"Unsay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... manner in which it was effected was something curious. Mr. Lushington, who by this time was got completely over, himself tells you that in conferences with Major Calliaud, and by arguments and reasons by him delivered, he was persuaded to unsay his swearing, and to declare that he believed that the affidavit which he made at Patna, and while the transaction was recent or nearly recent, must be a mistake: that he believed (what is amazing ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... do so, at any rate for the present. You will own that it might be possible that you would have to unsay ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... with doings which not will, But misery, hath wrested from me. Where 470 Easily canst thou find one miserable, And not inforced oft-times to part from truth, If it may stand him more in stead to lie, Say and unsay, feign, flatter, or abjure? But thou art placed above me; thou art Lord; From thee I can, and must, submiss, endure Cheek or reproof, and glad to scape so quit. Hard are the ways of truth, and rough to walk, Smooth on the tongue discoursed, pleasing to the ear, And tunable ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... blindly,' said I?—No! That saying I unsay: the wings Hear I not in praevenient winnowings Of coming songs, that lift my hair and stir it? What winds with music wet do the sweet storm foreshow! Utter stagnation Is the solstitial slumber of the spirit, The blear and blank negation of all life: But these sharp questionings mean ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... coming to his recollection, he could hold his peace, and did so. There was nothing to come—not likely to be—that could unsay that revelation that he had been a married man, and did not know of his wife's death; not even that he and she had been divorced, which would have been nearly as bad. He knew the worst of it, at any rate, and Rosalind ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... upon me as surely as upon yourself. You have shown yourself great this evening; I feel that I am worthy of our friendship, and I mean to prove myself worthy of it. I have not always been kind; I was in the wrong; forgive me, dearest; I wish I could unsay anything that may have hurt you; I take back those words. One common sorrow has brought us together again, for I do not know which of us is the more miserable. M. de Montriveau was not here to-night; do you understand what that means?—None of ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... the tale he had told, nor with the necessity he wanted to lay me under of appearing what I was not: that every step he took was a wry one, a needless wry one: and since he thought it necessary to tell the people below any thing about me, I insisted that he should unsay all he had said, and tell ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... that Napoleon drew have been effaced; the kingdoms that he set up have disappeared. But all the armies and statecraft of Europe cannot unsay what you ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... enough and more have I this day Spoken, which now I shame not to unsay. How should a woman work, to the utter end, Hate on a damned hater, feigned a friend; How pile perdition round him, hunter-wise, Too high for overleaping, save by lies? To me this hour was dreamed of long ago; A thing of ancient hate. 'Twas very slow In coming, but it came. And here I stand ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... my heart, impulsive and wayward, Pleaded your own, and spake out, forgetful perhaps of decorum? 635 Certainly you can forgive me for speaking so frankly, for saying What I ought not to have said, yet now I can never unsay it; For there are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion, That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, 640 Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... said the archdeacon. "Your wife knows better than that. You tell her what I call her, and if she complains of the name I'll unsay it." It may therefore be supposed that Dr Thorne, and Mrs Thorne, and the archdeacon, knew each other intimately, and understood each other's feelings on ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... had said when it was too late to unsay it, clapped her hands over her mouth and groaned. Apologies could only make the matter worse, so she tried to hide her confusion by passing around the box of candy. It passed around so many times during the course of the afternoon that the box was almost empty by train-time. Mary ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Miss Peel, the honor of the most fascinating college in England is imperiled. Unsay ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... instant answer in thunderbolts and flames. They gave me more room in the bed forthwith, and then the elder sat up and expressed his sense of my awfulness. I was already a little frightened at my temerity, but when he asked me categorically to unsay what I had said, what could I do but ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... that God lives in matter is pantheistic. The error, which says that Soul is in body, Mind is in matter, and good is in evil, must unsay it and cease from such 205:1 utterances; else God will continue to be hidden from hu- manity, and mortals will sin without knowing that they 205:3 are sinning, will lean on matter instead of Spirit, stumble with lameness, drop with drunkenness, consume with dis- case, - all ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... are not. These I follow; Not for their sport and laughter, but for gain To laugh with them, and wonder at their parts: Whate'er they say, I praise it; if again They contradict, I praise that too: does any Deny? I too deny: affirm? I too Affirm: and in a word, I've brought myself To say, unsay, swear, and forswear, at pleasure: And that is now ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that. Three days, perhaps, three long, interminable days to think of him and to long for him. Could she live three days? She sprang to her feet. She must see him again—now—this minute; hear him unsay that awful thing. Why, he couldn't belong to Madelene Waldstricker! Like a deer, Tess sped along the rocks in the direction of the lane. A night bird brushed a slender wing against her curls as he shot by her. To him she paid no heed save to ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... that if I desired that you should read the letter, it was only to contradict everything I stated in it; to unsay a hundred times all that you read there in your ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... be sure; and even if such be the case, is it the fault of your character, or of another's perceptions? But now, let me unsay what I said in anger. In one thing, and in all things, I deeply respect you. If you think scarcely enough of yourself, and too much of others, what ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... of the man who at this late day attempts to say anything new about Washington. But perhaps it may be possible to unsay some of the things which have been said, and which, though they were at one time new, have never at any time ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke
... all that she knew;—all that I knew. You knew all that her mother knew. No, Lord Scroope. It cannot be that you should be so unutterably a villain. You are your own masther. Unsay what you have said to me, and her ears shall never be wounded or her heart broken by a ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... of seeming brutal, Honor, I warn you that I'll not give you one minute's peace till you unsay those words—for ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... a pretty muddle! Barney Custer swore at himself inwardly for a boorish fool. What in the world had ever prompted him to speak those ridiculous words! And now how was he to unsay them without mortifying this beautiful girl who had just ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... persons. It might have arisen from inadvertence; it might have arisen from the foolishness of some Jewish transcriber, who resolved, at all costs, to drag the book into harmony with Judaism, and make Job unsay his heresy. This view has the merit of fully clearing up the obscurity; another, however, has been suggested by Eichorn, who originally followed Kennicott, but discovered, as he supposed, a less violent hypothesis, which was equally ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... and his hawking-party; and as he was staring about, who shou'd he see ushered into a fine house, and hear being call'd by a fine name, but my aunt Winifred—old Winifred Winbuttle, the housekeeper! Very well—I cou'dn't say or unsay this, you know; so I directly gets leave of my lord to come myself, and stare about; for thinks I, if I am made a fool of, I'm only where I was, you know. (With ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... dear Anna, go to London,' I said, 'and implore my mother to retract this wish, unsay her words. I would rather give up the world, than take it without your cheerful acquiescence. Your happiness is every thing to me. You ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... the Portuguese, which I thought very reasonable, as the Portuguese had always been injurious, and had done many vile things against them. Yet, unless we continue able to resist the Portuguese, they will soon unsay that speech for their own ease. When he had viewed our ship, with our ordnance and defensive preparations, we sent him and his train on shore in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the highest degree. I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what this harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respects safe to spend the night with him. And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if true I take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I've no idea of sleeping with a madman; and you, sir, YOU I mean, landlord, YOU, sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... in the road. "And I say, Hodge Dawson," he exclaimed with flashing eyes, "that 'tis a shame for a lout like thee to so miscall thy thousand-time betters. And what's more, thou shalt unsay that, or I will make thee swallow thy words ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... to Lizzie Robertson's for an hour. My heart is knocking at my lips, and I'll be saying what I would give my last bawbee to unsay. Keep a ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... rejected; for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears." Something that he had never felt before struck him as appalling in the awful fixedness of all past deeds and words,—the unkind words once said, which no tears could unsay,—the kind ones suppressed, to which no agony of wishfulness could give a past reality. There were particular times in their past history that he remembered so vividly, when he saw her so clearly,—doing some little thing for ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "Oh, Rosannah, unsay those words! There is some dreadful mystery here, some hideous mistake. I am utterly earnest and sincere when I say I never said anything about any song. I would not hurt you for the whole world . . . . Rosannah, dear speak ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he; and I never saw a man look so cast down: he took up the halfpenny off the flag, and walked away quite sober-like by the shock. Now, though as easy a man, you would think, as any in the wide world, there was no such thing as making him unsay one of these sort of vows, which he had learned to reverence when young, as I well remember teaching him to toss up for bog-berries on my knee. [VOWS.—It has been maliciously and unjustly hinted that the lower classes of the people of Ireland ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... emerald. No, no—that was not fair or kind, Wicker. I unsay it. Mr. Crow and all of them have been good to you. Forgive me the sarcasm. Mr. Crow is perfectly impossible, but I like him. He has a heart, and that is more than most of us can say. And now let us return to earth once more. When will you be ready ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... cooler and better sense; and by that means lay yourself lower and at his feet, whom before you pretended to overtop. I do not find anything a gentleman can say so vicious in him as unsaying what he has said is infamous, when to unsay it is authoritatively extracted from him; forasmuch as obstinacy is more excusable in a man of honour than pusillanimity. Passions are as easy for me to evade, as they are ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... last letter that I, Tom Brixton, shall ever write. (I put down my name now, in case I never finish it.) O dearest mother! what would I not now give to unsay all the hard things I have ever said to you, and to undo all the evil I have done. But this cannot be. 'Twice bought!' It is strange how these words run in my mind. I was condemned to death at the gold-fields—my comrades bought me off. Fred—dear ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... command by Madeline. A woman who had lost her child two years before, was pointed out by her as having throttled it. Afraid of being tortured, she fled or hid herself. Her husband, her father, went weeping to Sainte-Baume, hoping of course to soften the inquisitors. But Madeline durst not unsay her words; so ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... not go with you, madam," I repeated. "I love you too well. I have done you so much wrong, meaning to do right, that I dare not now risk an act which I know to be wrong. Oh," I cried, as my distress grew, "oh, unsay those words, Aurelia! You could not mean ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett |
