"Irrevocable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... it. Or suppose—for he knew the persuasive power of that glib tongue only too well—suppose her brother-in-law should persuade her to do it. Should he sit still—in seclusion, as his late adviser had counseled—and let this irrevocable and final move be made? After a divorce—Seth's idea of divorces were vague and Puritanical—there would be no hope. He and Emeline could never come together after that. And he must give her up and all his hopes of happiness, all that he had dreamed of late, would be but dreams, ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... any one told them a fortnight later, that they had been friends; there no longer existed any reason for such a thing. Fantine had remained alone. The father of her child gone,—alas! such ruptures are irrevocable,—she found herself absolutely isolated, minus the habit of work and plus the taste for pleasure. Drawn away by her liaison with Tholomyes to disdain the pretty trade which she knew, she had neglected to keep ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... 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 to ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... in A Doll's House, Ibsen's puppets came to life, they have refused ever since to be put back into their boxes. The manager may play what tricks with them he pleases, but he cannot get them back into their boxes. They are alive, and they live with a weird, spectacular, but irrevocable life. But, after the last play of all, the dramatic epilogue, When we Dead Awaken, the puppets have gone back into their boxes. Now they have come to obey the manager, and to make mysterious gestures which they do not understand, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... disappearing form looked like the moping spirit of guilt and regret, haunting the scene of the irrevocable. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... 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
... novice entered: to her doom she went, Gems on her robes, and flowers upon her brow. Virgin of tender years, poor innocent! Pause, ere thou speak th' irrevocable vow. What if thy heart should change, thy spirit fail? She kneels. The black-robed sisters cease to bow. They raise a hymn which seems a funeral wail, While o'er the pageant falls ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... are baptized into his death. "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?" (Romans 6:3). "The wages of sin is death." This is God's irrevocable statement, but Christ died for our sins and Paul's argument here is that we died with him, so the demands of the law have been met and we are to go free. No wonder Paul could say, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... shortcomings. They dissect their own weaknesses and failures with the most extraordinary reasonableness. One of the defects upon which they dwell is the love of finding substitutes for positive action, of avoiding entering upon a course of action which might be irrevocable. One almost wonders whether their power of self-criticism is not itself another of these substitutes. At all events, they are frank to the point of loquacity. Between the opposite camps there are always communications ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... the war and my confounded ill-health, I should, of course, have been quite independent by this time. I have explained my present unbearable situation to her in a general sort of way, and I know that she is in complete sympathy with me. Your resolve to not increase my allowance is, I suppose, irrevocable. I shall soon be in a position, I hope, to dispense with what you are already so gracious as to allow me. I have not deemed it wise to tell her at this time of my unfortunate and, as you say, foolish mismanagement of my affairs before and ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... conflict between this earthly passion and his heavenly calling and election. But the author has taken pains to make the obstacle between Andrea and Ilaria absolutely unreal. The fact that Andrea has as yet taken no irrevocable vow is not the essence of the matter. Vow or no vow, there would have been a tragic conflict if Andrea had felt absolutely certain of his calling to the priesthood, and had defied Heaven, and imperilled his ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... gentlemen 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 ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... have possessed her to let me take those poor unfortunate children away from her, and muddle up everything without her, was a mystery to herself. She hoped that, at least, I had done nothing irrevocable ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... evident from his words that he was thinking not of Shere Ali—not of the human being who had just his one life to live, just his few years with their opportunities of happiness, and their certain irrevocable periods of distress—but of the Prince of Chiltistan who might or might not be a cause of great trouble to the Government of ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... has considered all of them himself, and has been shown how small they are, when they are faced boldly, but he wishes you, too, to feel them as strongly and completely as possible before committing yourself to irrevocable vows, so that you may never, never have to regret the ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... however, America is very old indeed. In one respect America is more historic than England; I might almost say more archaeological than England. The record of one period of the past, morally remote and probably irrevocable, is there preserved in a more perfect form as a pagan city is preserved at Pompeii. In a more general sense, of course, it is easy to exaggerate the contrast as a mere contrast between the old world and the new. There is a superficial satire about ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... impromptu displays to fall below the more careful and premeditated efforts, on the contrary have oftentimes deep reason to mourn over the escape of inspirations and ideas born from the momentary fervors of inspiration, but fugitive and irrevocable as the pulses ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... the Princess Mathilde, and I know thoroughly the story of their break, which seems to me irrevocable. Sainte- Beuve was outraged against Dalloz and has gone to le Temps. The princess begged him not to do anything about it. He did not listen to her. That is all. My opinion on it, if you wish to know it, is this. The first wrong was done by the princess, who was hasty; but the ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... turns on what Gwen thinks. Believing, as I do, that my child may be sacrificing herself to expiate a sin of mine, I have no course but to do my best to prevent her, or, at least to postpone irrevocable action until it is certain that she is animated by no such motive. I might advocate that you and she should not meet, for—suppose we say—a twelvemonth, but that I have so often noticed that absence not only 'makes the heart grow fonder,' as the song says, but also makes ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... must be sacred and irrevocable is established by the conduct of Minamoto Yorinobu who, having promised to save the life of a bandit if the latter restore a child taken as a hostage, refuses subsequently to inflict any punishment whatever on the robber. That a bushi must prefer death to surrender ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... his voice low and shaken, because he knew that now he touched the decisive minute, after which there could only be an irrevocable fate. "Messieurs, in order to continue my experiment I am obliged to go through movements that might suggest to you the idea of an attempt at escape, or evasion. I hope you don't regard me as fool enough to have any ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... fashioned in Clapham. Neither in England nor America would a proposal to abolish marriage be tolerated for a moment; and yet nothing is more certain than that in both countries the progressive modification of the marriage contract will be continued until it is no more onerous nor irrevocable than any ordinary commercial deed of partnership. Were even this dispensed with, people would still call themselves husbands and wives; describe their companionships as marriages; and be for the most part unconscious ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... 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. ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... furnished, and looks as if it was inhabited. A great many good pictures, and Canova's Hercules and Lycus, which I do not admire. In the evening to the Convent of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, which is remarkably clean and well kept. There are forty-five friars (Passionisti), whose vows were not irrevocable, and, though the cases do not often occur, they can lay aside the habit if they please. They live on charity. In their garden is a beautiful palm, one of three which grow in Rome. They have several apartments for strangers who may like to retire to the convent for a few days, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Quincey's mind seemed to have become remarkably lucid; every thought in it ground to excessive subtlety in the mill of her logic. She saw it all clearly. There had been some misunderstanding, some terrible mistake. She had forfeited his friendship through a blunder nameless but irrevocable. Once or twice she wondered if Mrs. Moon could be at the bottom of it—or Martha. Had her aunt carried out her dreadful threat of giving him a hint to send in his account? And had the hint implied that for the future all accounts ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... be avoided, by that deliberation and delay, which prudence prescribes to irrevocable choice. In the variety and jollity of youthful pleasures, life may be well enough supported, without the help of a partner. Longer time will increase experience, and wider views will allow better opportunities of inquiry and selection: one advantage, at least, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... despair, until one morning he came to me, his face white as a sheet, and held out to me, with tremulous hands, a tiny sheet, pointing with his finger to one particular notice. It was not much, apparently, but it was the verdict, final and irrevocable, of insolvency and bankruptcy. It was a list of judgments, marked in the Superior Courts, against those who are unable to meet their demands; and ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... in the abyss of wretchedness. Such as you describe this happy fair, was once my Serafina, rich in every grace of mind and body which nature could bestow. Had it pleased Heaven to bless her with a lover like Renaldo! but no more, the irrevocable shaft is fled. I will not taint your enjoyment with my ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... nostrum, Amen," which, since there was no Mass, closed the ceremony, he felt more master of himself and his emotions than at any time previously during this day. A sensation of finality, of the irrevocable, came to him. He said within himself, "This matter has passed out of my hands into the hands of God." And in the midst of the violence of the storm a calm stole upon his spirit. "God knows best!" he said within himself. ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... St. Petersburg and London no trust was felt in Prussia as long as Haugwitz was at the helm. The man who had twice steered the ship of state under Napoleon's guns might do it again; and both England and Russia waited to see some irrevocable step taken before they again risked an army ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... God's immediate action brings in the supernatural, the miraculous, or the Gospel. Each has its proper place; and neither must be dwelt on to the exclusion of the other. We are all under the hard exactitude of the law, with its irrevocable condemnation, until the Gospel intervenes, and not only pardons the past, but enables us to fulfil the law's requirements for the future. The reign of second causes alone would take away man's moral responsibility, making us all mere creatures of our environment, ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... furent les incidents de ce jour qui a fixe le sort de l'humanite. L'opinion que Jesus etait ressuscite s'y fonda d'une maniere irrevocable. La secte, qu'on avait cru eteindre en tuant le maitre, fut des lors ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... she could only lie on her bed through the Sunday morning, wretched in a sense of abandonment. And then began to assail her that last and subtlest of temptations, the thought that already she had taken an irrevocable step, that an endeavour to return would only be trouble spent in vain, that the easy course was, in truth, the only one now open to her. Mrs. Tubbs was busy circulating calumnies; that they were nothing more than calumnies could never be proved; ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... very distant relationship between him and his new wife. Ingebiorg and her brother appealed to Pope Celestine III, who declared the sentence of divorce illegal and null. Philip not only paid no attention to the numerous letters and legates of the Pope, but he tried to make the divorce irrevocable by taking a new wife. After several rebuffs he found in Agnes of Meran, the daughter of a Bavarian noble, one who was willing to accept the dubious position (1196). Innocent III at once took up an uncompromising ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... Beale from your father, my dear, written from Spa and making the rupture between them perfectly irrevocable. It lets her know, and not in pretty language, that, as we technically say, he deserts her. It puts an end for ever to their relations." He ran his eyes over it again, then appeared to make up his mind. "In fact it concerns you, Maisie, so nearly and refers to you so particularly ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... new Republic. Count De Maistre, with his wife and children, fled from Chambery across the Alps to Aosta. 'Ma chere amie,' he said to his wife, by the side of a great rock which he never afterwards forgot, 'the step that we are taking to-day is irrevocable; it decides our lot for life;' and the presentiment was true. Soon the Loi des Allobroges was promulgated, which enjoined upon all who had left their homes in Savoy to return instantly, under pain of confiscation ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... the grand creature he had just begun to tame. He was going to extinguish the pallid light of Susan's prettiness in the brightness of Myrtle's beauty. He would bring this young man, neutralized and rendered entirely harmless by his irrevocable pledge to a slight girl, face to face with a masterpiece of young womanhood, and say to him, not in words, but as plainly as speech could have told him, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... in British South Africa, and nearly everybody in England, supposed the annexation to be irrevocable. Leading members of the parliamentary Opposition had condemned it. But when that Opposition, victorious in the general election of 1880, took office in April of that year, the officials in South Africa, whose guidance they sought, made light of Boer discontent, and declared ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... no further mischief! If the last act is yet to do, I, who have loved you, esteemed you, reverenced you, and served you—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 was, madam, most ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... the feigned offers of the seven and five years' franchise. According to original programme, the very next step to accomplish the coup d'etat was the immediate seizure of all Colonial ports, and to complete a general and irrevocable Boer rising all over ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... may tell what stirs, controls, And shapes mad fancies into facts? What trivial things may quicken souls To irrevocable, swift acts? Now who has known, who understood, Wherefore some idle thing May stab with deadlier sting Than well-considered insult could?— May spur the languor of a mood And rouse ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... suffering, the Jew is loath to love that which is most sacred to the Russian soul. For the benefit of those in whom resound the separate clashing voices of this spiritual dispute, I shall quote in conclusion this final and irrevocable verdict of Dostoyevsky, who had the reputation of ...
— The Shield • Various
... when, in order to make her condemnation and execration of her memory more irrevocable, she would heap charges upon her and slander her. She would add to the dead woman's horrible list of sins. She would reproach Germinie for more than was justly chargeable to her. She would attribute crimes to her ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Fordyce, Gladys was intentionally and wilfully deceiving him. His impassioned pleading had touched her heart. At a time when she was crying out for something to satisfy her need, in an unguarded moment, she had mistaken an awakened, fleeting impression for love, and passed what was now in her eyes an irrevocable word. She was no coquette, who gives a promise the one day to be carelessly withdrawn the next. George Fordyce had been fortunate in gaining the promise of a woman whose word was as her bond. There are circumstances ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... traitor!' exclaimed the commander. 'In ten minutes from this moment let him be a spectacle between the heavens and the earth.' The wife and daughter clung to his knees in supplication, but an irrevocable oath had passed his lips that never should treason receive his forgiveness after that of the miscreant Arnold. 'For my own life,' he said, while tears rolled down his noble countenance at the agony of the wife and daughter: 'For my own life I heed not; but the liberty of my native land—the ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... a young lady of too much resolution and energy of character to permit herself much useless and unseemly sorrow for the irrevocable past; so, having devoted only the proper portion of regret to it, she wisely turned her whole attention towards the future, which was now vastly more important to her. And she surveyed her position, and its hopes, doubts, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and country were all in perfect accord; her prosaic and hum-drum practice at home was now transmuted into the purest poetry, and under the promptings of this new afflatus she developed a grace and a daring which accomplished the final and irrevocable conquest of all her ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... now joined between America and England. They faced each other —the great, historic figure, and the stripling of a century—and knew that the limit had been reached. The next move might be irrevocable. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... just about one minute before he spoke, and during that minute each man there realized that what was coming would be quite irrevocable. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... monotony of the days. At his own urgent request he was given charge of the lonely prison, its solitude appearing to him the one bearable condition of life. He has his work to do and he does it well, and always between Count Sagan and his dreams stands the irrevocable figure ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... motive which is not stated in my text, but is involved in the very idea of opportunity or season—viz. that the time for the high and noble purposes of which I have been speaking is rigidly limited and bounded; and once past is irrevocable. The old, wise mythological story tells us that Occasion is bald behind, and is to be grasped by the forelock. The moment that is past had in it wonderful possibilities for us. If we did not grasp them with promptitude and decision they have gone for ever. You may as well try ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... great gods, my Lords, let them consign his name to perdition; let them curse him with an irrevocable curse; let them cause his sovereignty to perish; let them pluck out the stability of the throne of his empire; let not offspring survive him in the kingdom;[1] let his servants be broken; let his troops be defeated; let him fly vanquished before ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... bitter 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. ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... 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
... accept vows that were no longer insincere, her pride became her punishment, as well as my own. In a moment of bitter and desperate feeling; she accepted the offers of another, and made the marriage bond a fatal and irrevocable barrier to ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "I am innocent; I swear it upon my honor!" Dartelle averted his face, but not quickly enough to prevent Pascal from noticing the look of withering scorn in his eyes. Then, feeling that he was condemned, that his sentence was irrevocable, and that there was no longer any hope: "I know the only thing that remains for me to do!" ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... make for the Filberts. Too tender are the memories which wreathe those opal isles, too irrevocable the changes which must have taken place. Rather let us preserve their ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... inactive thou shalt nowhere discover; seek every where from the granite mountain, slow-mouldering since Creation, to the passing cloud-vapour, to the living man; to the action, to the spoken word of man. The word that is spoken, as we know, flies-irrevocable: not less, but more, the action that is done. 'The gods themselves,' sings Pindar, 'cannot annihilate the action that is done.' No: this, once done, is done always; cast forth into endless Time; and, long conspicuous or soon hidden, must verily work and grow for ever there, an ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... few seconds, and I was still dreaming of it when once more I felt an icy, irrevocable shadow falling upon me—the hostile ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... the price of silver, are among the many conditions which complicate the question. Except the Bengal landowners, most people now admit that the Permanent Settlement of Bengal in 1793 was a grievous mistake. It is also admitted that the mistake is irrevocable. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Union began with the 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 of ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... stale, and piracy, as a profession, flat and unprofitable. This, then, or something like it, should be my vocation and my revenge. A severer line of business, perhaps, such as I had read of; something that included black bread and a hair-shirt. There should be vows, too—irrevocable, blood curdling vows; and an iron grating. This iron grating was the most necessary feature of all, for I intended that on the other side of it my relations should range themselves—I mentally ran over the catalogue, and saw that the whole gang was present, ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... young Fellow spend more Time than the common Leisure which his Studies require, or more Money than his Fortune or Allowance may admit of, in the pursuit of an Acquaintance with his Betters: For as to his Time, the gross of that ought to be sacred to more substantial Acquisitions; for each irrevocable Moment of which he ought to believe he stands religiously Accountable. And as to his Dress, I shall engage myself no further than in the modest Defence of two plain Suits a Year: For being perfectly satisfied ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... perceive that I have no personal interests in these, or any other points, at variance with yours; but, on the contrary, if I were base and interested, I have now taken a decisive and irrevocable step to ruin my prospects; having no other security for such not being the consequence of my candour save my good opinion of ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... refractory people of Judah He is already framing or moulding evil—the verb used is that of which the Hebrew name for potter is the participle. Though chosen of God and shaped by His hands for high service Israel's destiny is not irrevocable; nay, their doom is already being shaped. Yet He makes still another appeal to them to repent and amend their ways. To this they answer: No use! we will walk after our own devices and carry out every one the stubbornness ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... Homer felt, who gave his men With glory but a transient state: His very Jove could not reverse Irrevocable fate. ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... and consequently without the traditions which these institutions carry with them, she presents the greatest imaginable contrast to the Empire with which she is irrevocably linked. Finland is Western of the Westerns, and keenly conscious of the fact just because of this irrevocable link; Russia is—Russia! And yet, as part of the Russian system, she must come to terms sooner or later with the Empire; she cannot receive the protection of the Russian military forces, a protection ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... the hope that lies in these parable lessons of death and life is meant for those only who are turning to Him for redemption. To those who have not turned, death stands in all its old awful doom, inevitable, irrevocable. There is no gleam of light through it ...
— Parables of the Cross • I. Lilias Trotter
... quivering lips and great, defiant eyes, she seemed to him once more a being of another clay from himself—beyond any criticism his audacity could form. He dared hardly touch her, and in his heart there swelled the first irrevocable wave of young passion. She raised her hand impetuously and began to paint again. But suddenly a tear dropped on to her knee. She brushed it away, and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... followed lay on them with the weight of things final and irrevocable. It seemed to Archer to be crushing him down like his own grave-stone; in all the wide future he saw nothing that would ever lift that load from his heart. He did not move from his place, or raise his ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... sutures, but to the forehead, which is poetically compared with a page of paper upon which Destiny writes her irrevocable decrees. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... to extravagant misconstruction. From what he had gathered, and particularly from the voices he had overheard on the Fair Plains Road, it seemed to him that Pedro was more capable of mercenary intrigue than physical revenge. He was not aware of the irrevocable affront put upon Pedro by Peyton, and he had consequently attached no importance to Peyton's own half-scornful intimation of the only kind of retaliation that Pedro would be likely to take. The unsuccessful attempt upon himself he had always thought might have been an accident, or if ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... learned, not merely from monasticism, but also from the true spirit of Christianity. The minds of the Italians assimilated paganism. In their hatred of mediaeval ignorance, in their loathing of cowled and cloistered fools, they flew to an extreme, and affected the manner of an irrevocable past. This extravagance led of necessity to a reaction—in the North, of Puritanism; in the South, to what has been termed the Counter-Reformation effected under Spanish influences in the Latin Church. But Christianity, that most precious possession of the modern world, was never ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... do what he would, betray himself entirely, he betrayed himself always upon his own responsibility. He permitted no question about himself. He was irrevocable in his isolation. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... of Shamash at Sippara, where the stele was clearly set up), curse with a bitter curse his dynasty, his land, his soldiers, his people, and his subjects. May the judgments of Bel, which in his mouth are irrevocable, curse him and quickly ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... happiness or contentment, the whole value of life is altered. We see then that we can get as much or even more out of the futile hour when we are held back from our chosen delightful work, even out of the dreary or terrified hour, when the sense of some irrevocable neglect, some base surrender that has marred our life, sinks burning into the soul, as a hot ember sinks smoking into a carpet. Those are the hours of life when we move and climb; not the hours when we work, and eat, and laugh, and chat, and ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... who, in all good faith, brought out in the Burlington a very handsome "obituary" on Jack—one of those showy articles stocked with random technicalities that I have heard (I won't say by whom) compared to Gisburn's painting. And so—his resolve being apparently irrevocable—the discussion gradually died out, and, as Mrs. Thwing had predicted, the price ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... away, rage in my soul. Or was it mortification? In any event, I had come to an irrevocable decision: I would ship the whole lot of them, without notice, before another ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... tadpoles swarm, and the green frog takes its header like a little man, and the water-rat swim to his hole among the roots of the willow, and the horse-leech thread his undulating way between the water-lily stems; and to dream fondly of the delightful, irrevocable past, on the very spot of all where I ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... 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
... Brand took no heed of the manner of his companion; his heart was beating wildly. And even when his reason forced him to see how little he could expect from this intervention—when he remembered what a decree of the Council was, and how irrevocable the doom he had himself accepted—still the thought uppermost in his mind was not of his own safety or danger, but rather of her love and devotion, her resolve to rescue him, her quick and generous impulse that knew nothing of fear. He pictured her to himself in Naples, calling upon this nameless ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... pathetic quality of recollection? It was certainly so; the mind, dwelling on the past, had that extraordinary power of rejecting all the dreary debris of life, and leaving only the pure gold, a hundred times refined; and yet it brought with it that mournful shadow of sadness, of the irrevocable, the irreplaceable past. But it seemed, too, to hold a hope within it, a hope that, if the pilgrimage of the soul were not to be ended by death, then memory, unshadowed by present sadness, in the deep content of ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... if 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
... Aunt Eliza, but it was no good. She is deeply engaged just now in driving batches of stuffy relatives in a stuffy brougham—luckily there's no room for me in it—to still stuffier garden parties. And, besides, I don't feel that I can take any desperate step of that kind until the Irrevocable has been ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... of you whenever it lies in my power. Only—well, I feel that I'm in your wife's company far too much, both here and in Lincolnshire. People are talking. Therefore, I have decided to leave her, and my decision is irrevocable." ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable. ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... the House of Brandenburg: Eldest Son always to inherit the Electorate unbroken; after Anspach and Baireuth no more apanages, upon any cause or pretext whatsoever; and these themselves to lapse irrevocable to the main or Electoral House, should they ever fall vacant again. Fine fruit of the decisive sense that was in the Hohenzollerns; of their fine talent for annihilating rubbish,—which feat, if a man can do it, and ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... Stevens protest. Their decision had been made and was irrevocable. Tlaloc must be appeased. Lo, even now he roared ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... this note had been sent, when she knew that her lover had received it, and that her decision was irrevocable, she was seized with trembling faintness, with the oppression of conscious guilt; and it seemed to her as if a new spring of love had suddenly burst forth in her heart, and as if she had never loved her father so sincerely, so devotedly, ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... may visit her son, and see him, and be apprised of all the measures adopted for his education; but to intrust her with the sole guardianship of the boy without a strict guardian by her side, would cause the irrevocable ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... on with its depressing shadows and silence, she felt the natural reaction that follows taking an irrevocable step. The loneliness of her unlighted room was peopled with ghostly memories of the horrors inflicted upon spies, and of tales she had heard of the merciless cruelty of the Rebels among whom she was going. She had to hold her breath to keep from shrieking aloud at the terrors conjured up ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... it possible that, after all, he could repent," said Myra in low, measured tones. "Whether, knowing all, he shrank from me at the moment when a few words would have made it irrevocable." ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... was a crucial test, and both knew it. Zoe was slightly pale. She fully realised that to conform now to Severac Bablon's wishes was tantamount to becoming a member of his organisation (which operated against her father!)—was to take a possibly irrevocable step ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... sanctum of the mind, took the assault, melting like an ice-castle in the sun—but before the tempting surrender could become irrevocable alarms rang through his being and his mind gathered in on itself in confusion, holding its isolation intact and inviolate. Through the opposing desires to yield and to withhold, to break barriers down and to raise them up, he detected ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... 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
... known to him. It is by no means natural to take the advice of an enemy. When the critic enters his department of literature in the false guise of urbanity and candor merely to conceal an incapable and huckstering soul, he only awakens for himself the irrevocable contempt of the very mind that he would gall or subdue; since that mind, under such circumstances, invariably rises above its detractor, and leaves him exposed on the same creaking gibbet that he has prepared for the object ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... his own eternal, immutable laws; when experience, when reflection, when the evidence of all we contemplate, warrants the idea, that this ineffable being has rendered nature competent to every effect, by giving her those irrevocable laws, that eternal, unchangeable system, according to which all the beings she contains must eternally act? Is it not more worthy the exalted mind of the GREAT PARENT OF PARENTS, ens entium, more ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... indissoluble as applied to the contract binding man and woman! I have no wish to controvert what has been laid down by philosophers or legislators—they are quite capable of doing this for themselves—but, dear one, in making marriage irrevocable and imposing on it a relentless formula, which admits of no exceptions, they have rendered each union a thing as distinct as one individual is from another. Each has its own inner laws which differ from those of others. The laws regulating married life in the country, for instance, cannot ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... dwelt good or evil spirits, who exercised a certain influence over human events, and they tried to propitiate them by sacrifices and prayers. Faith in dreams constituted the foundation of almost all their superstitions. The dream was to them an irrevocable decree which it was never allowable to slight. It, therefore, formed the starting point of their deliberations, and the basis of their decisions. Rather than reject the warning of a dream, they would have consigned ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... practiced. It is set aside to become dusty and dirty in some obscure corner. Only at some opportune moment is it brought forward from its hiding place to serve as a cover for some vile deed. We can no longer believe that beyond and above us there is some irrevocable, irresistible Fate, whose duty it is to punish all evil and wrong and to reward all goodness; an idea so fondly ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... raised to immortal life and glory in the future world, and the other to immortal damnation and dishonor—that at the same instant the living will be changed and that the whole human family will, in this condition, be arraigned before the "Judge of quick and dead," and receive their irrevocable sentence for endless joy or endless wo. Others believe, in opposition to these limited views of the divine character, that the resurrection is the closing scene of the great plan of salvation, and that no judgment is to succeed it. This resurrection, they believe, will introduce ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... tried to imagine the scenes just following the catastrophe, the horror of that long-past day, and the slow, irrevocable decay of all the monuments of ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... of democracy is the sovereignty of the people, but as the people cannot of themselves govern the country, they must delegate their power to agents who act for them. Thus they elect the Chief Magistrate to govern the country, and legislators to make the laws. The powers given to these agents are irrevocable during their respective terms of office. The electors are absolutely bound by their actions. Whatever laws Congress may pass, the people must strictly obey; thus the servants of the people really become their masters. There is no fear, however, that their ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... host and protector. It prophesies to its companion of a lifetime events which he cannot avoid or which do not concern him. It makes him see beforehand, for instance, all the circumstances of the death of a stranger whom he will only hear of after the event, when this event is irrevocable. It brings a crowd of barren presentiments and conjures up veridical hallucinations that are wholly alien and idle. With psychometric, typtological or materializing mediums, it practises art for art's sake, mocks at space and time, passes through personalities, sees through solid bodies, ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... added, "you know, I don't in the least believe in her former marriage. She seems so—well, if not exactly girlish, so young, so immaculately fresh, it's impossible to believe in. None the less, of course, it 's an irrevocable fact, and it's a complication. I must n't intrude on sacred ground. If she still grieves ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... but I had something to do in the interim—a little auto-da-fe to perform, by which, with that faith in ceremonial, so deep laid in human nature, I meant once for all to lay the ghost that haunted me—the ghost of a delightful but irrevocable past, with which I had ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... crusade was irrevocable, and sovereigns took it to obtain pardon, to secure glory, and propitiate favor. The pope alone could release the votary, and he took good care to make the price heavy in the acknowledgment of ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... dearest child," said sister Ursula, "which I dare not ask myself, and to which I am absolutely uncertain what answer I should return. I have not taken the final and irrevocable vows; I have done nothing to alter my situation with regard to Malcolm Fleming. He also, by the vows plighted in the Chancery of Heaven, is my affianced bridegroom, nor am I conscious that I less deserve his faith, in any respect now, than at the moment when it was pledged ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... psychical quality peculiar to its author, there were many, even amongst the friendliest in sympathy, who heard of the completed sequence with a sense of doubt. Such is the silent and unreasoning and all but irrevocable edict of all popular criticism against continuations of works which have in fragmentary form once made conquest of the popular imagination. Moreover, Rossetti's first volume achieved a success so signal and unexpected as to subject this second and maturer book to ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... of the moment, the solemnity of the ceremony, the sacred glooms which surrounded me, and the chilling silence that prevailed when I uttered the irrevocable vow—all conspired to impress my imagination, and to raise my views to heaven. When I knelt at the altar, the sacred flame of pure devotion glowed in my heart, and elevated my soul to sublimity. The world and all its recollections ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... boys throbbed high with hope when they found themselves outside the enclosure which had served them as a prison, and they knew the irrevocable step had been taken; they must now go forward at ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... 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 principles of civil and religious liberty, that it should secure ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... clear, my spirit calm. But he who beholds only the aerial pathway of an ideal right may stumble and fall on the stones of the world. It was only given me later to realise, through grief too terrible for words, that, given the world as the world is, there are wrongs that are irrevocable, lies that, once lied, no truth can ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... had been there last night among other things, that, as she stared at it, became more prominent, more poignant than they. And yet, though its air was so beckoning and so familiar, it was not among the number of things accomplished and irrevocable. It was simply the thing ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... capable. You spoke of hiring a colored man as engineer and helper in the packing room. Patrick would soon learn that trade and be very valuable. We will cease to need him by the middle or end of June. Have you made irrevocable arrangements with the colored man, or would you prefer to have Patrick, if he thinks he would like ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... supereminence of pain,—and the majority of his species, doomed to penury, disease, and crime, have reason to curse the untoward event, that, by enabling him to communicate his sensations, raised him above the level of his fellow animals. But the steps that have been taken are irrevocable. ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... idle," came Wilding's icy voice to quench the gleam of hope kindling anew in Richard's breast. The lad saw that he was lost, and he is a poor thing, indeed, who cannot face the worst once that worst is shown to be irrevocable. He rose with ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... given him the least uneasiness; but love, where he reigns in full empire, is altogether irresistible, surmounts every difficulty, and swallows up all other considerations. This was the case with me; and now the irrevocable step was taken, my first care was to avoid his sight. With this view, I begged that Lord W— would think of some remote place in the country, to which we might retire for the present, and he forthwith conducted me to a house on Blackheath, where we were very civilly ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... wish to live for you, such as I am, if I could be of any use, if I would not be a hindrance rather than a help, if our union were right, if, in short, God Himself had not already answered to all such questionings and beseechings, His great; unalterable, irrevocable No! ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... The killing of his employer was already crystallizing in his thoughts into an irrevocable thing, for the butler had lifted aside the dead man's coat and waistcoat, and this had shown him the ghastly evidences of a wound which must have been instantly fatal. Now, a shrewd if narrow intelligence was concentrated on the one tremendous question, ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... Assyrians, the Jews, Persians, Odrysians, Samothracians, Eleusinians, even of the Samaneans, i.e. the Buddhists (I, 24), and to have represented these as better accredited than those of the Jews. We see anew what treasures were stored up in Alexandria, and we feel all the more deeply their irrevocable loss. The desire and the hope of recovering the work of Celsus were therefore quite natural for any who wished to penetrate more deeply into the spiritual atmosphere of the second and third centuries, and ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... goods and chattels on it. For the preservation of his right destroys not our propriety, but maintains us in it. He has tied himself by law, not to invade our possessions; and we have obliged ourselves as subjects to him, and all his lawful successors: by which irrevocable act of ours, both for ourselves and our posterity, we can no more exclude the successor, than we can depose the present king. The estate of England is indeed the king's; and I may safely grant their supposition, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... his decision between justice, the prisoner's release, and injustice, the call to crucify him, he knows not what to do. In an agony of thought, which pen cannot describe or human words portray, he delays his irrevocable doom. ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... immediate action, the hasty little woman had darted into the heart of the difficulty at once. Every moment she lingered wore her out and disgusted her more with the life and fate which, nevertheless, it was impossible to abandon or shrink from. Nothing was so safe as to make matters irrevocable—to plunge over the verge at once. All gleaming with resolve and animation—with the frosty, chill, exhilarating air which had kindled the colour in her cheeks and the light in her eyes—with haste, resentment, every feeling that can quicken the heart and make the pulses ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... bowl of punch had remained for ever unmixed, at the bottom of which I found this son-in-law for my poor daughter, my innocent Dora, then unborn; but she must make the best of him for me and herself, since the fates and my word, irrevocable as the Styx, have bound me to him, the purse-proud grazier and mean man—not a remnant of a gentleman! as the father was. Oh, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... forsake it, and there is hardly room at once for two generations. The daughter begins to bloom before the mother can be content to fade, and neither can forbear to wish for the absence of the other. Surely all these evils may be avoided by that deliberation and delay which prudence prescribes to irrevocable choice." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... he adhered to it, he was, at the close of his probation, subjected to an examination in presence of the abbot and the monks, and then, appealing to the saints, whose relics were in the cloister, he laid upon the altar of the chapel the irrevocable vow, written or at least subscribed by his own hand, and therewith cut off from himself forever all return ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... 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 ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... in extreme terror at 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 of the indivisible primary faculties or sentiments which gave direction to the ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... Evelyn. That disagreeable autocrat has succeeded in prejudicing our neighbours against us, and it hurts you. Well, nothing is irrevocable. Say the word, and we will leave the house to-morrow, and put up a ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 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 ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... had made the deed irrevocable, Warwick put her away, speaking with the stern accent of one who fears a ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... gathered there made many friends. Chief among these was Elizabeth Tresham, the daughter of a gentleman who had bought, with the salvage of a large fortune, the small Cornish estate on which he lived, or rather fretted away life in vain regrets over an irrevocable past. Elizabeth was his only daughter, but he had a son who was much older than Elizabeth—a handsome, gay young man about whom little was known ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... He recovered his truculence. "Irrevocable or not, it will just have to be revocable. The ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... attention, as his companion read all those verses, which her memory suggested, and which were thought applicable to the situation in which they found themselves. He made her show him the words, which he regarded with a sort of strange reverence. A resolution once taken was usually irrevocable, in one who was moved with so much difficulty. He put his hand upon the book, and closed the pages himself, as much as to apprise his wife that he was satisfied. Esther, who so well knew his character, trembled at the action, and casting ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Persephone that she has suffered him to lead back his wife to the upper air, provided only he will not look upon her on the way. But love has overcome him. He has turned and looked, and the doom of an irrevocable parting is sealed. In no unseemly paroxysm of grief, but tenderly, sadly, they look their last at one another, while Hermes, guide of departed spirits, makes gentle signal for the wife's return. In the chastened pathos of this scene we have the quintessence of the temper of Greek art in dealing ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... Bartholomew Masurel gave, by a donation between living persons, and irrevocable, to take effect after his death, all his lands, fiefs, and houses which he owned at Lille, and in his country place, and the value of which might be estimated at a hundred and fifty thousand livres parisis, or in money of our day nominally 300,000 francs. In fact, the gift, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... he remarked round the thermometer, "the thing is not irrevocable. I can fix it up ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... it was the crisis of his history, and there rose in him, as though articulated one by one by an audible voice, words of irrevocable meaning. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... chair 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 altars. Orsetti has a meerschaum ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... bewildered, as if the words struck him with the awful irrevocable sense of what was done. Hurriedly he ran down the steps, sprang into the carriage beside ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... following day, December 9th, Douglas took the irrevocable step. For three hours he held the Senate and the audience in the galleries in rapt attention, while with more than his wonted gravity and earnestness he denounced the Lecompton constitution.[633] ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... turf. On the other hand, if you have acted a part in this little drama, the turf should be protected against you. In either case the judges desire to bring your career as an owner to a close; and we hereby bar you and your entries from all tracks of the Association. This is final and irrevocable.' ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... widened to six, and then to eight.... Guido Karamessinis, at Grank, was still at uneasy peace with King Yoorkerk, who was still undecided whether the rebels or the Company were going to be the eventual victors, and afraid to take any irrevocable step in either direction. ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... and unjust accusations, wound the heart that sincerely loves you. To-day, as your guardian, I hearken to the imperative dictates of my conscience, and turn a deaf ear to the pleadings of my tender affection, which would save you from even momentary sorrow and disappointment. Since my decision is irrevocable, do not render the execution of my purpose ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... gone into a passion, had accused us, reproached us, and stormed at us with all the ill-language that men of the world use! but that quiet, cold, irrevocable, "I have been mistaken in thee!" was ten ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Joe Lake listened, gave a violent start, leaped up with all his big frame quivering, and then fired question after question at the Indian. When the Navajo had replied to all, Joe drew himself up as if facing an irrevocable decision which would wring his very soul. What did he cast off in that moment? What did he grapple with? Shefford had no means to tell, except by the instinct which baffled him. But whether the Mormon's trial was one of spiritual rending or the natural physical fear of a perilous, virtually impossible ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey |
