weeks Frederick remained in Silesia. These men, who, but a few weeks before, came as enemies ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... remedy, within the power of Congress, and in its nature an irrevocable act. There is no necessity of an amendment to the constitution. It is not at all probable that two- thirds of both houses of Congress and three-fourths of the states can agree to any amendments. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... was to be written that night, after which his departure from Hintock would be irrevocable. But could he go away, remembering what had just passed? The trees, the hills, the leaves, the grass—each had been endowed and quickened with a subtle charm since he had discovered the person and history, and, above all, mood of their owner. There was every temporal ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Tilden reacted against Payne, and to escape controversy Manning indiscreetly asked if he might yield to the pressure which his letter had stimulated. To this Tilden could make but one reply: "My action is irrevocable. No friend must cast a ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... recognised as such in the spirit of her people. But she is still a virgin. To become as was the mother before her, it is essential that she should meet the male within the first twenty days of her life. Should the event for some reason be delayed beyond this period, her virginity becomes irrevocable. And yet we have seen that she is not sterile, virgin though she be. There confronts us here the great mystery—or precaution—of Nature, that is known as parthenogenesis, and is common to a certain number of insects, such ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... that commission to go to Greyhope meant. But she determined that he should see Lali first, before anything irrevocable was done. She still looked upon Frank's marriage as a scandal. Well, Captain Vidall should face it in all its crudeness. So, in a week or less, Marion and Mrs. Townley ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and stormy wind thundered on the walls of the prison. Within, where the very atmosphere was self-contained, a cold and solemn peace held like an irrevocable judgment. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... desperation and achievement of bliss. She felt exalted, proud of herself, as if she were vindicating her claim to character. To-morrow, when Pussy Comstock and the girls found that she had gone, they would know that she was no weak fool. And by that time, of course, it would all be over—irrevocable. ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... So the irrevocable step was taken! She had given her promise to marry Cassilis whenever he would, and must abide by it! Too late now, any hope of retreat, she had deliberately chosen her course, and ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... the natural course of things, remembering that the last time Philip had seen either, they were in each other's company. Twenty times he put his pen to the paper with the intention of relating briefly the event that had befallen Kinraid; and as often he stopped, as though the first word would be irrevocable. While he thus sate pen in hand, thinking himself wiser than conscience, and looking on beyond the next step which she bade him take into an indefinite future, he caught some fragments of the sailors' talk at the other ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... provided that England held aloof. Secondly, this fact disposes of the subsequent charge of Fox against Pitt, that he ought to have sided with France in 1792 and thereby to have prevented the attack of the German Powers. For, as we have seen, it was she who took the irrevocable step of declaring war on Austria; and further, the details given above prove that all that Frenchmen expected from Pitt was neutrality. By remaining neutral, while the French overran Belgium, Pitt was ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... itself with a rapidity that plunged him suddenly into decisive and irrevocable action. It is of the greatest moment to ascertain precisely what his feelings were during this summer with regard to Harriet. Hogg has printed two letters in immediate juxtaposition: the first without date, the second with the post-mark of Rhayader. Shelley ends the first epistle ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... and much rubbish was annihilated in the House of Brandenburg: Eldest Son always to inherit the Electorate unbroken; after Anspach and Baireuth no more apanages, upon any cause or pretext whatsoever; and these themselves to lapse irrevocable to the main or Electoral House, should they ever fall vacant again. Fine fruit of the decisive sense that was in the Hohenzollerns; of their fine talent for annihilating rubbish,—which feat, if a man can do it, and keep doing ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... fled in extreme terror at my approach. I had so much of my old heart left as to be at first grieved by this evident dislike on the part of a creature which had once so loved me. But this feeling soon gave place to irritation. And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart—one of the indivisible primary faculties or sentiments ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... the squalls of hot air. There came at times broad lightning flashes; then the darkness increased; and she could only see Matho's eyeballs like two coals in the night. However, she felt that a fatality was surrounding her, that she had reached a supreme and irrevocable moment, and making an effort she went up again towards the zaimph and raised ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... of Kings, Infusing a dread life into their words, And linking to the sudden transient thought The unchangeable irrevocable deed. Was there necessity for such an eager 20 Despatch? Could'st thou not grant the merciful A time for mercy? Time is man's good Angel. To leave no interval between the sentence, And the fulfilment of it, doth beseem ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... fact, a more unfortunate period could have been selected than that which he has chosen? If this were an ordinary measure, I should not oppose it with so much vehemence; but, Sir, it calls in question the wisdom of an irrevocable law—of a law passed at the memorable period of the Revolution. What right have we, Sir, to break down this firm column on which the great men of that age stamped a character of eternity? Are not all ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... penetrated through the newspapers from politicians to audiences. The man who knows that he has paid two dollars to sit in a hall and be 'spell-bound,' feels, it is true, the old sensations, but feels them with a subtle and irrevocable difference. The English newspaper reader who has once heard the word 'sensational,' may try to submit every morning the innermost sanctuary of his consciousness to the trained psychologists of the halfpenny journals. He may, according to the suggestion of the day, loathe the sixty million crafty ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... birthright; he was parting with all that a man should cling to in adversity as in prosperity—that which is not to be purchased with gold—all his old ties, his affections, his faith. Once signed, the deed was irrevocable; and yet if he did not sign, what had ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... troops of the new Republic. Count De Maistre, with his wife and children, fled from Chambery across the Alps to Aosta. 'Ma chere amie,' he said to his wife, by the side of a great rock which he never afterwards forgot, 'the step that we are taking to-day is irrevocable; it decides our lot for life;' and the presentiment was true. Soon the Loi des Allobroges was promulgated, which enjoined upon all who had left their homes in Savoy to return instantly, under pain of confiscation of all their property. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... one hand, while he exhorts to patience and reliance on the other. Yesterday he took a high tone with Lord Lansdowne, told him that he had, as he firmly believed, as many as twenty-five Lords, lay and spiritual, with him, which would make a difference of fifty, but that as to a public irrevocable pledge, it was not to be had, and that Lord Grey must place confidence in his belief and reliance upon his exertions, or, if not, he must take his own course. Upon Lord Grey's meeting with him, and the Archbishop's being brought to the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... drama, the turf should be protected against you. In either case the judges desire to bring your career as an owner to a close; and we hereby bar you and your entries from all tracks of the Association. This is final and irrevocable.' ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... contracts to Mackenzie, annulling the obligation, if the Court of Directors should resolve to abolish the monopoly; but at the request of Mr. Sulivan the contract was without difficulty purged of this obnoxious clause. The term was made absolute, the monopoly rendered irrevocable, and the discretion of the Directors wholly excluded. Mr. Hastings declared the reserved condition to be no longer necessary, "because the Directors had ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... claims thy promise to be king of kings.' Grief seized the Thunderer, by his oath engaged; Stung to the soul, he sorrow'd, and he raged. From his ambrosial head, where perch'd she sate, He snatch'd the fury-goddess of debate, The dread, the irrevocable oath he swore, The immortal seats should ne'er behold her more; And whirl'd her headlong down, for ever driven From bright Olympus and the starry heaven: Thence on the nether world the fury fell; Ordain'd with man's contentious race to dwell. Full oft the god his son's hard ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... covenant is a sure, a firm, and an irrevocable act. When you have such an all this, (and such you have) as is here concentrated in the text, to lay into, or for the foundation of a covenant, the superstruction is aeternitati sacrum, and ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... marriage, and was never silent afterwards.—This is the true art of managing Daughters—To prevent a discovery of their real dispositions 'till the end of the hypocrisy is answer'd,—and the Settlement for Life irrevocable.] ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... to pledge herself, at Boer bidding, that those then on the sea should not be suffered to set foot on African soil. Moreover, so urgent was this audacious demand that Pretoria allowed London only forty-eight hours in which to decide what should be its irrevocable doom, to lay aside the pride of empire, or pay the ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry |
