"Unsay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... You are then carried along by a towing-line attached to another vessel. There is no free power. Always your antagonist predetermines the course of your own movement; and you his. What he says, you unsay. He affirms, you deny. He knits, you unknit. Always you are servile to him; and he to you. Yet even that system of motion in reverse of another motion, of mere antistrophe or dancing backward what the strophe had danced forward, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... satisfied with 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
... it is impossible that God should lie; not fitting, that man should. The people's forementioned example teaches constancy, they stood to it. The covenants ordinary epithet [everlasting] implies continuance: neither can God, nor should man play the children, say and unsay. All our covenants in Him should be yea; not yea, and nay. If we prove loose, we prove false, and lie unto God that made us. Take heed to your covenant. This stone, these walls, these pillars, these seats shall witness against you, that ye denied Him: ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... Throne of Hell, With Diadem and Scepter high advanc'd 90 The lower still I fall, onely Supream In miserie; such joy Ambition findes. But say I could repent and could obtaine By Act of Grace my former state; how soon Would highth recal high thoughts, how soon unsay What feign'd submission swore: ease would recant Vows made in pain, as violent and void. For never can true reconcilement grow Where wounds of deadly hate have peirc'd so deep: Which would but lead me to a worse relapse 100 And heavier fall: ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... and then have added, "That is the mystery of it," I could have passed as orthodox with many. I had been charged with a proud and vain determination to pry into divine mysteries, barely because I would not confess to propositions the meaning of which was to me doubtful,—or say and unsay in consecutive breaths. It was too clear, that a doctrine which muddles the understanding perverts also the power of moral discernment. If I had committed some flagrant sin, they would have given ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... be so changeable," I said. "I can't bear people that say a thing and then try to unsay it. I don't believe they do mean ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... fire." "Why, Master Bame," said Kit, "had I the keys To hell, the damned should all come out and dance A morrice round the Mermaid Inn to-night." "Nay, sir, the damned are damned!" "Come, sit you down! Take some more wine! You'd have them all be damned Except Dick Cholmeley. What must I unsay To save him?" A quick eyelid dropt at Ben. "Now tell me, Master Bame!" "Sir, he derides The books of Moses!" "Bame, do you believe?— There's none to hear us but Beelzebub— Do you believe that we must taste of ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... eyes; there is suffering portrayed on the pretty face; the spirit of anguish keeps its steady guard at the threshold of those smiling lips—but—what have I done? Oh! forgive me, youth now tangled in those golden meshes. I unsay the words, mine must not be the tyrant hand to tear away the screen a merciful Father has placed between you and what is to come. No! no! smile and dream ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... bit of it," 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
... 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 ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... what it is, child, that is troubling you," he said; "there can be nothing, nothing under heaven that could make me wish to unsay what I have said, nothing that could make us wish to undo what we have done. Nothing can rob me now of the knowledge that you love me. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... good youth who two years ago believed I was his only possible future happiness, is now quite happy with a totally different sort of person. I had a little letter from him, shy and stately, announcing the event. I thought it such a friendly act, for some have never the grace to unsay their grievances, however much actually blessed as a ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... been a foolish woman too many years to mend now. I am down, and down I must be. I have made my bed, and I must lie on it, and die on it too. Oh my dear brother or sister in Christ, whoever you are who says that, unsay it again for it is not true. Ezekiel tells you that it is not true, and one greater than Ezekiel, Jesus Christ, your Saviour, your Lord, your God, tells you it is ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... missive had proceeded to unsay the advice which he had formerly bestowed upon the States, by complaining that his earlier letters had been misinterpreted. They had been made use of, he said, to authorize the very error against which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... it possible, Sir Leonard, that brother of mine, and belted Knight, should devise so foul a scheme of treachery! Oh, unsay it again! Let me believe it was my own folly that conjured up ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the concert—yes, she would go and make Charles miserable. She was enraged at the folly of her own remark, at Rose's self-possession, and at her possible possession of Francis Sales. She could not unsay what she had said and, having said it, she did not know how to go on living with Aunt Rose; but she was going to Wellsborough again and this time she need not come back: yet she must come back to see Francis Sales. And though there was no one in the ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... one desire, Son following hard on sire, With all the wrath of all a world to wreak, And all the rage of night Afire against the light Whose weakness makes her strong-winged empire weak, Stood up to unsay that saying, and fell Too far for song, though ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... great degree, is, the extreme weakness and tottering condition of our naval establishments. I do not mean to complain of the distribution of our naval establishments; though, at the same time, I by no means intend to unsay what I have said in respect to the expeditions to Spain, which I cannot approve of; but I repeat my expression that I consider our naval establishments to be in too weak and tottering a condition to answer ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... in remorseful recognition of an unsuspected devotion; "then I'll say what I've got to say in front of him, for you're both my friends, and I'll unsay all I said just now. Bear with my temper, both of you, if you can, for I feel beside myself about the boy! It was all I could do to keep my hands off that smug little lump of London inhumanity! Kept me waiting ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... I come to the end of my letter I may repent of my temerity and unsay my charge. For are not all our circlets of will as so many little eddies rounded in by the great Circle of Necessity, and could the Truth-speaker, perhaps now the best Thinker of the Saxon race, have written otherwise? And must not we ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... opposite principle. Or it might so happen that I got simply confused, by the very clearness of the logic which was administered to me, and thus gave my sanction to conclusions which really were not mine; and when the report of those conclusions came round to me through others, I had to unsay them. And then again, perhaps I did not like to see men scared or scandalised by unfeeling logical inferences, which would not have touched them to the day of their death, had they not been made to eat them. And then I felt altogether the force of the ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... you told her so? Why have you taken upon yourself to judge for me in such a matter, as though I were a child? Mother, you must unsay what you have said." Lord Lufton, as he spoke, looked full into his mother's face; and he did so, not as though he were begging from her a favour, but issuing to her a command. She stood near him, with ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... is all over, so try to forget it. I know that Hugh felt sorry for his burst of temper the moment after, but he could not unsay the words, and I would not forgive them—that is why he felt so badly when we parted on the train. I did not intend to tell you of it, Lancy; so do not ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth |
