"Unsay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boys here, but none of them are like you. I wonder if you remember what you said to me that day. If you want to unsay it, you can do it by letter, you know. I think that would be the best way to do it. So don't be afraid of hurting my feelings. Perhaps I would be glad. You don't know. What a long day that was! It seems as if it wasn't over yet. How lucky for me that it was such a ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... he; and I never saw a man look so cast down: he took up the halfpenny off the flag, and walked away quite sober-like by the shock. Now, though as easy a man, you would think, as any in the wide world, there was no such thing as making him unsay one of these sort of vows, which he had learned to reverence when young, as I well remember teaching him to toss up for bog-berries on my knee. [VOWS.—It has been maliciously and unjustly hinted that the lower classes of the people of Ireland pay but little ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... had done wrong; and Herbert knew that he also, he himself, had done wrongly. He was aware that there was something which he did not understand. But he had promised to see Clara either that day or the next, and he could not bring himself to unsay all that he had said to her. He left his father's room sorrowful at heart, and discontented. He had expected that his tidings would have been received in so far other a manner; that he would have been able to go from his father's study upstairs ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... things kept coming to his recollection, he could hold his peace, and did so. There was nothing to come—not likely to be—that could unsay that revelation that he had been a married man, and did not know of his wife's death; not even that he and she had been divorced, which would have been nearly as bad. He knew the worst of it, at any rate, and Rosalind need ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... claimed for mankind the divine attributes of free action! From you, who have taught my mind to soar above the petty bonds which one man in his littleness contrives for the subjection of his brother. Mackinnon—you who are so great!" And she now looked up into his face. "Mackinnon, unsay those words." ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... shrinking as though I had dealt her a blow. 'I want you to unsay those words: they pierce me like thorns. Please tell me you did ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and prayed Reidmar to unsay his word, and cease to desire the gold. But Reidmar the Wise, and Fafnir the Lord, and Regin the Worker cried aloud in ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... not pretend to unsay what you have said," cried her eldest sister: "that would be making ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... night it had been! How much had happened since he walked with his dog to Notre-Dame the evening before! Here was the whole course of his life changed, yes, and his prospects put in jeopardy by this extraordinary decision. How could he explain what he had done to his wise old mother? How could he unsay all that he had said to her a few days before when he had shown her that this trip to Brazil was quite for the best and bade her a fond farewell? Could he explain it to anyone, even to himself? Did he honestly believe all ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... even care for her. She had lost the real love, and this brightness that she clung to darkened for her. He looked at her, steadily, gloomily, ashamed of what she had made him say, yet too sunken in his own pain, too indifferent to hers, to unsay it. And in her dispossession she did not dare make manifest the severance that she saw. He did not care for her, but she could not tell him so; she could not tell him to go. With horrid sickness of heart she made a feint ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... 'I'm werry sorry, but I can't unsay it. It's hardly fair of you, sir, to make a ignorant man conwict himself in this way, but I DO think so. I am as respectful disposed to you, sir, as a man can be; but ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... which I then said I unsay. That which I now say is true. (This to the priest who reminded him that he had accused the Princess Elizabeth of treason to the council, and that he now alleged ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... That saying I unsay: the wings Hear I not in praevenient winnowings Of coming songs, that lift my hair and stir it? What winds with music wet do the sweet storm foreshow! Utter stagnation Is the solstitial slumber of the spirit, The blear and blank negation of all life: ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... can say and unsay things at pleasure: that you can address a lady in private, and deny it in public: that you have one story for us, and another for ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... lady!" he exclaimed passionately,—"oh, hear me, before you dismiss me for ever from your presence. I cannot unsay what I have said—I have dared to tell you that I love you with the fondest, the deepest devotion—I have done so from the first moment I saw you; but hear my excuses. I felt myself alone and desolate in the world; I beheld you, bright, innocent, and beautiful, exposed, I knew, to the most ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... should all come out and dance A morrice round the Mermaid Inn to-night." "Nay, sir, the damned are damned!" "Come, sit you down! Take some more wine! You'd have them all be damned Except Dick Cholmeley. What must I unsay To save him?" A quick eyelid dropt at Ben. "Now tell me, Master Bame!" "Sir, he derides The books of Moses!" "Bame, do you believe?— There's none to hear us but Beelzebub— Do you believe that we must taste of death Because God set a ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Robertson's for an hour. My heart is knocking at my lips, and I'll be saying what I would give my last bawbee to unsay. Keep ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... night like this, and many a worse night, I have sat on the stones of the street, hushing you in my arms. Unsay those words without even saying you are sorry for them, and my arms are open to you still, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... shall be no protection, unless you unsay what you have uttered," Fred continued, advancing in a menacing manner ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... a reason so calmly told by a member of our Queen's Council! He should unsay the words!" one of the maids of honor cried hotly. "There could be no color for it: the Signor Fabrici hath proven that he ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... attesting the river Styx, terrible to the gods themselves. Then she made known her request. The god would have stopped her as she spake, but she was too quick for him. The words escaped, and he could neither unsay his promise nor her request. In deep distress he left her and returned to the upper regions. There he clothed himself in his splendors, not putting on all his terrors, as when he overthrew the giants, but what is known among the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... it, and not to unsay it by any explanations, because I think it is good for us to face the fact in the unadorned form in which it probably presents itself to the minds ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... Herod attempt to induce the prophet to take back his ruthless sentence? "Come," he might say, "you remember what you said. If you unsay that sentence, I will set you free. I cannot, out of respect for my consort, allow such words to remain unretracted. There, you have your freedom in your own hands. One word of apology, and you may go your way; and my solemn bond is yours, that you ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... don't mean to unsay it. There's no use in repealing an obsolete law. That's the pity of it! You say you lost me ten years ago. (A pause.) I never ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... none: Go bid our moving plains of sand lie still, And stir not, when the stormy south blows high: From top to bottom thou hast tossed my soul, And now 'tis in the madness of the whirl, Requir'st a sudden stop? unsay thy lie; That may in ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... one means or another, he quickly got Mansoul to slight, neglect, and despise whatever Mr. Recorder could say. For, besides what already you have heard, Diabolus had a way to make the old gentleman, when he was merry, unsay and deny what he in his fits had affirmed. And, indeed, this was the next way to make himself ridiculous, and to cause that no man should regard him. Also now he never spake freely for King Shaddai, but also by force ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... already we find criticism beginning to call in question those powers which held the world in magic thraldom. Even in our own country, one of its greatest geniuses has had some rough passages with the censors of the press; and instantly criticism begins to unsay all that it has repeatedly said in his praise; and the public are almost led to believe that the pen which has so often delighted them, is absolutely destitute of the power ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... They gave me more room in the bed forthwith, and then the elder sat up and expressed his sense of my awfulness. I was already a little frightened at my temerity, but when he asked me categorically to unsay what I had said, what could I do but confirm ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... last letter that I, Tom Brixton, shall ever write. (I put down my name now, in case I never finish it.) O dearest mother! what would I not now give to unsay all the hard things I have ever said to you, and to undo all the evil I have done. But this cannot be. 'Twice bought!' It is strange how these words run in my mind. I was condemned to death at the gold-fields—my comrades bought me off. Fred—dear Fred—who ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... it, and I won't unsay it; besides, Pater, recollect it's a French question, and in France you would be considered noble. At all events, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... gloomy dungeon laid, didst thou not visit me, And solemnly avow that I from wicked plots was free? How canst thou, then, unto my charge such grievous actions lay, And all thou hast so solemn said as solemnly unsay?" ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... 1. 1161, I unsay that word.—It was a bad omen for Thoas to say at so critical a moment that a rule was broken. The priestess declares the word unsaid—just the opposite of "accepting" an omen.—Dr. Verrall, however, suggests to me that the line means, "I ask Hosia (the spirit of Holiness) to take in charge ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... ever harrying thy wild beasts— Save that to touch a harp, tilt with a lance Becomes thee well—art grown wild beast thyself. How darest thou, if lover, push me even In fancy from thy side, and set me far In the gray distance, half a life away, Her to be loved no more? Unsay it, unswear! Flatter me rather, seeing me so weak, Broken with Mark and hate and solitude, Thy marriage and mine own, that I should suck Lies like sweet wines: lie to me: I believe. Will ye not lie? not swear, as there ye kneel, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... skip from one side to another; go to the rightabout; box the compass, shift one's ground, go upon another tack. apostatize, change sides, go over, rat; recant, retract; revoke; rescind &c. (abrogate) 756; recall; forswear, unsay; come over, come round to an opinion; crawfish *[U. S.], crawl* [U. S.]. draw in one's horns, eat one's words; eat the leek, swallow the leek; swerve, flinch, back out of, retrace one's steps, think better of it; come back return to one's first ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... risk of seeming brutal, Honor, I warn you that I'll not give you one minute's peace till you unsay ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... county: you are the only gentleman in it who has ever uttered a disparaging word against him. Are you sure you are more free from passion and prejudice and wiser than all the county? Oblige me, and do what is right. Come, Griffith Gaunt, let your reason unsay the barbarous words your passion hath uttered against a worthy gentleman ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various |
