"Undoing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "your venomous bile pollutes the crystal flood of my narration. Did I ride? That was the undoing of the sage. When he recovered consciousness for the second time, it was to discover that the chain was missing and that the back tire was windless. In my endeavours to find the chain I lost myself. That reminds me. I must put an advertisement in The Times to the effect ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... an hour Thorn stood there before something happened that at once helped him, and, at the same time, nearly proved his undoing. ...
— The Radiant Shell • Paul Ernst
... other Self-flatteries, all vain and indiscreet, took up her waking Nights, and now more retired Days; while Love, to make her truly wretched, suffered her to sooth herself with fond Imaginations; not so much as permitting her Reason to plead one Moment to save her from undoing: She would not suffer it to tell her, he had taken Holy Orders, made sacred and solemn Vows of everlasting Chastity, that it was impossible he could marry her, or lay before her any Argument that might prevent her Ruin; but Love, mad malicious Love, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... that day that hitherto he had seen and heard nothing. Such a tornado of shells burst around him that it was like hell let loose. Hour after hour the Germans bombarded our trenches, tearing great holes in the ground, and undoing the work of months. It seemed to Tom that ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... dear, Though from our open eyes 'tis hidden. Thou, Time-to-come, shalt make it clear, Undoing our work; we are children chidden With pity and smiles of many ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... shrouded in treacherous ambiguity—such a man, be he Black Republican or Democrat, is unworthy of her support. To vote for either, is to give away her influence, to be used against her. It is to stultify principle, and be the instrument of her own undoing." ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... deck to shut the skylight, but the catch was very stiff; it took me some few moments to undo. I noticed, as I worked at it, that the deck was empty, except for the lanky man with the package, who was now forward, apparently undoing his package on the forehatch. I thought that he was a sort of pedlar or bumboatman, come to sell onions, soft bread, or cheap jewellery to the sailors. The carpenter's head showed for an instant at the galley-door, ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... only the other day when the Tsar's assumption of the title of Generalissimo lent new strength to the legend of the "Little Father." But the forces of "unholy Russia"—Pro-German Ministers and the sinister figure of Rasputin—have combined to his undoing, and now none is so poor to do him reverence. In the House of Commons everybody seems pleased, including Mr. Devlin, who has been quite statesmanlike in his appreciation, and the Prime Minister, in one of his angelic visits to the ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... made that will. He sent for Leon, you see, and must have seen at a glance that he had for a son—a mule, of the worst sort. He probably saw that to leave money to Leon was to give it to the Church, which meant that it would be spent for the further undoing of Spain and the propagation of ignorance ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... at his house in the Vosnesensky. Something will certainly be found there," he said, with insidious cunning, well knowing that Protopopoff's agents-provocateurs had already taken steps to secure the financier's undoing. ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... had been fortified that day. Towards evening little Heywood Dare, the Taunton goldsmith, who had landed at Seatown and gone out with the news of the Duke's arrival, rode into Lyme with forty horse, mounted, himself, upon a beautiful charger which was destined to be the undoing of him. ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... collar tight about his neck, and his Eton jacket stiff and unfriendly. He was walking up the aisle with his mother, his boots creaked, the bell's note was dropping, dropping, the fat verger with his staff was undoing the cord of their seat, the boys of the choir-school were looking at him and he was blushing, he was on his knees and the edge of the kneeler was cutting into his trousers, the precentor's voice, as remote from things human as the cathedral bell itself, ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... The rest of us had no weapon of any sort to combat time with, and for four whole days I sat counting the drops of rain that fell from the ceiling into a bowl beneath, or in burbling the chain of my watch for the pleasure of undoing it. 'Oh, Plato! what tasks for a philosopher!' At length in a frenzy of ennui I mounted a brute of a horse that could do nothing but trot, and rode till I was ready to drop from the saddle—just for diversion. I left ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... man I had in one moment become a beggar; and up to this time I have lived solely on the alms that have been bestowed on me. But, in order to expiate the sin of avarice, which was my undoing, I oblige each passer-by ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... in which he had beheld that half-breed Piute Indian in the saloon. He remained out of sight even now, dispatching a messenger to Culver, in the afternoon, requesting his presence for a conference for the total undoing of Van Buren. ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... Cassidy, and Quinlan among them. Even that poor devil who had been on duty Friday night as sentry on Number Five had been marched into the awful presence of the commanding officer, and ordered to tell who gave him the whiskey that had been his undoing—even promising immunity from punishment; but he was Irish and true to his faith and his friends, even they who had betrayed him, and he'd die first, he said. Never would he "sphlit on the best ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... one grows to the belief that, while woman's glory is her hair, man's glory is to defeat some one. And if he can "defeat with great slaughter" his monument is twice as high as if he had only visited on his brother man a plain undoing. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... of Beatrix, haunted Esmond and pursued him. The Prince's figure appeared before him in his feverish dreams many times that night. He wished the deed undone for which he had labored so. He was not the first that has regretted his own act, or brought about his own undoing. Undoing? Should he write that word in his late years? No, on his knees before heaven, rather be thankful for what then he deemed his misfortune, and which hath caused the whole subsequent happiness ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... to kick off his shoes, and was swimming towards the rock. Poor old man, he struggled hard for life. In a moment I forgot all the mischief he had caused, and considered how I might help to save him. Undoing my neck-handkerchief, I fastened it to another I had in my pocket, and secured the two to the sleeve of my jacket. I watched him anxiously as he drew near, crying out to encourage him. Then I lowered the handkerchiefs, and ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... the old warrior stirred. He had come to this, he who had planned, not for himself, but for his country. And because he was thinking clearly, in spite of his grief, he saw that his very ambition for the boy had been his undoing. In the alliance with Karnia he had given the Terrorists a scourge to flay ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... or not, it was a wish that Abraham Lincoln might have been spared to meet the situation. "I have been wondering where we are going to get a GREAT MAN, that will be tall enough to see over the whole country, and to direct that vast undoing of things which has got to be accomplished in a few years. It is a situation in which mere cleverness will not begin to work. The horizon of cleverness is too limited; it does not embrace enough of the heart of man, to ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... which she had never mixed, her intelligent innocence made the most artless avowals to my enraptured ear,—avowals that the more profligate minded woman of society would have blushed to whisper even to herself. And for these I loved her to my own undoing. ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... was right. The crew of christianized natives were soon alongside, very humble in their apologies, and very anxious to assist in undoing the damage ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... journey. She contrasted her present misery with the joyousness that had possessed her when last she had been under the same roof as her lover. Tears welled into her eyes, but she held them back, fearing they would further contribute to the undoing of ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... impatience, and was then equally impatient to have it clasped again. But no description can convey an adequate impression of the weary restlessness with which from morning to night he pursued these labors of Sisyphus—doing and undoing—fretting that he could not do it, fretting ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... My plan for the undoing of the castles does not depend on force, but on craft. We three cannot carry away as much gold as can twenty-one, but our shares will be the same, and then we are not likely to find again so full a treasury as that at Rheinstein. ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... He wolf and whelps upon those mounts pursued Which Pisa 'twixt and Lucca's domes obtrude. Hounds had he with him, lank and shrewd and keen, And in their front Gualandi's sword had place, Sismondi's lash and sour Lanfranchi's mace. Father and sons' undoing soon was seen; Methought the sharp fangs on them closed, and tore Their flanks, which now ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... her schoolhouses and churches that are trying to lift humanity heavenward the American Saloon is found lowering humanity and undoing the work these ministers and teachers have so ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... forty feet away, now thirty and almost ready to drop. Ten feet more and he would fire, Chris resolved. But that ten feet proved the ambitious little darky's undoing. A concentrated drop of buzzing liquid fire struck him above the eye, while hand and legs seemed splashed with molten fire. Down went the rifle with a thud and with a shrieked "Oh golly, oh golly, oh golly!" a black streak cleared the open ground with kangaroo-like leaps ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... no proof, but we think that Flippie's grandmother had a hand in the undoing of the security and peace which reigned supreme at Harmony before she came upon ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... the humble angle of the cavalier hat, the faint flush underneath, all formed together a challenge and an appeal which were the more irresistible for their sweet shamefacedness. Acute consciousness of the past (I thought), and (I even fancied) some penitence for a wrong by no means past undoing, were in every sensitive inch of her, as she sat a suppliant to the old player of that part. And there are emotions of which the body may be yet more eloquent than the face; there was the figure ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... permitted to sketch her countenance in various positions, and I Fondly protracted the study that was undoing me. The more I gazed on her the more I became enamoured; there was something almost painful in my intense admiration. I was but nineteen years of age; shy, diffident, and inexperienced. I was treated with attention and ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... causes him personal inconvenience, because he has acquired a sense of military values. But if it is either unduly harsh or unnecessarily lax, he likewise knows it and wears it as a hairshirt, to the undoing of his morale. Though the man, like the group, can be hurt by being pushed beyond sensible limits, his spirit will suffer even more sorely if no real test is put upon his abilities and moral powers. ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... of linen-lapped one, Leek-sea-bearing goddess, Hawk-keen out of heaven Shone all bright upon me; But that eyelid's moonbeam Of gold-necklaced goddess Her hath all undoing Wrought, ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous
... this box a vivid flash of lightning revealed its interior, and there, bolt upright, stood a tall Spanish grenadier, with his musket resting in a corner of the hut, close to his hand. I realised instantly that the briefest period of hesitation now meant our undoing; for as I had seen the soldier, he had also undoubtedly seen me; so the man no sooner stood revealed before me than, with one bound, I was in the sentry-box with him, one hand grasping his throat to prevent him from crying out, while with the ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... Noel. "Do you not know that I am always thinking of you; have I not proved it to you a thousand times? Look here! I am going to prove it to you again this very instant." He withdrew from his pocket the small packet he had taken out of his bureau drawer, and, undoing it, showed her a handsome velvet casket. "Here," said he exultingly, "is the bracelet you longed for so much a ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... virtues are always achieved by means of the excess of that propensity to love, and to believe in the truth of the object beloved, which is one of the most beautiful characteristics in woman; though, wo to her! it is but too often used to her undoing. ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... and slime to pollute them. They have dashed their iniquities into the face of everything decent and holy. And their work will be seen in the crime and debauchery and the hell of innumerable victims. Their columns are not long and broad enough to record the tragedies of their horrible undoing of ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... the world at his back! and what can any resistance of ours avail? We may gain a single victory—to that, genius and courage are equal, and we possess them in more than even Roman measure—but that very victory may be our undoing, or it will but embitter the temper of the enemy, call forth a new display of unexhausted and inexhaustible resources, while our very good success itself will have nearly annihilated our armies; and what can happen then but ruin, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... was undoing or rather tearing open the parcel; and the man was about to withdraw with all the court observance which the Protector would ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... signet ring, Francis. By that token the boatmen will take thee to London. By that token also thou mayest obtain horses at my house. Go, girl! Even now thou mayest be too late. As for me, with that ring on thee, 'twill be my undoing, but—take it." ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... Muza; "the Christian king conquers more foes by craft than force; and his spies are more deadly than his warriors. Wherefore this caution against me, but (pardon me) for thine own undoing? Were I a traitor, could Ferdinand himself have endangered thy crown so imminently as the revenge of the leader of thine own armies? Why, too, this desire to keep thee inactive? For the brave every hour hath its chances; but, for us, every ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... slowly moved toward the edge of the bed and Hal lowered his weapons. This act almost proved the lad's undoing. ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... have?—although I yearn To do them nicely to a turn, I can't afford an honest heat. This tariff makes even devils cheat! I'm ruined, and my humble trade All rascals may at will invade: Beneath my nose the public press Outdoes me in sulphureousness; The bar ingeniously applies To my undoing my own lies; My medicines the doctors use (Albeit vainly) to refuse To me my fair and rightful prey And keep their own in shape to pay; The preachers by example teach What, scorning to perform, I teach; And statesmen, aping me, all make More promises than they can break. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... syllable, old Tom," retorted Hurry, who smarted under Judith's observations; "the devil-tongued youngsters of the garrison have proved her undoing! I scarce know Jude any longer, and shall soon take to admiring her sister, who is getting to be much more ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the rivalry between Hughie and Foxy is preserved in John Craven's second letter to his friend Edward Maitland. The letter also gives an account of the master's own undoing—an undoing which bore fruit to the end of ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... folly that went near undoing me, for had it come to my father's ears, he had broke me without mercy. He was a hard man, my father; ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... his first brief order, one by one undoing the buttons of her dress, laying bare her poor chest, all flat and formless as a child's. A momentary gentleness came over him as he adjusted the tubes of his stethoscope and began the sounding, backwards and forwards from heart ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... darkness, he stood there, leaning against the wall in a state of collapse, creeping with horror from the touch of her yielding body, and inwardly raging at the weakness that he already dimly realised must prove his undoing. ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... I am more or less at sea; but I believe that the bribe which was offered me to throw the ball game to Harvard was a trap meant to work my undoing." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... in wooing, In watching and pursuing The light that lies In woman's eyes, Has been my heart's undoing. ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... in early prophecy on current events, but in such utterances as these there is manifest not merely the customary desire to stand in the limelight of assured knowledge and wisdom, but also the happy conviction that events in America were working to the undoing of the Radicals of Great Britain. If they would not be supine the Radicals must strike back. On December 4, at Rochdale where, as the Times asserted, he was sure of an audience sympathetic on purely personal grounds, Bright renewed his profession of faith in the American ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... A most absurd parody on Hamlet, wherein a lamentable tragedy written and repented by his uncle the king is unearthed and turned to the sad prince's undoing. ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... your lithe arms, ye graceful trees, The wind is out a-wooing! Ye may be many, yet he sees A way to your undoing. ...
— Out of the North • Howard V. Sutherland
... a triumphal entry into the last city left to the King of Belgium, Ypres, and to be on hand when his guards and marines from the Kiel Canal, who were present in large numbers, did the goose-step down the Rue Royale to Calais. The courage of the Canadians proved his undoing. ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... did not possess her chum's measure of beauty. Helen was a dainty, compelling brunette with flashing eyes—eyes she had already learned to use to the undoing of what Ruth called "the youthful male ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... to go back to school he went up to bed tremulous with excitement. There was snow on the ground, and Aunt Louisa had allowed herself the unaccustomed luxury of a fire in her bed-room; but in Philip's little room it was so cold that his fingers were numb, and he had great difficulty in undoing his collar. His teeth chattered. The idea came to him that he must do something more than usual to attract the attention of God, and he turned back the rug which was in front of his bed so that he could kneel on the bare boards; and then it struck him that ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... evening paper in a pettish manner, that sufficiently denoted discontent. "We are always puffing our own progress in America, without exactly knowing whether a good deal of the road is not to be traveled over again, by way of undoing much that we have done. Here, now, is a specimen of our march in folly, in an advertisement of Bobbinett's, ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... do chance such sundry high and notable inconveniences as be to the great and notorious detriment of the commonweal, the subversion of politic order in knowledge and distinction of people according to their preeminence and degrees, to the utter impoverishment and undoing of many light and inexpert persons inclined to pride, the mother of all vices: Be it enacted,"[415]—but I need not enter into the particulars of the uniforms worn by the nobles and gentlemen of the court of Henry VIII.; the temper, not the detail, is of importance; and of the wisdom ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... shears of Aunt Jen herself, a bodice and skirt of my mother's, dovelike in hue and carrying with them some of her own retiring quality in every line. It was all the same, with a shred or two of silk, with a little undoing here, a little tightening there, a broad splash of colour cut from one of my Uncle Rob's neckcloths—not anywhere, but just in the right place—Irma could give to all mankind the impression of being the only person ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... the power of speaking to me, will be my undoing. It won't let me pray, it interrupts me with dreadful blasphemies. I dare not go on, I could not. Oh! Doctor, can the skill, and thought, and prayers ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... which victory may bring ruin, and disappointment endanger their heads.... Acquisition alone can make burdens palatable, and in a war with our own colonies we must inflict instead of acquiring them, and we cannot recover them without undoing them. I am still to learn wisdom and experience, if these things are not so." (Letter to Mann, January 25, 1775.) "A war with our colonies, which is now declared, is a proof how much influence jargon has on human actions. A war on our own trade is popular." (February 15, 1775.) "The war with ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... "My undoing has been caused by leniency to dogs like thee," said the Dey, with a dark scowl; then, clearing his brow, and drawing himself up with dignity, he turned to Omar, and added, "I decline to take part in mine own death. If I must die, let me be led forth to the ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... East when a Child-Christ is born. Every such child is surrounded by perils and menaces, strange dangers that befall not other babes; for he is anointed with the chrism of the second birth and the Dark Powers of the unseen world ever seek his undoing. Despite all trials, however, he grows into manhood, for the Christ once born can never perish, the Christ once beginning to develop can never fail in his evolution; his fair life expands and grows, ever-increasing in wisdom and in spiritual stature, until the time ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... occupied in times when travelling was more difficult. These changes are inevitable. The "Ship" at Greenwich has gone, and Cabinet Ministers can no longer dine there. The convalescent home, which was the undoing of certain Poplar Guardians, is housed in an hotel as famous as the "Ship," in its days once the resort of Pitt and his bosom friends. Indeed, a pathetic history might be written of the ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... argued Mrs. Hittaway,—Frank would at once throw himself at his cousin's feet, and all the difficulty would be over. The abominable, unjustifiable, and insolent interference of Lady Glencora just at the present moment would be the means of undoing all the good that had been done, unless it could be neutralised by some such activity as this. The necklace had absolutely faded away into nothing. The sly creature was almost becoming a heroine on the strength of the necklace. The very mystery with which the robberies ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... with intense animosity against the white people, who encroached, every year, more and more upon the Indian hunting grounds. His was a soul full kin to that of Timmendiquas, and if the two met it meant a great council and a greater endeavor for the undoing of the white man. What more likely than that they ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... powerful, for he stands higher at Versailles than any here. With the Governor I have influence, for he is, as you know, a kinsman of my mother's, and of late he has shown a fondness for me. Yet you can see that I must act most warily, that I must not seem to care for you, for that would be your complete undoing. I rather seem to scoff. (Oh, how it hurts me! how my cheeks tingle when I think of it alone! and how I clench my hands, hating them all ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Byron's great-uncle, from whom he had inherited his title, had killed the grandfather of Miss Chaworth in a duel, lent a romantic tinge to the matter—the boy was doing a sort of penance, and in one of his poems hints at the undoing of the sin of his kinsman by the lifelong devotion that he will bestow. This calling up the past, and incautious revealing of the fact that the ancestor Chaworth could not hold his own with a Byron, but allowed himself to be run through the body by the Byron cold steel, was not pleasing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... be done by concession and conciliation,—and not by force. The plan he proposed, therefore, to obtain this consummation was, to allow all the claims the Americans had set forth in their petitions and declarations, and by undoing all that the parliament had done respecting America, since the year 1765. His resolutions were briefly these:—That the colonies not being represented in parliament, could in no way be taxed by parliament; that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Where our sick souls do lie Tossing continually! O where thy voice doth come Let all doubts be dumb, Let all words be mild, All strifes be reconciled, All pains beguiled! Light bring no blindness, Love no unkindness, Knowledge no ruin, Fear no undoing! From the cradle to the grave, Save, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... river stole away like a thief in straight places, or swung round corners with an eddy; the willows nodded, and were undermined all day long; the clay banks tumbled in; the Oise, which had been so many centuries making the Golden Valley, seemed to have changed its fancy, and be bent upon undoing its performance. What a number of things a river does, by simply following Gravity in ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... need of large populations. But we're told to increase and multiply at the command of God, so you needn't fear machines will ever lower our power to do so. If that happened, it would be as much as to say God allowed us to produce something to our own undoing." ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... impossible to know many well, to understand all their temptations and difficulties, and so help them effectively. To supply every needy family with a friend may seem an impossible ideal, but if all who are undoing each other's work to-day by doing it twice over, and if all who now waste their time in unnecessary charities, were seriously to put themselves in training, and confine their work to the thorough treatment of a few families, ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... concern about paying the interest of the national debt, but leave it, as in loyalty bound, wholly to the wisdom of the honourable House of Commons; I come now to consider by what methods we may be able to put off and delay our utter undoing as ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... come out again—on business," she said, with that ready mingling of the false and true which had been her undoing. "And I thought I could leave this for Miss Kresney as I passed. Will you please give it to her. I am sorry she is ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... not resist the temptation to glance at Martin Trevor—she had not seen him for some time, and it was surprising to meet him in the middle of the week, as he generally came home only for week-ends. That glance was her undoing—a certain cordiality must have crept into it, inspired by his broad shoulders and handsome, swarthy face, for Mr. Pratt was immediately encouraged, and pounced. He broke away from Trevor ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... to God, I should have made her such rich amends as would have pleased her and gained her mercy. God! what could my crime have been? I think she must have known that I mounted upon the cart. I do not know what other cause she can have to blame me. This has been my undoing. If this is the reason of her hate, God! what harm could this crime do? Any one who would reproach me for such an act never knew what love is, for no one could mention anything which, if prompted by love, ought to be turned into a reproach. Rather, everything that one can do for his lady-love ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... at Kirklees Nunnery, in fair Yorkshire, with mercy in his heart toward those that had been his undoing; for thus he showed mercy for the erring and pity for the weak through all the ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... was the happiest of all mothers, and so would she have remained if she had not believed herself so peculiarly blessed. Her very knowledge of her good fortune was her undoing. ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... particular writer really believes is that the German people, through some innate and incurable frowardness of disposition, have turned the inestimable blessings of compulsory soldiership to their own moral undoing, and have made themselves wholly bad and beastly, in spite of a beneficent institution which would have made ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... carried out. The patient must cooperate, and to get him to do this he must be tactfully warned of his condition. Many, such patients, noting their impaired ability, do not seek medical advice, but think all they need is more exercise; hence they walk, golf, and dance to excess and to their cardiac undoing. ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... Now Otter, hastily undoing the cord from Juanna's waist, made it into a running noose which he threw down to Leonard, who placed it over his shoulders. Having lifted the spear from the cleft in which it stood, he commenced his ascent. His first movements cost him a pang of agony, and no wonder, for the ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... foresight than Grattan, Flood desired that the Volunteers should refuse to lay down their arms until the Catholic question had been settled. But Grattan, still filled with that spirit of generous trust which has been the undoing of so many noble Irishmen, refused to use the military power for any further exaction of ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... girl—she has ruined me, she will be my undoing! Oh, sir, how can I make you understand? The letter was not intended for you—it was meant for the English Ambassador, an old friend of my mother's, from whom I hoped to obtain assistance—oh, how can I ever ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... but he became her favourite pupil. And Hypatia, dreaming that the worship of the old gods might be restored, and her philosophy triumph over Christianity, received daily visits from Orestes, the governor, and entered into his plans—to her undoing. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... religious world, imagined themselves to have received special revelations from Heaven, and claimed to have been divinely commissioned to carry forward to its completion the Reformation which, they declared, had been but feebly begun by Luther. In truth, they were undoing the very work which he had accomplished. They rejected the great principle which was the very foundation of the Reformation,—that the word of God is the all-sufficient rule of faith and practice; and for that unerring guide they substituted the changeable, uncertain ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... which the "farmer" watched that day, one poor man was sold for the price of a pair of shoes. The poor had even no chance to get justice in the courts. The greed for money placed corrupt officials in office and the offenders bribed them to the undoing ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... pleasure, or shock to the extreme of endurance; and on a still larger, kill whether they be on the right side or the wrong. Nature, as I said in "Life and Habit," hates that any principle should breed hermaphroditically, but will give to each an helpmeet for it which shall cross it and be the undoing of it; and in the undoing, do; and in the doing, undo, and so ad infinitum. Cross-fertilisation is just as necessary for continued fertility of ideas as for that of organic life, and the attempt to frown this or that down merely on the ground that it ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... and seemed disinclined to speak, but at last let the cat out of the bag and revealed a diabolical conspiracy—the horse had been brought back for my undoing, or rather for the undoing of the strings of ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... Johnnie could not help but wonder how he was ever to get on if the laws bound him so tight to the truth, and the truth would prove the undoing, the wrecking ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... snapped as he lay and a red slaver dripped from his fangs. Not twelve feet away, Sundown gazed upon the scene with fear-wide eyes. "Go to it, Chance!" he quavered, and his encouragement was all but the dog's undoing, for he lost the wolf's gaze for an instant, barely turning in time to meet the vicious charge. Sundown groaned as the wolf, with a slashing stroke, ripped the dog's neck from ear to shoulder. The stones in the enclosure ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... a moment. Hasty speech has been the downfall of many; ill-considered silence was the undoing of ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... Rebecca Mary's fingers and rolled on the floor, to the undoing of the little, white cat, who had gone to bed in his basket. Rebecca Mary caught him up as he darted after the pencil, and hugged him in an odd little ecstasy. She felt ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... looked at Ernest. He was lying low in his seat in an almost fainting condition. Frank, with closed eyes, looked deathly in the early morning light. Bill struggled out of his seat, and stood shakily beside the plane, undoing his helmet. A group of orderlies and janitors ran up, and several officers in more or less undress appeared on the porches. Bill, reeling, walked over to ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... reason of his own not at all clear to Malvina, had forbidden the taking off of the coat. But had said nothing about undoing it. So by way of response Malvina ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... that the saloon-keeper never hinted at pay. He poured out drink after drink of the vitriolic whiskey, which Whiskers made in the secrecy of his back-room; and as Wunpost drank and shuddered the waspish Phillip F. Lapham set about his complete undoing. First he went to Dusty Rhodes, who still claimed a full half, and browbeat him until he fell back to a third; and then, when Dusty priced his third at one million, he turned to the disillusioned Billy. Her ideas were more moderate, as ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... unconsciously ally themselves with it, and find that there is a tide that bears them on. Divine will? Not necessarily. There is no understanding of it. Guardian spirits? There are many who so believe, to their utter undoing. (Witness Macbeth). An unconscious drift in the direction of right, virtue, duty? These are banners of mortal manufacture. Nothing is proved; ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... certainly have been torn to pieces in five minutes by the Indian curs which came howling round him, had not an old woman come to the rescue and driven them away. With the help of her grand-son—a little naked creature, just able to walk, or rather to stagger—she dragged him to her tent, and, undoing the line that fastened his mouth, offered him ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... to put her children to bed, only to find that her fertility of imagination in the afternoon was to prove her undoing in the evening; for her memory was by no means as reliable as her powers ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... passed and in that time I had entered every chamber except that one whose door I was charged not to open. But my thoughts ever ran upon that forbidden fortieth and Satan urged me to open it for my own undoing...." ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... cravat as if he had been undoing the parchment of a great treaty. He fell asleep in the midst of rehearsing the speech which he meant to make upon occasion of his presentation as foreign minister somewhere; while his beloved partner lay by his side, and resolved that Alfred Dinks must immediately secure Hope Wayne ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... little river, May thy loving prosper ever! Heaven speed thee, poplar tree, May thy wooing happy be. GENERAL: Yet, the breeze is but a rover, When he wings away, Brook and poplar mourn a lover Sighing,"Well-a-day!" MEN: Well-a-day! GENERAL: Ah! the doing and undoing, That the rogue could tell! When the breeze is out a-wooing, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... and the fire. See how the sausages burst and splutter in their different pans. See how stolidly the tough steaks brown, refusing either to splutter, yield fat, or find gravy to assist in their own undoing. ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... trembling, for she could scarcely stand. His unmoved certainty was terrifying. "Your father was a very popular man. His vanity was his undoing. Juliet was too smart to let him throw away her money, so rather than lose his reputation as a good sport, rather than not keep up his end, he looked elsewhere for the needful, and he came to me, not once, but many times. At last he wore out my patience and the Carder spring ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... as day, with the moon full on the window at the end of it. And wrapped in a shawl, with her back to me, stood my dream girl, undoing the front door as noiselessly as I ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... drawing his pork to the extremity of the hanger, and arming himself with his lantern and his old sack, he set out on what, in ordinary weather, would have been a twenty minutes' errand. He could not have locked his door without undoing his well-knotted string and retarding his supper; it was not worth his while to make that sacrifice. What thief would find his way to the Stone-pits on such a night as this? and why should he come on this particular night, when he had never come through all the ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... their lives. They were only carrying out strenuously the principles laid down under Gregory's guidance in many acts of synods and inculcated by Gregory in numberless private letters. And yet Gregory is found frequently undoing their acts, restoring bishops whom they have deposed, accepting excuses or explanations which ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... believe," said she to herself, "that I begin to see how it was done. Nay, perhaps I could tie it up again, after undoing it. There would be no harm in that, surely. Even Epimetheus would not blame me for that. I need not open the box, and should not, of course, without the foolish boy's consent, even if ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Before leaving Pernambuco he desires that a testimony of everything that has happened since his departure from Spain until his arrival at Pernambuco be taken down by the notary-public, this testimony being taken from the men who had come with him, "and the Frenchmen who were present at my undoing, and others who heard it from persons who were in the ships of the French who destroyed me." Acuna desires this in case any accident befall him while on the way to Portugal, and "that the emperor may be informed of the truth, and that I may give account of myself." This testimony is ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... woman who is interested in them. Thus I always seemed to have the good luck of the bashful man up to the last gasp, and until I began to turn blue. She would then see that it was apoplexy, and not her charms, which was undoing me. But the apoplexy, the bulging veins and the reddening eyes were forgotten when I sought relief by inserting the first two fingers of each hand on either side of my collar, and with a short, outward jerk, would ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent |
