"Irretrievably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... daunted Dupont as much as his cool sarcastic bitterness galled him to the quick. The character of the man was known; he was convinced he dared not bring down shame on the memory of Greville, without inculpating himself, without irretrievably injuring his own character, and however he might use that threat as his weapon to compel Mary's submission, Mr. Hamilton was perfectly easy on that head. Dupont's cowardly nature very soon evinced itself. A ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... nominated, but his battle had been to defeat Seward, and when Lincoln turned to Seward for secretary of state, which meant, as Greeley believed, the domination of the Weed machine to punish his revolt against Seward, Greeley became irretrievably embittered against ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... "Why, the boy is in their hands. It is hostage for hostage now, a very different matter. He is lost—irretrievably lost!" he ended, groaning. "We can but avenge him. To save him ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... the gloomy shadows of the wings, he stood entranced that night watching her depict the character of a wife whose previous happy life had been irretrievably ruined by deceit; and the force, the quiet originality of her depiction, together with its marvellous clearness of detail and its intense realism, held him captive. The plot of the play was ugly, melodramatic, and entirely untrue to nature; against ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... the Carlovingian Renaissance and of the Renaissance proper of the fifteenth century endeavoured to furnish intelligible texts. They therefore corrected everything they did not understand. Several ancient works have been in this manner irretrievably ruined. ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... himself from forests of wedged legs. "You've got a fine, big family in here," they told him: "you ought to be proud of us." And there was a sorrowing Italian who had with him a string of seven children who had tunnelled and burrowed their way down the packed aisle of the smoking car and had got irretrievably scattered. The father was distracted. Here and there, down the length of the car, someone would discover an urchin and hold him up for inspection. "Is this one of them?" he would cry, and Italy would give assent. "Right!" And the children were agglomerated ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... can hardly wipe away his memory from the minds of his countrymen and clan. Many fragments of his numerous songs continued for ages to be repeated in the country, but it is feared, from all the changes which have taken place in the circumstances of the natives, that these are now irretrievably lost. Many of his witty sayings became proverbial in the island. He was one of the first sportsmen in the country, and was considered one of the most successful deer stalkers of his day. Along with his other accomplishments ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... position in which his justifiable jealousy—his naturally vindictive rage—had so irretrievably ensnared him. He had been so intent upon the administration of poetic justice, so intent upon condignly punishing the false friend who had dishonoured him, upon finding a balm for his lacerated soul in the spectacle of Tremayne's ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... send it? The courtiers and statesmen about her urged her to sign the warrant; the peace of the country demanded the execution of the laws in a case of such unquestionable guilt. They told her, too, that Essex wished to die, that he knew that he was hopelessly and irretrievably ruined, and that life, if granted to him, was a boon which would compromise her own safety and confer no benefit on him. Still Elizabeth waited and waited in an agony of suspense, in hopes that the ring would come; the sending of it would be so far an act of submission on his part as would put ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... great city; broken in mind, body and heart; bitter, discouraged, and so nearly ready to fall in with Kellow's criminal suggestion as actually to let him give me the money which, if I had kept it or spent it as he directed, would have committed me irretrievably to a life ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... made these offerings. The visitors to Libagnon brought the news that the toppling over[8] of the world would take place within one moon, and that the orders of Mesknan, the Magbabya, should be carried out at once, for otherwise, when the day of destruction arrived, all would be irretrievably lost; husband would be separated from wife, and mother from child; pigs and chickens would prey upon whomsoever they could catch, and all would live a life of darkness and despair. But those who had complied ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... insurrectionists, one or more, we have a general government; but when States depart, we are a house divided against itself. We find that we have been living, as it were, not so much under paternal authority, as under fraternal rule. If broken irretrievably, the alternative is to be divided, or for one part of the country to coerce its neighbors and brethren. This we find to be extremely inconvenient and really impracticable without civil war; and after the war,—whose horrors, in our case, can ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... I cried out, "what am I to do? Am I then irretrievably ruined?—and have I also ruined the poor child whom I ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... king never could keep his end of the great social stick in the place where he had sworn to keep it, they solemnly declared that he must have forgotten where the constitutional foot-hole was, and that he had irretrievably lost his memory—a decision that was the remote cause of the recent calamity of Captain Poke. The king was no sooner constitutionally deprived of his memory, than it was an easy matter to strip him of all his other faculties; after which it was humanely decreed, as indeed it ought to be in the ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... appears to be much deranged and interrupted by those incumbent masses. In some places it is depressed greatly below its ancient level; shortly after it is borne down to the water's edge, and can be traced under its surface. By and by it dips entirely, and seems irretrievably lost under the superior mass. In a short space, however, it begins to emerge, and, after a similar variation, recovers ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... atmosphere that should sustain it is rendered poisonous by such breath as this man mingled with Zenobia's. Yet his reflections possessed their share of truth. It was a woeful thought, that a woman of Zenobia's diversified capacity should have fancied herself irretrievably defeated on the broad battlefield of life, and with no refuge, save to fall on her own sword, merely because Love had gone against her. It is nonsense, and a miserable wrong,—the result, like so many others, of masculine egotism,—that the success or failure of woman's existence ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ready money, that his tenantry were worse off than any other in the country, that his agents and bailiffs and stewards were rogues who ground them and cheated him, that his farmers were careless and incompetent, and that the whole of his noble estate appeared to be going irretrievably to ruin; when the earl complaining one day bitterly of this state of things, for which he knew no remedy, she told him that she would find the remedy, and undertake to recover what was lost and redeem what remained, if he would give her absolute discretionary power to deal with ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... would have been irretrievably lost! For you well know the king is so proud of his impartiality and his virtue! Oh, had he known that Thomas is my son he would have condemned him to death, to show the people that Henry the Eighth everywhere ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... JENNINGS' bombs, Miss FAIRBROTHER threw the most and the best of them with a perfect aim. The rest of the platoon helped in varying degrees. I hope I don't irretrievably damage Miss JOYCE CAREY'S reputation as a modern when I say that she looked so pretty and innocent that I don't believe even sour old spinsters would have doubted her. A charming and capable performance. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... of life should at least in some degree blend with the married state. Nor is it desirable that a relation in which the formation of habits plays so large a part should be deferred until character has lost its flexibility, and until habits have been irretrievably hardened. ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... no one to molest or make him afraid! Half a hundred Texans trembling at sight of one gun were a sight worth seeing,— and they did not even know it was loaded! Gone is our ancient glory—our rep. is irretrievably in the tureen. Henceforth when a pilgrim from the pathless Southwest registers at an Eastern hotel the bell-boys will not fall over each other to do him honor as a dime-novel hero, nor the gilded clerk insure his life before politely requesting him to pay in advance. The ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... who, along with us, regret that while the world is deluged with insipid correspondences, and 'pictures of mind' that were not worth drawing, the correspondence of a man who never wrote unwisely should lie mouldering in private repositories, ere long to be irretrievably destroyed; that the 'picture of a mind' who was among the conscript fathers of the human race should still be left so vague and dim. This letter is addressed to Schwann, during Schiller's first residence in Weimar: it has already been ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... fingers. It contained only a few poor toys,—cheap and barbaric enough, goodness knows, but bright with paint and tinsel. One of them was broken; another, I fear, was irretrievably ruined by water; and on the third—ah me! there was a ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... the Volksraad. He opposed the war, and, with prophetic eye, foresaw the awful devastation of his country which would follow in the footsteps of the British army. But when the time came, and his country was irretrievably pledged to war, he was not the man to hang back. He was one of those who had much to lose and little indeed to gain by taking up arms against us, for, by honest industry, he had become a wealthy farmer and stockbreeder. At the first ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... true solution: that the boy hadn't meant to steal whatever it was he had stolen. A victim of one of those mental typhoons that scatter irretrievably the barriers of instinct and breeding; and he had gone on the rocks all in a moment. Never any doubt of it. That handsome, finely drawn face belonged to a soul with clean ideals. All in a moment. McClintock's ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... gentleman's income be sunk irretrievably for ever from a hundred pounds to fifty, and that he hath no other method to supply the deficiency, I desire to know, my Lord, whether such a person hath any other course to take than to sink half his expenses in every article of economy, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... haphazard method adopted to achieve them. "No politics in the unions" follows logically enough from an avowed antagonism to the State. If one starts with the assumption that nothing can be done through the State—as Owen, Bakounin, and the syndicalists have done—one is, of course, led irretrievably to oppose parliamentary and ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... was neither copious enough nor of sufficient duration to be of any appreciable service to the crew of the schooner, and indeed it did not perceptibly check the progress of the flames. To the onlookers aboard the Mercury it seemed that the other craft was irretrievably doomed; and such also seemed to be the opinion of her own crew, for they were presently seen to be frantically busy over the clearing away of the longboat, which was stowed on top of the main hatch, and the safety of which was now threatened by the ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... be burned, but they don't burn, and though in great fires libraries have been wholly or partially destroyed, we never hear of a library making a great conflagration like a cotton mill or a tallow warehouse. Nay, a story is told of a house seeming irretrievably on fire, until the flames, coming in contact with the folio Corpus Juris and the Statutes at Large, were quite unable to get over this joint barrier, and sank defeated. When anything is said about ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... he had talked more freely than to anyone, knew aught of the details of that momentous Report, what recommendations he actually should make to Congress; for none knew better than he that a hint derived from him which should lead to profitable speculation would tarnish his good name irretrievably. Careless in much else, on the subject of his private and public integrity he was rigid; he would not have yielded a point to retain the affection of the best and most valued of his friends. Fastidious by nature on the question of his honour, he knew, also, that other accusations, even ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... of thing. Very quiet-spoken sort of chap—rather pretends to be a simple sort of Johnny, don't you know, but he's a regular demon, I believe. Got into a row at a music-hall one night, and threw the chucker-out in among a lot of valuable pot plants, and irretrievably ruined him." ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... In the depths of her heart she confessed herself proud and happy at the prospect of becoming his wife; but she would never consent to a marriage that was not commended by prudence. Better, far better, they should part forever than that the lapse of a few months should prove how irretrievably she had ruined him. ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... amateur. Commencing with 1802, he might have read the admirable series of memoirs which Young then published, and might thereby have learned how the study of the phenomena of diffraction led to the belief that the undulation theory, which, since the works of Newton seemed irretrievably condemned, was, on the contrary, beginning quite a new life. A little later—in 1808—he might have witnessed the discovery made by Malus of polarization by reflexion, and would have been able to note, no doubt with stupefaction, that under certain conditions a ray of ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... the earlier Prophets, and the inspired Hymns used for the purpose of devotion. Some compositions, however, which respected the remotest period of their commonwealth, especially the Book of Jasher and the Wars of the Lord, were irretrievably lost. ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... to any other. But the discovery of her position led me to another discovery which the reader will wonder, as I did myself, that I had not made before. This was the momentous discovery that my heart was irretrievably lost to her—that I loved her with all the intensity of a first passion, which, like every other passion in my heart, was absorbing during its prevalence. I could name my feelings to myself only when I perceived ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... made are apt to break so that one should carry at least five pairs. In putting them on, take care not to drop the little square nut off the bolt into powder snow as it sinks at once and may be irretrievably lost. ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... which was also at the moment uninsured, owing to the confusion arising from the transfer of the property—entirely burnt down. All its valuable contents too, including a fine collection of pictures and private papers he by no means wished to lose, were irretrievably destroyed. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... suddenly to the left into a narrow lane, cleared the corner by an impossible fluke, and Fanny Fitz was hurled ignominiously on to Rupert Gunning's lap. Long briars and twigs struck them from either side, the trap bumped in craggy ruts and slashed through wide puddles, then reeled irretrievably over a heap of stones and tilted against the low bank ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... would avoid the grave dangers we are now incurring of getting entangled in impassable pressure-ridges and possibly irretrievably damaging the boats, which are bound to suffer in rough ice; it would also minimize the peril of the ice splitting under us, as it did twice during the night at our first camp. Yet I feel sure that it is ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... answer, so wide of that tenderness and concern which had hitherto manifested itself in the disposition of his amiable mistress, deprived him of all power to carry on the conversation, and he retired with a low bow, fully convinced of his having irretrievably lost the place he had possessed in her affection; for, to his imagination, warped and blinded by his misfortunes, her demeanour seemed fraught, not with a transient gleam of anger, which a respectful lover would soon have appeased, but ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... which you wish to entangle me—doubly dangerous for me, as the king suspects me, and he would never forgive it if he should learn that I had dared to act against his commands, and to assist the Princess Amelia to save an unhappy wretch whom he had irretrievably condemned. I know well who this prisoner is, but do not call his name—it is dangerous to speak it, even to think it. I be long not to the confidantes of the princess in this matter, and I do not desire it. Speak no more of ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... wish to annihilate his rival at all cost. By the exercise of that treachery which love for the same woman renders possible to men the most honourable in every other relation of life, he could send off Phillotson in agony and defeat by saying that the scandal was true, and that Sue had irretrievably committed herself with him. But his action did not respond for a moment to his animal instinct; and what he said was, "I am glad of your kindness in coming to talk plainly to me about it. You know what they say?—that I ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... contrast marks the difference of the two plays, namely, the fate of Faust. Marlowe's Faust is utterly and irretrievably damned. On the old theory of an essential antagonism between the secular and the sacred, and upon the old cast-iron theology to which the intellect of man was enjoined to conform, there is no escape whatsoever for the rebel. So the play leads on to the sublimely terrific ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... inhabitants, but they had captured all the wives of the rebel chiefs, together with a number of inferior slaves, and a herd of goats that had fortunately escaped the search of Mahommed's retreating party. Fowooka and Owine had escaped by crossing to the northern shore, but their power was irretrievably ruined, their villages plundered and burned, and their ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... consummate general; but his forces were greatly inferior to those of the enemy, and his Gaulish auxiliaries were of little service. The gallant resistance of the Spanish and Ligurian troops is attested by the heavy loss of the Romans; but all was of no avail, and seeing the battle irretrievably lost, he rushed into the midst of the enemy, and fell, sword in hand, in a manner worthy of the son of Hamilcar and the brother of Hannibal. The Consul Nero hastened back to Apulia almost as speedily ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... even when sheltered by the protection of common racial or cultural traditions, one must remember that the overwhelming majority of lyrics, like the majority of artistic products of all ages and races and stages of civilization, are irretrievably lost. Weak-winged is song! A book like Gummere's Beginnings of Poetry, glancing as it does at the origins of so many national literatures and at the rudimentary poetic efforts of various races that have never ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... of Sutherland upon the whole case—viz. upon the petition for land, as affected by the shocking menaces of the Seceders—has, in no other way, been able to evade the double mischief of undertaking a defence for the indefensible, and at the same time of losing the land irretrievably, than by affecting an unconsciousness of language used by his party little suited to his own sacred calling, or to the noble simplicities of Christianity. Certainly it is unhappy for the Seceders, that the only disavowal of the most fiendish sentiments heard in our ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... kinsman's return, answered, "That he believed, from the representations he had received of the private opinions both of Badenoch and Athol, that their treason was more against Baliol than the kingdom; and that now that prince was irretrievably removed, he understood they would be glad to take ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... several distinct parties, and developed the natural disintegrating tendency of the Filipinos to split up into factions on any matter of common concern. The Spanish reform party, led by Pedro A. Paterno, collapsed when all hope was irretrievably lost, and its leader passed over to Aguinaldo's party of sovereign independence. To-day there is practically only one organized party—the Federal—because there is no legislative assembly or authorized channel for the legitimate expression of opposite views. The Federal Party, which is ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... be hasty in forming our judgment upon these subjects; for that, owing to the destruction caused by the Norman pirates and the abominable negligence (damnabilis negligentia) of those to whom the care of the records of religious houses had subsequently been intrusted, many documents had been irretrievably lost.—The see of Lisieux was also peculiarly unfortunate, in having twice been in a state of anarchy, and on each occasion for a period of more than a century. The series of its prelates is interrupted from the year 670 to 853, and again from 876 ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... the reader make no mistake; architecture is dead; irretrievably slain by the printed book,—slain because it endures for a shorter time,—slain because it costs more. Every cathedral represents millions. Let the reader now imagine what an investment of funds it would require to rewrite the architectural book; to cause thousands ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... not a word from Amelia, either to his telegram or Dick's letter. Things were looking up. It might be Amelia had been elected to some new and absorbing organization for putting the social edifice still more irretrievably into the disorder it seemed bent for, in which case she might forget the inner wobblings of such an inconspicuous nomad as a brother in metaphysical pangs. He became recklessly optimistic, as the train climbed higher into the hills, and luxuriated in it, conscious ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... government from an honourable repugnance to join Lord North. He was now made prime minister. The country in the election of the next year ratified the king's judgment against the Portland combination; and the hopes which Burke had cherished for a political lifetime were irretrievably ruined. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... whenever they were mentioned, they were always understood as applying only to white men. Domestic labor was confined to the blacks, and such was the prejudice that if he, who was the most popular man in his district, were to keep a white servant in his house, his character and reputation would be irretrievably ruined. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... the learned Viennese doctor and the trip to Ischl. A few more months of this appalling absorption in his own personality, this morbid marriage of man to his own image, and he suspected that his brain would be irretrievably injured. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... case into deep consideration, but dared not incur the moral responsibility of sending him across the sea, at his age, after so many years of exile, when the very tradition of him had passed away, to find his friends dead, or forgetful, or irretrievably vanished, and the whole country become more truly a foreign land to him than England was now,— and even Ninety-second Street, in the weedlike decay and growth of our localities, made over anew and grown unrecognizable ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for a long time; "She is a dear dear Tess," he thought to himself, as one deciding on the true construction of a difficult passage. "Do I realize solemnly enough how utterly and irretrievably this little womanly thing is the creature of my good or bad faith and fortune? I think not. I think I could not, unless I were a woman myself. What I am in worldly estate, she is. What I become, she must become. What I cannot be, she cannot be. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... compromised by my prolonged stay, one of them irretrievably, if I were arrested. However, they placed themselves entirely and unconditionally at my disposal. I stated my objections to the proposed conveyance of a coal boat to Wales, where I would be equally exposed as in Ireland, and have infinitely less sympathy or assistance. ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... rally his broken troops, General Mercer was mortally wounded, and the van was entirely routed. But the fortune of the day was soon changed. The main body, led by General Washington in person, followed close in the rear, and attacked the British with great spirit. Persuaded that defeat would irretrievably ruin the affairs of America, he advanced in the very front of danger, and exposed himself to the hottest fire of the enemy. He was so well supported by the same troops who, a few days before, had saved their ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... already taken up their positions for the evening, were divers unmarried ladies past their grand climacteric, who, not dancing because there were no partners for them, and not playing cards lest they should be set down as irretrievably single, were in the favourable situation of being able to abuse everybody without reflecting on themselves. In short, they could abuse everybody, because everybody was there. It was a scene of gaiety, glitter, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... years have been but twelve per cent. And should they be at any time thrown out of the service, more than half of their property would be irretrievably lost. This percentage of dividend would be large enough but for such possibilities as these, which may soon reduce it to a deficit and a loss. Thus it is that steam stock should declare three times the dividend of other stocks, to be eventually equal ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... straits, for the northern point is a dangerous assemblage of rocks, shoals, and islands. The cape was now two leagues to leeward, and the master was even in doubt whether we might be able to steer clear of it; but there was no remedy, as we must either succeed or be irretrievably lost. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... said, 'but if all were irretrievably offended, there still is One who can abundantly pardon, where ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Hartington. But from the first rumour of his personal misfortune his influence rapidly dwindled; when the period closed, many of those who had been his political associates had left him, and from Mr. Chamberlain, in political life, he was irretrievably sundered. ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... last story is simply that we seem to hear Stevenson chuckling to himself, "Ah, now, won't they all say at last how clever I am." That too mars the Merry Men, whoever wrote them or part wrote them, and Prince Otto would have been irretrievably spoiled by this self-conscious sense of cleverness had it not been for style and artifice. In this incessant "see how clever I am," we have another proof of the abounding youthfulness of R. L. Stevenson. If, as Mr Baildon says (p. 30), he had true child's horror ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... do, Alice,—but I see you are not prepared for this. Still, you may as well know it now as ever. Yes, Alice, your husband is irretrievably bankrupt!" ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... ran upon two wheels for some distance, and the boys knew that if a stone of any size was met the waggon must be irretrievably wrecked, and they saw in anticipation the flames overtaking it, scorching up the valuables it contained, and ending by reaching the ammunition, when everything must ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... Jamaica would, as a natural consequence, follow liberty! Commerce, said they, will cease; hordes of barbarians will come upon us and drive us from our own properties; agriculture will be completely paralyzed; and Jamaica, in the space of a few short months, will be seen buried in ashes—irretrievably ruined. Such were the awful predictions of an unjust, illiberal faction!! Such the first fruits that were to follow the incomparable blessings of liberty! The staple productions of the island, it was vainly surmised, could never be cultivated ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... French pickets, together with Ogilvy's regiment, checked in some measure the pursuit, but nothing could be done to save the day. All was irretrievably lost, though the Prince galloped over the field attempting a rally. The retreat became a rout, and the rout a panic. As far as Inverness the ground was strewn with the dead slain in ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... annals of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans are irretrievably lost. The traditions of the Druids perished with them. A Chinese emperor has the credit of burning "the books" extant in his day (about 220 B.C.), and of burying alive the scholars who were acquainted with them. And a Spanish adventurer destroyed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... every window tightly sealed, and the moaning cry for water answered by a little hot ale or tincture of bitter herbs, nature often gave up the useless struggle and released the tortured and delirious wretch. The means of cure left the constitution irretrievably weakened if not hopelessly ruined, and the approach of the disease was looked upon with affright and regarded usually as a special visitation ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... Commissioners, and if the vessel had been duly condemned by an American court, the proceeding would have been irreproachably regular. This being so, by the acknowledgment of the English themselves, who will be willing to admit that any will be found bold enough to cause an irretrievably fatal rupture to grow out of a quarrel of this kind, concerning the mode of procedure. England has consulted her legal advisers; America will consult hers also. Do disputes in which the national honor is ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... the shoulders of such a monarch, instead of concealing his vices, only made them glitter in the national eyes; and the morals of England might have been irretrievably stained, but for that salutary judgment which interposed between the people and the dynasty, and by driving James into an ignominious exile, placed a man of principle on the throne. Unfortunately, the reign of William was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Christ for two thousand years, it suddenly found itself in the throes of the most appalling upheaval yet experienced, with the majority of its inhabitants engaged in a murderous war. The dream of human brotherhood, glimpsed throughout the centuries, seemed to be irretrievably threatened, and once more arose the age-old question as to how the Reign of Love was to be introduced ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... that time was flying. Day had slipped into week and week into month, without his moving an inch from his groove in search of the girl whose unhappiness was yet always at the back of his thoughts. Now he was shaken with astonished self-reproach at his having allowed her to drift perhaps irretrievably beyond his ken. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... I was confronted by a perfect type: the apotheosis of injured nobility, the humiliated victim of perfectly unfortunate circumstances, the utterly respectable gentleman who had seen better days. There was about him, moreover, something irretrievably English, nay even pathetically Victorian—it was as if a page of Dickens was shaking my friend's hand. "Count Bragard, I want you to meet my friend Cummings"—he saluted me in modulated and courteous accents of indisputable culture, gracefully extending his pale hand. ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... wounds, were considered as dead. Having secured the banner of St. John, Aluch Ali took the prior's ship in tow, and was making the best of his way out of a battle which his skilful eye soon discovered to be irretrievably lost. He had not, however, sailed far when he was in turn descried by the Marquess of Santa Cruz, who, with his squadron of reserve, was moving about redressing the wrongs of Christian fortune. Aluch Ali had no mind for the fate of Giustiniani, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... into greater harmony with the religious instincts of the nation at large. The Church of England stood from that moment isolated and alone among all the Churches of the Christian world. The Reformation had severed it irretrievably from those which still clung to the obedience of the Papacy. By its rejection of all but episcopal orders the Act of Uniformity severed it as irretrievably from the general body of the Protestant Churches whether Lutheran or Reformed. And while thus cut off from all healthy ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... JUDITH is a fragment, but a very torso of Hercules. The first nine cantos, nearly three-fourths of the poem, are irretrievably lost, so that we have left but the last three cantos with a few lines of the ninth. The story is from the apocryphal book of Judith, and the part remaining corresponds to chapters XII. 10 to XVI. 1, but the poet has ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... from the natives what they had purloined from the fire, we had restored to us some of our boxes, desks, and clothes; but all our little comforts towards housekeeping were irretrievably lost. When the fire was over we received a visit from one of the missionaries, who made us a cold offer of assistance. We accepted a little tea, sugar and some few articles of crockery from them; but, although they knew we stood there houseless, amongst ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... precluded his consulting his party first. He issued a circular to explain his action in taking a course for which many blamed him. Viewed dispassionately, the incident appears to have exhibited his statesmanlike qualities in a marked degree, for he secured concessions which would have been irretrievably lost by continued opposition. Not long after this, Lord Cairns resigned the leadership of his party in the upper house, but he had to resume it in 1870 and took a strong part in opposing the Irish Land Bill in that year. On the Conservatives coming ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... protect from airplane fire the massive basilica of St. Mark's, consider the problem presented to the authorities by the Palace of the Doges, that creation of fairylike loveliness, whose exquisite facades, with their delicate window tracery and fragile carvings, would be irretrievably ruined by a well-aimed bomb. In order to avert such a disaster, it was proposed to protect the facades of the palace by enclosing the building in temporary walls of masonry. It was found, however, that this plan ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... Sir Robert Cotton in the possession of his tailor, who was just about to cut the precious document out into "measures" for his customers. Sir Robert redeemed the valuable curiosity at the price of old parchment, and thus recovered what had long been supposed to be irretrievably lost. ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... however, saw that as she proceeded, the important leaf was torn from the tablets, in a manner which showed that their owner had got rid of his delusion at the same instant. From that moment the world has heard no more of the Vespertilio Horribilis Americanus, and the natural sciences have irretrievably lost an important link in that great animated chain which is said to connect earth and heaven, and in which man is thought to be so familiarly ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... While engaged in the inside of an engine, making some repairs, a fellow-workman accidentally let in the steam upon him. The blast struck him full in the face; he was terribly scorched, and his eyesight was irretrievably lost. The helpless and infirm man had struggled for a time with poverty; his sons who were at home, poor as himself, were little able to help him, while George was at a distance in Scotland. On his return, however, with his savings in his pocket, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... soft face to mine, and mark what faith and submissiveness and expectancy is in her face, that whatever the future holds for us, and whatever of happiness we two may know hereafter, we shall find no instant happier than this, which passes from us irretrievably while I am thinking about it, poor fool, in place of rising to ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... proud Leonor could not entirely conceal the inward satisfaction she felt at the triumph of the young Don Antonio; for, notwithstanding her efforts, she could but ill disguise a latent feeling of interest and delight. Certainly it was not love; for, according to general opinion, she had irretrievably fixed her affections on another object. But yet she was in that state of mind which is more easily felt than described; a state too glowing to be called mere friendship—too cold to be denominated love; it was something between ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... those lonely, heart-hungry men should fall in love with her? In all the population of the camp the number of women was fewer than two score, and of this number half were married, others were hopeless spinsters, and others were irretrievably bad, only excepting Miss Woppit, the prettiest, the tidiest, the gentlest of all. She was good, pure, and lovely in her womanliness; I shall not say that I envied—no, I respected Hoover and Dodsley and Barber Sam for being stuck on the girl; you 'd have respected 'em, too, if you 'd seen her ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... it were, roughly and at random, with fierce clattering and jolting, quite off the ordinary track; so that none could say whether they should finally regain it, and roll smoothly forward, as in the prosperous and peaceful days of the past, or should bear suddenly and irretrievably down to some ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... considered himself to have 'irretrievably lost caste.' It is a fantastic idea, and could not have any justification in a country where an Englishman of good manners and behaviour need never want congenial society. Gordon was abnormally proud, independent and sensitive: an unfortunate ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... tempted to mention two or three years ago, but had not the confidence. In short, my lord, when the order of St. Patrick was instituted, I had a mind to hint to your lordship that it was exactly the moment for seizing an occasion that has been irretrievably lost to this country. When I was at Paris, I found in the convent of Les Grands Augustins three vast chambers filled with the portraits (and their names and titles beneath) of all the knights of the St. Esprit, from the foundation of the order. Every new knight, with few exceptions, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... new way of supplying the market of Europe, by means of the British power and influence, was invented: a species of trade (if such it may be called) by which it is absolutely impossible that India should not be radically and irretrievably ruined, although our possessions there were to be ordered and governed upon principles diametrically opposite to those which now prevail in the system and practice of the British ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... an ugly girl whining. If I'd been irretrievably ugly I'd never have forgiven my parents for bringing me into the world. But you're starting life without any handicap—" Marjorie's little fist clinched, "If you expect me to weep with you you'll be disappointed. ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... their account the nearest of kin; or, in other words, simply a discarded niece of the defunct. She telegraphs back that she will arrive in person for the funeral. I shall remain till she comes. I have lost a fortune, but have I irretrievably lost a friend? I am sure I can't say. Yes, I shall ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... out as she looked into his eyes—eyes haunted by the vision of all that he had denied his manhood and this girl's young womanhood—all that he had lost, irretrievably and forever on that day ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... health and constitution of many of the young people were irretrievably destroyed. At present permanent loss of health is rarely entailed, and even when sickness does from any cause arise, skilful and prompt advice and medicine are provided at a moderate charge ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... destructive shafts of the oriental archers; whole troops, stung with anguish and despair, threw themselves into the rapid stream of the Drave, and perished. Ere the sun had set, the army of Magnen'tius was irretrievably ruined; fifty-four thousand of the vanquished were slain, and the loss of the conquerors is said ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... choice, as to the sort of imitations the freaks of their animal nature may lead them to attempt. You feel, with deep annoyance, that a paroxysm of shyness has often made you speak entirely at random, and express the very opposite sentiments to those you really feel, committing yourself irretrievably to, perhaps, falsehood and folly, because you could not exercise self-control. Try to bring vividly before your mental eye all that you have suffered in the recollection of past weaknesses of this kind, and that will give you energy and ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... That is foolish. You deserve that Mademoiselle Kayser should have ridiculed, deceived and ruined you irretrievably, and that your name should never be uttered again. When one has the opportunity to possess a wife like yours, one adores her on bended knees, you understand me, and one doesn't destroy her true happiness to divert it in favor of the crowd. And what pleasure! Jouvenet has had the same dose ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... watched him leave the room.... Inevitable re-action set in, doubts overwhelmed her. Had she done what was best or had she blundered irretrievably? She went unsteadily to a chair, extraordinarily tired, exhausted in her new weakness by the emotional strain through which she had passed. She was beginning to be a little aghast at what she had done, at the force that she had set moving. And yet she had been actuated ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... of action—what man in love would not have done so?—but his first impulse was consistent with the life of strenuous effort for the cause he had embraced. To a romantic girl, however, his conduct could but seem brutal and treacherous. Helen had done more than enough. She had compromised herself irretrievably, and an immediate marriage was imperatively demanded by the conventionalities. She was, however, seized by a brutal father and confined to her room, until she understood that Lassalle had left Geneva. Then the entreaties of her family, the representation that ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... the very time when Cardinal Richelieu had crushed out all insurrection, whether Huguenot or noble, in France and was seeking some effective means of prolonging the war in the Germanies to the end that the rival Habsburgs might be irretrievably weakened and humiliated. He entered into definite alliance with Gustavus Adolphus and provided him arms and money, for the time asking only that the Protestant champion accord the liberty of Catholic worship ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... bright-coloured 'Watteau sacque,' involuntarily put up her eyeglass to look at it. Instantly Lucy, conscious of the eyeglass, and looking hurriedly round on the people near, was certain that the pleat from the shoulder and the mittens were irretrievably wrong and conspicuous, and that she had betrayed herself at once by her dress as an ignoramus and an outsider. Worst of all, the lady in green was in a sacque too!—a shapeless yellow thing of the most untutored and detestable make. Mittens also! drawn ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... beyond my control; or if I find that abstinence from innocent things increases my power to help a brother, and to fight against a desolating sin; or if things good and innocent in themselves, and in some respects desirable and admirable, like the theatre, for instance, are irretrievably intertwisted with evil things, then Christ's example is no plea for our sharing in such. It is better for us to cut off the offending hand, and so, though maimed, to enter into life, than to keep two hands and go into the darkness ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... canny and cautious pace. Not so the Saints. They always retained the freshness and confidence and generous impulses of childhood. If God spoke to their inner ear and bade them leap boldly forth into His Infinite Arms, spurning irretrievably the solid footing of our spinning globe, without hesitation or question they took the leap. And every child can see the wisdom of it. To the child it is common sense: to his elders it is inspired heroism or unintelligible hardihood. We have always entertained a deep- seated suspicion ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... old rule was for heroes and heroines to fall suddenly and irretrievably in love. If they fell in love with the right person so much the better; if not, it could not be helped, and the novel ended unhappily. And, above all, it was held quite irregular for the most reasonable people to make any use whatever ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... begrudge the last cent of his earthly possessions that purchases his relief from the gallows? Better that we should all be ruined—better that the land should be entirely depleted of its youth, and the country irretrievably in debt, with a prospect of a future and lasting peace, than a compromise now, with the inevitable certainty of everlasting war and tumult and bloodshed, worse, a thousand times worse than that of the South American States. Shall we make ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... reproaches I had to endure. It is enough to say that, with desperate infatuation, I made a solemn promise to my creditors to satisfy them all on the first day of the ensuing month, and on the fulfilment of that promise it depended, whether my character as a gentleman was still preserved or irretrievably lost. Ellen, I cannot attempt to describe to you what I suffered at that time. The wrestling with an impossibility, the struggle after what was unattainable, the incapability of resigning myself to what seemed inevitable, the powerless rage, the ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... was so weak and emaciated that a medical board determined that not a day should be lost in sending me back to England. I was dispatched, accordingly, in the troopship "Orontes," and landed a month later on Portsmouth jetty, with my health irretrievably ruined, but with permission from a paternal government to spend the next nine months in attempting to ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... quote the sharp remarks of David's Harp, the organ of the Dunkers. You urge that such things can be nothing more than the play of boys and girls, and are something worse than mere waste of time, for they set young people to thinking of the theatre, which is irretrievably sunk and only harmful. In your character of trustee, you are sorry it has been done, and beg that it may ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... links of person and office with the privileged character of the city. Perhaps he might feel a sort of narrow local patriotism in recalling these scenes to public notice by description, at a time when they had been irretrievably extinguished as realities. But, after making every allowance for their local value to a Frankfort family, and for their memorable splendor, we may venture to suppose that by far the most impressive remembrances which had gathered about ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... phase was to attack the enemy's front-line system from El Arish Redoubt to the sea at Sea Post. At 3 A.M., after the enemy guns had plentifully sprinkled Umbrella Hill and had given it up as irretrievably lost, we opened a ten-minutes' intense bombardment of the front line, exactly as had been done on preceding mornings, but this time the 161st and 162nd Infantry Brigades followed up our shells and carried 3000 yards of trenches at once. Three-quarters of ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... birth; and no sooner was he informed of the event, than the new-born infant was borne off to the regenerating water, when he was christened by the name of Merlin; the fond hopes of the demons being for this time, at least, irretrievably disappointed. How Merlin, by superhuman prowess and knowledge, defeated the Saracens (Saxons) in many bloody battles; his magical achievements and favour at the court of King Vortigern and his successors, are fully exhibited by the author of the history.[86] Geoffrey ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... the pursuit. Thus neither selfish nor unselfish pleasures were pleasures to me. And there seemed no power in nature sufficient to begin the formation of my character anew, and create, in a mind now irretrievably analytic, fresh associations of pleasure with any of the objects ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... exercised, furnishes the most disgusting moral spectacle I ever witnessed. In all ranks, however, it appeared to me that the greatest and best feelings of the human heart were paralyzed by the relative positions of slave and owner. The characters, the hearts of children, are irretrievably injured by it. In Virginia we boarded for some time in a family consisting of a widow and her four daughters, and I there witnessed a scene strongly indicative of the effect I have mentioned. A young female slave, about eight years of age, had found on the shelf of a ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... believer must, perforce, be a heaven upon earth; for the Christian "prospect of an immortal life in heaven," together with the other consolations, "must irretrievably vanish" for him who has but "one foot" on the Straussian platform. The way in which a religion represents its heaven is significant, and if it be true that Christianity knows no other heavenly occupations than singing and making music, the prospect ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... alone upon the boundless ocean, far from all human help, and feel more than ever that your life depends upon the Almighty alone. The man who, in such a dreadful and solemn moment, can still believe there is no God, must indeed be irretrievably struck with mental blindness. A feeling of tranquil joy always comes over me during such great convulsions of Nature. I very often had myself bound near the binnacle, and let the tremendous waves break over me, in order to absorb, as it were, as much of the spectacle before me as possible; on ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... full speed. It was a messenger from Field- Marshal Rosenberg, who informed the archduke that he had been repulsed, that all was over, and that the day was irretrievably lost. ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... claims of the only Being, who could have sustained him in the hour of temptation. He saw his past errors, he moaned over them, but alas! he considered it too late to repair them. His life, he believed to be irretrievably lost, and he wished only to commit himself to the mercy of ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... has been recorded thus at length, because it was really the only occasion on which the General Staff were afforded anything like a proper opportunity of expressing an opinion as to operations against the Dardanelles, until after the country had been engulfed up to the neck in the morass and was irretrievably committed to an amphibious campaign on a great scale in the Gallipoli Peninsula. Prince Louis resigned his position as First Sea Lord a few days later; Commodore Lambert often mentioned the pow-wow in conversation with me in later days, after the mischief (for which the professional side of ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... this despicable rumour that to attack it seems absurd, only sometimes it is wise to risk an absurdity. Puny insects, left too long unhurt, may turn out dangerous enemies irretrievably damaging the fertile vine on which they fastened in ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... restraint between the two boys. Both of them realized then that Pen was more to them than the little playmate they had hitherto considered her. Jim believed that the kiss in the vestibule bound Pen to him irretrievably. But this did not prevent him from feeling uneasy and resentful over ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... was to hurl him irretrievably from the eminence to which in three short years he had climbed was approaching with stealthy, relentless foot, and was even now ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... of Jeronimo Marcello at Venice, we learn that it was finished by Titian. The text says: "La tela della Venere nuda, che dorme ni uno paese con Cupidine, fu de mano de Zorzo da Castelfranco; ma lo paese e Cupidine furono finiti da Tiziano." The Cupid, irretrievably damaged, has been altogether removed, but the landscape remains, and it certainly shows a strong family resemblance to those which enframe the figures in the Three Ages, Sacred and Profane Love, and the "Noli me tangere" of the National Gallery. The same Anonimo ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... stunned them with the boat's tiller, and threw them overboard: their bodies were picked up next day, and gave the first intimation of their fate. Two of the pirates were subsequently caught and executed; but the property, worth 10,000 dollars, was irretrievably lost. ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... sight of these witnesses, who could not know all the circumstances which had provoked and might justify his offence, Cornelius felt that he was irretrievably lost. ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... arrogant of late; but the result did not come up to expectations. By midday the chateau had been ransacked from attic to cellar; every kind of valuable property had been destroyed, priceless works of art irretrievably damaged. But priceless works of art had no market in Paris these days; and the property of real value—the Sucy diamonds namely—which had excited the cupidity or the patriotic wrath of citizens Gourdon and Tournefort could ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... must arise. It is needless to pursue the correspondence which ensued with Monroe, now Secretary of State. By Madison's proclamation, and the passage of the Non-Intercourse Act of March 2, 1811, the American Government was irretrievably committed to the contention that France had so revoked her Decrees as to constitute an obligation upon Great Britain and upon the United States. To admit mistake, even to one's self, in so important a step, probably passes diplomatic candor, and especially ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Heaven confers' is, probably, the good human nature which by vice, and especially by drunkenness, may be irretrievably ruined. ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... Madame de Stael, however, were very fleeting. Her father had fallen irretrievably, and in September 1790 he passed almost unnoticed out of the country where, but little more than a year before, he had been welcomed with such enthusiasm. The Ministry of Narbonne, to which she had attached her most ardent hopes, ended in four months, and ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... burst into tears of joy. But the amateur pilot was no match for the situation. Affrighted to find himself in mid-air, too dazed to know what to do, he pulled the wrong levers and the machine crashed to earth. The pilot escaped, but the airship which had taken four years to build was irretrievably wrecked. The widow's hopes were blasted, and the way was left free for ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... what ever known risks. "We must pay our tribute to Time": ah yes, yes;—and yet I will believe, so long as we continue together in this sphere of things there will always be a potential Letter coming out of New England for me, and the world not fallen irretrievably dumb.—The best is, I am about going into Scotland, in two days, into deep solitude, for a couple of months beside the Solway sea: I absolutely need to have the dust blown out of me, and my mad nerves rested ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... them, the boy or girl could reproach her for afterwards and with reason. One is the fore-thought for beauty. How many boys' whole personal appearances are ruined by standing-out ears! How many little girls' complexions are irretrievably spoilt by unsuitable soap having been used which has burnt red veins into their tender cheeks. These two small examples are entirely the fault of the mother and do not lie at the door of uncorrected habits in the children themselves. No boy's ears need stick out; there are caps and every ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... the emigrants steadily pursued his way, with no other guide than the sun, turning his back resolutely on the abodes of civilisation, and plunging, at each step, more deeply if not irretrievably, into the haunts of the barbarous and savage occupants of the country. As the day drew nigher to a close, however, his mind, which was, perhaps, incapable of maturing any connected system of forethought, beyond ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... people under contribution; but, as revenue is, by a very false rule, taken as a criterion from which the prosperity of a nation may be estimated, the very evil that brings on decay serves to disguise its approach. A nation may be irretrievably undone, before it is perceived that it has any tendency to decline; it is, therefore, unwise for governments to wait till they see the effects of decay, and then to hope to counteract them; they must look before-hand, and prevent, otherwise ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... could have checked and that would have resulted inevitably in the abandonment of the cause forever. The King's Basin lands with the wealth of effort that had already been expended would have been given over to the river, lost irretrievably to the race. ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... commonly thought in America that Mr. Adams, although not a judge, had a singular gift for constitutional interpretation. Far-sighted men could nevertheless believe that a powerful party in England, inspired by inveterate hatred of America and irretrievably bent upon her ruin, would pronounce all his careful distinctions ridiculous and would still reply to every argument by the mere assertion, as a fact behind which one could not go, that Parliament had always had ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... competent to judge you to whom you had played in a happy mood. This new and indescribably individual element was still dependent on your personality, and without your actual presence it did, properly speaking, not exist. On hearing you one felt sad, because these marvels were to be irretrievably lost with your person, for it is absurd to think that you could perpetuate your art through your pupils, as some one at Berlin boasted lately. But nature, by some infallible means, always takes care of the permanent ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... always do it. The wealth, the life of luxury that he offered, appealed to her strongly; but she kept her head and remembered that he was dependent on his father's bounty, and she had no intention of compromising herself irretrievably under such circumstances. If he had the disposal of the old man's immense riches then the temptation might be over-powering; but until he had she would wait. And ever the memory of Wargrave obtruded itself, rather to her annoyance; but ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... it's not my fault, so you needn't nag," he said savagely, for the thought that all hope of Daphne was now irretrievably lost had just begun ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... on which a man throws away so few as two thousand words, not reckoning what he loses in sleep. A hundred and twenty-five words for every one of sixteen hours cannot be thought excessive. The result, therefore, is, that, in one generation of thirty years, he wastes irretrievably upon the impertinence of answering—of wrangling, and of prosing, not less than twice eleven thousand times a thousand words; the upshot of which comes to a matter of twenty-two million words. So that, if the English language contains (as ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... up his mind to forswear all other occupations, and give himself exclusively to the Christian ministry, that he might spend his life and powers in a ceaseless warfare against the horrible delusions to which I seemed so irretrievably wedded. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... this measure were terrible almost beyond conception. The main industry of the country was at a blow completely and irretrievably annihilated. A vast population was thrown into a condition of utter destitution. Several thousands of manufacturers left the country, and carried their skill and enterprise to Germany, France, and Spain. The western and southern districts of Ireland ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... have written by this post to Wills, to go to him and investigate. I have also detached Berry from here, and have sent him on by train at a few minutes' notice to Edinburgh, and then to Glasgow (where I have no doubt everything is wrong too). Glasgow we may save; Edinburgh I hold to be irretrievably damaged. If it can be picked up at all, it can only be at the loss of the two first nights, and by the expenditure of no end of spirits and force. And this is the harder, because it is impossible not to see that the last readings ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... no effect. The hoof-marks of Dyke's horse had been traced in the mud of the road to within a quarter of a mile of the foot-hills and there irretrievably lost. Three days after the hold-up, a sheep-herder was found who had seen the highwayman on a ridge in the higher mountains, to the northeast of Taurusa. And that was absolutely all. Rumours were thick, promising clews were discovered, new trails ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... a previous acquaintance with the trick that has been played upon them. Indeed we think the remark, that Shakspere never leaves any of his characters the same at the end of a play as he took them up at the beginning, will be found to be true. They are better or worse, wiser or more irretrievably foolish. The historical plays would illustrate the remark ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... course of one fortnight the labours of fourteen years were annihilated. Forty-four persons were murdered, 369 dwellings consumed, 261 pillaged, and 172,000 head of live-stock carried off into Kafirland and irretrievably lost; and what aggravated the wickedness of the invasion was the fact that during a great part of the year the Governor had been engaged in special negotiations for a new—and to the Kafirs most advantageous—system of relations, with ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne |
