"Irrevocable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have been more bold, and killed the servant also; he should have done all things otherwise; poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable would fall ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... make me your heir. It was unexpected on my part, unsolicited; but you did do it, and you caused me to leave the army in consequence, to give up my fair prospects in life. I am aware that this deed is not irrevocable, and certainly you have the right to do what you will with your own property. But you must forgive me for saying that you should have made quite sure of your intentions beforehand: before picking me up, if it be only ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... objected so strenuously to Gramont's views and intentions that the minister, somewhat shaken, merely said that the formal decision would be made public next morning. While the emperor and two councillors were then taking irrevocable steps toward a collision, and were unconsciously playing into the hands of their arch-enemy, the leaders of the warlike faction in the Chamber and the Parisian press were clamouring with fury and vitriolic sarcasm against a faint-hearted and contemptible ministry that shrank ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... become your avenger, Binding Tiamat and saving your life, Then come in a body, In Ubshu-kenna,[716] let yourselves down joyfully, My authority instead of yours will assume control, Unchangeable shall be whatever I do, Irrevocable and irresistible, be ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... was held, at which it was resolved to petition Mr. Cross, the Home Secretary, to reconsider the sentence. Two days before the day of execution Habron was granted a respite, and later his sentence commuted to one of penal servitude for life. And so a tragic and irrevocable miscarriage of justice was ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... would ask the writer, why this or that sentence might not have found as appropriate a place under this or that other thesis: and if no satisfying answer could be returned, and two faults of the same kind were found in one exercise, the irrevocable verdict followed, the exercise was torn up, and another on the same subject to be produced, in addition to the tasks of the day. The reader will, I trust, excuse this tribute of recollection to a man, whose severities, even now, not seldom furnish the dreams, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and it's very painful for us To tell how faithless Maurice forgot his plighted vow: He thinks not of the breaking of the heart he late was seeking, He but listens to her speaking, and but gazes on her brow; And his heart has all consented, and his lips are ready now With the awful and irrevocable vow. ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... recovered my breath: that decidedly more than mere permission from my dear father would be necessary to authorise my entering on the consideration of particulars at all.' And then he falls into a vein of devout reflection, almost as if this sudden destination of his life were some irrevocable priesthood or vow of monastic profession, and not the mere stringent secularity of labour in a parliament. It would be thin and narrow to count all this an overstrain. To a nature like his, of such eager ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... define his position. Chesterton replied, "The unreasonable patriot is one who sees the faults of his fatherland with an eye which is clearer and more merciless than any eye of hatred, the eye of an irrational and irrevocable love." His attitude sprang, he claimed, not from defect but from excess ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... future lonely years. Just once more she broke that silence. "Oh, darling, come back! I WILL RISK IT," she said. But no step drew near, and, kneeling with her face buried in her clasped hands, Jane suddenly realised that Garth Dalmain had accepted her decision as final and irrevocable, and ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... Atlantic to the Pacific—Prosperity. Before its advent, the Goodriches and Gores, the Warings, the Prestons and the Atterburys lived leisurely lives in a sleepy quarter of shade trees and spacious yards and muddy macadam streets, now passed away forever. Existence was decorous, marriage an irrevocable step, wives were wives, and the Authorized Version of the Bible was true from cover to cover. So Dr. Gilman ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... almost paternal glance upon her. "No, girl, no. I can't do that. You're too young. It wouldn't be right to snarl a grown woman's life up with mine—much less a child like you." Then, as if to soften the effect of his irrevocable decision, he added: "Perhaps some time we'll meet again. But it's good-by now." He put his arm about her and drew her to his side and patted her shoulder as if she were a lad. Then he turned. "Lend me a dollar, Judge! ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... governors, against the sovereign, and against Parliament. The original colonies were almost all founded on charters, specific grants which gave them territory and directed in what manner they should carry on government therein. These charters were held by the colonists to be irrevocable except for cause shown to the satisfaction of a court of law; and it was a recognized right of the individual to plead that a colonial law was void because contrary to the charter. Most of the grants ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... was permitted by Congress to form a Constitution and State Government, and admitted as a new State into the Union, by the name of Louisiana. The acts of Congress for these purposes, in addition to sundry important provisions respecting rivers and public lands, which are declared to be irrevocable unless by common consent, annex other terms and conditions, whereby it is established, not only that the Constitution of Louisiana should be republican, but that it should contain the fundamental ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... proved false, their joy should be openly known, and they should be accused for it, and be thereby undone. For this Tiberius had brought a vast number of miseries on the best families of the Romans, since he was easily inflamed with passion in all cases, and was of such a temper as rendered his anger irrevocable, till he had executed the same, although he had taken a hatred against men without reason; for he was by nature fierce in all the sentences he gave, and made death the penalty for the lightest offenses; insomuch that when the Romans heard the rumor about his death gladly, they were restrained ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... I can answer at once. NEVER can I be yours. That decision is irrevocable. I admire you, but cannot ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... lines dash on. These men are now his foes. The tossing breakers of the bar throw their spray high over bulwarks and guard. In grim determination he watches the last American flag he ever will see in friendship, till it fades away from sight. He has now taken the irrevocable step. When he steps on Mexican soil, he will be "a man without a country." Prudential reasons keep him aloof from his companions until Guaymas is reached. Once ashore, the comrades openly unite. Without delay the party plunges into the interior. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... seen or understood, or shall erase the writing and inscribe his own name, or shall divide the sculptures (?) and break them off from my tablets, may Anu and Vul, the Great Gods, my lords, consign his name to perdition! May they curse him with an irrevocable curse! May they cause his sovereignty to perish! May they pluck out the stability of the throne of his empire! Let not his offspring survive him in the kingdom! Let his servants be broken! Let his troops ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... it's worth while going into that," he said, in the solemn tone of one who feels that an irrevocable thing is being uttered. She waited to hear more, apparently. "I think I shall go away—give up the ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... her; and a woman in her circumstances might not have been hard to find who would have persuaded herself that she might overlook "all that," reclaim her lover, and be an Earl's wife. Miss O'Neill rejoined her family at Calais, wrote to Lord F——'s father, the Earl of E——, her final and irrevocable rejection of his son's suit, fell ill of love and sorrow, and lay for some space between life and death for the sake of her unworthy lover; rallied bravely, recovered, resumed her work,—her sway over thousands of human ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... first acts of resistance taken in common by the colonies, and is thus, in a sense, older than the state governments, which were not formed until after the Declaration of Independence. Also, that when the States gave in 1788 their consent to the constitution, their consent was irrevocable. Two quotations from decisions rendered by the Supreme Court of the United States will make clear the arguments and theory ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... And now that I have said it, you must read it so; for I am unalterably determined. Believe me, it is something much more deep than courtesy which compels me to give you my reasons for this final and irrevocable doom. ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... an awe of her ignorance crept over Halleck. Apparently she had not understood the step that Bartley had taken, except as a stage in their quarrel from which they could both retreat, if they would, as easily as from any other dispute; she had not realized it as a final, an almost irrevocable act on his part, which could only be met by reprisal on hers. All those points of law which had been so sharply enforced upon her must have fallen blunted from her longing to be at one with him; she had, perhaps, not imagined her defence in open court, except ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... in the way before him. She stopped him, took him by the hand, urged him to restrain his useless anger, and calmed and quieted him with soothing words. "It is not Helen," said she, "that has caused the destruction of Troy. It is through the irresistible and irrevocable decrees of the gods that the city has fallen. It is useless for you to struggle against inevitable destiny, or to attempt to take vengeance on mere human means and instrumentalities. Think no more of Helen. Think of your family. Your aged father, your helpless wife, your little ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... restore them to liberty. The king was well pleased with my answer, and ordered them to be sent me. They expected the money, which I was in no haste to give, and even hoped it had been forgotten. But the king's words are all written down[217], and are as irrevocable decrees. Seeing that I sent not for the malefactors, his officers delivered them into the hands of my procurator, in my absence this day, taking his note for the sixty rupees, which I paid at my return, and set free ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... if possible, to seek an interview with the person who has wronged or affronted you. Spoken recrimination or reproof is forgotten; but when you have once written down and issued your angry thoughts, they are irrevocable, and a sure ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... plains of Manchuria, come into conflict with the imperialistic policy of the United States, although invisibly at first. Prior to that time the Asiatic races had looked upon the dominion of the white man as a kind of fate, as an irrevocable universal law, but the fall of Port Arthur had shattered this idol once and for all. And after the days of Mukden and Tsushima had destroyed the belief in the invincibility of the European arms, the Japanese agents found fertile soil ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... hall was of itself an omen that the matter was one of moment, but the profusion of lights before the Ancestral Tablets and the various symbols arranged upon the table showed that the occasion was to be regarded as one involving irrevocable issues. ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... and equipped the punt, in which, after lunch, he proposed to take them on the river. Placing those Chinese-looking cushions, he could not tell whether or no he wished to take Annette alone. She was so very pretty—could he trust himself not to say irrevocable words, passing beyond the limits of discretion? Roses on the veranda were still in bloom, and the hedges ever-green, so that there was almost nothing of middle-aged autumn to chill the mood; yet was he nervous, fidgety, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... white the life, and kindling lights in every dark landing-place. We preach the Bible, authentic in its statements, immaculate in its teaching, and glorious in its promises. We preach grace, limitless grace, grace enough for all men, and grace enough for each. We preach Hell, the irrevocable doom of the soul that rejects the Saviour. We preach Heaven, the home of the righteous, the reward of the good, the crowning of them ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... operations. At first, high words had been spoken; then there came the strife of two dissimilar natures, and both were headstrong, and each proud and unrelenting in his own way. Then, at last, had come the separation, irrevocable and painful; and Jim had flung out into the world, a drunkard, who, sober for a fortnight or a month, or three months, would afterward go off on a spree, in which he quoted Sappho and Horace in taverns, and sang bacchanalian songs with a voice meant ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... my approach. I had so much of my old heart left as to be at first grieved by this evident dislike on the part of a creature which had once so loved me. But this feeling soon gave place to irritation. And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart—one ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... no wish by any word of ours to revive bitter feeling or stir up strife. This hallowed day has been from the first a peacemaker. Men, standing with uncovered heads in the presence of the dead, do not care to utter words of reproach for the irrevocable past. We, wearing the blue, can say to the scarred veteran wearers of the gray: "You fought well for the lost cause. But the case was fairly tried in the awful court of war. It took four years for the jury to agree, but the verdict has been given—a ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... an open market economy with free competition. 2. Concurrently with the foregoing, and as provided in this Treaty and in accordance with the timetable and the procedures set out therein, these activities shall include the irrevocable fixing of exchange rates leading to the introduction of a single currency, the ECU, and the definition and conduct of a single monetary policy and exchange rate policy the primary objective of both of which shall be to ...
— The Treaty of the European Union, Maastricht Treaty, 7th February, 1992 • European Union
... arbitrary power of banishment, neither the exiled persons, nor their friends, nor even their children, can reach his presence to plead the cause of the unfortunates who are thus torn from the objects of their affection and their habits; and these sentences of exile, which are now irrevocable, particularly where women are the objects, and which the emperor himself has rightly termed proscriptions, are pronounced without the possibility of making any justification be heard, supposing always that the crime of having displeased ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... courage, inflexible morals to do all that. Julia and with her Roman society have defied Caesar's desires, just as her mother and her set defied them ten years ago. Imagine the grief and despair of our old Emperor! He must do something savage, drastic, irrevocable, to save his state. My heart breaks for him, and yet I cannot help pitying our imperial lady. With her light grace, her audacious humour, among our stern old standards, she has often made me think of a Dryad moving with rosy feet ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... honour to protect and convey her safely to the King's presence, were noble and generous cavaliers, and we may well believe had no evil thoughts. They were not, however, without an occasional chill of reflection when once they had taken the irrevocable step of setting out upon this wild errand. They travelled by night to escape the danger of meeting bands of Burgundians or English on the way, and sometimes had to ford a river to avoid the town, where they would have found a bridge. Sometimes, too, they had many doubts, Bertrand ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... that their looks dealt forth death. Thus, without any remorse at being at once the judge and the accuser, De Marsay coldly condemned to death the man or the woman who had seriously offended him. Although often pronounced almost lightly, the verdict was irrevocable. An error was a misfortune similar to that which a thunderbolt causes when it falls upon a smiling Parisienne in some hackney coach, instead of crushing the old coachman who is driving her to a rendezvous. Thus the bitter and profound sarcasm which ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... his boyish flame into this premature conflagration. Of that I felt convinced. But Bob would not believe me if I told him so; and what else was there for me to tell him? To betray Catherine and the secret of my presence, would simply hasten an irrevocable step. To betray Mrs. Lascelles, and her secret, would certainly not prevent one. Both courses were out of the question upon other grounds. ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... intended for me—when she playfully challenged my curiosity, and implored me to acknowledge an anxiety to knew the contents. The pleading tenderness of her speech and manner now rose vividly to my recollection. It touched me more now—now that the irrevocable step had been taken—far more than it ever could have affected me then. Then, indeed, I remained unaffected save by the caprice of my evil genius. The demon of the blind heart was then uppermost. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... comparatively easy matter to establish beyond doubt the identity of Mrs. Lester's last known visitor. And what would be the outcome? He dared hardly trust his own too lively imagination. Whether or not his testimony gave a clew to the police, the one irrevocable issue was that somewhere in London there was a girl named Evelyn who would regard a certain young man, Francis Berrold Theydon to wit, as a ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... and exertions against "social order" were now destined to be forever ended. Irrevocable was the doom, and the lowering aspect of the proud dame of Waddow, as the door unclosed, and a faint light from the loophole opposite revealed her enemy in all the mockery of repose—grim, erect, and undisturbed—showed the inflexibility of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... only excited Henry to more decided opposition. The parliament, controlled by Cromwell, acknowledged him as the supreme head of the Church of England, and the separation from Rome was final and irrevocable. The tenths were annexed to the crown, and the bishops took a ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... societies, in whatever form or to whatever purpose their intelligence or their caprices may dictate to them, the German, on the contrary, discovers among his very first perceptions that his position and treatment in the world is already fixed and irrevocable. He becomes numbered and labelled from the hour of his birth, and the gathering items of his existence are duly recorded—not in the annals of history—but in the registry of the police. Thus he finds that the State, in the shape of his Zunft or Guild, is his Sick Benefit Club and his Burial Society, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... for carrying it into execution—whether, in fact, a more unfortunate period could have been selected than that which he has chosen? If this were an ordinary measure, I should not oppose it with so much vehemence; but, Sir, it calls in question the wisdom of an irrevocable law—of a law passed at the memorable period of the Revolution. What right have we, Sir, to break down this firm column on which the great men of that age stamped a character of eternity? Are not all authorities against this measure—Pitt, ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... day Tyson was wretched, haunted by the fear of some unforeseen calamity that might still happen and destroy his plans. By way of guarding against it he had stuck the Steamship Company's labels on all his luggage long ago. That seemed to make his decision irrevocable whatever happened. But he would not be safe till ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... "leave it open," in case anything happened to make me change my mind. I warned him that, so far as I could see, I would never change it; but if an "optimist will op"—as Tony remarked—what can you do? You can't prevent his opping, and rather than hear an irrevocable word he bade me good-bye while I protested. This was in the midst of what should have been his second dance, and I didn't feel equal to going indoors again directly after that scene, even to tango. I asked Tony to leave me where I was, to gather ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... hearts on either side of the mangled body, overwhelmed by this sudden and irrevocable disaster which had brought all our long and weary labours to so piteous an end. Then, as the moon rose we climbed to the top of the rocks over which our poor friend had fallen, and from the summit we gazed out over the shadowy moor, half silver and half gloom. Far away, miles off, in the direction ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... finally decided on by her father, and she was on the point of taking—at his wish—the irrevocable step which would bind her for ever to a man whom she could never love. But she did not think of rebellion, she had no thought of grumbling at Fate or at her father: Crystal de Cambray had English blood in her veins, the blood that makes men and women accept the inevitable ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... modified accordingly. The invasion of the loyal States might have been altogether prevented, or it might have been rendered even more disastrous. Speculations of this kind as to movements which could have been made, are not of much value, inasmuch as they cannot alter the irrevocable past. Military operations are subject to so many contingencies, that it is impossible to conjecture with any certainty what results might have followed a different plan of campaign. Yet there could be no improvement in military science, and no benefit from disastrous ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... together for their entire existence, the decisive "Yes"—which she pronounced in a voice filled with emotion from the depths of her heart, and which he said in a much louder tone, and with a tender earnestness. The irrevocable step was taken, the clergyman had placed their right hands together, one clasping the other, as he repeated the prescribed formula: "I unite you in matrimony, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... Southern leaders, on the part of others who care nothing for the South as such; a lingering tenderness, a forgiving magnanimity and generosity, among the people at large, which would in this case be wholly misplaced; and finally an easy faith in the extent and irrevocable nature of the successes already accomplished—all concur to lead on to the commission of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... this great and momentous truth: that wrong and injustice once done cannot be undone; but are eternal in their consequences; once committed, are numbered with the irrevocable Past; that the wrong that is done contains its own retributive penalty as surely and as naturally as the acorn contains the oak. Its consequences are its punishment; it needs no other, and can have no heavier; they are involved in its commission, and cannot be separated ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... present, with the exception of Arnoux, had ever seen either of them engaged in the exercise of his profession. None the less, everyone formulated an irrevocable judgment with ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... imagination saw a devine warning to forsake the "world." In a fright he vowed to St. Ann to become a monk and, though he at once regretted the rash promise, on July 17, 1505, he discharged it by entering the Augustinian friary at Erfurt. After a year's novitiate he took the irrevocable vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. In 1507 he was ordained priest. In the winter of 1510-1 he was sent to Rome on business of the order, and there saw much of the splendor and also of the corruption of the capital of Christendom. Having ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... time for his army and all its followers to cross the bridge of boats over the Aboras, received letters with bad news from Sallust, the prefect of Gaul, entreating him to suspend his expedition against the Parthians, and imploring him not in such an unseasonable manner to rush on irrevocable destruction ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... reply that I thanked her for her present graciousness, and that it was upon that my thought should dwell in recalling my stay here, and not upon what was past and irrevocable; which brought the colour to her dry cheek, I thought, but I could say nothing else. And so I bowed, and we rode away; my few belongings having gone before by carrier, all save my violin, which I carried on the saddle ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... I honour you; a thousand times better that you should separate now than find out your mistake afterwards when it is irrevocable. Thank God, He has given you such courage! But you must have suffered—I know you must;' and she tenderly kissed ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... knew, a wild and stormy wind thundered on the walls of the prison. Within, where the very atmosphere was self-contained, a cold and solemn peace held like an irrevocable judgment. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... men is found the power of sustained conception necessary to the successful composition of so prolix a tale; and certainly I have never betrayed the ownership of such a qualification. The tale, nevertheless, is an irrevocable fact; and my present business it is ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... at all, by a fleet from the naval depot and a yard on the Mississippi River." After the State of Illinois had expended millions on the Illinois and Michigan canal, was Congress to begrudge a few thousands to remove the sand-bars which impeded navigation in this "national highway by an irrevocable ordinance"?[175] ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... informing him that "in consequence of the marriage which he had been pleased to contract Mr. Osborne ceases to consider him henceforth as a member of his family. This determination is final and irrevocable." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... wife. Our marriage is irrevocable. The dishonoured man is the everlasting outcast. What are earthly possessions to me, if within myself shame faces me? Let all go. Though I have lost Camilla, I will be worthy of her. Not a pen no pen; it is the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... inculcated the duty of passive obedience, and descanted on the inevitable mischiefs of freedom. The lawyers and historians concurred in teaching, that the Imperial authority was held, not by the delegated commission, but by the irrevocable resignation of the senate; that the emperor was freed from the restraint of civil laws, could command by his arbitrary will the lives and fortunes of his subjects, and might dispose of the empire as of his private patrimony. [71] The most eminent of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... may your folly do no further mischief. If the last act is yet to do, I who have loved you, esteemed you, reverenced you, and served you[1], I who long thought you the first of womankind, entreat that, before your fate is irrevocable, I may once more see you. I was, I once ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Alfred Boucher, has just announced to me the honor you have done me. But before that decision is irrevocable," said the lawyer, "I think that I ought to explain to you who and what your candidate is, so as to leave you free to take back your word if my declaration should disturb ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... Holland had a good deal to say on the subject of the codicil, when he was alone with Mrs. Linton, a few days later. He had by no means made up his mind to sever his connection with the dear old mother Church, he said. He could not see that there was any need for his taking so serious a step—an irrevocable step. It was his feeling at that moment, he declared, that he might be able to effect the object of his life—which was, of course, the reform of the Church—better by remaining within its walls than by severing himself from it. He must take time ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... test of the true strength of a society, for the most valuable things in a human state are the irrevocable things—marriage, for instance. And architecture approaches nearer than any other art to being irrevocable, because it is so difficult to get rid of. You can turn a picture with its face to the wall; it would be a nuisance to turn that Roman cathedral with its face to the wall. You can tear ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... length listened to the public voice, and the irrevocable edict of total expulsion from the realm was issued. Their whole property was seized at once, and just money enough left to discharge their expenses[86] to foreign lands, perhaps equally inhospitable. The 10th of October was the fatal day. The King benignantly allowed them till All Saints' ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... he shook it off a dozen times, but it grew more and more poignant, until it settled on his heart, a lancinating pain which neither work nor pleasure could remove. Daily he grew feebler, losing at each effort some power of resistance. One day he took up the pen to write the irrevocable. But the reality of the ink and paper frightened him. "Will you be my wife?" seemed to him silly. Even in this crisis self-esteem lay uppermost in his mind; and he wrote many letters before he felt certain he had guarded himself against ridicule. At last he folded ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... the farewell of the emigrant, torn by cruel fate from country and friends, hope smiles in his tears; the fortune that drives away can bring back; but the farewell of death leaves no fissure in its cloud for the gleam of hope—it is final, terrible, and, on this side the grave, irrevocable. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... no wish to press your Majesty," the Premier went on; "but at the present moment we are still under orders that to-morrow the definite and irrevocable announcement is to be ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... perfectly safe in pretending to accede to his father's plan to send him to a monastery, for his father would never think of such a thing as putting the threat in execution. Besides, if he did, it would do no harm; for the vows that he would take, though so utterly irrevocable in the case of common men, would all cease to be of force in his case, in the event of his father's death, and his succeeding to the throne. And, in the mean time, he could go on, they said, taking his ease and pleasure, and living as he had ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... absolute and irrevocable determination that the bill is to be extended to us, the sooner the great penalty is inflicted the better; for in politics and commerce, as in all the other affairs of life, absolute and certain evil is better than uncertainty ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... prairies, which, always fresh with the coolness of dew and of growing things, had drifted in at the tiny windows of the Baker ranch-house. She recalled the sweet scent of the buffalo grass with a vague sense of depression and irrevocable loss. ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... less pronounced. But it certainly exists. In the middle of the last century Lecky wrote (History of European Morals, vol. ii, p. 285) that habitual prostitution "is in no other European country so hopelessly vicious or so irrevocable." That statement, which was also made by Parent-Duchatelet and other foreign observers, is fully confirmed by the evidence on record. But it is a statement which would hardly be made to-day, except perhaps, in reference to special confined ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the same exultation, the same pleasure mingled with bitter sadness, the same perception of the irrevocable passing of beautiful things, and the equally inexorable coming on of care and trouble, as filled my heart that night. Whether any of the other members of my class vibrated with similar emotion or not I cannot say, but I do recall that some of the girls annoyed me by their ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... added an indefinable fear, now when the irrevocable separation confronted her; the thought that she was to leave her home was tinged with a vague sense of regretfulness, of impalpable foreboding. Sometimes a quivering pang would pierce her heart when ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... the one member of the family who appears really terrible. His device, Aut Caesar, aut nihil, was not a chance phrase, but the irrevocable decision to be a ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... rose with a dreary sense of the irrevocable. A door seemed to have closed behind her, and the future stretched before her in a straight dusty path with few nooks and shadows. This was not the blithe morning of betrothal she had looked for. The rapturous ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... the new republic rose from the horrors of civil war and foreign tyranny to its uncontested rank as a free and independent state among the most powerful nations of Europe. No country had ever done more for glory; and the result of its efforts was the irrevocable guarantee of civil and religious liberty, the great ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... overlooked the other sister. He was not absent-minded where she was concerned. He had resolutely cast her out of his mind. With conscious deliberation he had banished her far beyond his horizon. His only remaining difficulty was not to discover the nature of his next step, but how to take it. He felt an irrevocable destiny bidding him solicit Leonetta's hand, but he rightly foresaw that there might be some difficulty ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... union. She encloses a letter to Mr. Beauclerc, which she begs may be given to him to-morrow. General Clarendon will find she has dissolved their engagement as decidedly as he could desire, and that her decision will be irrevocable. And since General Clarendon has ceased to esteem her, Miss Stanley cannot longer accept his protection, or encroach upon his hospitality. She trusts that he will not consider it as any want of respect, that she has resolved to retire from his family as soon as possible. She is certain ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... natives of this country, and also the Langgos and the Umiros, shall hear that I have exchanged blood with the Pacha, they will have thorough confidence, as they will know that he will always be true to me, and I to him; but without this irrevocable contract, they will always suspect some intrigue, either upon your ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... her husband and her home still, and after all the changes that life had brought she was content. No one could doubt that. And Graeme asked herself, would it ever be so with her? Would she ever cease to regret the irrevocable past and learn to grow happy in a new way? She prayed that it might be so. She longed for the tranquil content of those old days before her heart was startled from its girlhood's quiet. How long it seemed since she had been quite at peace ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... as fly the irrevocable hours Futile as air, or strong as fate to make Your lives of sand or granite. Awful powers, Even as men choose, they either give ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... the greatest, the other's end and crown. To the "weak" mortal priesthood of the law, never warranted by the vow of God to abide always in possession, succeeds One who is Priest, and King, and SON, sealed for His office by the irrevocable vow, "consecrated ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... for harness, one for the saddle), his club, his visiting, his slow reimbursements, made it impossible for him to wait. Moreover, the elder Astier suddenly declared that he was not going to give any more; and all that the mother could attempt or say for her darling son failed to shake this irrevocable decision. Her will, which had hitherto swayed the establishment, was now resisted. Thenceforward there was a continual struggle. The mother used her ingenuity to make little dishonest profits on the household ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Nothing would induce him, he confessed to a friend, to be kept vaguely waiting; he would break it all off at once. His reception at Windsor threw an entirely new light upon the situation. The wheel of fortune turned with a sudden rapidity; and he found, in the arms of Victoria, the irrevocable assurance of ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... to realize that his thoughts were not only of her and the irrevocable step she had planned to take, and her frightened face whitened as she instinctively gasped her ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... near Baldassare, with his short legs crossed, and his thumbs stuck into the arm-holes of his coat, is Count Orsetti, smiling, fat, and innocuous. His mother has not yet decided when he is to speak the irrevocable words to Teresa Ottolini. Orsetti is far too dutiful a son to do so before she gives him permission. His mother might change her mind at the last moment; then Orsetti would change his mind, too, and burn incense on other ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... girl's first love-kiss, and the kiss of a man who loved in earnest for the first time, but it seemed a great and a fearful thing to her, irrevocable as lost innocence itself; and he, whose masculine light-heartedness made not much of mere kisses, and laughed at the thought that love could do much wrong, felt that he had given a pledge he must redeem and a ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... when Micky turned up at the Delands'. He had taken extravagant pains with his toilet, lingering over it as long as possible. Ever since the arrival of that parcel from Esther, he had been trying to make up his mind to take the irrevocable step, and ask Marie Deland to be his wife. He was miserably sure that she would accept him, miserably sure that he was ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... announcement to be prepared, to the effect that the stupendous collection would only remain in its present quarters one day longer; in fulfilment of which threat (for all announcements connected with public amusements are well known to be irrevocable and most exact), the stupendous ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... seeing they are so certain, so sure, so irrevocable and firm, and seeing the saving faith of the things contained therein, is to reform the soul, and bring it over into the things of God, really conforming to the things contained therein, both to the point of justification, and also an impartial ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... invitingly with gas; they alone were alive in the weekly death of the town; and they gleamed everywhere, at every corner; the town appeared to consist chiefly of public-houses. He dropped the letter into the box in the market-place; he heard it fall. His heart beat. The deed was now irrevocable. He wondered what Monday held for him. The quiescent melancholy of the town invaded his spirit, and mingled with his own remorseful sorrow for the unstrenuous past, and his apprehensive solicitude about the future. It was not unpleasant, this brooding sadness, half-despondency ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... for a day or so it goes a deep blackish purple that delights me exceedingly. My grandfather's hat—I understood when I was a little boy that I was to have that some day. But now I get a hat for ten shillings, or less, two or three times a year. In the old days buying clothes was well-nigh as irrevocable as marriage. Our flat is furnished with glittering things—wanton arm-chairs just strong enough not to collapse under you, books in gay covers, carpets you are free to drop lighted fusees upon; you may scratch what you like, upset your coffee, cast your ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... enormous a crime deserved, quite forgetting to ask me if I had anything to offer in my defence. At last they settled that, as a commencement, I should receive five hundred bastinadoes on the soles of my feet, and if I lived, about as many more on my belly. The cadi was about to pronounce his irrevocable fetva, when I took the liberty of interrupting this rapid course of justice. 'O cadi,' said I, 'and ye, mollahs, whose beards drop wisdom, let your slave offer, at the footstool of justice, the precious proofs ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... him to a strange wondering; he sat at the coffin and watched it. His wife's face it was, and above the sorrow of irrevocable parting floated the thought that she did not look happy as she lay in her bed of death. Monross had seen but two dead faces before, those of his father and mother. Both had worn upon the mask which death models an expression of relief. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... electricity—and refer to them as if they had an objective reality, when they are only concepts in our own minds. Nature has no statute books and no legislators, though we habitually think of her processes under these symbols. Human laws can be annulled, but Nature's laws cannot. Her ways are irrevocable, though theology revokes or suspends them in its own behalf. It was Joshua's mind that stopped while he conquered his enemies, ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... think that she was prepared for the only solution which appeared to be possible or acceptable. Alan and she were to go their separate ways: that was, she told herself, the one thing fixed and unalterable. They might meet again as friends, and give each other help and sympathy; but it was their irrevocable doom that they should live apart and alone. That which her heart had sanctioned hitherto, it would sanction no longer; the cause and the justification were gone, and so were the courage ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant |
