"Irrevocable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he resumed, in a lighter manner, and yet with a show of effort in assuming it, which was even more expressive than the manner he dismissed; 'it is no irrevocable offence in a young fellow of your brother's years, if he is heedless, inconsiderate, and expensive - a little dissipated, in ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... Caesar had passed all forwards. If he keeps his wits a base is certain. The full back alone lies between him and triumph. But this is the moment, the psychological moment, when one tiny mistake will prove irrevocable. The Head of Damer's whispers as much to Damer, ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... downstairs and left poor Maggie to that bitter sense of the irrevocable which was almost an everyday experience of her small soul. She could see clearly enough, now the thing was done, that it was very foolish, and that she should have to hear and think more about her hair than ever; for Maggie ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... I cried, "now. I don't care. Damn the whole system of things! Damn all this patching of the irrevocable! I want to take care of you, Isabel! and have ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... frog played a tuneless guitar; a pensive monkey gazed with clasped hands and dreadfully human eyes into futurity; there were sagacious looking elephants, placid rhinoceroses, rampant hares, two pug dogs clasped in an irrevocable embrace, an enormous lobster, a diminutive polar bear, and in the center of all a most evil-looking jackdaw ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... irrevocable; the power almost of a deity seemed behind its finality. "No! I—will—not—do—it!" Careful, slow enunciation as though to make sure an inferior mentality could not mistake his words. And with a click, Tarrano broke connection. The mirror went dark; he hung his little disc and ear-piece back on ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... could never lose the property, which he had once acquired, in the persons who had yielded either a voluntary or reluctant submission to his authority. From this principle he concluded, and the conclusions of Attila were irrevocable laws, that the Huns, who had been, taken prisoners in war, should be released without delay and without ransom; that every Roman captive who had presumed to escape should purchase his right to freedom at the price of twelve pieces of gold; and that all the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... quivering lips and great, defiant eyes, she seemed to him once more a being of another clay from himself—beyond any criticism his audacity could form. He dared hardly touch her, and in his heart there swelled the first irrevocable wave of young passion. She raised her hand impetuously and began to paint again. But suddenly a tear dropped on to her knee. She brushed it away, and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... him that what he said was irrevocable, but he was desperate. It seemed to him that in a moment more he would have told her his whole secret. But the young girl drew back from him with a slight start of surprise. There may have been something in the tone of his voice and in his manner that verged upon a seriousness she was ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... which the currency of any country should bear to the whole value of the annual produce circulated by its means is a question upon which political economists have not agreed. Nor can it be controlled by legislation, but must be left to the irrevocable laws which everywhere regulate commerce and trade. The circulating medium will ever irresistibly flow to those points where it is in greatest demand. The law of demand and supply is as unerring as that which regulates the tides of the ocean; and, indeed, currency, like the tides, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... movement—not the result of a theoretical formulation, but a situation forced upon us by the logic of events. It is as logical, however, and as irrevocable, as tho produced by deductive reasoning. An explanation of a statement made earlier in the paper as to the relative teaching abilities of elementary, secondary, and higher teachers, can now be seen in the periods of development of the ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... the same exultation, the same pleasure mingled with bitter sadness, the same perception of the irrevocable passing of beautiful things, and the equally inexorable coming on of care and trouble, as filled my heart that night. Whether any of the other members of my class vibrated with similar emotion or not I cannot say, but I do recall that some of the girls annoyed me by their excessive ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... 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 conclusions, ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... the views are not irrevocable—I may change, you know. In the meantime, let us go down to Fleet Street and interview Casey. And then, if you're good, I'll take you to call ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... began 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 ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... circumstances altogether mediocre. He had loved his wife, but now after all she seemed to be a very ordinary human being. He had begun life with high hopes—and life was commonplace. He was to grow fretful and restless. His discontent was to lead to some action, some irrevocable action; but upon the nature of that action I do not think the Note Book was very clear. It was to carry him in such a manner that he was to forget his wife. Then, when it was too late, he was to see her at an upper window, stripped and firelit, a glorious thing of light ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... past recall; at one's last gasp &c (death) 360; given up, given over. incurable, cureless, immedicable, remediless, beyond remedy; incorrigible; irreparable, irremediable, irrecoverable, irreversible, irretrievable, irreclaimable, irredeemable, irrevocable; ruined, undone; immitigable. Phr. lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate [Dante]; its days are numbered; the worst come to the worst; no change, no pause, no hope, yet I endure [Shelley]; O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... here brings back their noble memories, it breathes the spirit of concord, and unites with so many other voices in the irrevocable message of union and good-will. Mere sentiment all this, some may say. But it is sentiment, true sentiment, that has moved the world. Sentiment fought the war, and sentiment has re-united us. When the war closed, it was proposed in the newspapers and elsewhere to ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... 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
... oh what a majestic spectacle! disregarded the entreaties of his friends, and when it was in his power to make his escape from prison refused it. Crito having bribed the jailor and made his escape certain, urged Socrates to fly; "where shall I fly," he replied, "to avoid the irrevocable doom passed on all mankind?" Christians! wonder at this heathen, and profit by his example! in his last days he enlarged upon the wicked crime of suicide, which he reprobated with an acrimony not usual with him, declaring it to be an inexpiable offence to the gods, and degrading ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... Samothracians, Eleusinians, even of the Samaneans, i.e. the Buddhists (I, 24), and to have represented these as better accredited than those of the Jews. We see anew what treasures were stored up in Alexandria, and we feel all the more deeply their irrevocable loss. The desire and the hope of recovering the work of Celsus were therefore quite natural for any who wished to penetrate more deeply into the spiritual atmosphere of the second and third centuries, and especially ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... 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
... conciliated veneration to the religious orders. When we behold a man abdicating the hope of terrestrial possessions, and precluding himself, by an irrevocable vow, from the pursuit and acquisition of all that his fellow-beings consider as worthy of wishes and endeavours, we are immediately struck with the purity, abstraction, and firmness of his mind, and regard him as wholly employed in securing the interests of futurity, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... sentence of the Thing—all these bring out sharply the quite reckless daring of Gunnar himself, who braves the decree. A mysterious and epic touch is added by the three ancient hags-evidently of these minor Norns who watch over individual destinies and announce the irrevocable doom of the gods. It was Hallgerd who broke their thread, representing, of course, Gunnar's ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... Him. And there existed, on the other hand, at the time of Solomon also, the foundation for the doctrine of the final restoration of the people. For, even in the Pentateuch, the election of Israel by God is represented as irrevocable and absolute, and which, therefore, must at last triumph over all apostasy and covenant-breaking on the part ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... Some dread event beneath this horror lurks, Ordain'd by fate's irrevocable doom; Perhaps Arsaces' fall—and angry heav'n Speaks it, in thunder, to ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... fellow-traveller is to be his companion at bed and board and in all other situations? The wife is not a commodity which, when once bought, you can exchange or return; the marriage bargain, once struck, is irrevocable. It is a noose which, once thrown about the neck, turns to a Gordian knot, and cannot be unloosed till cut asunder by the ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... M. Desmalions's secretary that the two murders would take place to-night. He said it was fatal and irrevocable." ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... by the debate of 1850. It is proposed now to convert the territory south of the line of 36 deg. 30' into slave territory, and to make that conversion irrevocable. Suppose these propositions had been applied at the moment the territory was acquired. Then certainly slavery would have been carried there by force of these articles alone. The principle would have been the same; one case being no stronger ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... coward for having given up Bertha, and not being of the type who trouble to conceal their feelings in domestic life, he openly and frankly showed to the unfortunate Mary that he knew he had made an irrevocable mistake. This was the natural way of regaining his self-respect, since he was under the deepest obligation to her. To add to his annoyance, not long after the marriage he and his brother Charlie came into a legacy from ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... what they love 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 dust we ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... or could have loved,— Though accident, blind contact, and the strong Necessity of loving, have removed Antipathies—but to recur ere long Envenom'd with irrevocable wrong." ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... imaginatively filling up our past life, that our consciousness of personal identity is by no means the simple and exact process which it is commonly supposed to be. I have already remarked that the very fact of there being so large a region of the irrevocable in our past experience proves our consciousness of personal continuity to be largely a matter of inference, or of imaginative conjecture, and not simply of immediate recollection. Indeed, it may be said that our power of ignoring whole regions of the past and of leaping complacently ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... rectification will inevitably feel that they are 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
... a strange wondering; he sat at the coffin and watched it. His wife's face it was, and above the sorrow of irrevocable parting floated the thought that she did not look happy as she lay in her bed of death. Monross had seen but two dead faces before, those of his father and mother. Both had worn upon the mask which death models an ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... you did it for the best, I do not doubt,' her father added presently. 'I only regret that I was not consulted before an irrevocable step ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... reputation, home, all that makes life of value to woman. She had forfeited her duty to God, had deliberately broken his commandments, for the one poor miserable mistake of flying with Francis Levison. But the instant the step was irrevocable, the instant she had left the barrier behind, repentance set in. Even in the first days of her departure, in the fleeting moments of abandonment, when it may be supposed she might momentarily forget conscience, it was sharply wounding her with its adder ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... who was in the confidence of Mounier, declared that the clergy recognised the duty of sharing taxes in equal proportion. The Duke of Luxemburg, speaking for the nobles, made the same declaration. The intention, he said, was irrevocable; but he added that it would not be executed until the problem of the Constitution was solved. The nobles declined to abandon the mode of separate verification which had been practised formerly. And when the Commons objected that what was good in times of civil ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... belonged to an uncongenial family. The Colonel's distinguished guests saw them only on their best behaviour. Their local critics never penetrated here at all. Judith was the only outsider who did, and she had besides the irrevocable right of youth to pronounce judgment upon those who have prepared the world for it to occupy. She was their only licensed critic. What did she think of them? Her blond head drooped sleepily. She did not look ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... quite forgetting to ask me if I had any thing to offer in my defence. At last they settled that, as a commencement, I should receive five hundred bastinadoes on the soles of my feet; and, if I lived, about as many more on my belly. The cadi was about to pronounce his irrevocable fetva, when I took the liberty of interrupting this rapid course of justice. 'O cadi,' said I, 'and ye, mollahs, whose beards drop wisdom, let your slave offer, at the footstool of justice, the ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... and permanent prosperity to both countries. This, my Lords, is yet in our power; and let not the wisdom and justice of your Lordships neglect the happy, and, perhaps, the only opportunity. By the establishment of irrevocable law, founded on mutual rights, and ascertained by treaty, these glorious enjoyments may be firmly perpetuated. And let me repeat to your Lordships, that the strong bias of America, at least of the ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... don't! I tell you it's a scientific and psychical impossibility for you to continue to love her! Your subconscious personality is now in eternal and irrevocable accord and communication with the subconscious personality of some chit of a girl who is destined to love and marry you! And she's probably ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... its followers to cross the bridge of boats over the Aboras, received letters with bad news from Sallust, the prefect of Gaul, entreating him to suspend his expedition against the Parthians, and imploring him not in such an unseasonable manner to rush on irrevocable destruction ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... a memorable subject for consideration, with what unconcern and gaiety mankind pricks on along the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The whole way is one wilderness of snares, and the end of it, for those who fear the last pinch, is irrevocable ruin. And yet we go spinning through it all, like a party for the Derby. Perhaps the reader remembers one of the humorous devices of the deified Caligula: how he encouraged a vast concourse of holiday-makers ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the girls gathered there made many friends. Chief among these was Elizabeth Tresham, the daughter of a gentleman who had bought, with the salvage of a large fortune, the small Cornish estate on which he lived, or rather fretted away life in vain regrets over an irrevocable past. Elizabeth was his only daughter, but he had a son who was much older than Elizabeth—a handsome, gay young man about whom little was known in ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the legislative power is the fundamental test of type; for executive and judiciary are clearly dependent on it. Nor, as Hobbes argued, is the form of government permanent in character; the supreme community is as capable of making temporary as of registering irrevocable decisions. And though Locke admits that monarchy, from its likeness to the family, is the most primitive type of government, he denies Hobbes' assertion that it is the best. It seems, in his view, always to ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... the advice of an enemy. When the critic enters his department of literature in the false guise of urbanity and candor merely to conceal an incapable and huckstering soul, he only awakens for himself the irrevocable contempt of the very mind that he would gall or subdue; since that mind, under such circumstances, invariably rises above its detractor, and leaves him exposed on the same creaking gibbet that he has prepared for the object ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... worth while going into that," he said, in the solemn tone of one who feels that an irrevocable thing is being uttered. She waited to hear more, apparently. "I think I shall go away—give up ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... wishes to divorce his wife, he has merely to say, "You had better go back to your father," or she, the woman, wishes to leave her husband, she says, "I wish to go back to my father," and if her husband says, "Very well, go," the divorce in either case holds good, and the separation is irrevocable. Both parties are free to re-marry. Childlessness is a common cause ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... no longer held her in bondage; the full horror of the irrevocable gripped her. Tied for ever to a brute whom she despised and hated, sacrificed to no purpose; whilst here, alive and well, stood the man to whom in ardent youth she had plighted her undisciplined heart. The thought maddened her. And as she struggled to choke back this overwhelming ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... means to remove so grievous a scandal. Then the Chapter, including representatives of the lower ranks of the clergy and the university, made a public protest, and drew up appeals to the Pope and the Emperor. They at once informed the archbishop of these measures, and again attempted before taking irrevocable steps to bring about a peaceful solution. But all was useless; and, forced to extremities, they solicited for their appeal the support of other dioceses and learned academies, in order to obtain more speedy relief. The best and most distinguished of the bishops ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... the word of a man who does not know defeat. I shall succeed. Only, I entreat you to make me an irrevocable promise." ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... have it definitely hardened into a Constitutional prohibition. It is not desirable ordinarily that a man should stay in office twelve consecutive years as President; but most certainly the American people are fit to take care of themselves, and stand in no need of an irrevocable self-denying ordinance. They should not bind themselves never to take action which under some quite conceivable circumstances it might be to their great interest to take. It is obviously of the last importance to the safety of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... head from her lover's shoulder, and withdrew from his embrace. She wiped away her tears and rose to her feet with the determination of irrevocable resolution. ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... passed by the House, and then by the Senate, and was signed by the President. Lincoln, in his inaugural address, said of it: "Holding such a provision to be now constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable." This view of it was correct; it had no real significance, and the ill-written sentence never disfigured the Constitution; it simply sank out of sight, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... nor the imagination, which could make such understanding possible. But she saw in his look that he loved her, that he was unhappy. She knew that Reckage had never shown so much feeling. Yet had she not given her word to Reckage? Was it not irrevocable? Was Rennes behaving well in speaking out—too late? Was it too late? A torrent of questions poured into her mind. She dragged off her gloves, and spread out her hands, which were slim and white, and stared ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... was a house which was full of cats and dogs who lived together like amicable cousins, for this reason: Their master had made a hundred irrevocable laws and rules, settling their respective tasks, their meals, and every other incident of their lives, and at the same time he threatened with the whip the first one who should promote a quarrel. The kindly, almostly brotherly nature of this ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... mastering his sensations as the chevalier was incapable, he merely allowed such words of compliment to escape him as weigh neither with him who utters nor her who hears them; and yet, before the close of this first interview, the abbe had decided in his irrevocable will that this ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... at the last minute all these doubts have assailed me,' he explained. 'I didn't realize before how serious a thing marriage is—how irrevocable.' ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... hand, although possessed of no property. Ever since that time he remained, as I knew, my enemy, though I did not know, nor ever suspected, that such a man would find pleasure in spying upon my actions and in effecting the irrevocable estrangement of a husband and a wife, who until then had been mutually ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... that he himself would become a monk. At the same time he counselled his wife to take the veil, and they parted, thinking never to see each other again. But one night, ere either of them had taken the irrevocable vows, the Virgin Mary appeared to Abbot Bernard and told him he had acted unwisely in parting the bride and bridegroom in this wise, for was not Eldegarda wholly innocent? The Churchman instantly returned to Otto's ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... the cottage at Bethlehem—the conflict between the expectation of faith and the impulse of love. Twice the gift which he had consecrated to the worship of religion had been drawn from his hand to the service of humanity. This was the third trial, the ultimate probation, the final and irrevocable choice. ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... her stare—in a tone of irrevocable decision.] We'll get you married, young lady, and that very soon. What you need to bring you down to earth is a husband and the responsibility of children. [Turning her glance to MARTHA, a challenge in her question.] Every woman who is able should have children. Don't ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... of her, his separateness as a human being. Her passionate self-love instinctively, unconsciously, had made of his life the appendage of hers. And now—? His devotion had never been so plain, so attested; and all the while bitter, terrifying voices rang upon the inner ear, voices of fate, vague and irrevocable. ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that his thoughts were not only of her and the irrevocable step she had planned to take, and her frightened face whitened as she instinctively gasped ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... Trigger Island as a servant. More than one woman who reads 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 would she ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... different side of you, or would have minded things less. It is enough that we do not belong together, because we are we and cannot change. We are not only ruining each other's happiness—that is already irrevocable,—we are ruining each other, and the children, and their futures. It is a question of the least wrong. And I am ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... evil influence of climate, mischievous as it is at present, is not to be looked upon and acquiesced in as an irrevocable fatality. At first sight it would seem as if the human race could not possibly escape the malevolent action of cosmical influences over which it has little or no control. The rise and fall of temperature, its rage and intensity, is one ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... that not only sagacious individuals but extensive communities should persevere in an attempt which, in the nature of things, can lead only to disappointment; for, the sincerity of that species of conversion which is supposed to be final, of that grace which is said to be irrevocable, can never be decided until the Judge of all has pronounced his verdict. In the meantime, the terms of communion must agree in some measure with the actual state of man; and when the matter is quietly examined, it appears that even in Calvinistic communions the terms of ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... He said, "If the natives of this country, and also the Langgos and the Umiros, shall hear that I have exchanged blood with the Pacha, they will have thorough confidence, as they will know that he will always be true to me, and I to him; but without this irrevocable contract, they will always suspect some intrigue, either ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... love-death, the will that the world should be governed by love, is the most unconditional postulate of feeling ever laid down. For the love-death is the definite and irrevocable victory of emotion; it is ecstasy as a solution of the world-problem and the world-process. It is human to regard love and death as antitheses; to consider them far removed from each other; marriage and funeral are the poles of social ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... bequeathed and distributed, but the forgiveness of all sins, grace and mercy into eternal life, that all who come to this memorial shall have the same testament; and then He died, whereby this testament has become permanent and irrevocable. In proof and evidence of which, instead of letter and seal, He has left with us His own Body and Blood under ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... for he was never crowned by the pope. He had been a partisan of the second Frederick's, but pope Nicholas III. did not find in the founder of the Hapsburg dynasty the stuff of the Hohenstaufen. In 1278 he forced Rudolph to secure to him by an "irrevocable decree" all that the papacy had ever claimed in the Exarchate and the Pentapolis. The empire renounced all its claims in the Romagna and the Marches; the confines of the states of the Church were defined anew, and the cities of which the pope was absolute lord were named one ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... their honour to protect and convey her safely to the King's presence, were noble and generous cavaliers, and we may well believe had no evil thoughts. They were not, however, without an occasional chill of reflection when once they had taken the irrevocable step of setting out upon this wild errand. They travelled by night to escape the danger of meeting bands of Burgundians or English on the way, and sometimes had to ford a river to avoid the town, where they would have found a bridge. ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... critical facility, finds the cause of Conrad's unyielding pessimism in the circumstances of his own life—his double exile, first from Poland, and then from the sea. But this is surely stretching the facts to fit an hypothesis. Neither exile, it must be plain, was enforced, nor is either irrevocable. Conrad has been back to Poland, and he is free to return to the ships whenever the spirit moves him. I see no reason for looking in such directions for his view of the world, nor even in the direction ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... by the mad crowd around him, balancing his decision between justice, the prisoner's release, and injustice, the call to crucify him, he knows not what to do. In an agony of thought, which pen cannot describe or human words portray, he delays his irrevocable doom. ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... as a profession, flat and unprofitable. This, then, or something like it, should be my vocation and my revenge. A severer line of business, perhaps, such as I had read of; something that included black bread and a hair-shirt. There should be vows, too—irrevocable, blood curdling vows; and an iron grating. This iron grating was the most necessary feature of all, for I intended that on the other side of it my relations should range themselves—I mentally ran over the catalogue, ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... made up his mind to marry Mrs. Montague; he had indeed been almost upon the point of offering himself to her, just as Ray and Mona had passed through the drawing-room, when he had suddenly resolved to wait and consult his son, before taking the irrevocable step. He felt that he owed it to him to do so, for they had been good friends and confidants ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... 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
... sleeplessness, she could only lie on her bed through the Sunday morning, wretched in a sense of abandonment. And then began to assail her that last and subtlest of temptations, the thought that already she had taken an irrevocable step, that an endeavour to return would only be trouble spent in vain, that the easy course was, in truth, the only one now open to her. Mrs. Tubbs was busy circulating calumnies; that they were nothing more than calumnies could never be proved; all who heard ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... my dearest, my poor, poor child! It shall be never if you choose, Lynette. But make no rash vows, no determinations that you think irrevocable. Leave the future to God. Now dry these dear eyes, and put old thoughts and memories of sorrow and of wrong most resolutely away from you. Be happy, as Our Lord meant all innocent creatures of His to be. And do not be tempted to magnify Greta's offence against friendship. She has acted according ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... sort 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
... and enter at once upon command, honors, 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 ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... save her by encountering and enduring and cherishing her scorn. At least so it seemed to me at the time; and, although I am certain the other higher motives had much to do in holding me back, I am equally certain that this awful vision of the irrevocable fate to follow upon the deed, had great influence, as well, in inclining me to ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... so beautiful. The words of irrevocable Devotion were on his lips. But at that moment had he been king of Scotland, Maggie Promoter would not have stayed to listen to them. So he turned to Angus. The man, with an insolent, defiant face, stood leaning against the rock. ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... my strong impression that the spider on my knee deliberately winked at me was the result of memory, enlivening imagination. But it sufficed to bring to mind, in one rapid, consoling flash, the irrevocable law of destiny—that the deeds of the wicked return unto ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... so things went on, despair deepening 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 this particular item ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... apartment, with the tin labels stuck in the kosher meat, and there was Gideon, the fat, genial butcher, flourishing his great carving-knife as of yore, though without that ancient smile of brotherly recognition. Gideon's frigidity chilled him; it was an inauspicious omen, a symptom of things altered, irrevocable. ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... wishes to change his master he goes to one whom he likes better and breaks a spear or a bow in his presence—the transference is irrevocable. This curious custom prevails on the Zambesi, and also among the Wanyamwesi; if the old master wishes to recover his slave the new one may refuse to part with him except when he gets his full price: a case of this kind ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... slow, this tendency to the humanization of prostitution may be less pronounced. But it certainly exists. In the middle of the last century Lecky wrote (History of European Morals, vol. ii, p. 285) that habitual prostitution "is in no other European country so hopelessly vicious or so irrevocable." That statement, which was also made by Parent-Duchatelet and other foreign observers, is fully confirmed by the evidence on record. But it is a statement which would hardly be made to-day, except ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of a great, epochal resurrection, as a reply to the inquiry, What is to become of the soul? a dogma is next encountered which we shall style that of a local and irrevocable conveyance. The disembodied spirit is conveyed to some fixed region,7 a penal or a blissful abode, where it is to tarry unalterably. This idea of the banishment or admission of souls, according to their deserts, or according ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... little, and when he spoke his voice was almost awful in its passionless sternness, in its despairing finality; it seemed to echo the irrevocable judgment which his words pronounced: "That the crimes against God and each other which had destroyed the parents' life should enter into the children's blood, and that never thereafter should there fail a Mervyn ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Madelene—though she, behind the white sash curtains of her own office, saw him come, watched him go until he was out of sight far down the street. On Monday he went to work, really to work. No more shame; no more shirking or shrinking; no more lingering on the irrevocable. He squarely faced the future, and, with his will like his father's, set dogged and unconquerable energy to battering at the obstacles before him. "All a man needs," said he to himself, at the end of the first day of real work, "is a purpose. He never knows where he's at until he gets ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... packet, addressed to her at her uncle's place of business in London. She would pray that he might be brought to a sense of the sin that he had committed, and that he might yet live to be a worthy and a happy man. For the rest, her decision was irrevocable. His own letter to Mrs. Payson condemned him—and the testimony of an old and honoured friend of her uncle proved that his wickedness was no mere act of impulse, but a deliberate course of infamy and ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... Christianity was in a literal sense the New Testament—a covenant with God which opened to men a clear deliverance. They thought themselves secure; they claimed palaces of pearl and silver under the oath and seal of the Omnipotent; they believed themselves rich with an irrevocable benediction which set them above the stars; and immediately they discovered humility. It was only another example of the same immutable paradox. It is always the ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... "you have been good enough to make me your heir. It was unexpected on my part, unsolicited; but you did do it, and you caused me to leave the army in consequence, to give up my fair prospects in life. I am aware that this deed is not irrevocable, and certainly you have the right to do what you will with your own property. But you must forgive me for saying that you should have made quite sure of your intentions beforehand: before picking me up, if it be only to ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... machine rose and fell and rocked, as if upon the waves of an invisible ocean. It was buffeted about until I knew that he could not be on his seat half the time. First one wing tip and then the other was blown upward, threatening irrevocable side slip, but always at the last moment his instinct—for it could have been nothing else—saved ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... crusade was irrevocable, and sovereigns took it to obtain pardon, to secure glory, and propitiate favor. The pope alone could release the votary, and he took good care to make the price heavy in ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... traitor!' exclaimed the commander. 'In ten minutes from this moment let him be a spectacle between the heavens and the earth.' The wife and daughter clung to his knees in supplication, but an irrevocable oath had passed his lips that never should treason receive his forgiveness after that of the miscreant Arnold. 'For my own life,' he said, while tears rolled down his noble countenance at the agony of the wife ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... and the wicked will still be living upon the earth in their mortal state,—men will be planting and building, eating and drinking, all unconscious that the final, irrevocable decision has been pronounced in the sanctuary above. Before the flood, after Noah entered the ark, God shut him in, and shut the ungodly out; but for seven days the people, knowing not that their doom was fixed, continued their careless, pleasure-loving life, and mocked the warnings ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... now! 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 old self in it. She shook ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... 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 ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... 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 favouring the French plans more than any British statesman had done since the time of James ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... he reflected: "I have fought Fantomas, and not always has the victory been wholly his! More than once I have called check to him! It is his turn to take revenge with the irrevocable checkmate. Well, I have ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... circumstances 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, ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... 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
... this note had been sent, when she knew that her lover had received it, and that her decision was irrevocable, she was seized with trembling faintness, with the oppression of conscious guilt; and it seemed to her as if a new spring of love had suddenly burst forth in her heart, and as if she had never loved her father so sincerely, so devotedly, so tenderly, as now that she was on ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... at each decade. They are the records of the nation's movement and condition, the decennial monuments marking her steps in the path of empire, the oracles of her destiny. They are prophecies, for each decade fulfils the predictions of its predecessor. They announce laws, not made by man, but the irrevocable ordinances of the Almighty. We cannot, with impunity, refuse to obey these laws. For every violation, they enforce their own penalties. From these there is no escape in the present or the past, nor for the future, except in conformity to their demands. These laws condemn slavery; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... for their portion of Luxemburg, the Belgians were obliged to relinquish their rights over Eastern Limburg and Maestricht, which became the Dutch provinces of the same name. Such were the "final and irrevocable" ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... 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 ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Phil asked. He'd swallowed half the drink Celia offered him at a gulp and now, a few minutes later, he was experiencing what might have been under different circumstances a comfortable glow, but which didn't entirely erase the awareness of having committed himself at this hour to an irrevocable line ...
— Watch the Sky • James H. Schmitz
... that things would grow better, and that I should, at least, be able to have some influence on the modes of teaching; but I soon found that everything connected with the establishment was directed by the iron will of an unscrupulous and tyrannical woman, whose laws were as irrevocable as those of the Medes and Persians. I at once decided I could not stay there long, but I had no other position in view, and it was not easy to secure one in the middle of the term. As usual, I made ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... attachment a heart whose principal delight should be in augmenting your domestic felicity and returning your affection, even to the height of romance. To a man of less keen sensibility, and less enthusiastic tenderness of disposition, Flora Mac-Ivor might give content, if not happiness; for, were the irrevocable words spoken, never would she be deficient in the duties ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... purpose, you propose to lay bare the 'arcana of the initiates' (the words are your own) which, if it ever be published, will indisputably occasion action by the Holy See. Let me endeavour to bring home to you the fact that I believe you are about to make a dreadful and irrevocable mistake." ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... however, was ordered by our Government until Count Bernstorff had reached Berlin and Mr. Gerard was in Washington. For the German Ambassador on his departure had begged that no irrevocable decision should be taken until he had had the chance to make one final plea for peace to his sovereign. We do not know the nature of his report to the Kaiser; we know only that, even if he kept his pledge and urged ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... has just announced to me the honor you have done me. But before that decision is irrevocable," said the lawyer, "I think that I ought to explain to you who and what your candidate is, so as to leave you free to take back your word if my declaration should ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... but (as the ancient custome was) to put white stones and black into a pot, and to take them out againe, to see whether the young-man accused should be acquitted by judgment or condemned, which was a thing irrevocable. ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... sarcastic, and unsocial man grew to be nothing less than uxorious. But his wife recompensed his devotion but shabbily; her position had not fulfilled her anticipations, she was angry at the loss of her money, and upon the whole she repented having taken an irrevocable step too hastily. She felt herself to be the intellectual equal of her husband, and she was not long in improving the advantage she possessed of not caring anything about him. In a word, she bullied the unfortunate gentleman unmercifully, and he ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... her for choosing him. And then wounded vanity came in to help wounded pride; and she sat over the cold embers till almost dawn of day, her head between her hands, musing sadly, and half wishing that the irrevocable yesterday had ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... not killed him; he should have been more bold, and killed the 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, in ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.) |
