"Irretrievable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... followers. His kindness as their ealdorman, his skill and bravery as a leader, his cheerfulness and brightness under every danger and peril had immensely endeared him to their hearts, and each man felt that he had sustained an irretrievable loss, and that with their chief the spirit which had animated the Dragon and directed ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... without a knowledge of nature." Herbart says: "Here (in nature) lies the abode of real truth, which does not retreat before tests into an inaccessible past (as does history). This genuinely empirical character distinguishes the natural sciences and makes their loss irretrievable. It is here (in nature) that the object disentangles itself from all fancies and opinions and constantly stimulates the spirit of observation. Here then is found an obstruction to extravagant thinking such ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... members of the Society of Friends. The abolitionists, however, rallied to their support, H.B. Stanton even proposing to arrange some meeting where he and they could speak together. But even Angelina shrank from such an irretrievable committal on his part as this would be, and did not think the time had yet come for such an anomaly. On the 19th they returned to Amesbury, and Angelina writes that great excitement prevailed, and that many had come from neighboring towns to hear two Massachusetts men ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... ambuscade, for the advanced guard of rangers were too perfect in their knowledge of woodcraft to lead the whites into any situation that shut off escape. The Shawanoes knew enough of Kenton, Boone and their rangers to hold them in respect, and not presume upon their committing any irretrievable error. ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... established &c. v.; deep-rooted, ineradicable; inveterate; obstinate &c. 606. transfixed, stuck fast, aground, high and dry, stranded. [movable object rendered unmovable] stuck, jammed; unremovable; quiescent &c. 265; deterioration &c. 659. indefeasible, irretrievable, intransmutable[obs3], incommutable[obs3], irresoluble[obs3], irrevocable, irreversible, reverseless[obs3], inextinguishable, irreducible; indissoluble, indissolvable[obs3]; indestructible, undying, imperishable, incorruptible, indelible, indeciduous[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... grand tragi-comic style, over the Lilliputian difficulties and petty disappointments it has to encounter, gives way to all the fretfulness of grief and all the turbulence of resentment, makes a fuss about nothing because there is nothing to make a fuss about—when an impending calamity, an irretrievable loss, would instantly bring it to its recollection, and tame it in its preposterous career. A man may be in a great passion and give himself strange airs at so simple a thing as a game at ball, for instance; may rage like a wild beast, and be ready to dash his head against ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... all the time the inebriate has been pouring down his daily draught and making merry over the cup, morbid changes have been going on within; and though these are unseen, and, it may be, unsuspected, they are fatal, irretrievable. A few of the most important of these changes I shall ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... he said to me (in his wife's hearing!). "What a figure, and what a voice! You remember her voice? It's a loss, my dear lady, an irretrievable loss, to the operatic stage! Do you know, when I think what that grand creature might have done, I sometimes ask myself if I really had any right to marry her. I feel, upon my honor I feel, as if I had committed a ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... imaginative impending, approaching imperious, imperial imply, infer in, into inability, disability ingenious, ingenuous intelligent, intellectual insinuation, innuendo instinct, intuition involve, implicate irony, sarcasm irretrievable, irreparable ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... day, are dreadful to relate; and no punishment can be too great for those whose wilful conduct becomes the occasion of such catastrophes. Parents are deeply laden with guilt, who by this means plunge their children into irretrievable ruin; and lovers are deserving of no forgiveness, whose treacherous conduct annihilates the hopes and even ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... front was from its geographical position the one where British and French troops could most easily be assembled, and it was the one on which a serious defeat to the enemy necessarily threatened that enemy with a grave, if not an irretrievable, disaster. It is true that for the comparatively short period during which Russia really counted, that is to say during the early months before Russian munitions gave out, the Eastern Front—the Poland Front—was a weak point for ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... Frenchmen omitted to perceive that a great part of their devotion to Toussaint was loyalty to their race. Proceeding on this mistake, Leclerc and his council, sanctioned by the First Consul, ruined their work, lost their object, and brought irretrievable disgrace upon their names—some of which are immortalised only by the infamy of the act ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... that American farmers in many parts of the State expect unlimited credit, and profit by it in the meanwhile, without a thought for consequences. Jew storekeepers have already learned the advantage to be gained from this; they lead on the farmer into irretrievable indebtedness, and keep him ever after as their bond-slave hopelessly grinding in the mill. So the whirligig of time brings in its revenges, and except that the Jew knows better than to foreclose, you may see Americans bound in the same chains with which they themselves had ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of my father hath placed me in a situation wherein, from the magnitude and delicacy of the concern, every hour may afford an important crisis; and in which a single omission, a momentary absence, may entail consequences irretrievable, in matters wherein the result to me and mine is to be conjoined reputation and affluence, or disgrace and penury. I cannot, under impression of such alternatives, delegate an iota of conduct to a ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... so many, so deep, so sudden, and so irretrievable, that when we consider them attentively, they ought to inspire us with the greatest submission towards that Providence which directs us and fills us with humble sentiments of our own capacities, which are so weak and incapable to protect us from any of those evils ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... daily drudgery that had fallen to my lot to embitter my poverty and cause me to look with gloomy distrust upon the unpromising future. But no sorrow that I had hitherto experienced could compare with the grief that I now felt in contemplating the irretrievable ruin of what I knew to be the great passion of my life. For to a man like myself, of few friends and deep affections, one great emotional upheaval exhausts the possibilities of nature; leaving only the capacity for feeble and ineffective ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... elasticity of her spirits, withering her glorious beauty, and making her aged before her time. Perchance she mourned the absence of one she loved, and was wearied with anxiety for his return; perhaps the canker-worm of remorse was at work within her, for a fault committed and irretrievable; perhaps she was the victim of lawless outrage, a captive against her will; perhaps she had been severed from all she loved on earth, and the bright hopes of life had been blasted for ever. At last she ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... dismay which I cannot find words to express. If the plan of politics there recommended, pray excuse my freedom, should be adopted by the King's Councils and by the good people of this kingdom (as so recommended undoubtedly it will) nothing can be the consequence but utter and irretrievable ruin to the Ministry, to the Crown, to the succession, to the importance, to the independence, to the very existence of ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... up and say them. Therefore this world is his paradise. He would not know what to do with himself in a world where matters were sorted and folded and laid away ready for you when you wanted them. He likes to see human affairs mixing themselves up in irretrievable confusion. If he detects a symptom of straightening, it shall go hard but he will thrust in his own fingers and snarl a thread or two. He is delighted to find dogged duty and eager desire butting each ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... End of London is clamouring for bread and peace at any price. If we fall, we fall for ever. . . . The working man has to choose whether he will have lighter taxation for the moment, starvation and irretrievable ruin for the ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bars mid-stream; and in the growing tepid warmth of summer would tramp pleasantly along the river trail. Of course, a dry year would make necessary a larger crew and more labour; of course, a big flood might sweep the logs past all defences into the lake for an irretrievable loss. But such floods come once in a century, and even the dryest of dry years could not now hang the drive. As Orde sat in his buckboard, ready to go into town for a first glimpse of Carroll in ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... England, she would, in all human probability, be dead. It conveyed the impression of a soul resigned indeed, and humble, but crushed down to the very earth with the load of mysterious bereavement and irretrievable sorrow. ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... for she wore for him the elemental guise of a supernatural vision. When the prompter's bell tinkled and the curtain descended for the last time, he had a feeling as though the universe had collapsed in irretrievable ruin. ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... with impunity; but a statesman who is slow—whatever the force of his character and the strength of his judgment—can hardly escape unhurt from the hurrying of Time's winged chariot, can hardly hope to avoid some grave disaster or some irretrievable mistake. The fate of General Gordon, so intricately interwoven with such a mass of complicated circumstance with the policies of England and of Egypt, with the fanaticism of the Mahdi, with the irreproachability of Sir Evelyn Baring, with Mr. Gladstone's ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... Sydney—to my great sorrow—I have gone in as a candidate for a Professorial chair at the other end of the world, Toronto in Canada. In England there is nothing to be done—it is the most hopeless prospect I know of; of course the Service offers nothing for me except irretrievable waste of time, and the scientific appointments are so few and so poor that they are ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... with an island reeking with blood, and the sword at our throat, directed by an administration in the best and in the worst of times hostile to Ireland, we call upon you to assist in rescuing our country from utter and irretrievable ruin—we implore you to interfere for us with our common Sovereign—to solicit at his paternal hand the removal of those wicked men, who by abusing the confidence of their Sovereign, and sacrificing their duty to his ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... there followed the slow revelation in return, bringing with it all the misery of an explanation which comes too late. The question whether Miss Aldclyffe were schemer or dupe was almost passed over by Cytherea, under the immediate oppressiveness of her despair in the sense that her position was irretrievable. ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... they may imagine that they have lost his favour, and that looking upon themselves as driven by him into the wrong road, they may fall into the belief, that they are among the condemned reprobate, and pine away, deprived of their senses, in a state of irretrievable misery and despair? ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... the top of the hill, with the oak boughs for roof, where the pigeons were raising an endless wedding hymn, and the autumn, humming, whispered to the ears of lovers in the fern, while the deer stole by. The bracken grove of irretrievable delights, of golden minutes in the long marriage of heaven and earth! The bracken grove, sacred to stags, to strange tree-stump fauns leaping around the silver whiteness of a birch-tree ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... be reconciled to it. It is doing an irretrievable injury to one whose only fault is an undue and mistaken devotion to an unworthy cousin. ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... past, rumors had been abroad that the Iroquois were preparing to invade the country of the Illinois, bent on expelling or destroying them. Here was a new disaster, which, if realized, might involve him and his enterprise in irretrievable wreck. ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... with five thousand horse, dashed down upon the disordered mass of Russians, casting it into irretrievable confusion. At the same time the infantry ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... reading thus far will, I am afraid, prepare themselves for the arrival of a faithful cashier with news of irretrievable ruin, or a mysterious and cynical stranger threatening disclosures of a ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... individual who had appeared so opportunely—"you have saved me from my last temptation, into which I was led so naturally, that I had not an idea of danger. If I had fallen then, as I fear I should have fallen but for you, I must have gone down, rapidly, to irretrievable ruin. How can I express to you the grateful ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... flying about aloft, which threatened every moment to drag the masts out of her, for everything was swaying to and fro, and the topsails jerking terribly as they swelled out, the clews fouling the reef points as the wind threw them up, and all getting mixed in irretrievable confusion from the continual slatting of the canvas—for the whole of the running gear, having been let go, was now dangling about in all directions and knotting itself up in the standing rigging, round which the wind whipped the ropes, ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... no doubt, and what remained to be done presented no difficulty. Nevertheless, it was essential that he should perform these final actions with promptness, decision and infallible perspicacity. The smallest blunder was irretrievable. Lupin knew this; but his strangely lucid brain had allowed for every contingency. And the movements and words which he was now about to make and utter were ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... to the after deck, but could not open it. From the position of the ship, he realized that something irretrievable had happened. On the port side, the steamer was lying high, on the starboard side, it was only ten or twelve feet above the level. As the stern was also much lower than the bow, it would have been a practically hopeless venture to clamber forward across the deck, especially with the heavy seas ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... case of conscience, as I came here," said Greenleaf. "It was, How far a promise is binding, when it involves a lasting and irretrievable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... and Germany went to war. As soon the British Government saw that hopes for peace were no longer possible Sir Edward Grey sent to its ambassadors in Germany and France the following telegram; "London, July 31, 1914; I still trust situation is not irretrievable, but in view of prospect of mobilization in Germany it becomes essential to his Majesty's Government, in view of existing treaties, to ask whether French [and German] Government is prepared to engage to respect the neutrality of Belgium so long as no other ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... personal love to which death seems to menace irretrievable and final disaster. But it is personal love to which comes the divinest presage. Some voice says to our yearning heart, "Fear ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... melancholy than the aspect of H——.... It was a miserable day, dark, dismal, and foggy; the Manchester smoke came down, together with a penetrating cold drizzle, like the defilement and weeping of irretrievable shame, and sin, and sorrow; and the whole aspect of the place struck me with dismay. The house was shut up, and looked absolutely deserted, not a soul stirring about it; the garden dismantled and out of order. Altogether, the contrast of the whole scene to ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... masterly management that can be accomplished. Apart from Education Bill, enough work in hand, if Supply be fairly dealt with, to carry us on to last week in July. Every moment precious; every quarter of an hour lost an irretrievable misfortune. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... liabilities amounted to the vast sum of L102,000, for which Sir Walter was individually responsible. To a mind less balanced by native intrepidity and fortified by principle, the apparent wreck of his worldly hopes would have produced irretrievable despondency; but Scott bore his misfortune with magnanimity and manly resignation. He had been largely indebted to both the establishments which had unfortunately involved him in their fall, in the elegant production of his works, as well as in respect ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... plans for redress of grievances, and a constitutional union with the mother country. With little or no belief in the possibility of either, they stood shivering on the banks of the Rubicon, that mythical river of irretrievable self-committal, hesitating to enter its turbid waters. A few of the bolder "shepherds of the people" tried to urge them onward; but no one was bold enough to dash in first and lead them through. Paine seized the opportunity. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... with an effort, "I want to say something to you. Once in my life, when I was almost as young as you are, I made a great mistake. Therefore I know that mistakes are not irretrievable. God teaches us sometimes by our very errors, leading us through them into light and truth. Only we must follow Him, and hold fast to the right, however difficult it may be. We must not be disheartened: we must leave the past where it is, and go on ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... up Bob in despair, and began to investigate the extent of the ruin that had been wrought in his trousers. It was a bad rent, an irretrievable one, in fact; and all that he could do was to tie his handkerchief ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... to be put out as soon as he tinkles his little cow-bell curfew. Whenever slavery is touched, he sets up his scarecrow of dissolving the Union. This may do for the North, but I should conjecture that something more than a pumpkin-lantern is required to scare manifest and irretrievable Destiny out of her path. Mr. Calhoun cannot let go the apron-string of the Past. The Past is a good nurse, but we must be weaned from her sooner or later, even though, like Plotinus, we should run home from school to ask the breast, after we are tolerably well-grown youths. It will ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... to pieces under this machine for an act which, at the worst, was one of weakness? Is he to become a member of the luckless crews that man those dark, ill-starred ships called prisons?... I urge you, gentlemen, do not ruin this young man. For as a result of those four minutes, ruin, utter and irretrievable, stares him in the face.... The rolling of the chariot wheels of Justice over this boy began when it was decided ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... her prospects.—I wanted that miserable sum—only four thousand dollars—that fellow Schwiden asked to borrow it of me for a few days, and to refuse would have been to confess all. I dared not try my credit, and I just madly took that step that proved irretrievable—I counted at the moment upon funds that were coming to me only the next week, sure, I thought, as possible,—but the man cheated me, and our embarrassments thickened from that time; that thing has been a weight—oh a weight of ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... are in a terrible situation, but for God's sake do not throw yourself into one that is irretrievable. Be calm, I ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... As, in pretended mercy, it was forbidden to inflict torture a second time, with horrible duplicity it was affirmed that the torment had not been completed at first, but had only been suspended out of charity until the following day! The families of the convicted were plunged into irretrievable ruin.... This frantic priest destroyed Hebrew Bibles wherever he could find them, and burnt six thousand volumes of Oriental literature at Salamanca, under an imputation that they inculcated Judaism" (Draper's "Conflict of Science and Religion," p. 146). Torquemada ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... believe I remained a favourite with the chiefs of the establishment. I had now become a cripple for life, and as I reflected upon all that these words involved in relation to my future history, and the circumstances which had entailed upon me a loss so irretrievable, I thought, amongst other things how easily, and still how fatally a little carelessness, negligence, or ill-temper on the part of our convict surgeons, may influence the future life and conduct of their convict patients. They are, without doubt, subjected to many vexations, ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... of all tender entanglements. Women treat love as if it were an extremely tenuous wire that can be drawn out indefinitely. This is a very expensive process. It costs us the most precious, the only irretrievable thing in the universe—time. And to him time was song; for money he did not care. The Lord had hallowed his lips with rhythmic speech; only in the intervals of his singing might he listen to the voice of his heart—strangest ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... unutterably evil, with the wicked. That there is a mysterious and awful malignity attaching to sin—that to be in sin means to be in misery and ruin in this life or any other life—and that sin persisted in tends to utter and irretrievable ruin. No arguments about the love and power of God to save to the uttermost can cancel the fact of the free-will of man or the plain statements of Scripture confirmed beyond question by the loving Lord Himself as to the awful fate ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... greatest enemies; at the head of a powerful army, with a numerous train of nobles devoted to her service; and a fugitive, at the hazard of her life, driven, with a few attendants, to lurk in a corner of her kingdom. Still anxious and agitated in her retreat, she was impelled by her fears to an irretrievable step, fatal to all her future hopes. In vain her attendants, with the lords Herries and Heming, implored her on their knees not to confide in Elizabeth, her resolution was not to be shaken, and to England she ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... to enforce peace would have to begin its regime with enforcing peace on terms of the unconditional surrender of the formidable warlike nations; which could be accomplished only by the absolute and irretrievable defeat of these Powers as they now stand. The question will, no doubt, present itself, Is the end worth the cost? That question can, of course, not be answered in absolute terms, inasmuch as it resolves itself into a question of taste and prepossession. ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... afflicted, urged by love Of life too fond, and trembling for his fate, Repented soon severely, and himself Sunk in his guilty solitude, devoid Of friends, of succor, hopeless and forlorn; While those who nursed them, to the pious task Roused by their prayers, with piteous moans commixt, Fell irretrievable: the best by far, The worthiest, thus most frequent met their doom. —Trans. by J. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... find that she is as utterly heartless as her own mother was. I always opposed the match, because I probed her mask of dissimulation, and knew Eugene could not be happy with her. But the mistake is irretrievable, and it only remains for you to watch him the more carefully. Lift me, father; I can't breathe easily. There is the doctor on the steps; I am too tired to ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... fellows, imprisonment is no injury to a man; it has happened to some of our most distinguished and respected public men. The bad opinion of his fellows, even when the law is powerless to touch him, is often an irretrievable injury to a man. We do not fortify the social reaction, in most matters, when we attempt to give it a legal sanction; we do not even need to fortify it, for it is sometimes harsher and more severe than the law, overlooking or not knowing all the extenuating circumstances. In France, as in England, ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Edinburgh ended, I returned to London, to our house in James Street, Buckingham Gate, where I found my parents much burdened with care and anxiety about the affairs of the theater, which were rapidly falling into irretrievable embarrassment. My father toiled incessantly, but the tide of ill-success and losing fortune had set steadily against him, and the attempt to stem it became daily harder and more hopeless. I used sometimes to hear some of the sorrowful details of this dreary struggle, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... remember this, and let us be more generous towards the men who were wicked that we might be enlightened. Above all, let us bear in mind, in judging the Renaissance, that the sacrifice which it represents could be useful only in so far as it was complete and irretrievable. Let us remember that the communal system of government, on whose development the Renaissance mainly depended, inevitably perished in proportion as it developed; that the absolute subjugation of Italy by Barbarous nations was requisite to the dissemination of the civilization thus obtained; ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... us irretrievable harm, for without his African discoveries we might yet have retained the traffic in Indian commodities. I cordially dislike the mongrel race, being, as it is, half Gothic ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... had been given special leave of forty-eight hours to make all necessary preparations, would not you have gone where your more impressionable acquaintances and friends were gathered together in the greatest numbers, informing them of the position and doing, on the strength of it, a quiet but irretrievable swank? No ostentation, mark you, and nothing approaching a boast, but just a suspicion of a brave careless laugh, a voice just slightly choked with emotion and but a formal reluctance to accept the numerous and costly gifts proffered by relatives who at less emotional times would have grudged ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... by interest and by passion, would soon invade them with superior force, and bereave them of all their liberties: or if they delayed the attack, the insidious peace, by making the Scots forget the use of arms, would only prepare the way for a slavery more certain and more irretrievable.[*] ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... the relation which was the most important event in George Eliot's life will seem one of those irretrievable errors which reduce all talk of duty to a mockery. It is inevitable that this should be so, and those who disregard a social law have little right to complain. Men and women whom in every other respect it would be monstrous to call bad, have taken this particular ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... thoughts fluttered to and fro. Constant, only, was a feeling of profound dejection; a sense of unutterable, irretrievable failure. The carter—a regular customer—rose and looked askance at me as he rubbed his face with the towel. He remarked that I 'seemed to be feeling a bit dull tonight,' paid his fee, and, with a civil 'good evening,' took ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... step towards commendation from your gang, might induce the public to believe I had abandoned my character, and become one of your honourable fraternity-the very suspicion of which would (to me) produce irretrievable ruin. Your masters, the trading brotherhood, will (as usual) direct you in the course you should pursue; whether to approve or condemn, as their 'peculiar interests may dictate. Most sapient sirs of the secret bandit' ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and everything appeared to point to a shining stage career, when there came a crushing calamity. She lost her voice. She was now twelve years old, and in her childish perspective of life this disaster seemed irretrievable, the sunshine of happiness for ever clouded. To become a singer in grand opera had been the great aspiration of her heart. Her voice gone, she was soon forgotten by the fickle public who had looked on this young girl as a chrysalis soon to burst into the glory ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... fool in having exposed my person to the horror of his children. I ought to have familiarized the old De Lacey to me, and by degrees to have discovered myself to the rest of his family, when they should have been prepared for my approach. But I did not believe my errors to be irretrievable, and after much consideration I resolved to return to the cottage, seek the old man, and by my representations win him to ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... her husband. She said trade could not be carried on without credit, and surely he was sufficiently justified in giving it to such a person as the count appeared to be. Besides, she said, reflections on what was past and irretrievable would be of little service; that their present business was to consider how to prevent the evil consequences which threatened, and first to endeavour to procure her husband his liberty. "Why doth he not procure bail?" said Wild. "Alas! sir," said she, "we have applied ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... hostile conduct would have afforded so indubitable a proof of the thing impugned. While the ancient patriarchates which had formed the substructure of the triple dais on which the Apostolic See rested were falling into irretrievable confusion, while the new State-made patriarch at Constantinople was trying to nominate and, if he could, to consecrate his elders and superiors at Alexandria and Antioch, who descended from Peter, the essential prerogative of ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... pen dropped from his hand and he sat inert, almost pulseless, in the desolation of a despair known only to those who, at a blow, have sunk from the height of public applause into the depths of irretrievable ignominy. ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... of Conscription, of war on Russia, of the permanent military occupation of Germany, of imperialism and grab, of war policy in Ireland, of repression in Egypt, of the reckless profligacy and corruption that are plunging Europe into Bolshevism and hurrying this country to irretrievable ruin." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... and with them the memory of this last irretrievable hour and a just estimate of what she ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the wise. The acutest thinkers rarely succeed in becoming leaders of men. A watchword or a catchword is more potent with the people than logic, especially if this be the least metaphysical. When a political prophet arises, to stir the dreaming, stagnant nation, and hold back its feet from the irretrievable descent, to heave the land as with an earthquake, and shake the silly-shallow idols from their seats, his words will come straight from God's own mouth, and be thundered into the conscience. He will reason, teach, warn, and rule. The real "Sword of the Spirit" is keener than the brightest ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... evil influence to others, and had experienced a terrible joy in being so; and that, of the lives that had crossed his own, it had been the fairest and the most full of promise that he had brought to shame. But was it all irretrievable? Was there no hope ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... without a desire to condole with him. I expressed my regrets, therefore, as succinctly as possible, encouraging him with the hope of seeing a new covering of down before long, but delicately abstaining from any allusion to the cauda, whose loss I knew was irretrievable. To my great surprise, however, the judge answered cheerfully; discarding, for the moment, every appearance ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to whom he was deeply attached, overwhelmed him. For while with some people "one blow drives out another," with some the second serves only to drive home, deepen, and aggravate the first. For years he was satisfied to believe both losses irretrievable. And so he might still have gone on believing, except ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Of absolute and irretrievable black,—black's soul of black Beyond white's power to disintensify,— Of that I saw no sample: such may wreck My life and ruin ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... whom I have made by my recommendations! Tobbins, the bootmaker, his neighbour in Jermyn Street, forty-one pounds more, and that is all—I give you my word, all. In a few months, when my pew-rents will be coming in, I should have settled with those cormorants; otherwise, my total and irretrievable ruin, and the disgrace and humiliation of a prison attends me. I know it; I can bear it; I have been wretchedly weak, Pendennis: I can say mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, and I can—bear—my—penalty." In his finest moments he was never more pathetic. He turned his head ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... reach now," Mulford at length exclaimed, sighing heavily, like one who became conscious of some great and irretrievable loss. "Were there no sharks, I could hardly venture to attempt swimming so far, with the boat drifting from me at the ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... 1768, Dr. Darwin met with an accident of irretrievable injury to the human frame. His propensity to mechanics had unfortunately led him to construct a very singular carriage. It was a platform with a seat fixed upon a very high pair of wheels, and supported in the ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... month of May; and most people turned to cultivation of their crops in the hope that a bountiful nature might restore somewhat their broken fortunes. The bitter cup had been drained. The cause of the planters had gone down in irretrievable disaster. For forty years they had contended with their rivals of the North, and having staked all on the wager of battle they had lost. Just four years before they had entered with unsurpassed zeal and enthusiasm upon the gigantic task of winning their independence. They had made the greatest ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... ourselves, that slavery can be extirpated in the United States in a short time. It will require time and patience to attain an object, so desirable. Hasty and inconsiderate action will be likely to prove abortive, and result in no good to either master or slave; if not in irretrievable ruin to both. We should avoid everything in word or deed, which has a tendency to irritate the South and arouse them to resistance. Abolitionists by their low abuse and vile misrepresentations, have done everything ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... 1345, a great battle took place in the market-place between them and the fullers, of whom 1500 were slain. This victory of the weavers strengthened the power of the party hostile to Artevelde and the English connection; and the former saw that unless he could induce his countrymen to take some irretrievable step in favour of England they would ultimately fall back into the arms of France. Accordingly he invited Edward to pass over with a strong force into Flanders, where he would persuade the Flemings to make the Prince of Wales their duke. King Edward at once accepted the offer, ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... country, where Verinder and Lord Farquhar were heavily interested in some large gold producers. That chapter of her life would be closed. She told herself that it was best so. Her love for a man of this stamp could bring no happiness to her. Moreover, she had taken an irretrievable step in betrothing herself to Captain Kilmeny. Over and over again she went over the arguments that marshaled themselves so strongly in favor of the loyal lover who had waited years to win her. Some day she would be glad of the course ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... health," said she, "is not irretrievable, and, sweet madam, your good looks are left you. A touch of rouge upon your cheek, and you are quite an angel. And then you are free—you will one day travel back again to Paris with a better ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... cannot be denied that there are life-long burdens and griefs,—incurable illnesses, irretrievable losses, bereavements that will never cease to be felt, and cannot be replaced. Especially in advanced years there are infirmities, disabilities, and privations, which cannot by any possibility have a resultant revenue equivalent to what ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... despair. She could not tell—could not guess—what had happened. She only knew that the man whose happiness meant more to her than her own, and the woman she had learned to love as a friend, had somehow come to irretrievable misunderstanding and disaster. At last she turned ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... interruption to an obscure place in the suburbs. His poetical guide to godliness hearing nothing of him during half a year, and apprehending he might have carried the jest too far, sought after him, and found him just in time to prevent what Ruffhead calls "an irretrievable derangement." ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... troops, whom he caused to march and encamp to the sound of instruments. Having arrived in the Milesian territory, he completely destroyed the crops and the orchards, and then again withdrew." In these expeditions he was careful to avoid any excesses which would have made the injury inflicted appear irretrievable; his troops were forbidden to destroy dwelling-houses or buildings dedicated to the gods; indeed, on one occasion, when the conflagration which consumed the lands accidentally spread to the temple of Athena near Assesos, he rebuilt two temples for the goddess at his own expense. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... hers, Lady Constance could not master her agitation. The train had left the metals, so to speak, and the result was confusion dire. A great shame held her, a dislocation of mind. She suffered that loneliness of soul which forms so integral a part of the misery of all apparently irretrievable disaster, whether moral or physical, and places the victim of it, in imagination at all events, rather terribly beyond ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... female sinners of the sixteenth century 'tis religion which saves a society ploughed up by so many elements of dissolution and so many causes of moral and material ruin, rescuing it from barbarism, vandalism, and from irretrievable decay;" but the women of the eighteenth century clung, to the end, to the scepticism and material philosophy which served them ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... them before. They were soft, pretty eyes, too, now that the hair was suffered to lie around the face, instead of being stretched back as tightly as possible. One good result had come from the wood-shed catastrophe: the high comb had been shattered into irretrievable fragments. I inly determined that none like it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... exile, and instead of joining you there, I will be there to meet you. As you step from the carriage which brings you, you shall find me waiting to soften the pain of your adieux to France; and then, death alone is irretrievable; later, the king may pardon you; later still, and the action punished to-day may be looked upon as a deed to be rewarded. Then we will return; then nothing need keep us from Bretagne, the cradle of our love, the paradise ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... Such a policy would have resembled the last desperate resource of an unprincipled gambler, who, on seeing his final game at chess, and the accumulated stakes depending upon it, all on the brink of irretrievable sacrifice, dexterously upsets the chess-board, or extinguishes the lights. But Julius, the one sole patriot of Rome, could find no advantage to his plans in darkness or in confusion. Honestly supported, he would have crushed ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... doubt read that incident of the sergeant who, in a moment of panic, fled, was placed under arrest and sentenced to be shot. Before the sentence was ratified by the Commander-in-Chief, there came a moment of extreme peril to the line, when irretrievable disaster was imminent and every man who could fill a gap was needed. The condemned man was called out to face the enemy, and, even in the midst of brave men, fought with a bravery that singled him out for the Victoria ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... 1862, Jefferson Davis committed the one irretrievable mistake of his administration. He consented to his inauguration as permanent President of the Confederacy under the strict forms of ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... presented by the agent for South Carolina, setting forth, that unless the rice produced in that province were allowed to be exported, the colony must be ruined by the irretrievable loss of their whole trade, as the countries now supplied from thence might easily procure rice from the French settlements, already too ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... far as its operation upon men's hearts is concerned, to that small minority who have gone through the process of conversion as recognised by Edwards' sect. All others, heathens, infants, and the great mass of professed Christians, are sentenced to irretrievable perdition. The simplicity with which he condemns all other forms even of his own religion is almost touching. He incidentally remarks, for example, that external exercises may not show true virtue, because they have frequently proceeded from false ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... helplessness overwhelmed her. She could not ignore her love; it had become interwoven with every interest and fibre of her life. At first she contemplated it in wonder, in deeply troubled and alarmed perplexity. It was a momentous truth, that had suddenly been made known as some irretrievable misfortune might have been revealed. She had read of love as children hear of mental anxieties and conflicts of which they have no comprehension. As she grew older it had been like poetry, music, romance—something that kindled her imagination into vague, ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... Quen's internal organs whatever reluctance he might have otherwise displayed in the matter, so that as courteously as was necessary he presented to the undoubtedly very ordinary and slow-witted maiden in question the gifts of irretrievable intention, and honourably carried out his spoken ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... Yet these obvious precautions were not taken. In truth, the separation of the allies was dictated more by political jealousy than by military motives. To these political affairs we must now allude; for they had no small effect in leading Napoleon on to an illusory triumph and an irretrievable overthrow. We will show their influence, first on the conduct of the allies, and then ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... any sentimental point of view; but he told himself that to be suspected of having poisoned his friend, and to be accused of poisoning, or attempting to poison, his daughter, would be ruin—ruin social and commercial, ruin complete and irretrievable. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... righteousness thus to fuse together our divisive impulses and march with one mind through life, there is plainly one thing more unrighteous than all others, and one declension which is irretrievable and draws on the rest. And this is to lose consciousness of oneself. In the best of times, it is but by flashes, when our whole nature is clear, strong and conscious, and events conspire to leave us free, that we enjoy communion with our soul. At the worst, we are so ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... safe from their attacks, perished from age, seems clearly made out. Goats were introduced in the year 1502; eighty-six years afterwards, in the time of Cavendish, it is known that they were exceedingly numerous. More than a century afterwards, in 1731, when the evil was complete and irretrievable, an order was issued that all stray animals should be destroyed. It is very interesting thus to find, that the arrival of animals at St. Helena in 1501, did not change the whole aspect of the island, until a period ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... offerings gratified him, but yielding no return, and I ask, is there anything so discouraging to an ardent love as this cold neutrality, which proves, without a scruple, that all affection lavished upon it is an irretrievable waste. ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... rising ground, they could see the little army of their enemies come on directly to their habitation, and in a moment more could see all their huts and household-stuff flaming up together, to their great grief and mortification; for they had a very great loss, and to them irretrievable, at least for some time. They kept their station for a while, till they found the savages, like wild beasts, spread themselves all over the place, rummaging every way, and every place they could think of, in search for prey, and in particular ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... was little marvel that she wept as all women weep when their hearts are broken. It is so easy to break a heart; sometimes a mere word will do it. But the vanishing of the winged Love-god from the soul is even more than heart-break,—it is utter and irretrievable loss,—complete and dominating chaos out of which no good thing can ever be designed or created. In our days we do our best to supply the place of a reluctant Eros by the gilded, grinning Mammon-figure ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... mother, my dear young lady—greatly like. Your mother was very kind to me, and I fear I abused her kindness; abused it by misunderstanding it. There was a great deal of misunderstanding; and I was proud, and my friend was proud, and so the misunderstanding continued, until now it has become irretrievable." ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... in no haste—Fabius Cunctator about to be named—with 60,000 men; does come to Kolin. Frederick attacks; but a blunder of too-impetuous Mannstein fatally overturns the plan of battle; to which the resulting disaster is imputed: disaster seemingly overwhelming and irretrievable, but Daun does not follow up. The siege of Prag is raised and the Prussian army—much smaller—retreats to Saxony. And on the west Cumberland is in retreat seawards, after Hastenbeck, and French armies are advancing; Cumberland very soon mercifully to disappear, Convention of Kloster-Seven ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... though in reality they bear not the least analogy to each other. In order to the forming a right judgment, it is absolutely necessary to observe this distinction, which will effectually secure you from the dangerous error of taking the shadow for the substance, an irretrievable mistake, pregnant ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... our turn. The enemy charged us, and for the first time were repulsed. We pressed on determined to win. The success of the morning turned to a most irretrievable and disastrous defeat to the enemy. They were completely routed, suffering a terrible slaughter. Twenty-four guns captured in the morning were retaken, besides a large number of prisoners, and most of the enemy's artillery, numbering over fifty pieces. Our Regiment ...
— History of the 159th Regiment, N.Y.S.V. • Edward Duffy
... then make a concentrated charge in front. It seemed certain that the effect of this movement would be to hurl the whole of the enemy's advance, horse and foot, back upon his battalia, and thus to break up his army in irretrievable rout. The plan was a sensible one, but it was not ingeniously executed. Before the handful of cavalry had time to make the proposed feint the cannoneers, being unduly excited, and by express command of Sir Francis Vere, fired ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and failure, however explained, can hardly be carried to a man's credit; but his after course, by wresting success out of seemingly irretrievable disaster, has merited the highest eulogium. Maintaining both courage and energy unimpaired, every effort was instantly made to get the ships once more into fighting condition, that the attack might be renewed. "Tell the Admiralty," said he to the bearer of his despatches, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... minister. At half-past nine, the prime minister will speak in the chamber; and he will speak according to the substance of my report. This is what I wish you to understand above all things. Next, I want you to know the German reply, I want you to realize the great, the irretrievable importance of every word which you utter. As for me, feeling as I do the full weight of my responsibilities, I wish to seek behind those words, beyond yourselves, whether there is not some detail unperceived ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... of blue papers with printed headings. From time to time he turned them over in his hands and replaced them on the table with a groan. To the earl they meant ruin—absolute, irretrievable ruin, and with it the loss of his stately home that had been the pride of the Oxheads for generations. More than that—the world would now know the awful ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... and a thousand times Virginia had gone through the ordeal of this day in her mind. Yet now the beating in her temples confused her thoughts. She was afraid that she should forget, that she should make some irretrievable blunder, and that everything would be ruined by her fault. But much might depend now upon a look or a gesture, and she held herself in a vice of self-control, fearing that her smile on greeting the courteous old Commandant was suspiciously forced, her voice unnatural, or the look ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... the great showman had fallen short of his printed promise. The hurricane had come by night, and with one fell swash had made an irretrievable sop of every thing. The circus trailed away its bedraggled magnificence, and the ring ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... Your signing this check may save me from irretrievable ruin. This trifling supply, which I can nowhere else procure, if it comes to-night, may place us out of danger. If delayed till to-morrow morning, there will be no remedy. I shall receive an adequate sum to-morrow afternoon, and with that I ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... hard for the mind to reconcile itself to the irretrievable. I can't shake off a sense that there is something to be done. I can't realise that it is ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... time I want to lie down and cry. Everything seems to me so impossible. I do not make things go very well, and I feel that my life is an absolute and irretrievable failure. Perhaps I am thankless, but I so often feel that I should like to give it up and die. However, I presume that if I could have the opportunity I should at ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... military skill. But disunion in his ranks did what the Tartar sword could not effect. Many of his adherents deserted him, and the Chinese warrior who had never known defeat was brought to the brink of irretrievable disaster. From this dilemma death extricated him, he passing away at the head of his men without the stigma of defeat on his long career of victory. In the end his body was taken from the tomb and his ashes were scattered through the eighteen ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... houses, were unique, so were the Yankee boarders. The race of our merchant-marine captains disappeared with their ships, and they will return no more. The loss is irretrievable, for in many respects they held the ideal of patriotic and energetic Americanism higher than it is likely to go again. When at sea, in command of and responsible for their ships and cargoes, they were, no doubt, upon occasion, despots and slave-drivers; but their crews ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... which he had purloined, once more rose to confront him. Again he saw before him the irascible employer, pointing with relentless finger at the deficiency in the accounts, again he saw his weeping mother, his stern father,—the disgrace, the irretrievable past. ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... which is nearly thrice our own. This risk I must run, or all is lost. We must beat him or die, all of us, before his batteries." He burst unawares upon the Austrian left, and rolled their whole host together, corps upon corps, in a tumult of irretrievable ruin. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... learned this new loss at early dawn he was overcome with grief; and when Beowulf, attracted by the sound of weeping, appeared at his side, he mournfully told him of his irretrievable loss. ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... to dine with Giles and Dorothea to-day, and meet him. This morning's work, then, is not irretrievable. I can speak now to Dorothea, tell her what has occurred, and she will see that I have opportunity to return him this—and—-and things may end in his loving me a little, after all. Oh, if they ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... section of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow could there have been a more terrible picture of hopeless and irretrievable defeat. In this area alone, eighty-seven guns of various calibres, and fully a thousand horse and oxen-drawn vehicles, nearly a hundred motor-lorries, cars, field-kitchens, water carts, and a mass of other impedimenta blocked the road, with the carcases ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... yet she was sure that none other had any influence over him, that, as he had looked at her in those short-lived days of his first devotion, he looked at no other. The way was clear yet. There was nothing irretrievable, nothing irrevocable, which would for ever stain the memory and tarnish the gold of life when the perfect love should be minted. Whatever faults of mind or disposition or character were his— or hers—there were no sins ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
