"Accomplished fact" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nerves—has risen up in revolt against what has been done. I do not know whether there can be a more desperate state of mind than when we do not agree with something, protest with every fibre of heart and brain, and at the same time feel powerless in presence of an accomplished fact. I understand that this is only a foretaste of what is awaiting me in the future. There is nothing to be done,—nothing. She is married, is Pani Kromitzka; she belongs to him, will always belong to him; and I who cannot consent, for to do so would mean losing my own self, am obliged to consent. ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the homemaker, as we have conceived her, has a part in most of the concerns of the community. We speak of "woman and citizenship." To many this means, perhaps, "woman and suffrage." Woman in politics is already an accomplished fact in fourteen western states. Suffrage has been granted her in the state of New York. That her political influence will widen seems a foregone conclusion. She must therefore be prepared for real service in civic concerns. Women have already applied their housecleaning knowledge and ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... and the festive offices almost equal in length, and have so arranged matters that the frequent recitation of every psalm, and the possible and probable recitation of every psalm, once every week, is now an accomplished fact; and the old and much-sought-after ideal—the weekly recitation of the whole Psalter—is of ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... inspired words in the dots and dashes of the Morse alphabet. Alfred Vail, at the other end of the line in Baltimore, received the message without an error, and immediately flashed it back again, and the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph was no longer the wild dream of a visionary, but an accomplished fact. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... final struggle at the polls for mastery and possession of that section. When the smoke of battle cleared over South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana, the Southern forces of re-action were in complete possession of those states, and the solid South had become an accomplished fact. Nothing stood now between the blacks and their ancient enemy. They were again at the mercy of the old master class, who returned promptly to the execution of their interrupted program of inequality and injustice. As the whites could not now reestablish constitutionally ...
— The Ultimate Criminal - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 17 • Archibald H. Grimke
... were thousands of other girls, millions of other girls, and could she suppose that one of them would not have the sense to snap up a treasure like Wally? A sense of blank desolation swept over Jill. Her quick imagination, leaping ahead, had made the vague possibility of a distant future an accomplished fact. She felt, absurdly, a sense of ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... an accomplished fact, and it was no use pretending it was wrong. Said Adrian therefore:—"Yes—there was a little more Septimius Severus. I had rather made up my mind not to talk about it, in case you should think too much of it." He then narrated the Miss Scatcherd ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... naval officer—a man who, by training and the tradition of the Service, had acquired the habit of prompt resolution, and an equal promptitude of action in the conversion of such resolution into an accomplished fact. The helmsman of the Ludwig Gadd, therefore, had scarcely begun to revolve his steering-wheel ere the Flying Fish, with her speed accurately reduced to that of the other vessel, had sheered still closer, while von Schalckenberg, prompted by his companion, hailed in Russian, ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... likewise absent from him; and his recent tremendous disappointment thus thundered upon a mind devoid of any machinery to resist it. The possession of Phoebe Lyddon had come to be an accepted and accomplished fact; he chose her for his own, to share the good things Fortune had showered into his lap—to share them and be a crowning glory of them. The overthrow of this scheme at the moment of realisation upset his estimate of life in general and set him adrift and rudderless, in ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... carried by the first locomotive to travel from Cairo to the Cape. That flag has never been unfurled to the breeze but the vision that beheld it waving in the heart of the jungle is soon to become an accomplished fact. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... therefore, that she might have no chance of warning Sir Henry, and he hoped, no doubt, that when the whole country-side put down the baronet's death to the curse of his family, as they certainly would do, he could win his wife back to accept an accomplished fact and to keep silent upon what she knew. In this I fancy that in any case he made a miscalculation, and that, if we had not been there, his doom would none the less have been sealed. A woman of Spanish blood does not condone such an injury so lightly. And now, my dear ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... appeared to be an accomplished fact from one end to the other of Africa. Quite recently a mere fraction of the Donatist party had been able to send three hundred and ten bishops to the Council of Bagai, who were to judge the recalcitrants of ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... long been anxious to enter a community, restrained from doing so solely by Hugh's need of her as mistress of his house, and now that her wish was an accomplished fact, it seemed as though he were spurred on to increasing effort by the example of his sister's renunciation of the world. He withdrew himself even more completely from his wife, sometimes avoiding her company for days at ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... succeeding when once the moment should come to work it. Pateley was altogether in a high state of jubilation in those days. The Cape to Cairo railway was actually on the verge of being completed. In a week more the gigantic scheme would be an accomplished fact. The excitement in London respecting it was immense. A small piece of German territory still remained to be crossed, but if no unforeseen incident arose to jeopardise the situation at the last moment all would yet be well. The rejoicings of Englishmen ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... in like proportion, Australia's prosperity would have marvellously increased. Knowing, therefore, what John Macarthur has done for Australia, it is to be hoped that before these lines see the light of day what is now proposed will be an accomplished fact. ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... her nightmare-ridden sleep it became an accomplished fact, so that she would awake, trembling, in a cold sweat, crying out. Her sleep had become wretched. Sometimes she was convinced that she did not sleep at all, and she knew that she had insomnia, and remembered that it was of insomnia her ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... tendency of Laurier's policy but illustrated the tactics which he had developed for achieving his ends in the face of opposition within the party. Upon occasions of this kind he was addicted to confronting his associates and followers with an accomplished fact, leaving no alternative to submission but a palace rebellion which he felt confident no one would attempt. By such methods he had already rounded several dangerous corners, as for instance his committing Canada to submit her case ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... really a good enough sort of fellow, but what I dread is that he may have been open-handed in his fit of drunkenness, and that he mayn't, by and by, ask for his money to be paid twice over; and what will I do then? Never mind," he suddenly went on to ponder, "when that job has become an accomplished fact, I shall even have the means to pay him back double ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... America were dropped—although American troops continued to dominate Nicaragua—and in 1914 the Administration successfully discouraged American participation in a six-power loan to China. The Russo-Japanese absorption of Manchuria was to be treated as the accomplished fact that it was; and in general the policy of the new Administration was anything but aggressive. It would not use diplomacy to advance American commercial interests, nor was it prepared to accept the assistance of American financiers in ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... every State shall make it apparent to every eye, when too late to remedy it, that division from the south is anarchy at the north, and that peace without union is the end of the Republic; then the independence of the south will be an accomplished fact, and gentlemen may, without treason to the dead Republic, rise in this migratory house, wherever it may then be in America, and declare themselves for recognizing their masters at the south rather than exterminating them. Until that day, in the name of the American nation; in the ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... measure of his self-sacrificing rule, Carleton served on devotedly through six weary months of 1778—the year in which a vindictive government of Bourbon France became the first of the several foreign enemies who made the new American republic an accomplished fact by taking sides in a British civil war. His burden was now far more than any man could bear. Yet he closed his answer to Germain's parting shot with words which are as noble ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... speaking of the Son's identification with us in His mission, and our identification with Him, but that identification depends on ourselves and is only an accomplished fact through our faith. When we trust in Him it is true that all His—His righteousness, His Sonship, His union with the Father—is ours, and that all ours—our sins, our guilt, our alienation from God and our dwelling in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... army—the rising of the West—the entrance of Louis XVIII into his good town of Paris—and the return of the Corsican to his island! Predictions that were not so wild after all. Ten years later it was an accomplished fact in almost all its details. And what are ten years in politics? Frotte, Georges, Pichegru, d'Ache, would only have had to fold their arms. They would have seen the Empire crumble ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... and broken the news to him while I was waiting for Alathea to come. He was not surprised, he pretended, and now that the marriage is an accomplished fact, he is too well bred not to fall into the attitude of delight about it. Maurice has no intention of ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... Railway, so frequently referred to in the following pages, is now almost an accomplished fact. It will, after traversing for over a thousand miles the great prairies of the Swan River and Saskatchewan territories, thread the Rocky Mountains and, running through British Columbia to Vancouver's Island, unite ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... that the treaty between England and the United Provinces was signed on January 23. Three days afterwards Dohna was able to announce the adhesion of the Swedish government; and on January 26, the Triple Alliance was an accomplished fact. It was essentially a defensive alliance, and its main object was to offer mediation between France and Spain in order to moderate the French claims and to back up their mediation, if necessity should arise, by joint action. As a preliminary precaution, a strong force was promptly placed under ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... it an instance of that obscure operation of the feminine mind whereby the merest wish becomes an accomplished fact? ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... no longer a mere party leader. Unlike Wellington and Eldon, he saw the necessity of accepting loyally the accomplished fact and shaping his future course in accordance with the nation's will. He, therefore, took an early opportunity of declaring that he regarded the reform act as irrevocable, and that he was prepared to participate in the dispassionate amendment of any institution that ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... by President Hoover on behalf of the National Aeronautic Association. Alvan Macauley, president of the Packard Motor Car Company, accepted the trophy, saying: "We do not claim, Mr. President, that we have reached the final development even though our diesel aircraft engine is an accomplished fact and we have the pioneer's joy of knowing that we have successfully accomplished what had not been done before...."[8] The amazing early success of the Packard diesel is illustrated by ...
— The First Airplane Diesel Engine: Packard Model DR-980 of 1928 • Robert B. Meyer
... was the sale of Joseph an accomplished fact than the sons of Jacob repented of their deed. They even hastened after the Midianites to ransom Joseph, but their efforts to overtake them were vain, and they had to accept the inevitable. Meantime Reuben had rejoined ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... Count had put to him and wondered that it had so distressed him. Why had his cheeks tingled and the words stumbled upon his lips because he had been called Lois Boriskoff's lover? It used not to be so when they walked Union Street together and all the neighbors regarded the engagement as an accomplished fact. He had never resented such a charge then—what had happened that he should resent it now? Was it the long weeks of temptation he had suffered in Anna Gessner's presence? Had the world of riches so changed him that any mention of the old time could make him ashamed? ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... widowhood; and it set a limit to his recognition, at the best, of Catherine's possibilities and of Mrs. Penniman's ministrations. He, nevertheless, at the end of six months, accepted his sister's permanent presence as an accomplished fact, and as Catherine grew older perceived that there were in effect good reasons why she should have a companion of her own imperfect sex. He was extremely polite to Lavinia, scrupulously, formally polite; and she had never seen him in anger but once in her life, when he lost his temper ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... the Vatican's standards, the kingdom of Italy is not an accomplished fact, as the Vatican refuses to recognize any government in Italy save that which he chooses to establish and build up out of the filth ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... death, of the various Wagner societies), the foundation-stone of the Baireuth Theatre was laid in 1872, and in 1876, two years after the completion of the "Goetterdaemmerung" ("Nibelungen Ring," Part III.), it became an accomplished fact. The first work given was the entire "Trilogy;" and in July, 1882, Wagner's long and stormy career was magnificently crowned there by the first performance of "Parsifal." A few weeks later his health showed signs of giving way, and he resolved to spend the winter at Venice. There ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... are so largely in the direction of municipal control. One hears and reads as little of socialism now in London as in New York, but that is because it has so effectually passed from the debated principle to the accomplished fact. It has been embodied in so many admirable works that the presumption is rather in favor of it as something truly conservative. It is not, as with us, still under the ban of a prejudice too ignorant to know in how many things it is already effective; but this is, of course, mainly ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... the strings. And the heroine's reply is made, not by a soprano with a cold, but by an honest man playing a flute. The next step will be the substitution of marionettes for actors. The removal of the orchestra to a sort of trench, out of sight of the audience, is already an accomplished fact at Munich. The end, perhaps, will be music purged of its current ptomaines. ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... scenes in the Chamber, and the King's final departure. All the way across France, too, except at Toulon, where the strong hand of the navy made itself felt, Touchard had watched the eager speculations of the majority on the accomplished fact, and the struggle as to who should first offer his services to the Provisional Government, before the corpse of Constitutional Monarchy was cold—for dead it was, without having struck a ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... was, at the time Mr. Lincoln spoke, as good as ended. It was a foregone conclusion, that the great end for which he, and so many other great and good men of the Republic had for so many years been earnestly striving, would be an accomplished fact. They had not failed; they had stood firm; the victory which he had predicted six years ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... believe, wholly due to Sir Richard Collinson, the Deputy Master of the Trinity House. Thanks to the skilful aid given by the authorities of Woolwich, by Mr. Prentice, and Mr. Brock, that idea is now an accomplished fact; a signal of great power, handiness, and economy, being thus placed at the service of our mariners. Not only may the rocket be applied in association with lighthouses and lightships, but in the Navy also it may be turned to important account. Soon after ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... supposed the Emperor to hold, and the fact that all the generals expressed the same wish—could no longer check the inevitable movement, and gave the order to do what he regarded as useless and harmful—gave his approval, that is, to the accomplished fact. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... which choice the man would make. We should, in fact, have not one but several futures mapped out before our eyes, without necessarily being able to determine which of them would materialize itself into accomplished fact. In most instances we should see so strong a probability that we should not hesitate to come to a decision, but the case which I have described is certainly theoretically possible. Still, even this much knowledge would enable us to do with safety a good ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... tell him not to let the grass grow under his horse's hoofs. The capture of the Scarlet Pimpernel, though not absolutely an accomplished fact, is nevertheless a practical certainty, and no one rejoices over this great event more than the man who is to be present and ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... fear my sense of humour is defective. I can't see the justice of repudiating the duty of one's position, since there the position is, an accomplished fact not to be denied. Why not make ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... further recited how North Carolina's original cession of the western lands had moved the Westerners to declare their independence, and contended that her subsequent repeal of the act making this cession was void, and that Congress should treat the cession as an accomplished fact. However, Congress took no action either for ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... action rather than of thought. Like their forbears in England, they begin to do things, because their common sense tells them that such things have to be done, and then at a later date think over the accomplished fact. A man in public life who told them that their "noble national theory" was ambiguous and distracting, and that many of their popular catchwords were false and exercised a mischievous influence on public affairs, would do so at his own ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... referred to an accomplished fact. It appeared in a Parsi paper, which strongly insists on the necessity of giving up "disgusting superannuated customs," and especially the early marriage. It justly ridiculed a certain Gujerati newspaper, which had just described in very pompous expressions a recent ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... of the valley was the Hon. George Summers, who had represented it in the Congress of the United States, and had opposed secession in the Virginia Convention with a vigor that had brought him into personal peril. When, however, secession was an accomplished fact, his ideas of allegiance to his State so far influenced him that he was unwilling to take active part in public affairs, and sought absolute retirement at his pleasant home a little below Charleston on the Kanawha. His house ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... what the Englishman had come for. In his mind the marriage was an accomplished fact, and he regarded Sir John already as his brother-in-law. He hesitated a moment as to whether he should or should not make himself known to Sir John, and tell his friend about his projects; but he reflected that Sir John was not a man to let him work them out alone. He, too, had a revenge ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... monarchy has been decided to be the future form of the state, and His Majesty has consented to accept the Throne, the change may be said to be an accomplished fact. There is no question about it. All persons of whatever walk of life can henceforth continue their pursuits without anxiety. In the meantime we will proceed slowly and surely with the enthronement, as it involves many ceremonies and diplomatic etiquette. ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... same scheme. The Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviki fell victim to it, and on June 1st a Coalition Ministry, with the participation of Tchernov, Tseretelli, Skobeliev, Avksentiev, Savinkov, Zarudny and Nikitin became an accomplished fact.Problems of ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... only by a specialized class whose personal interests reach beyond the locality. This class is irresponsible, for it acts upon information that is not common property, in situations that the public at large does not conceive, and it can be held to account only on the accomplished fact. ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... of the noonday sun distress her? Who may say! She had been reared to believe that one day she should wed Djor Kantos, son of her father's best friend. It had been the dearest wish of Kantos Kan and The Warlord that this should be, and Tara of Helium had accepted it as a matter of all but accomplished fact. Djor Kantos had seemed to accept the matter in the same way. They had spoken of it casually as something that would, as a matter of course, take place in the indefinite future, as, for instance, his promotion in the navy, in which he was now a padwar; ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... later there came a letter from Mrs. Dornell to her husband, written before she knew of his stroke. She related the circumstances of the marriage in the gentlest manner, and gave cogent reasons and excuses for consenting to the premature union, which was now an accomplished fact indeed. She had no idea, till sudden pressure was put upon her, that the contract was expected to be carried out so soon, but being taken half unawares, she had consented, having learned that Stephen Reynard, now their ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... he puts it, "no sex was excluded," there was hardly any secret made of the projects they were carrying on. Before the sudden appearance of Ormond in Paris they had counted, with the utmost confidence, on a full success, and were already talking of the Restoration as if it were an accomplished fact. Every word they uttered which it was of the least importance for the British Government to hear was instantly made known to Lord Stair, the new English Ambassador—a resolute and capable man, a brilliant soldier, an astute and bold diplomatist, equal to any craft, ready for ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... the conjecture became accomplished fact. The Doomsmen, retreating with admirable steadiness, fell back upon the shelter of the citadel walls. Quinton Edge, with a score of mounted cross-bowmen, brought up the rear, and he himself was the last man to pass through the ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... wherever he went. He had the knack of popularity. He came of an old family, and his rumoured engagement to Lady Violet Calcott had surprised no one. Lord Culverleigh, her brother, was known to be his intimate friend, and the rumour had come already to be regarded as an accomplished fact when, like a thunder-bolt, had ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... was well; Sally was thoroughly mastered; and, with a horse beneath him which, he felt, could give even the gray stallion of Hal Dozier hard work, and therefore show her heels to any other animal on the mountain desert, he looked forward to the crossing of the mountains as an accomplished fact. Always supposing that he could pass Twin Falls and the fringe of towns in the hills, without being recognized ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... eclipse of the Sun which has to be noticed as an accomplished fact was the "Indian Eclipse" of Jan. 22, 1898, which was very successfully seen by large numbers of people who went to India from all parts of the world. As usual in all total eclipses of the Sun nowadays, the photographers were very much to the ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... had become an accomplished fact. With due drum-beatings and act-reading, flag-raising, cannonading and galloping of aides-de-camp, Nouvelle Orleans had become New Orleans, and Louisiane was Louisiana. This afternoon, the first week of American jurisdiction was only something over half gone, and the main topic of public debate ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... the trees, and watched in solitude the decline of the sun in a cloudless sky. The memory of the happy years of her marriage had never been so sadly and persistently present to her mind as at this time, when the choice of another married life waited her decision to become an accomplished fact. Remembrances of the past, which she had such bitter reason to regret, and forebodings of the future, in which she was more than half inclined to believe, oppressed her at one and the same moment. She thought of the different circumstances, ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... Heaven. You rebel against your father's marriage; everybody else ought to be lonely and unhappy because you are; the world ought to wear crape, and the light of the sun be darkened. But the world laughs and sings much as usual, the sun shines as joyously. Your father's marriage will be an accomplished fact, and our modern heroine says 'yes' to the first man who asks her to marry him in a fit of spleen, because she will be Grace Danton's step-daughter, and must retire a little into the background, and look forward to the common humdrum life ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... cordon of troops, the house under close watch, and—best of all—a sworn confession from an Irish Member of Parliament whom Victor had managed to buy with a promise to free Ireland once Soviet England was an accomplished fact. So I left Karslake to wind up loose ends in London, and posted back with my heart in my mouth for fear ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... perhaps, be better worth while to go direct to the corral, where it might be supposed that the convicts had again taken refuge, either to pillage or to establish themselves there. But either the devastation of the corral would have been an accomplished fact by this time, and it would be too late to prevent it; or it had been the convicts' interest to intrench themselves there, and there would be still time to go and turn ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... secured more favourable terms than he had dared to hope for. The capitulation of Quebec was an accomplished fact! ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... were proposed and carried; some "unanimously," some with "one dissentient," and some "by a majority of at least one thousand and one;" and the "General Political Union between the Lower and Middle Classes of the People," became an accomplished fact. ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... longer the hero of the people. He had lost his best friend—between his counsellors and himself an ominous gulf was widening every hour. There were whispers of treason in the city, his isolation would soon become an accomplished fact. ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... as I can go at the moment. Nothing definite has yet taken place. When and if an arrangement of this kind should become an accomplished fact the House will have the fullest opportunity of expressing itself, if it so ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... became the idea. That it could be accomplished via Siberia, Lieutenant Payer believed, and the Austro-Hungarian Arctic expedition was soon an accomplished fact. Doctor Petermann said the work accomplished by the little expedition were very valuable, and it was decided to supplement it. The steamship Tegethoff was fitted out: the equipment was most complete, many well-known Arctic voyagers lending their assistance. Captain Carlsen was pilot, Captain ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... "And here I am, my dear brother, and I am not blaming you for delays in the post. I merely remarked that it was too late now to consult me upon a marriage which is to all intents and purposes, an accomplished fact already." ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... commanding—"Block-that-kick! Block-that-kick! BLOCK-THAT-KICK!" The kneeling quarter back opened his muddy hands; the muddied oval came sailing lazily into them.... There was the gentle thud of Gridley's toe against the leather, and then—unbelievably, unbearably, it was an accomplished fact, a finished thing. Gridley had executed his place kick. They were scored on. It stood there on the board, glaring white letters and ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... said I, "should be seized red-handed, is a great mistake to suffer such an outrage to be accepted by the hours as they elapse. Each minute which passes is an accomplice, and endorses the crime. Beware of that calamity called an 'Accomplished fact.' ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... "the being (el ka'n, i.e. that which is, the accomplished fact) there is not from it a refuge or place of fleeing" (mehreb). Burton, "nor hath the creature aught of ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... posterity, and the verdict of impartial history. Our time will probably be more profitably employed in considering how we shall deal with secession than in discussing the causes which have produced it. Secession, right or wrong, justifiable or unjustifiable, is an accomplished fact; and it presents to us no less an alternative than that of peace or war. Sir, I believe that, in the general ruin which would follow coercive measures against the seceding states, all sections, all classes, all the great interests of the country, without any exception, would be involved. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... not find an answer to these questions in than. No one, from Beccaria to Carrara, has ever thought of this problem, and they could not have asked it, considering their point of departure and their method. In fact, the classic criminologists accept the phenomenon of criminality as an accomplished fact. They analyze it from the point of view of the technical jurist, without asking how this criminal fact may have been produced, and why it repeats itself in greater or smaller numbers from year to year, in every country. The theory of a free will, which ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... of the Convention: It is with great appreciation of the compliment paid my State that I rise to respond to your invitation to address you. I stand here, gentlemen of the convention, together with my colleagues from the several States, as an illustration of an accomplished fact of American emancipation, not only as an illustration of the management of the American people, but as a living example of the justice of the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Bourbonises too much. It lives in the past, learning nothing and forgetting nothing. Argument runs off it like rain off a duck's back. These two types of thought we must leave to the grace of God, and the education of the accomplished fact. They represent a declining cause, and a decaying party. The Lodges once mustered more than 200,000 members; they have now less than 10,000. There is another kind of Orangeism, that which has begun to think, and the Orangeism that has begun to think is already converted. ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... would be. My period of elation was when we got firm hold of the railroad at Rough and Ready. Hood having failed to attack our exposed flank during the movement, the fall of Atlanta was already an accomplished fact with me when Sherman was still in doubt, as well as when Thomas thought the news "too good to be true." But the above is worthy of noting only as a necessary introduction ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... by machinery, cheaper and better than those made by hand, is now an accomplished fact by Mr. Ransome's machines. There are twelve factories already established abroad, some turning out 2,000 or 3,000 casks a week. This is a good case of English invention taking the lead in ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... concerned, however, with another set of Limited Tolerationists, then much more conspicuous in England. They were those who had given up all thoughts of the retention of a Prelatic Establishment, and who indeed regarded the deliverance of England from such an Establishment as the noblest accomplished fact of the time. What they were anxious about was the nature of the new National Church, if any, that was to be substituted, and especially the degree of conformity to that Church that was to be required. The chief representatives of this state of feeling in its more moderate ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... must have felt this very clearly, must have felt that there was nothing left for him but to resign himself to the accomplished fact; for, one fine day, his two other victims, Ganimard and Holmlock Shears, made their reappearance. Their return to the life of this planet, however, was devoid of any sort of glamor or fascination. An itinerant rag-man picked ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... enjoys the idealism of Berkeley, wields the quaternions of Hamilton, uses the lightnings for his red sandaled messengers, holds his spectroscope to a star and tells what elements compose it, or to an outskirting nebula and declares it a mass of incandescent hydrogen. From such a background of accomplished fact he seems really to have a right to peer forth into the unbounded future and promise himself an unbounded destiny. The repetition of such a progress, nay much less, it may not unreasonably be imagined would raise the curtains from unsuspected secrets, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... this tyrannical enactment it would perhaps be well to recapitulate briefly the influences that led up to it. When the Union of the South African Colonies became an accomplished fact, a dread was expressed by ex-Republicans that the liberal native policy of the Cape would supersede the repressive policy of the old Republics, and they lost no time in taking definite steps to force down ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... I will not write Woman Suffrage, for that is an accomplished fact—for good or evil we shall presently be better ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... for the marriage of Pelaez with Dona Victorina made them really happy, and they saw it already an accomplished fact, until Isagani remembered that Don Tiburcio was still living and confided the secret to his sweetheart, after exacting her promise that she would tell no one. Paulita promised, with the mental reservation of ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... of parishes was common, and their various fields separated by hedges or other fences; before, too, the ordnance survey with its many calculations was an accomplished fact, much more measuring of land in connection with work done each year was required than at present. It was a necessity, therefore, that each village should have in or near it a man skilled in the science of calculation. Consequently, the acquirement of figures was ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... enough, in all conscience; but the antecedents of this wild ward of his were ten times more so. But, in spite of all, the engagement was an accomplished fact. ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... bottles, had since informed Austen Vane that Mr. Rangely had spent the day with Victoria, and had remained at Fairview far into the evening; rumour went farther (thanks to Mrs. Pomfret) and declared the engagement already an accomplished fact. And to Austen, in the twilight in front of Jabe Jenney's, the affair might well have assumed the proportions of an intimacy of long standing rather than that of the chance acquaintance of an hour. Friends ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... his way. The German Empire has been an accomplished fact for more than a third of a century—a great and dreadful legacy left to the world by the ill-omened ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... if the reduction were already an accomplished fact. The man was more likely to agree, if he thought that others were already working at ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Mr. Feargus O'Connor. We were all naked under our clothes, which clearly proved our equality. This was the simple, the beautiful programme; once carried out, peace, fraternal and eternal peace, would reign - till it ended, and the earthly Paradise would be an accomplished fact. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... an end to the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, and four hundred non-juring clergymen—including half-a-dozen bishops—of the Church of England were deprived of their ecclesiastical appointments for refusing to accept the accomplished fact, and acknowledge William III. as the lawful King of England. By making William King, to the exclusion of the children of James II., Parliament destroyed for all future time in England the belief in the sacred character ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... one penny for each well child. Within a short fortnight four hundred thousand pennies flowed in—four hundred thousand thank-offerings for children strong and well. The good pastor's wish was realised, and his Baby Castle an accomplished fact. Not only did the four hundred thousand pennies come, but the appeal for them stimulated a new sense of gratitude among all the parents who responded, so that there came pretty, touching messages from all sides, such as: "Four pennies for four living children; for a child ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... knowledge of it is confined to a statement in the Memoirs of Kamatari that it was compiled in the year 667. Two years later—that is to say, in the year after Tenchi's actual accession—the census register, which had formed an important feature of the Daika reforms, became an accomplished fact. Thenceforth there was no further occasion to appeal to the barbarous ordeal of boiling water (kuga-dachi) when questions of lineage ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... essentially British, is the tendency to receive almost any innovation, be it a new style of dress or a new method of locomotion, with some degree of distrust which shows itself in satirical criticism; to be followed soon after by the acceptance of the accomplished fact and complete approval. In this trait of our national character, as in all others, MR. PUNCH proves himself a true born Britisher. When the bicycle was first coming into popularity, he seemed rather to resent ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... gale broke, and I saw many signs of land. Bad weather having made itself felt in the galley, I was minded to try my hand at a loaf of bread, and so rigging a pot of fire on deck by which to bake it, a loaf soon became an accomplished fact. One great feature about ship's cooking is that one's appetite on the sea is always good—a fact that I realized when I cooked for the crew of fishermen in the before-mentioned boyhood days. Dinner being over, I sat for hours reading the life of Columbus, and as the day wore on I watched ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... up! No one intended what has happened. It was an accident, a calamity, but it is an accomplished fact, and 'what is done, is done,' and 'what is past remedy is past regret.' If the ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... scope of this enquiry to trace the various steps or indicate the various influences, the civilizing effect of the Church, the restraining power of the law, by which this complete amalgamation of two distinct races became an accomplished fact; we need only to note that the unity of the race was achieved. Even Macchiavelli recognizes this fact and, speaking of the time of the Carlovingian conquest, in the brief review of the history of all Italy which forms the first part of the first book of the "Florentine History," he truly says that, ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... direction of perjury. Have we, in the hour of our success, been invariably true to the promises made in the hour of our necessities? A study of the treaty we made with France in 1778, by the light of after years, would be useful to men who think that a treaty made is an accomplished fact. The people of the United States have to choose between the conquest of Mexico and non-intervention in Mexican affairs. There may be something to be said in favor of conquest, though the President's arguments in that direction—for such they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... reconcilable with the existence of an Eternal and Infinite Spirit; and although such a statement may seem a paradox, yet I am convinced that before many more years have passed, the reconciliation of natural with spiritual phenomena will be an accomplished fact. The fool to-day may say in his heart, there is no God, but ere long not only religion, but Science herself, shall expose his lack of ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... attempted to imagine what Jurand would say and do when he learned of the marriage. There was some alarm in this thought, but not too much of it, for the simple reason that it was an accomplished fact. It would not do for Jurand to challenge him to fight, and even should Jurand oppose, Zbyszko could answer him thus: "Forbear, I ask you; your right to Danuska is human, but mine is divine; she is therefore no more yours, but ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... human sacrifice to the Moloch of international warfare. For centuries world peace has been the dream of the poet, the philanthropist, the statesman, and the Christian. That dream is becoming a confident hope. This generation should see it an accomplished fact. ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... his waking hours. The result was only what might have been expected—a rapid assimilation of the teachings to the end that before any of them realized it, communication by word of mouth became an accomplished fact. ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wife and giving every detail: what she was being sent to Siberia for, and why he was now following her. Nekhludoff had never heard a detailed account of this affair, and so he listened with interest. When he came up, the story had reached the point when the attempt to poison was already an accomplished fact, and the family had discovered that ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... the wasting of many matches, so as to get the pine cones and needles started into a blaze, on account of the night wind that kept blowing them out as fast as Step Hen lighted them, the torches were finally made an accomplished fact. ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... the entire absence of imitation in its productions. How had the burden of precedent, laid upon every artist, increased since then! It was all around one:—that smoothly built world of old classical taste, an accomplished fact, with overwhelming authority on every detail of the conduct of one's [100] work. With no fardel on its own back, yet so imperious towards those who came labouring after it, Hellas, in its early freshness, looked as distant from him even then as it does ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... come about, even now Sylvia scarcely realized. The woman's intentions had barely begun to dawn upon her before they had become accomplished fact. Her father's attitude throughout had amazed her, so astoundingly easy had been his capture. He was infatuated, possibly for the first time in his life, and no influence of hers ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... soundless in the autumn dusk but for the noise of waters, and in the middle, amid the blackness of the shade, the gleam of the swift, strange tide. At the station every one was talking of the inundation being in many places an accomplished fact, and, in particular, of the condition of the Durance at some point that I have forgotten. At Avignon, an hour later, I found the water in some of the streets. The sky cleared in the evening, the moon lighted up the submerged suburbs, and the population again collected in the high places to enjoy ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... for having presumed to treat the seceded States as still in any sense States of the Union. It was in effect a declaration that those States had successfully seceded—that their elimination from the Union was an accomplished fact—that the Union of the States had been broken—and that the only method left for their return that would be considered by Congress was as conquered and outlying provinces, not even as Territories with the right ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... hour had passed since Tony went away. They had heard several distant shots in quick succession, and Larry was filled with hope that his craving for "quail on toast" might be finally made an accomplished fact; though just where the latter article was to come from might have puzzled any one, since their last scrap of bread had long ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... moment, to the superficial observer, and in the capital, the empire seemed an accomplished fact. The country at large, although by no means pacified, was nominally under imperial rule. Almost alone, in the south, General Porfirio Diaz held his own ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... circumstances is not trust. Trusting the Lord to save us means to definitely rely on him to do it; to confidently expect that he will do it. This leads directly to the confident trust that he does do it. It brings the conscious assurance that it is an accomplished fact. We are not left to doubt, to hope, or to guess; but we have a positive trust ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... summer Bleriot crossed the Channel in an aeroplane, and the first passenger-carrying Zeppelin airship was completed. Those who had previously scoffed came to the conclusion that flying was not only possible but an accomplished fact, and the next two years with their great aerial cross-country circuits revealed the vast potentialities of aircraft in assisting in military operations. We, therefore, began to study aeronautics as the science of the future, ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... refusing uniforms and badges—those outward signs of authority and servitude—and remaining people among the people, the earnest revolutionists will work side by side with the masses, that the abolition of rent, the expropriation of houses, may become an accomplished fact. They will prepare the ground and encourage ideas to grow in this direction; and when the fruit of their labours is ripe, the people will proceed to expropriate the houses without giving heed to the theories which will certainly be thrust in their way—theories about paying compensation ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... it for his own ends? And, for all these fine arguments, Waymark saw with perfect clearness how the matter would end. Self would triumph, and Ida, if the fates so willed it, would be sacrificed. It was detestable, but a fact; as good already as an accomplished fact. ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... though not with the limitations above suggested, as fit the proper renderings for God; and of the two terms the great Manchu Emperor K'ang Hsi chose T'ien. It has been thought that the conversion of China to Christianity under the guiding influence of the Jesuits would soon have become an accomplished fact, but for the ignorant opposition to the use of these terms by the Franciscans and Dominicans, who referred this question, among others, to the Pope. In 1704 Clement XI published a bull declaring that the Chinese ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... my dear! Oh, what a trial one's children sometimes are. The Drummonds have bought the Towers. The whole thing is an accomplished fact." ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... say that the possible prospect which I outlined in the House to-night has become an accomplished fact. Two hundred and forty-three years ago London heard the sound of hostile guns. We have heard them to-night. This telegram is from Sheerness, and it tells, I most deeply regret to say, the same story, or something ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... performed the remarkable feat of flying with the machine upside down. This exhibition shows that the age of perfection has arrived in flying machines, and that stability is an accomplished fact."—News item. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... even after World War II some of our most respected scientists sold short the idea of developing long-range missiles. Impractical, they said; visionary. But 6 years after the United States went to work seriously on missiles, an operational ICBM with a 9,000-mile range was an accomplished fact. ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... thing is actually in existence—an accomplished fact—it's rather futile to talk of guarding against it," he said, in his brief, unsympathetic voice. "You've been extraordinarily generous to the imp, and it isn't surprising that she should be extraordinarily ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... inflamed rather than enlightened by the discussions on unity of command, and the newspaper campaign directed against our War chiefs. Meanwhile, the Suffragists have triumphantly surmounted their last obstacle in the House of Lords, and Votes for Women is now an accomplished fact. But the Irish Andromeda still awaits her Perseus, gazing wanly at her various champions in Convention. The Ulsterman's plea for conscription in Ireland has been rejected after Sir Auckland Geddes had declared that it would be of no use as a solution of the present difficulty. He did not give ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... the struggles of the great saurian continued, its tail lashing the water into foam, as through its gagged jaws a stream rushed constantly down its throat, causing suffocation. But, in spite of its amphibious nature, drowning was inevitable; and soon after became an accomplished fact—the huge reptilian carcass drifting down stream, towards the all-absorbing ocean, to become food for sharks, or some other marine monster more ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... the chair Gamelin offered her. The young dragoon stood beside her, his hand on the back of the chair on which she sat. Which showed plainly that the Revolution was an accomplished fact, for under the ancien regime, no man would ever, in company, have touched so much as with the tip of a finger, the seat occupied by a lady. In those days a gentleman was trained and broken in to the laws of politeness, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... of some of the best watches in the regiment, unable to stand the strain of anything so hot and high and dry. Possibly the Third was so overjoyed at getting out of Arizona on any terms that they would gladly have left their eye-teeth in pawn. Whatever may have been the cause, the transfer was an accomplished fact, and Van was one of some seven hundred quadrupeds, of greater or less value, which became the property of the Fifth Regiment of Cavalry, U.S.A., in lawful exchange for a like number of chargers left in the stables along the recently-built Union Pacific ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... deliverance, at suitable elevated stations, from some of the oppressive conditions of low-level star-gazing; yet for a number of years nothing effectual was done for their realisation. Now, at last, however, mountain observatories are not only an admitted necessity but an accomplished fact; and Newton's long forecast of a time when astronomers would be compelled, by the developed powers of their telescopes, to mount high above the "grosser clouds" in order to use them,[1639] had been ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... long time, and agreed with Benjamin that the Yankees did not really intend to go to war with England if she recognised the South; and he said that, when the inevitable smash came—and that separation was an accomplished fact—the State of Maine would probably try to join Canada, as most of the intelligent people in that state have a horror of being "under the thumb of Massachusetts." He added, that Maine was inhabited by a hardy, thrifty, seafaring population, with different ideas to the people in the ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... 13th, we were out of the canyon at last, and the towering walls, now friendly, now menacing, were behind us. Three hundred and sixty-five large rapids, and nearly twice as many small rapids, were behind us and the dream of ten years was an accomplished fact. But best of all, there were no tragedies or fatalities to record. Perhaps we did look a little the worse for wear, but a few days away from the river would repair all that. The boats had a bump here and there, besides the one big patch on the Edith; a little mending and a little caulking ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... because it contained in embryo all the conditions under which South Africa became united. It is remarkable, indeed, that such a very short time after a war which seemed altogether to have compromised any hope of coalescing, the Union of South Africa should have become an accomplished fact. ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... old gentleman, "he is invading the field of ethics! He will be questioning the righteousness of slavery next! I'm afraid you wouldn't make a good lawyer, in any event. Lawyers go by the laws—they abide by the accomplished fact; to them, whatever is, is right. The laws do not permit men of color to practice law, and public sentiment would not allow one ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... States General to demand the emancipation of Charles, which was finally granted by the Emperor for a money consideration. Margaret, who had been kept in ignorance of these intrigues, though deeply hurt in her pride, could do nothing but accept the accomplished fact. ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... during the course of these operations. The long-hoped for open warfare was upon us at last, and the gunners' dream of galloping into action and firing with open sights at close range was an accomplished fact almost before we were aware of it. On one occasion, the whole Brigade, immediately at the close of executing a creeping barrage, limbered up, and topping the crest in front came face to face with the enemy, and dropped into action alongside our advancing infantry. The enemy machine gunners ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... Irishmen responded with "Rule Britannia" and cheers for Old England. Cheers for Belfast and Newcastle alternated with such stentorian vigour, each side shouting for the other, that you might have been excused for imagining that the Union of Hearts was an accomplished fact, and that brotherly love had begun and must ever continue. Said a miner, "We're all surprised to see that the people here are just like Englishmen. An' I'm blest if they aren't more loyal than the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... society of the Middle Ages, was a clamourous necessity; it was a slavery as bad in some ways as any that had existed in antiquity, and the number of its victims was greater. The ill results of the accomplished fact was largely due to the condition of religion which existed during the period of emancipation. No society can endure without vital religion, and any revolution effected at a time when religion is moribund or dissipated ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... controversy over the route which the road should take into and through the village. There was the party of the "nabobs" (as they were characterized by Mr. Harum) and their following, and the party of the "village people," and the former had carried their point; but now the road was an accomplished fact, and most of the bitterness which had been engendered had died away. Yet the struggle was still ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... FELLOW-MEMBERS OF THE CHEMICAL SOCIETY:—I propose to introduce an innovation to after-dinner speaking and stick to my text. In my opinion, it is too late in the day to question the Creator's purpose in making Woman. She is an accomplished fact! She is here! She has come to stay, and we might as well accept her. She has broken into our Society, which, until within a year or two, has remained entirely masculine. She has not yet appeared at our annual dinners, but I am a false prophet if she be not here to ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various |
