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Unmake   Listen
verb
Unmake  v. t.  (past & past part. unmade; pres. part. unmaking)  To destroy the form and qualities of; to deprive of being; to uncreate. "God does not make or unmake things to try experiments."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Unmake" Quotes from Famous Books



... I made," said Deodonato, "I unmake. Henceforth let men and maidens in my Duchy marry or not marry as they will, and God ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope

... soldiery with bows. Dirt and disease shall rule us as of yore, The Plague's grim spectre stalk from shore to shore. Proceed, brave BALFOUR, whom no flouts appal, Collect stupidities and do them all. Uneducate our men, unplough our land, Bid heathen temples rise on every hand; Unmake our progress and revoke our laws, Or stuff them full of all their banished flaws. Let light die out and brooding darkness reign, And in a word call Chaos back again. Then, as we perish, we can shout with glee, "Hail, hail ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various

... to say, we cease being poets, we are no longer the children of romance, although we may remain idealists. Perhaps it is external events that change, rather than we ourselves. The restoration of the Bourbons, the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, make and unmake romantics. Often society catches up with the romanticist; he is no longer a soldier of revolt; he has become a "respectable." Or, while remaining a poet, he shifts his attention to some more familiar segment of the idealistic circle. He sings about ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... that she should clear herself. She had made her sisterly sacrifice for a sister who regarded it very lightly; to whose light fancy that night and all it involved counted but as a scene in a comedy; and she could not unmake it. But having so sacrificed his good opinion whose esteem she valued, she wanted to see some happy result, and to save this ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... unchangeable and immutable being of God, who was, and is, and is to come, without succession, without variation, or shadow of turning, and then the almighty power of God, by which without difficulty by the inclination and beck of his will and pleasure, he can make or unmake all,—create or annihilate—to whom nothing is impossible. Which three, if they were pondered by us till our souls received the stamp of them, they would certainly be powerful to abstract and draw our hearts from the vain changeable, and empty ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... have such reminiscent thought; it makes us less pessimistic and gives life to strive and spirit and hope. We cannot unmake human nature, but can certainly improve conditions by self-denial, earnest thought, and ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... the State, there is no other possible mode by which this can be effected so speedily as by prompt admission. The will of the majority is supreme and irresistible when expressed in an orderly and lawful manner. They can make and unmake constitutions at pleasure. It would be absurd to say that they can impose fetters upon their own power which they can not afterwards remove. If they could do this, they might tie their own hands for a hundred as well as for ten years. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson

... of what we call statesmanship to-day is not) has been outgrown. Let us not be startled by the statement. The highest art of politics is to recognize existing facts. No thinking person will deny that the policies of the past are powerless to-day. We cannot, if we would, unmake the history of the last ten years. Tempora mutantur, et mutamur in illis. Or, as a distinguished and eloquent son of Tennessee lately paraphrased this old maxim: 'The world moves, and takes us along with it, whether we will ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... curious letter of the queen's written to a bishop of Ely, and preserved in the register of that see. It is in these words: "Proud prelate, I understand you are backward in complying with your agreement: but I would have you know, that I, who made you what you are, can unmake you; and if you do not forthwith fulfil your engagement, by God I will immediately unfrock you. Yours, as you demean yourself, Elizabeth." The bishop, it seems, had promised to exchange some part of the land belonging to the see for ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... and took very violent measures to cool his religious ardour. He was assailed by his royal spiritual head for his arrogance and inefficiency, and warned to take heed lest he who had made him a bishop might unmake him. By his fellow-labourers and associates in the work of spreading the gospel, Staples of Meath and Bale of Ossory, he was denounced as a heretic, an avaricious dissembler, a drunkard, and a profligate, who preached only two sermons with which the people became so familiar that ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... who fell out, father spake: "This Bundle of Sticks you can't break; Take them singly, with ease, You may break as you please, So, dissension your strength will unmake." ...
— The Baby's Own Aesop • Aesop and Walter Crane

... tool in the hands of that quiet, sallow-faced man who, by reason of his colossal wealth and huge financial resources, could even make and unmake dynasties. Oswald De Gex, the man who without nationality or patriotism pulled a hundred financial strings both in Europe and in America, held the sinister Doctor Moroni in his pay. I could discern that fact, just as I could see that the man Suzor, who had so cleverly posed as an official ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux

... failure of life, he would do it with a conscientious use of opportunities, good or bad. An eye that is trained to detect the values of circumstances, and a hand that is quick to adjust them, have produced the mental forces that make or unmake ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... "I can't explain it, but I do feel that there is a difference—that it is not wrong to make such a distinction. It is in us already made, and we can't unmake it. I know that I feel everything you have said about him, and I am very, very glad that you too have forgiven him and are his friend. But it would have been horrible if you had felt for him again ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... Union, who make and unmake constitutions, and upon whose will hang the destinies of our governments, can transmit their supreme authority to no successors save the coming generation of voters, who are the sole heirs of sovereign power. If that generation ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VIII.: James A. Garfield • James D. Richardson

... sudden he was crying, as if with a loud voice from the bottom of his heart, though never a sound rose through his throat, "Oh thou who didst make me, if thou art anywhere, if there be such a one as I cry to, unmake me again; undo that which thou hast done; tear asunder and scatter that which thou hast put together! Be merciful for once, and kill me. Let me cease to exist—rather, let me cease to die. Will not plenty of my kind remain to satisfy thy soul ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... depends upon its being faithfully reproduced by their regular minister. Such is not by any means the fact; the creed of the members of a Church is not at the mercy of any passing influence. It has been engrained by a plurality of influences; one man did not make it, and one man cannot unmake it. Moreover, allowance should be made for the spirit of opposition found in Church members, as well ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... it, is as follows: His father was a respectable tanner in the neighbouring town, who, wishing to make his son a gentleman, sent him to college. Having never been at college myself, I cannot say whether he took the wisest course; I believe it is more easy to unmake than to make a gentleman; I have known many gentlemanly youths go to college, and return anything but what they went. Young Mr. Platitude did not go to college a gentleman, but neither did he return ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... much like Tom. It is easier to save ten knaves than one fool. A leopard is a leopard; a nigger is a nigger. God can change the spots of the one and the color of the other, but I'm blessed if I believe even God can unmake a fool. Now my dear girl, don't throw away your happiness for life in a hopeless effort to save your ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... whatever relation man might have toward a machine, this stands sure: he will ever be able to stand before it and say: 'I am thy master. I can change thee, make thee better or worse. I made thee. I can unmake thee. If thou dost accomplish such mighty works, more honor to the mind ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... "I was made queen for the purpose of ruling. They told me they had confidence in my judgment, not in my readiness to carry out their wishes. If my judgment, coupled with that of my advisers, does not suit them, it is open to them to unmake me as they made me, and appoint a king or a president, but my ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne

... mine, hed come on with their applications for Post Offises, and who jined so heartily in the cheers wich went up for J. Davis: and there, addressin this crowd, wuz a President—the man who had the appintin power in his hands—who cood make and unmake Post Offisis. ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby

... a Zincala— Unmake yourself from being child of mine! Take holy water, cross your dark skin white; Round your proud eyes to foolish kitten looks; Walk mincingly, and smirk, and twitch your robe: Unmake yourself—doff all the eagle plumes And be a parrot, chained to a ring ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... you. I feel sure that you are going to go far, as the saying is. Well, I want to tie myself to your star. Do you see what I mean? You are going to be a power in finance. You are going to be able to make and unmake men as you choose. I should be very much obliged indeed if ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... I never appreciated, a thing I never knew. All I know is that Col. Bledsoe has been appointed by the President to fill an important position; and the same power appoints the secretaries, and can unmake them. Under these circumstances I find him permitted to sit for hours and days in the department with no one to inform him of the condition of the business or to facilitate him in the performance of his official duties. Not for any partiality ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... rebels and traitors. More than a thousand did leave, but the others stood firm. Counsellors and generals went to them, and exhorted them to obedience; but they cried out that they would make and unmake the king, according to their own good right and decree, and that if it was attempted to hinder them, the very child in the cradle should meet no mercy at their hands. To give greater weight to their words, they fired a cannon and a volley of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... the nature of the case, the true Vicar of Christ must ever to the world seem like Antichrist, and be stigmatized as such, because a resemblance must ever exist between an original and a forgery; and thus the fact of such a calumny was almost one of the notes of the Church. But we cannot unmake ourselves or change our habits in a moment. Though my reason was convinced, I did not throw off, for some time after,—I could not have thrown off,—the unreasoning prejudice and suspicion, which I cherished about her at least by fits and starts, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... traceable even in that produced by our different and changeful moods. We make and unmake a world more than once in the space of a single day. In trifling moods all seems trivial. In serious moods all seems solemn. Is the song of the nightingale merry or plaintive? Is it the voice of joy or the harbinger of gloom? Sometimes one, and sometimes the other, according ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... to tax the people!—that's all the thanks we get for helping him," said the grumbling Cecco. "What would he have been without us?—we that make, can unmake." ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... towards thee! God forbid! No. I am amused to think my humor can make or unmake such a villain as thou, therefore dost thou go scot-free—understand me aright—I take thy failure as an omen of my future greatness—'tis this thought that renders me indulgent, and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... nature: it was the power of God over nature which he was jealous to maintain. The majesty of the elemental forces was extolled in order to magnify the greater power of Him who made and could unmake them, and whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain. The weakness and insignificance of man, as contrasted with the tremendous power of God, is the reflection which the contemplation of nature generally produced in his mind. "How can a man be just with God?" asks Job; "which ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... Misenum into the receptions of Caesar, and be wholly uninfluenced by what he saw there of kings, princes, ambassadors, hostages, and delegates, suitors all of them from every known land, waiting humbly the yes or no which was to make or unmake them? As mere assemblages, to be sure, there was nothing to compare with the gatherings at Jerusalem in celebration of the Passover; yet when he sat under the purple velaria of the Circus Maximus one of three hundred ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... he began to perceive that his fortune would return to him, when he became aware that he was knocked about like a shuttlecock from a battledore, that his pride came by its first fall. Mollett was in truth the great man,—the Warwick who was to make and unmake the kings of Castle Richmond. A month ago, and it had pleased Earl Mollett to say that Owen Fitzgerald should reign; but there had been a turn upon the cards, and now he, King Herbert, was to ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... or overlooked need not despair for that reason, if he will reflect that criticism can neither make nor unmake authors; that there have not been greater books since criticism became an art than there were before; that in fact the greatest books seem to have ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... marriages. Would it be any better if country lines were obliterated, and the great brotherhood of peoples were established, and there was no such thing as patriotism or family, and marriage were as free to make and unmake as some people think it should be? Very likely, if we could radically change human nature. But human nature is the most obstinate thing that the International ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... "We cannot make or unmake God's laws in our thoughts," the other answered; "you were wilfully blind to the knowledge that ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson

... bell if I want anything. No—no tea, thank you," responded Bessie; and the waiting-woman felt herself dismissed. Bessie chose to make and unmake her toilette alone. It was easy to see that her education had not been that of a young lady of quality, for she was quite independent of her maid; but Mrs. Betts was a woman of experience and made allowance for her, convinced that, give her time, she would ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... return—and continued the war against us. The matter turned out well, and now the said cachil who went from here is returning, in the capacity of ambassador of his people, petitioning that their king be sent to them, whom they promise to receive as such, and to make and unmake for us. I do not know what Governor Don Juan Nino de Tabora will do. What I know is, that the Dutch do not like any of these agreements and friendships that we are making with the Ternatans; but since they are at present fallen, and can do no more, they ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various

... other function of human affairs, turns on oratory. Orators make and unmake kings, but kings are seldom orators, and orators never secure thrones. Orators are made to die—the cross, the torch, the noose, the guillotine, the dagger, awaits them. They die through the passion that they fan to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... his end much as King Arthur from a race that he had trusted and defended. In Greeley's defeat for the Presidency all theorists who had dwelt upon the so-called "Power of the Press" received a shuddering blow. The men who had affected to believe that the press could make and unmake destinies began to count on their fingers the few newspapers that had opposed Horace Greeley. To their amazement they found that, excepting one journal in the metropolis, every daily paper in the land ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... elected by the people. But we are more interested in social reform, in labour legislation, and in constitutional reform than in foreign politics; and so it is on questions of home policy that we make and unmake Governments, and when we discuss whether a Conservative or a Liberal Government ought to be in power, we never think what effect the change would have on foreign policy. If the democracy is to take a real part in foreign politics, ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... will vanish as incense upon the coals of the censer. The woman who is loved by the King no longer remembers men. Go, come; accustom yourself to Pharaonic magnificence; help yourself as you please to my treasures; make gold flow, heap up gems; order, make, unmake, raise, destroy; be my mistress, my wife, my queen. I give you Egypt with its priests, its armies, its toilers, its numberless population, its palaces, its temples and cities. Crumple it up as you would crumple up gauze,—I will win other kingdoms ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... question of stopping a money Bill or of knocking out a few taxes obnoxious to particular classes; the rejection of the Budget by the House of Lords would mean the claim of the House of Lords—that is, the claim of a non-elective and unrepresentative Chamber—to make and to unmake Governments; and a recognition of that claim by the country would unquestionably mean that the House of Lords would become the main source and origin of all political power under the Crown. Now that is a great quarrel; that ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... Five were smelted in a pot Than the South more fierce and hot; These the siroc could not melt, Fire their fiercer flaming felt, And the meaning was more white Than July's meridian light. Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know. Have you eyes to find the five Which ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... office of Constable. On this opposition, according to Sir Anthony Weldon, "the Duke peremptorily accosted Coventry, 'Who made you Lord Keeper, Coventry?' He replied, 'The King.' Buckingham replied, 'It's false; 'twas I did make you, and you shall know that I, who made you, can, and will, unmake you.' Coventry thus answered him, 'Did I conceive that I held my place by your favour, I would presently unmake myself, by rendering up the seals to his Majesty.' Then Buckingham, in a scorn and fury, flung from him, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... you were to shut your eyes at me now—though I might go blind, you could not unmake me:—"The gods themselves cannot recall their gifts." Also that I am yours is a gift of the gods, I will trust: and so, not ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous

... of the opera. You've done your best. You've stuck to it. You've done all that you, or any other woman with your views and desires, could do for me in art. You've unmade me. I've been weak and contemptible enough to let you unmake me. From to-night I've got to build on ruins. Perhaps you'll say that's impossible. It isn't. I mean to do it. I'm going to do it. But I've ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... within this enormous expanse of political control the competence of the chambers knows, in neither theory nor fact, any restriction. "The British Parliament, ..." writes Mr. Bryce, "can make and unmake any and every law, change the form of government or the succession to the crown, interfere with the course of justice, extinguish the most sacred private rights of the citizen. Between it and the people at large there is no legal distinction, because ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... felt desperately for a weapon with which to pierce his antagonist, one of those present seized him by the foot and threw him on one side, so that Henry found himself uppermost. Popular tradition says that it was Du Guesclin's hand that did this act, and that he cried, "I neither make nor unmake kings, but I serve my lord;" but some writers say it was the Viscount de ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... to have me go and that Governor Wilson would like me to. But I wrote him precisely as I have you. If the members of this Commission once get into politics, the institution is gone to hell, for we can make or unmake any candidate we wish. This is the most powerful body in the United States, and we must act with a full sense of the responsibility that ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... is encouraging to know that my suggestions find some favor in your sight. Pray don't go too fast. It isn't well to make up our minds fully until we have heard all sides, lest we have them to unmake, which is always more ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner

... faith, the whole essence of its being, in favor of the giver of pleasure. Men make works of art: but women make men,—(except when they tamper with the work of the men, as happened in France at that time):—and it would be more just to say that they unmake what they make. No doubt the Eternal Feminine has been an uplifting influence on the best of men: but for the ordinary men, in ages of weariness and fatigue, there is, as some one has said, another Feminine, just as eternal, who drags them ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... the tollgate was only two miles, and while the boy made ready the team to take us over, the honest, intelligent farmer gave us a few sketches from his life history. His daughter wished him to don his better coat, but he replied that he had never been able to think that clothes could make or unmake a gentleman. He also observed that early adversity had been the greatest boon he had ever received, as, had he never failed in his city trading projects, he never would have come to the country, or have enjoyed ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... of his death is not properly known" ("non si sa bene la cagione della sua morte") "beyond the fact that such was the pleasure of the prince, who shows us that he can make and unmake men according to ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... idea of the Majesty of God, who could in one short second turn it all into confusion. There is nothing to me more beautiful than the raising one's eyes to Heaven, and thinking with adoration who made this scene, and who could unmake it again.' ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Nature; learn the higher, Whereby, thou Valiant One! this Universe Is, by its principle of life, produced; Whereby the worlds of visible things are born As from a Yoni. Know! I am that womb: I make and I unmake this Universe: Than me there is no other Master, Prince! No other Maker! All these hang on me As hangs a row of pearls upon its string. I am the fresh taste of the water; I The silver of the moon, the gold o' the sun, ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold

... not that "I come like water and like wind I go." I am here today, and the moment and the place are real, and my will is itself one of the fates that make and unmake all things. "Every meanest day is the conflux of two eternities," and in this center of all time and space for the moment it is I that stand. Great is Eternity, but it is made up of time. Could we blot out one day in the midst of time, Eternity could be no more. The ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan

... made it what it is, and may unmake it again," replied the general. "The earthquake is the father of the desert, as the Indians say; and it may some day become the father of a ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne

... us We'll not be afraid. No power can unmake us Save that which has made. Nor yet beyond reason Or hope shall we fall— All things have their season, ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various

... the real work, and, single- handed, cowed and controlled the mob. No doubt, it took more time than the brief narrative, at first sight, would suggest. The image is flung into the fire from which it had come out. The fire made it, and the fire shall unmake it. We need not find difficulty in 'burning' a golden idol. That does not mean 'calcined,' and the writer is not guilty of a blunder, nor needed to be taught that you cannot burn gold. The next clause says that after it was ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... was about to succeed the one which had just collapsed—one of those modern edifices, all, whatever may be the name with which they are decorated, tainted with the same original weakness—"What the majority has made, the majority has the right to unmake." In fact—as somebody said in a speech—a perpetually provisional arrangement Under these ephemeral forms of rule, our national inferiority in face of other stable and far-sighted governments is flagrantly evident. ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... horse cannot be expected to carry two men a four days' journey. I hate white horses, but this time it cannot be helped. You begin to understand me? I perceive that you are minded, on the strength of what you have seen and fancy, to taint my reputation. It is men of your sort who unmake kings. Besides which—I never ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... side-paths, which lead nowhere; and they never will confess, either, that they need help. They always think they are doing what they call "making up their mind." But, whichever way they make it, they wish they had made it the other; so they unmake it directly. And by this time the crisis of the first hour which they lost has become complicated with that of the second hour, for which they are in no wise ready; and so the hours stumble on, one after another, and the day is only ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... standing before the girl and looking down upon her, "I should almost prefer not to have you take my affairs into your consideration. I doubt if they're worth it. I can't deny that I shrink from becoming a factor in your life, as well as from feeling that you must make your decisions, or unmake them, ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King

... side to this daily intercourse, with its sweet and gracious courtesies. The women who discuss grave questions and make or unmake literary reputations in the salon, are capable of rare sacrifices and friendships that seem quixotic in their devotion. Cousin, who has studied them so carefully and so sympathetically, has saved from oblivion many private letters which give us pleasant glimpses ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... consider, Sir, that a House of Commons is to the people as a Creature is to its Creator[107]?" To this question, said Dr. Johnson, I could have replied, that—in the first place—the idea of a CREATOR must be such as that he has a power to unmake or ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... and commerce. Even granting equal understanding and experience, the tradition of the race must count for much; and it would seem that at every stage of growth, boys and girls alike should feel the impulse to imitate men who have an instinct to make and unmake, to trade and carry. It is no justification of existing conditions to say that the men now in the teaching profession lack these qualities; if they do, let us get rid of them and have real men. And for purposes of political life, does it not ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes

... precious doctrine to King James, and he insisted that his subjects ought to see how clearly God had predestined him to rule over them! But he could not tolerate the necessary logical inference of Calvinism that all men must be equal before God, and so men can make and unmake kings as they need to do so, the matter of king or subject being purely an incidental one. He remembered the time when Andrew Melville, one of the Scotch ministers, had plucked him by his royal sleeve and called him "God's silly ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee

... land. They could not accomplish good by passing over a wrong. If the right of one single human being is to be disregarded by us, we fail in our loyalty to the country. All over this land women have no political existence. Laws pass over our heads that we can not unmake. Our property is taken from us without our consent. The babes we bear in anguish and carry in our arms are not ours. The few rights that we have, have been wrung from the Legislature by the Woman's Rights movement. We come to-day to say to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... would only be good and unmake me, and let darkness cover the place where once was me! That would be like a good God! All I should be sorry for then would be, that there was not enough of me left for a dim flitting Will-o'-the-wisp of praise, ever singing my thankfulness to him that I was no more.—Yet even then ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... is an act which aims at an impossibility. You can destroy the body, but the you who suffers in mind and spirit will suffer still, and live still. You will only change your location from one state to another. You did not make yourself, you cannot unmake yourself. You can merely put yourself among the spiritual tramps who hang about the earth's borders, because they have not prepared a better ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... nothing concerning the execution of Ramiro d'Orco, except that Caesar Borgia is the prince who best knows how to make and unmake men according ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... with the modification or cessation of the senses it is changed or comes to an end. In other words (for this doctrine like most of the Buddha's doctrines is at bottom ethical rather than metaphysical) the saint can make or unmake his own world and triumph over pain. But the theory of sensation may be treated not ethically but metaphysically. Sensation implies a duality and on the one side the Buddha's teaching argues that there is no permanent sentient self but merely ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... existence, and the immutability of his power; and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries. The probability that we may be called to account hereafter, will, to reflecting minds, have the influence of belief; for it is not our belief or disbelief that can make or unmake the fact. As this is the state we are in, and which it is proper we should be in, as free agents, it is the fool only, and not the philosopher, nor even the prudent man, that will live as ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... return to London. It is now that the Commonwealth is to be really put upon its trial. Hitherto the army, that had made and could unmake it, had been occupied first in Ireland, then in Scotland; and the minds of people at home had been equally occupied in watching its achievements. The Commonwealth has lived upon the expectations of men. It has been itself an expectation. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... foundation upon which our Constitution rests being the people—a breath of theirs having made, as a breath can unmake, change, or modify it—it can be assigned to none of the great divisions of government but to that of democracy. If such is its theory, those who are called upon to administer it must recognize ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... and the Euphrates felt, when they learned that the empire had been put up to sale by the Praetorian Guards. It was intolerable that certain regiments should, merely because they happened to be quartered near Westminster, take on themselves to make and unmake several governments in the course of half a year. If it were fit that the state should be regulated by the soldiers, those soldiers who upheld the English ascendency on the north of the Tweed were as well entitled to a voice as those who garrisoned the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... taught by Fate to know Jehovah's plan, Thet man's devices can't unmake a man, An' whose free latch-string never was drawed in Against the poorest child ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... vocabulary. They are words that you have no use for. Replace them by two others—habit and character. Slave as you are of habit, of the character you have woven for yourself out of years of deliberate living—what wild unreason to imagine that love can unmake, can recreate! What you are, you are to all eternity. Bear your own burden, but for God's sake beguile no other human creature ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... concealment and, at the same time, no shred of responsibility to any organ of the State, they are a deadly peril. The chief of these men are more powerful to-day than any Minister. Nay, they do, as I have said (and it is now notorious), make and unmake Ministers, and they may yet in our worst hour ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc

... being can unmake or materially change himself (at least none can annihilate himself) so God is unchangeable, for no Being God made can change him and no other Being can exist ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner

... direction of suffrage for women, represented the dominant financial and political power in the greatest metropolis in America, whose ramifications extend to every city, village and cross-roads in the State. With its money and its votes this element can make and unmake politicians at will, and under present conditions, with the ballot in the hands of men only, it is virtually an impossibility for a candidate to be elected if this organization exert its influence against him. How to persuade the parties and the individual men to risk defeat ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper



Words linked to "Unmake" :   make, undo



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