"Irretrievable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that I have never been faulty in my will; that ever since my calamity became irretrievable, I have been in a state of preparation; that I have the strongest assurance that the Almighty has accepted my unfeigned repentance; and that by this time you will (as I humbly presume to hope,) have been the means of adding one to the number of the blessed; you will have reason for joy rather ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... at a distance, printers purchase me." There is nothing more trying to the judgment of the friends of a young man of genius than the invention of a new manner: without a standard to appeal to, without bladders to swim, the ordinary critic sinks into irretrievable distress; but usually pronounces against novelty. When REYNOLDS returned from Italy, warm with all the excellence of his art, and painted a portrait, his old master, Hudson, viewing it, and perceiving no trace of his own manner, exclaimed that he did not paint so well ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... dramatic talent also showed promising glimpses of what was to come, 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 ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... 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
... my mother as to her character, but you will 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 ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... that foul Roman hotel. Malarial fever, of course! Doctors don't admit—do they?—that it's possible for strong men to die of miserable marriages. And yet I was dying in Rome, I truly believe, from my bitter, crushing disappointment, from the consciousness of my wretched, irretrievable—[FORTUNE enters, carrying LUCAS' hat, gloves, overcoat, and silk wrap, and upon a salver, a bottle of medicine and ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... in Elizabeth no inclination of replying, she added, "Unhappy as the event must be for Lydia, we may draw from it this useful lesson: that loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable; that one false step involves her in endless ruin; that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful; and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behaviour towards the undeserving of ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... to select my pleasures with care, that I may not plunge into joyful moments that are irretrievable. May I indulge in the pleasures that bring happiness and not weariness. Grant that I may have the honor to protect others from harm and loss, as I engage in my pleasures and ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... confirms a general impression that Lawrence's eagerness prevented his making due allowance for the way of the "Chesapeake," causing him to overshoot his aim; an error of judgment, which the accidents to the headsails converted into irretrievable disaster. The general testimony agrees that the crew, though dissatisfied at non-receipt of pay and prize money, behaved well until the moment of boarding. Four witnesses, all officers, stated as of their own observation ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... to destruction. Once the step is taken, to retrace it seems impossible. The line which society draws, and which it proclaims no man shall overstep without punishment, may be approached very closely, but once on the wrong side, once the fateful step is taken, the act is irretrievable; to attempt to retrace it is to attempt to undo the past; ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... evening he first met Ruth Morse, and still he dared not call. Time and again he nerved himself up to call, but under the doubts that assailed him his determination died away. He did not know the proper time to call, nor was there any one to tell him, and he was afraid of committing himself to an irretrievable blunder. Having shaken himself free from his old companions and old ways of life, and having no new companions, nothing remained for him but to read, and the long hours he devoted to it would have ruined a dozen pairs of ordinary eyes. But his eyes were strong, and they ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... stormy season. Fearful hurricanes swept over Quebec. The lower town was flooded to an incredible height, many buildings were destroyed, and the havoc amounted to 100,000 livres. All this was painfully disquieting. To quote Mother Marie again: 'If M. Talon has been wrecked, it will be an irretrievable loss to the colony, for, the king having given him a free hand, he could undertake great things without minding the outlay.' In the meantime M. Patoulet, Talon's secretary, who had left France on another ship and had reached Quebec safely, wrote to Colbert: 'If he is dead, His Majesty will have lost ...
— The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 • Thomas Chapais
... 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 ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... 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 fatally resolved to fly. No longer an ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... 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, ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... the gentleman to sit down. There are always two vultures hanging over the poor—death and the law; but of the two the law is the lesser evil. The former is a calamity; the latter is a misfortune. The one is final, hopeless, irretrievable; from the other there may perhaps be an escape. She knew Tony was a good boy; was sure his arrest was a mistake, and that when the judge heard the evidence he would let Tony go. Life had dealt hardly with her and made her an old woman at thirty-four, really ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... 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
... the good, and that it shall be evil, 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 ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... be traced in a great measure to that very natural source of independence. In many cases the instant removal of an offender from his power of doing mischief is the only mode of preventing the utter and perhaps irretrievable ruin of public affairs. In such a case the process ought to be simple, and the power absolute in one or in either hand separately. By contriving the balance of interests formed in the act, notorious offence, gross error, or palpable ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... out, then, from the old thoughts and old ways, Before you harden to a crystal cold Which the new life can shatter, but not mould; Freedom for you still waits, still looking backward, stays, But widens still the irretrievable space. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... with its thousand snares and resplendent workers never fails to hold out a hope with each temptation; but while the victim now and then asks hope to be his guardian, he seldom thinks how surely he is sinking faster and faster to an irretrievable depth. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... this feeling. A sudden sense that what he had seen there he had himself evoked, that it was an answer to some question he had scarcely yet formulated, and that they were both now linked by an understanding and consciousness that was irretrievable, came over him. He rose awkwardly and went to the window. She rose also, but more leisurely and easily, moved one of the books on the table, smoothed out her skirts, and changed her seat to a little sofa. It is the woman ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... aware that under these circumstances she would probably break off the engagement. In the second, he would be acting a lie, and the lie would sooner or later be discovered, and what then? Well, if it was after marriage, what would it matter? To a woman of gentle birth there is only one thing more irretrievable than marriage, and that is death. Anyhow, he had suffered so much for the sake of this woman that he did not mean to give her up now. He must meet the mortgages after marriage, that ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... succeeded in not only making me feel absolutely welcome and at home in her house, but also in some subtle fashion imbued me with the conviction that, serious as my misfortune undoubtedly was, it was by no means irretrievable. We could not talk confidentially at luncheon, the servants being present, but afterward, the weather being fine and the air warm for the time of year—it was the first day of December 1903—we adjourned to the garden, and there I told my tale all over again, this time in full detail, ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... for your own sake, for your husband's, for your children's, change your course; take a new direction; leave the path of danger on which you are hastening to irretrievable destruction." ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... 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
... two officers ignored each other; this not so much from inimical intention as from a very real indifference. All their store of moral energy was expended in resisting the terrific enmity of Nature and the crushing sense of irretrievable disaster. ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... rate of going, like a buffalo stampede; but fall into heaps and gaps: Seidlitz, with a swiftness, with a dexterity beyond praise, has picked his way across that quaggy Zabern Hollow; falls, with say 5,000 horse, on the flank of this big buffalo stampede; tumbles it into instant ruin;—which proves irretrievable, as the Prussian Infantry come ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 was cleared for ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... in the grate. It was victory of a sort, but she realized very well that the ultimate issue was more doubtful than ever. In her room Jeanne would have time for reflection. If she chose she might easily decide upon the one step which would be irretrievable. ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... same, 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 ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... Indians, still more terrible were the calamities in which they had involved themselves. They were now three hundred miles from Tampa Bay. Loud murmurs began to rise in the camp. Nearly all demanded to return. But, for De Soto, the abandonment of the enterprise was disgrace, and apparently irretrievable ruin. There was scarcely any condition of life more to be deplored than that of an impoverished nobleman. De Soto was therefore urged onward by the energies ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... in it. Laurence, reckless, unscrupulous as he was, could not but hesitate. In striving to save his young friend from one form of ruin, was it written that he should plunge him into another more irretrievable, more ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... it can be long preserved—a firm, manly, and steady resistance against usurpation. The measures of the Federal Government have, it is true, prostrated her interests, and will soon involve the whole South in irretrievable ruin. But even this evil, great as it is, is not the chief ground of our complaints. It is the principle involved in the contest—a principle which, substituting the discretion of Congress for the limitations of the Constitution, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... his indiscretion by enduring imprisonment, and braving threats of torture, with a noble fidelity. He suffered yet more cruel penalties for having vaunted the mineral riches of Guiana to enhance the merit of its discovery, until the mirage ended by beguiling his admired chief into irretrievable ruin. Not even death redeemed his memory. His comrades decried him as an impostor and deceiver. 'False to all men, a hateful fellow, a mere Machiavel,' Captain Parker called him, because he did not find his gold mine. Ralegh, for whom he had ventured and borne much, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... her, nor do I wish to aid worldly vengeance in rooting up the dead man from the earth which covers him, nor that the executioner should now brand the mouldering bones with dishonour. No; the beloved of my soul will weep for me as one who has fallen innocent, and time will soften her sorrow; but how irretrievable a shock would it be if she learnt of the fearful and diabolical deeds of her ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... thirty they cease to follow visions; they seek tangible things. . . . No, they must never meet again. It would not be wise. Her heart, lonely, disappointed, galled as it were by disillusion, might not withstand much storming. And she had no wish to add this irretrievable folly to the original blunder. Too late, too late! Decidedly they must not meet again. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... 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 this was a great loss to them, irretrievable, indeed, 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 of prey; and in particular for the people, ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... of his contract with Harriot, and by that discovery was no longer at a loss for the motives which had obliged his son to raise money, not doubting but the woman was either extremely indigent; or a jilt: but to think the heir of his estate had been so weak as to enter into so solemn and irretrievable an engagement, with a person of either of these characters, gave him an inexpressible disquiet. All his endeavours were now bent on finding her out, not in the least questioning but his son was with her: the task was pretty difficult, the contract discovering no more of her than ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... first to mobilize, she took this step in consequence of German threats. We repeat that in spite of the three empires taking this action, discussion was still possible between Russia and Austria,[97] and might have had good results. In fact, the situation was not irretrievable, if Germany had not rendered it so by issuing her ultimatum to Russia. Once again we may ask, was this crime ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... 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
... tears, Elfie put her handkerchief up to her face to conceal her emotion. Under the coarseness and flippancy of the courtesan were glimpses of an unhappy woman, a human being conscious of her own irretrievable degradation. For the first time in years, she was making another the confidant of her life's tragedy, the sad, commonplace story of a woman's ruin. Recovering herself, she went ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... nature and compact to a free participation in the navigation of the Mississippi? Spain excludes us from it. Is public credit an indispensable resource in time of public danger? We seem to have abandoned its cause as desperate and irretrievable. Is commerce of importance to national wealth? Ours is at the lowest point of declension. Is respectability in the eyes of foreign powers a safeguard against foreign encroachments? The imbecility of our government even ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... great pity. I have done myself an injury that is quite irretrievable;—I know that, and am prepared to bear it. I have done him, too, an injustice which I regret with my whole heart. I can only excuse myself by saying that I might have done him a ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... that England 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 power ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... a station to interfere with these wretched captives, as I knew that such an act would create irretrievable confusion. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... expression changed when he had done so, and she sat very still, with one hand tightly closed, for she now realized what the cost of her lover's defeat might be. In his case it would not mean a grapple with temporary difficulties, or a curtailing of unnecessary luxuries, but disaster complete and irretrievable, perhaps for years. If he failed, he would vanish out of her life; and it was becoming rapidly clear that, however hard pressed he might be, there was, after all, no way in which she could help him. ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... said Psmith. 'Things in the Postage Department are tolerably quiescent at present. Naturally I shall be missed, if I go out. But my absence will not spell irretrievable ruin, as it would at a period of greater commercial activity. Comrades Rossiter and Bristow have studied my methods. They know how I like things to be done. They are fully competent to conduct the business of the department in my absence. Let us, as you say, scud forth. We will go to a Mecca. ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... the night a pang of emptiness, of vast, irretrievable loss, possessed her. She and Love had touched each other for a space—then had flung violently apart, and were speeding each in their eternally separate direction. Life for her might be rich and full of honour and achievement, ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... the resolution and strength to pull himself together and become once more a man, in the best and highest sense of the term, before it was too late and mental, moral, and physical ruin, complete and irretrievable, had overtaken him. He had the joy of seeing his father's belief and pride in him fully restored, and of making that father's declining years easy, pleasant, and happy. Now he reigns in that father's stead, honoured, respected, ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... by these unhappy events, reduced to the necessity of applying to the House, in order to secure themselves and their families from impending ruin; to prevent a multitude of manufacturers from becoming a burden to the community, or else seeking their bread in other countries, to the irretrievable loss of the kingdom; and to preserve the strength of this nation entire, its commerce flourishing, the revenues increasing, our navigation the bulwark of the kingdom, in a state of growth and extension, and the colonies, from inclination, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... same principle that you are silent about it in your letter; that it was not the time for speaking; and I only felt, what I hinted at when I wrote last, a bitter grief, which prompted me, when the act was irretrievable, to hide myself from you. However, I have spoken, with whatever pain to myself, the first ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... 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 ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... that all he has to do is to pick them 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 other. All the irresistible forces crashing against all the immovable bodies give him no shock, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... County, within a few miles of the old homestead, and is as active in mind as ever. He was a supporter of the Government during the war, and remains a firm believer, that national success by the Democratic party means irretrievable ruin. ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... the street door and down the walk; out into the gay world of dissipation, down into the treacherous depths of crime; one more of the many who have chained bright intellects to the chariot wheels of vice, and have been dragged through dust and mire to final and to irretrievable disaster. ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... "Stonewall" Jackson's, in that same wilderness, one year before. Both were shot by their own men, at a critical moment, in the midst of brilliant success, and in both cases their fall saved the enemy from irretrievable disaster. Longstreet's fall checked the attack, which after an inevitable delay of some hours, was resumed. But the enemy seeing his danger had time to recover, and ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... at 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
... concession to its pretensions, would be a heavy calamity to the people of the whole Union, and to none more than to the people of South Carolina themselves; that such concession would be a dereliction by Congress of their highest duties to their country, and directly lead to the final and irretrievable ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... the lean years had cost them their reputation. Each season they had needed smaller bands of "hoppers," and their standard had been lowered. It had been his habit to think of them gloomily, as of hopeless and irretrievable loss. Because this morning, for a remote reason, the pulse of life beat strong in him he was taking a new view. Might not study of the subject, constant attention and the application of all available resource ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... been for him, if he had ended his days while he was blessed with Alexander's good fortune! The rest of his life, every instance of success brought its proportion of envy, and every misfortune was irretrievable. ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... him from those Errors which have been transmitted down thro' a Series of incorrect Editions, and a long Intervention of Time, many Passages must be desperate, and past a Cure; and their true Sense irretrievable either to Care or the Sagacity of Conjecture. But is there any Reason therefore to say, That because All cannot be retriev'd, All ought to be left desperate? We should shew very little Honesty, or Wisdom, ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... I repeat, that I cannot," answered the Constable. "The step which I have adopted as a great duty, may perhaps be a great error—I only know that it is irretrievable." ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... my beloved Helen, I must forthwith look. In the meantime, let me gather patience and await some more favorable relaxation in the penal code. At present, the step you propose would be utter destruction to us both, and an irretrievable stain upon our reputation. You will return to your father's house, and I shall seek some secure place of concealment until I can safely reach the continent, from whence I shall contrive to let you hear from me, and in due time may possibly be able to propose some mode of ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... shall be with the prime 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 by yourselves which ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... us. You have no 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 ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... commercial relations with us, is another question, dependent entirely on the character which they may vindicate to themselves for honour and fidelity in their pecuniary transactions. That rests with themselves alone: whether they will go forward in a career of improvement and greatness, or sink into irretrievable disgrace and ruin, REPUDIATED and scouted by all mankind. We cannot quit America without a very anxious allusion to late occurrences in Canada. We feel words inadequate to express our sense of the transcendent importance of preserving in their integrity our Canadian possessions. No declaration ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... the veil, in fact. You must give me time to become accustomed to a whole heap of things: if we were to do anything suddenly now, we might blunder into some great mistake, perhaps irretrievable. I must train myself by degrees for another kind of life altogether; and I am going to surprise you, Keith—I am indeed. If papa takes me to the Highlands next year, you won't recognize me at all. I am going to read up all about the Highlands, and learn the tartans, and the ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... we found ourselves placed was due almost entirely to the famine at Anadyrsk. The late arrival and consequent wreck of the Golden Gate was of course a great misfortune; but it would not have been irretrievable had not the famine deprived us of all means of transportation. The inhabitants of Anadyrsk, as well as of all the other Russian settlements in Siberia, are dependent for their very existence upon the fish which enter the ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... 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 ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cavalry in one mass should 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 a volley ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... weeks or even months on my writing-table. Without the aid of M. all records of bills paid or to be paid must have perished, and my whole domestic economy, whatever became of Political Economy, must have gone into irretrievable confusion. I shall not afterwards allude to this part of the case. It is one, however, which the opium-eater will find, in the end, as oppressive and tormenting as any other, from the sense of incapacity and ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... company. This sneaking scoundrel, this scornful, irritating imp, placing himself betwixt me and my beloved, sporting with two bleeding hearts, roused my deepest feelings. I looked on what had past as ordained, and considered my misery as irretrievable. I turned upon ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... present instance. But to the point. I am willing to do what I can to extricate you from your situation. Your first scheme[114] I was considering; but your own impatience appears to have rendered it abortive, if not irretrievable. I will deposit in Mr. Murray's hands (with his consent) the sum you mentioned, to be advanced for the time at ten pounds ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... sacramental cup Lifted—and all the vault of life grew bright With tides of incommensurable light— But tremblingly I turned and covered up My face before the wonder. Down the slope I heard her feet in irretrievable flight, And when I looked again, my stricken sight Saw night and rain in a dead ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... 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
... slightest deviation from your usual course to independent writers—or one 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' of the screen, inquisitors of literature, raise all ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... ever read a Letter which is sent with the more Pleasure for the Reality of its Complaints, this may have Reason to hope for a favourable Acceptance; and if Time be the most irretrievable Loss, the Regrets which follow will be thought, I hope, the most justifiable. The regaining of my Liberty from a long State of Indolence and Inactivity, and the Desire of resisting the further Encroachments of Idleness, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... pow'r might meet That onset; blaz'd his eyes with lurid fire. Then to the Trojans, turning to the throng, He call'd aloud to scale the lofty wall; They heard, and straight obey'd; some scal'd the wall: Some through the strong-built gates continuous pour'd; While in confusion irretrievable Fled to their ships the ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... and cared less: we met during the holidays, and separated, without regret, after a month's quarrelling. When I went to sea, I ceased to think about them, concluding there was no love lost; but when I found that death had for ever robbed me of two of them, I felt the irretrievable loss. I reproached myself with my coldness and neglect; and the affection I had denied to them, I heaped threefold on my remaining sister: even before I had ever seen her on my return, the tide of fraternal love flowed towards her with an uncontrollable violence. All that I ought to have ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... aspect, seemed the connecting link between the dwellings of man and the caverns of beasts. Vegetation had long been growing more and more meagre, and it was now fast melting away into still deeper and irretrievable traces of sterility, like the shadows of a picture passing through their several transitions of color to the depth of the back-ground. The larches and cedars diminished gradually in size and numbers, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... air—society was too depraved to understand their import. It was reserved for later generations to give ear to their immortal utterances, eloquent witnesses to the lofty heights to which the Jewish spirit was permitted to mount in times of general decline. The northern kingdom sank into irretrievable ruin. Then came the turn of Judah. He, too, had disregarded the law of "sanctification" from Sinai, and had nearly arrived at the point of stifling his better impulses in the ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... 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 as the sciences themselves ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... if we think it is so; for we cannot be mistaken, when we feel that the element of the poetical is wanting in our constitutions. But we err both in our mode of accounting for the fact, and in believing the loss we deplore to be irretrievable. The fault committed by reasoners on this subject is, to confound one thing with another—to account for the age being unpoetical—as it unquestionably is—by a supposed decay in the materials of poetry. We may as well ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... adored by his 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 their enterprises ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... the flames. In both cases the story contains some truth and much exaggeration. Bigotry, however, has often distinguished itself by such exploits. The Spaniards burnt in Mexico vast piles of American picture-writings, an irretrievable loss; and Cardinal Ximenes delivered to the flames, in the squares of Granada, eighty thousand Arabic manuscripts, many of them ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... measure of incapacity. Bazaine was no match as a military commander for the powerful genius of Von Moltke and the persistency of Frederick Charles and the more than two hundred thousand resolute Germans who surrounded him, and brought him and his army to irretrievable ruin. ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... was run upon the shore at the highest tide. All efforts to float her again were unavailing. The calamity was irretrievable. The Aimable contained all the ammunition, the mechanic tools, and the farming and household utensils. But La Salle, ever rising superior to the blows of misfortune, still retained his firmness. Diligently he engaged in removing the stores from the wrecked ship. One of the shallops ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... 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. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... taking either Sackett's Harbour, which was meanwhile being strongly reinforced from Ogdensburg, or Fort Niagara, which was being reinforced from Oswego, Procter was held back from taking Fort Wayne, at the point of the salient angle south of Lake Michigan and west of Lake Erie—a quite irretrievable loss. For the moment the British had the command of all the Lakes. But their golden opportunity passed, never to return. By land their chances were also quickly disappearing. On September 1, a week before the armistice ended, there were less than seven hundred ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... prosecuted; he was not aware, he said, that the lad was habitually vicious; this probably was his only deviation from honesty; he, the father, would make every reparation required; but exposure would entail upon his family irretrievable ruin. It was elicited from the boy, amid tears and sobs of apparent contrition, that the articles of apparel were in pledge for a small sum; redemption, and every other possible atonement, was instantly proposed by the father: Sir Felix hesitated, was he justifiable, he asked, in yielding ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... take it. I have no wish for health without Luscinda; and since it is her pleasure to be another's, when she is or should be mine, let it be mine to be a prey to misery when I might have enjoyed happiness. She by her fickleness strove to make my ruin irretrievable; I will strive to gratify her wishes by seeking destruction; and it will show generations to come that I alone was deprived of that of which all others in misfortune have a superabundance, for to them the impossibility of being consoled is itself a consolation, while to me ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... desperate and penniless, from that field. I learnt from the peasants, that what I had thought to be merely a serious defeat was an irretrievable disaster; and, in spite of wounds, hunger, and want of clothes, I held on my ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... 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
... with such dishonesty," says the creditor in triumph, and reviles his sinking enemy. "You fool, why do you catch at a straw?" calm good sense says to the man that is drowning. "You villain, why do you shrink from plunging into the irretrievable Gazette?" says prosperity to the poor devil battling in that black gulf. Who has not remarked the readiness with which the closest of friends and honestest of men suspect and accuse each other of cheating when they fall out on money matters? ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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
... his measure of 1832, which was no doubt a statesmanlike measure, committed a great, and for a time it appeared an irretrievable, error. By that measure he fortified the legitimate influence of the aristocracy, and accorded to the middle classes great and salutary franchises; but he not only made no provision for the representation ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... of a profound division of the Canadian people in war-time passed; but irretrievable damage had been done to the cause of national unity. In considering subsequent events these unhappy developments of the first year of the war cannot be overlooked. Party feeling among the Liberals had been held in leash with difficulty; now it was running free again. The attitude ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... irretrievable loss of human life; I lamented that the bravest and noblest were swept away the first; that the gentlest and most domestic were the earliest mourners; that frugality was supplanted by intemperance; that order was succeeded by confusion; and that your Majesty was destroying the glorious ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... become too intense for outward shew; he stood dumb and motionless, with his eyes fixed and rivetted upon her, in whose death he felt that he had sustained an irretrievable loss. We had both still hold of her hands; his mute, immovable figure looked like a statue; and I fancied that his heart was breaking. I seized him by the hand, and in the most supplicating manner implored him to leave the room. My extreme sorrow seemed ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... 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 ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... 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 fraud ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... shall always love the tiny hamlets of that sun and wind-washed countryside, between Warminster, Andover, Stockbridge, and Salisbury. Yet always they will be associated in my mind with a bowing down sense of loneliness, of empty, unredeemed sadness, and of irretrievable loss. I cannot pretend that I experienced any sense of remorse or penitence, where my abortive attempt to win another man's bride was concerned. I had no such feeling. But, discreditable as that fact may be, it did not make the aching sorrow that ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... and quicken the almost dead patriotism of the masses, and to educate them anew in the high and pure sentiments they had suffered to be forgotten, and, in forgetting which, many another ration has gone to irretrievable decay and ruin. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and we have been beaten," exclaimed Gentz, in a loud and bitter tone. "The last hope of Germany, nay, of Europe, is gone; the Russians were defeated with us in a terrible battle. The disaster is an irretrievable one, all the armies of Prussia being unable to restore the lost prestige of the coalition! [Footnote: Gentz's own words.—Vide Gentz's "Correspondence with Johannes von Muller," p. 150.] The Russians have already retreated, and the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... 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 ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... ruinous consequences arising from disappointment, which happen almost every 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
... ended. Brion's mind contained nothing but despair and the pain of irretrievable loss. If his brain had been completely the master of his body he would have died there, for at that moment there was no will to live. Unaware of this, his heart continued to beat and the regular motion of his lungs drew in the dreadful sweetness of the ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... all. The 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
... following day, her father was too ill to go to his office. A cold, caused by the exposure of two nights previous, and accompanied by a rising temperature, kept him confined to his room, though not to bed. The occurrence, by maintaining the situation where it was, rendered it impossible to take any irretrievable step that day. This was ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... his sorrowful face, the face of a man who has had his troubles of which he does not care to speak, was seized with a sort of sudden heroic madness. At that moment of irretrievable defeat, when he must have known that the company was annihilated and that there was not a man left to answer his summons, he grasped his bugle, carried it to his lips and sounded the general, in so tempestuous, ear-splitting strains that one ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... played his game there, while admirers and friends watched his far-seeing moves. He had lost; and now, after checkmate, he must resign his place. How he struggled against the idea! He could not bring himself to acknowledge that the past was irretrievable. His spirit seemed in prison, shut in as by the bars of a dungeon, against which he might ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... it is not to lament the irretrievable that I intrude myself upon your leisure. There is something to be done, to save, at least to spare, that lady. You did not ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... beginning of the Battle of the Aisne up to the close of the Battle of Loos, at the end of 1915, the scanty supply of munitions of war paralysed all our power of initiative and, at critical times, menaced our defence with irretrievable disaster. Great anxiety on this subject overshadowed all my direction of military operations, and deep concern at the failure of the Government to appreciate and remedy our difficulties from this cause dominated all my work. In this chapter it is ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... 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 ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... 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 second person. I have laid down a systematic plan of conduct for myself, which in executing ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... 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 should ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... with stories of the strange and exciting incidents that grew out of this pretended popish plot. Its consequences extended disastrously through many years, and involved a vast number of innocent persons in irretrievable ruin. The true character of Oates and his accomplices was, however, at length fully proved, and they themselves suffered the fate at last which they had brought upon others. The whole affair was a ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... 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, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... negotiation with the powerful armies of the West, whose resolution might decide, or at least must balance, the mighty contest; instead of advancing without delay towards Rome and Italy, where his presence was impatiently expected, [24] Niger trifled away in the luxury of Antioch those irretrievable moments which were diligently improved by the decisive activity of Severus. [25] [Footnote 21: Hist. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... State for the ticket, Pinckney was outgeneraled by the strategy of his cousin Charles Pinckney, who effected an irresistible combination of the Piedmont farmers and the artisans of Charleston. The loss of South Carolina was irretrievable and decisive. The Federalists had to concede the defeat of ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... his life. It seemed to him now that there had never been a time when he had not known her and talked with her, and yet with this was also a consciousness of all the joys that he had missed because he had not known her before. As he thought of it the hard irretrievable fact of those earlier empty years struck him physically with a sharp agonising pain—toothache, and no possible way of healing it. The irony of her proximity, of her desire for him as he, all unwittingly, had in reality desired her, hit him like a blow. The picture of her waiting, told that ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... coldness of the Court of France, and the rashness of the Prince, gave great sorrow to his harassed mind. Soon after his arrival in Paris he opened a correspondence with the Chevalier St. George, and represented to him that the misfortunes which had befallen the cause were not irretrievable, and that if ten regiments only could be landed in Scotland before the depopulating system adopted by the English Government had taken effect, an insurrection might again be raised with good grounds for the hope ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... an unsullied reputation, I will return and claim you. Till then farewell." There was no retrieving the past. Other men might fail at first, and then make good; but he was not like them. His was the fall of Humpty Dumpty. Final—irretrievable. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... clear-headed judge, even in his own case, that this encouraging estimate may be accepted as correct upon his sole authority without other evidence. But the fair prospect was overcast almost in its dawning, and a period of supreme trial and of apparently irretrievable ruin was at hand. ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... Jeremiah, but Jeremiah started his religious experience, not with a sense of individual need, but with a burning, patriotic, social passion. He was concerned for Judah. Her iniquities, long accumulating, were bringing upon her an irretrievable disaster. He laid his soul upon her soul and sought to breathe into her the breath of life. Then, when he saw the country he adored, the civilization he cherished, crashing into ruin, he was thrown back personally on God. He started ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... hand, the middle and temperate party, represented this step as unnecessary, uncertain in its benefits, and irretrievable in its consequences. They expatiated on the advantages that had long been experienced by the colonists from the fostering care of Great Britain, the generosity of the efforts she had made to protect ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... o'clock in the morning at Brighton took his seat perhaps opposite a young lady whom he thought pretty and interesting. When he arrived at Cuckfield he began to be in love; at Crawley he was desperately smitten; at Reigate his passion became irretrievable, and when he gave her an arm to ascend the steep ridges of Reigate Hill—a just emblem, by the way, of human life—he declared his passion, and they were married soon after. Nothing of this sort ever occurs on railroads. Sentiment never blooms on the iron soil ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... particularly physiology, from its intimate acquaintance with the human organism, is admirably adapted for the function of a danger-signal, so to speak, to warn the ignorant and indifferent that a life undisciplined and ill-regulated cannot but end in irretrievable disaster. It thus most powerfully subserves the ends of private and individual morality, just as historical science, which, as Professor Huxley accurately noted, can in no wise be tested in a retort or a crucible, can point the moral when the lawless actions of public bodies or nations threaten ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... revered illustrious father of my murdered lord, endeavouring to sooth his pangs for the loss of those comforts in a child with which my cruel disappointment forbade my ever being blest—though, in the endeavour to soothe, I often only aggravated both his and my own misery at our irretrievable loss—when a ray of unexpected light burst upon my dreariness. It was amid this gloom of human agony, these heartrending scenes of real mourning, that the brilliant star shone to disperse the clouds which hovered over our drooping heads,—to dry the hot briny tears which were parching up ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... pitch of inventing and projecting. There are few artists who have not, at times, experienced in themselves a more than ordinary disposition or aptitude, for this operation of the mind; and it is these critical moments, which may otherwise be irretrievable, they ought particularly to improve, with as little diversion from them as possible. They should pursue a thought, or a hint of a thought, from its first crudity to its ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... chance, to be still looked on as one who has gone a little astray, but who will come back? 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. He can be saved now. Imprison him as a criminal, and I affirm to you that he will be lost. He has neither the face nor the manner of one who can survive that terrible ordeal. Weigh in the scales his criminality and the suffering he has undergone. The latter ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... eyes were locked with the already startled ones of Silas. As she went on, the flush covered the lower part of his face, and rose like a spring-tide up his cheeks, and lent a fierce, congested glare to his eyes. He felt how woeful and irretrievable a thing it would be for him just then to lose his countenance, and at the thought the flush burned deeper and merged higher. It overspread his high, bald, intellectual forehead, and incarnadined his sconce up to the very top of it. At this moment it was that Mrs. Kilgore ...
— Two Days' Solitary Imprisonment - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... 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 ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... had been as yet unsullied by any considerable violations of faith, justice, or humanity: but it must not escape remark, that the first steps taken by her in this business were strong, decided in their character, and almost irretrievable. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Lanjaron, and the tragical end of el Negro, were an irretrievable loss to the Moors. They now found it utterly impossible to oppose the superior and better disciplined troops of the Christians with any chance of success, either in open battle or in regular sieges. They therefore resolved to limit ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... whatever 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"
... 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 closed her book with a smile; but it was one of pain and bitterness at ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... advice as to how to lead it. Your work is all that I can claim to criticise. Of course I see, with Major Hunt, the difficulty that will arise over the lady's remaining in this small station, where her presence must become known to the Staff. If you are both resolved on taking the irretrievable step it would be wiser to defer it until you were elsewhere. I don't offer to blame either of you; for I don't know enough ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... day was awaited with a certain amount of anxiety. Would Lupin not try to resume the offensive? Would he accept with a good grace the irretrievable loss of the woman he loved? Twice or three times, suspicious-looking people were seen prowling round the villa; and Valmeras even had to defend himself one evening against a so-called drunken man, who fired a pistol at him and sent a bullet through his hat. But, in the end, the ceremony ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... imaginary, 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
... that the differences and the break should have come now that I have—at least in my own belief, and that of most people—ceased for ever to count at all in politics.... The fall was, as you know, in my opinion final and irretrievable on the day on which the charge was made in July last—as would be that, in these days, of any man against whom such a false charge was made by conspiracy and careful preparation. I think, as I have always thought, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... southern planter is not their competitor and rival. He is their partner. His work is to them and to their pursuits one of co-operation and aid. Consequently his prosperity is their prosperity, and his ruin would be an irretrievable disaster, not a benefit, to them. They are thus naturally his friends, and, consequently, when in desiring a change in the relation which subsists between him and his laborers, they declare that they are not actuated by any unfriendly ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... precluded any confidence as to their superior numbers and resources effecting their natural result, and although Gordon himself declared that the Taeping cause was a lost one before he assumed the command, no cause could be pronounced irretrievable with a leader so expert and resolute as Chung Wang, and opponents so incapable and craven as his were. But another thing was certainly incontestable, and that was that the Taepings could not in any sense be regarded as patriots. Their regular ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... long life and happiness. When the whole of | | the machinery, mental and physical, is clean, its strength and | | elasticity is so much better, its retentiveness is much more vivid and | | comprehensive that one is mostly spared the pain of irretrievable | | errors. | | | | If instead of exerting reflection in so critical a moment you deliver | | yourselves up to levity, sloth and slavery of habit and poison, what | | can you expect to follow? Will wisdom tread the path of folly? Can you | | thus abuse both the mind and body, and call yourselves ...
— Vanity, All Is Vanity - A Lecture on Tobacco and its effects • Anonymous
... for awhile, and then remembering that Colonel Osborne could hardly quarrel with a clergyman, told him the truth. "Outhouse says that you have done her an irretrievable injury by going down to Devonshire to her, and by writing ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... 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, ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... with it would have upon the minds of our soldiers, of our allies, of our enemies in Asia, and of our countrymen, and of all foreign nations in Europe. It is an object of just ambition, which no one more than myself would rejoice to see effected; but I see that failure in the attempt is certain and irretrievable ruin; and I would endeavour to inspire you with the necessary caution, and make you feel that, great as are the objects to be obtained by success, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... his wife. Outside the bedroom door he stood hesitant. A desolating sadness of disappointment suddenly surged over him. He had destroyed his ambitions, he had transformed all his life, by a single unreflecting and irretrievable impulse. What he had done was terrific, and yet he had done it as though it were naught ... The mood passed as suddenly as it had come, and left him matter-of-fact, grim, as it were swimming strongly on and with the mighty current which had caught him. He went into the bedroom ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... might have been, as distinguished from that heartfelt sorrow for the man who had perished which had not been incompatible with a religious life. Recalling the Mother Superior's words of warning, she recorded her failure, as the first of its kind, and prayed that it might not be irretrievable, and that resentment and regret might ebb away and leave her again as she had been before the unforgettable voice had pierced her ears with the ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... upon you. You have always been the aggressors: you have brought upon yourselves these difficulties by being disaffected, and not being subject to rule. And my advice is that you become as other citizens, lest by a recurrence of these events you bring upon yourselves irretrievable ruin." ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... he said. 'Is this a time for Frenchmen and fellow-soldiers to fall out? We are in the midst of our enemies; a quarrel, a loud word, may suffice to plunge us back into irretrievable distress. Monsieur le Commandant, you have been gravely offended. I make it my request, I make it my prayer—if need be, I give you my orders—that the matter shall stand by until we come safe to France. ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... traitorous counsel, did all in his power to ruin the very expedition he had planned. He advised the Spartans to send at once their best general to the Syracusans. They sent Gylippus, an able commander, whose generalship contributed largely to the total and irretrievable defeat that the Athenians finally suffered. Their fleet and army were both virtually annihilated. Seven thousand prisoners were crowded into the open stone quarries, where hundreds speedily died of exposure and starvation. Most of the wretched survivors were sold as slaves. The disaster was appalling ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... that which was irretrievable. Fear and pity for herself, and fondness for him made her weep. Sanine lifted her up and set her on his knee. She meekly submitted like some sorrowful child. As in a dream she could hear him gently comforting her in a tender, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... for an instant, then recovering himself as he looked upon her and marked the nature of her emotion, he said: "There can be no false step that you could ever have taken that cannot be retrieved. There can have been nothing that is irretrievable, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... paper with a thrill of horror. Poor Edie! How absolutely his own small difficulties with Lord Exmoor faded out of has memory at once in the face of that terrible, irretrievable calamity. Harry dead! The hope and mainstay of the family—the one great pride and glory of all the Oswalds, on whom their whole lives and affections centred, taken from them unexpectedly, without a chance of respite, without a moment's warning! Worst of all, they ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... probable that the idea quickened his drooping hopes; for Ludlow believed it might not yet be too late to rescue the woman, he so sincerely loved, from the precipice over which she was suspended. The seemingly irretrievable step, already taken, was forgotten; and the generous young sailor was about to rush back to la Cour des Fees, to implore its mistress to be just to herself, when the hand fell from her polished brow, and Alida raised her face, with a look which ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... winds and the waves. In the division and decline of the empire, the tributary harvests of Egypt and Africa were withdrawn; the numbers of the inhabitants continually diminished with the means of subsistence; and the country was exhausted by the irretrievable losses of war, pestilence and famine. Pope Gelasius was a subject of Odoacer, and he affirms, with strong exaggeration, that in Emilia, Tuscany, and the adjacent provinces, the human species was almost extirpated."[21] Again the same accurate author observes ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... and affliction. Indeed, even all the younger branches of this amiable and interesting family, as well as their respective parents, evinced the highest possible degree of sensibility and sorrow for their irretrievable calamity; a calamity which, to them, all the honours and emoluments a grateful nation may bestow, extending to his remotest kindred, at present as well as in future, can scarcely be considered as affording any ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... terrible "NEXT MORNING," when reason is wide awake, upon which remorse fastens its fangs. Has a man gambled away his all, or shot his friend in a duel—has he committed a crime or incurred a laugh—it is the next morning, when the irretrievable Past rises before him like a spectre; then doth the churchyard of memory yield up its grisly dead—then is the witching hour when the foul fiend within us can least tempt perhaps, but most torment. At night we have one thing to hope for, one refuge to fly to—oblivion ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... equal that of a woman who, of her own free will, truly loving one man whom she can marry if she will sit, deliberately gives herself to another. It is not only a folly, it is a crime, and, like most crimes, for this life, an irretrievable mistake. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... that the eyes of all terrestrial stargazers are upon us. Adventurers, pretenders, and quacks, are our meteors, our aurorae, our comets, our falling-stars, shooting athwart our hemisphere, and exhaling into irretrievable darkness: our tuft-hunters are satellites of Jupiter, invisible to the naked eye: our clear frosty atmosphere that sets us all a-twinkling is prosperity, and we, too have our clouds that hide us from the eyes of men. The noonday ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... is a brief but faithful statement of my present situation; it is, as I before told your Lordship, in every respect an untenable one. I must relinquish it, and throw myself an outcast on society. Can you, will you, my Lord, exert your influence to save me from irretrievable ruin? Can you, my Lord, in any possible way, afford employment to me? Can you take me into your service—a young man, not totally destitute of talents, eager to exert them, and willing to do anything or be anything in his power? If you can, my Lord, I will ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron |
