"Unmake" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prolonged existence. Why should he desire to live a day, not to say forever—worth nothing to himself, or to any one? If there were a God, he would rather entreat Him, and that he would do humbly enough, to unmake him again. Certainly, if there were a God, He had not done over well by His creatures, making them so ignorant and feeble that they could not fail to fall. Would Mr. Drake have ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... landlord and capitalist by the folly of the people; but they can unmake me if they will. Meanwhile I have absolutely no means of escape from my position except by giving away my slaves to fellows who will use them no better than I, and becoming a slave myself; which, if you please, you shall not catch me doing ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... government nearest us is that of the State. The political divisions which we have considered are subject to the State, holding their powers as grants from its government. The State can make and unmake them, and we owe them obedience because the State has commanded it. As we sometimes express it, the sovereignty or supreme sway of these local divisions resides ...
— Elements of Civil Government • Alexander L. Peterman
... property or confiscate it, encourage one kind of enterprise and discourage another, facilitate immigration or obstruct it, improve communication or censor it, establish schools, build navies, proclaim "policies," and "destiny," raise economic barriers, make property or unmake it, bring one people under the rule of another, or favor one class as against another. For each of these decisions some view of the facts is taken to be conclusive, some view of the circumstances is accepted as the basis of inference and as the stimulus of feeling. What view of ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... made you break this enterprise to me? When you durst do it, then you were a man; And, to be more than what you were, you would Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place Did then adhere, and yet you would make both: They have made themselves, and that their fitness now Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... looked round him, it seemed to him that he was enclosed in the strongest tower in the world, and laid upon a fair bed. Then said he to the dame: "My lady, you have deceived me, unless you abide with me, for no one hath power to unmake this tower but you alone." She then promised she would be often there, and in this she held her covenant with him. And Merlin never went out of that tower where his Mistress Viviane had enclosed him; but she entered and went ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... foundation upon which our Constitution rests being the people—a breath of theirs having made, as a breath can unmake, change, or modify it—it can be assigned to none of the great divisions of government but to that of democracy. If such is its theory, those who are called upon to administer it must recognize as its leading principle the duty of shaping their measures so as to produce the greatest ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson
... terrors o'ertake us We'll not be afraid. No power can unmake us Save that which has made. Nor yet beyond reason Or hope shall we fall— All things have their season, And Mercy ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... who drove into their little mountain village and stopped at the tannery house made their blood beat faster. Senators came, and representatives, and judges, and governors, "to git their orders," as Rias Richardson briefly put it, and Jethro could make or unmake them at a word. Each was scanned from the store where Rias now reigned supreme, and from the harness shop across the road. Some drove away striving to bite from their lips the tell-tale smile which arose in spite of them; others ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was at this moment when he began to perceive that his fortune would return to him, when he became aware that he was knocked about like a shuttlecock from a battledore, that his pride came by its first fall. Mollett was in truth the great man,—the Warwick who was to make and unmake the kings of Castle Richmond. A month ago, and it had pleased Earl Mollett to say that Owen Fitzgerald should reign; but there had been a turn upon the cards, and now he, King Herbert, was to be ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... voices, but really serving the private interests of one man, is dangerous to the nation. It was breeding dissension between various social classes at a moment when unity was more necessary than ever; pretending to make and unmake Ministers; weakening authority by calculated confusion, but, above all, undermining public confidence and spreading panic in a methodical way which has already made the opinion of London an extraordinary contrast to that of the Armies, and gravely disturbing ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... taught me— They should know best. Yet now this wedlock seems A second infancy's baptismal robe, A heaven, my spirit's antenatal home, Lost in blind pining girlhood—found now, found! [Aside] What have I said? Do I blaspheme? Alas! I neither made these thoughts, nor can unmake them. ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... of the opera. You've done your best. You've stuck to it. You've done all that you, or any other woman with your views and desires, could do for me in art. You've unmade me. I've been weak and contemptible enough to let you unmake me. From to-night I've got to build on ruins. Perhaps you'll say that's impossible. It isn't. I mean to do it. I'm going to do it. But I've got to build ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... something to do that will vary the monotony of this routine existence? We rise in the morning, make a toilet, go to her Majesty, make a toilet, breakfast, read to her Majesty, make a toilet, dine, walk with her Majesty, sup, unmake a toilet and go to bed! Of all the awful existences I really believe ours has ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... never can enjoy a square meal. It isn't the money; it's the trouble of their lives how to get rid of that. It is the notoriety, the power that they are out for. In Carleton's case, it is to feel himself the power behind the throne; to know that he can make and unmake statesmen; has the keys of peace and war in his pocket; is able to exclaim: Public opinion? It ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... suppressed in nearly all communities. The sentiment which obtained the law secures its enforcement—men do not dare run counter to the wishes of women, when the latter have in their hands the power to make or unmake politicians. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... they never will confess, either, that they need help. They always think they are doing what they call "making up their mind." But, whichever way they make it, they wish they had made it the other; so they unmake it directly. And by this time the crisis of the first hour which they lost has become complicated with that of the second hour, for which they are in no wise ready; and so the hours stumble on, one after another, and the day is only a tangle ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... plain 'Yes.' I know a way. I've read all about it in the Cyclopedia in the big bookcase. I hunted it up right away, that first day after the first night when I—I mocked you. I made up my mind then, and I never unmake minds, that if you'd be decent I'd cure you. It's nothing but a dreadful bad habit, anyway, and easy done. But not until you find my—the—Aunt Eunice's ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... to say that I wronged folk from whom a man within me cannot part. One is dead, and I have to seek her along another road. But you are living, breathing there! I made myself your foe, and now I wish that I could unmake what I made.... I was and am a sinful soul.... It is for you to say if it is anything to you, what I confess." He rose from the fire and moved once or twice the length of the place. At last he came and stood before the other. "It is no ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... always friendly,—but never more than that on Hawthorne's side,—with one exception, where he thanks Longfellow for a complimentary review of "Twice-Told Tales" in the North American. At that time the North American was considered an authority which could make or unmake an author's reputation; and Longfellow may be said to have opened the door for Hawthorne into the great world. Hawthorne's friendship for President Pierce proved an advantage to him financially, but it also became a barrier between him and the other ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... moment later the entrance of Aunt Pike helped her to recover herself—Aunt Pike, with a white face and an expression on it which said plainly that her mind was made up and nothing would unmake it. Betty and Tony stepped forward to ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... such as has attended upon such a system in all countries where it has been in vogue. The officials were selected almost entirely from one political party, and had always an eye upon the nod of their taskmasters, who had the power to make or unmake them. Whenever it was desirable, in the supposed interests of the Executive, that the authority of the courts should be strained to the perversion of judgment, the dispensing of even-handed justice was altogether a secondary consideration. Mr. Gourlay's case, to say nothing of that of ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... help one to fame. Such a question is almost too dreadful, and though I have asked it, I will not attempt to answer it. I would much rather consider the question whether if the newspapers can make an author they can also unmake him, and I feel pretty safe in saying that I do not think they can. The Afreet once out of the bottle can never be coaxed back or cudgelled back; and the author whom the newspapers have made cannot be ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... clearly see the influence of the past upon the present. But, to employ a figure of speech, the fly-paper beckons to the insect toothsomely, and, thinks he; 'Shall I give it a try? Shall I? Shall I give it a try?' The future is in his own hands to make or unmake. The past, the voice of Providence, has counselled him: 'Leave it alone, leave it alone, little fly. Go away from there.' Does he heed the warning? Does he heed it, ladies and gentlemen? Does he? Ah, no! He springs into the air, decides ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... complete: His father had been insane when he made the will, had repented afterward, but had been unable to unmake it; his only son Arthur Ranger, now head of the family, owed it to the family's future and to its two helpless and oversentimental women to right the wrong. A complete case, a clear case, a solemn mandate. Interest and duty were synonymous—as always ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... have such reminiscent thought; it makes us less pessimistic and gives life to strive and spirit and hope. We cannot unmake human nature, but can certainly improve conditions by self-denial, earnest ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... book to be really tasted—not thrust aside because crammed down—no, it would not be desirable, as I was going to say, we should only do double mischief. We are not sent into the world to mould people, but to let them mould themselves; and the internal elasticity will soon unmake all the shapes that just now seem to form under my fingers ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... speech, so that it may with due impact reach the pit. The opening scene expounds the situation. In the second Wentworth and Pym confront each other; the King surprises them; Wentworth lets fall the hand of Pym, as the stage tradition requires; as Wentworth withdraws the Queen enters to unmake what he has made, and the scene closes with a tableau expressing ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... persuasion or force. Its belief is not subject to the will. Aurelia, if I have heard aright, is a Christian from conviction. Evidence made her a Christian—stronger evidence on the side of her former faith can alone unmake her.' ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... a lover of men, And turn abhorring as from fat slug or snake? Lives obstinate in me too Something the power of angels could not unmake?" ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... the army return to London. It is now that the Commonwealth is to be really put upon its trial. Hitherto the army, that had made and could unmake it, had been occupied first in Ireland, then in Scotland; and the minds of people at home had been equally occupied in watching its achievements. The Commonwealth has lived upon the expectations of men. It has been itself an expectation. It is now to be perfected, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... spite of ourselves; their labours call for response and correspondence. What about those who are now leaving childhood behind and will be in the front ranks of the coming generation? Their influence will make or unmake the religion of their homes, and what they will be for the whole of their life will depend very much upon how they take their ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... schools for the sons of noblemen in which he will forget it," said the friar bitterly; "where they teach disloyalty to princes and unmake men to make machines—and the mainspring is at Rome. Gentle women are won to believe in them by the subtle polish of those who uphold them, and the marvelous learning by which their teachers fit themselves for office. And among them are men noble of character and true of conscience—but ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... their applications for Post Offises, and who jined so heartily in the cheers wich went up for J. Davis: and there, addressin this crowd, wuz a President—the man who had the appintin power in his hands—who cood make and unmake ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... respectable tanner in the neighbouring town, who, wishing to make his son a gentleman, sent him to college. Having never been at college myself, I cannot say whether he took the wisest course; I believe it is more easy to unmake than to make a gentleman; I have known many gentlemanly youths go to college, and return anything but what they went. Young Mr. Platitude did not go to college a gentleman, but neither did he return one; he went to college an ass, and returned a prig; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow |
