"Retraction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and which undoubtedly limited his influence in the later years of his life. A knowledge of this shortcoming is, however, essential to a thorough comprehension of the man. It is frequently said that Godkin rarely, if ever, made a retraction or a rectification of personal charges shown to be incorrect. A thorough search of The Nation's columns would be necessary fully to substantiate this statement, but my own impression, covering as it does thirty-three years' reading of the paper under Godkin's control, inclines me to believe ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... many such) who knew him best during this latter part of his career, would naturally be pained to have it represented, though only by implication, as a sort of deepening declension ending in a virtual retraction. Of such friends Carlyle was the most eminent, and perhaps the most highly valued, and, as co-trustee with Archdeacon Hare of Sterling's literary character and writings, he felt a kind of responsibility ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... others, he was careful not to take his son away from the institution. Many of the coloured papers, especially those that were the organs of religious bodies, joined in the general chorus of condemnation or demands for retraction. ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... eloquence to obtain a retraction of that sentence, and ran with the greatest volubility through all the protestations, prayers, entreaties, professions, and assurances which love could feel or art contrive. I had resolution, however, to resist them, and to command my own emotions ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... is extremely elongate and ribbon-like, and this, combined with its wonderful power of extension and retraction, makes it one of the most curious and interesting of microscopic forms. The anterior end is square or cylindrical; the type species has a four-sided mouth, but many specimens may be found which have a plain cylindrical mouth region. One reason for this may be the ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... the Secretary of the Navy—after slyly pulling down the blinds—so bravely patted him on the back—that the South renewed her hope, in the seeming certainty of war between the two countries. But she had calculated justly neither the power of retraction in American policy, nor Secretary Seward's vast capacity for eating his own words; and the rendition of her commissioners—with their perfectly quiet landing upon British soil—was, at last, accepted as sure token of how little they would accomplish. And, for over three years, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... retraction of your charges against us, and pledge your word of honour never to repeat them, or to make any complaint, formal or otherwise, ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... check it in the light forms. Ice, a teaspoonful of salt and lemon juice may be tried. Inhalations of chloroform often relieve. Strong retraction of the tongue may give immediate relief. Spirits of camphor, one teaspoonful. Tincture of cayenne pepper one to two drops in water. Ten grains of musk by the rectum. Hoffman's anodyne one teaspoonful in ice water ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... assent. Meynell left him to read and sign the public apology and retraction, which Flaxman had mainly drawn up; while the Rector himself took up a Bradshaw lying on the table, and walked to the ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bell for a silence in which the clock of death seemed to tick. But as the seconds fled Reilly's courage oozed away. He dared not accept the invitation to reach for his weapon and try conclusions with this debonair young daredevil. He mumbled a retraction, and flung, with a ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... demigod, and it seems to me I never loved you so fondly as at this moment, when you stand before me as the victor over my cowardly husband. Ah, I wish I could have witnessed that scene; you proud and grand, and he lying trembling like this miserable windspiel at your feet, repeating the words of retraction ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Rangoon was dated Oct. 26. Moung Shwa-gnong had been accused before the viceroy, and had disappeared. Mr. Judson had felt much anxiety and distress on his account, fearing he had done something in the way of retraction, which prevented his visiting him. But in a fortnight he was agreeably surprised at seeing him enter. He informed Mr. J. that having been accused, he had thought it the wisest way to keep out of sight; that he had put ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... writing, "I had little expectation of success, but I felt it my duty at once to execute the orders," advanced with Russell the now threadbare and customary arguments on the Proclamation of Neutrality, and received the usual refusal to alter British policy[634]. If Seward was sincere in asking for a retraction of belligerent rights to the South he much mistook European attitude; if he was but making use of Northern victories to return to a high tone of warning to Europe—a tone serviceable in causing foreign governments to step warily—his time was well chosen. Certainly at Washington Lyons ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... territorial increase, and that Austria might expect Illyria. Such ideas, expressed in grandiloquent phrase, could not be regarded as indicating a pacific feeling. Every social class in France had a grievance; yet amid the din of arms, and in the dazzling splendors of military preparation, even the retraction of the Concordat attracted little attention, and a few riots in Dutch cities, which were the only open manifestation of discontent throughout the whole Empire, aroused no interest at all. The report of Napoleon's conciliatory ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... N. unbelief, disbelief, misbelief; discredit, miscreance[obs3]; infidelity &c. (irreligion) 989[obs3]; dissent &c. 489; change of opinion &c. 484; retraction &c. 607. doubt &c. (uncertainty) 475; skepticism, scepticism, misgiving, demure; distrust, mistrust, cynicism; misdoubt[obs3], suspicion, jealousy, scruple, qualm; onus probandi[Lat]. incredibility, incredibleness; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... her all, Till thou, a stranger, stole her heart's allegiance, Suborned—Forgive me, I am old, a father, Whose doting passions blind. I am not jealous, Believe me, sir. When we Riberas give, We give without retraction or reserve, Were it our life-blood. I rejoice with thee That she is thine; nor am I quite bereft, I have some treasure still. I do repent So heartily of my discourteous speech, That I will crave your leave before I kiss Your ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... accidental. Weak knees due to faulty conformation seldom escape becoming sprung in animals that are given hard work. Severe and continuous driving is a common factor in the production of this condition. Strains of the flexor muscles of the region may cause it. The retraction of the flexor muscles and their tendons and the aponeurosis of the antibrachial region occurs in this disorder and prevents the animal ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... people eager to believe and repeat it. Within twenty-four hours he found himself famous, all the way from the Parc Monceau to the rue de Varennes. After his conscience had given him a sleepless night he got up to see that any modification of his statement meant retraction. Retraction was out of the question, in that it involved the loss of his reputation among men. He was caught in a trap. He must lie and maintain his place, or he must confess and go out of society. It must not be ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... It was a retraction all right, and all that could be expected of the Pinkerton Press. In its decision and emphasis I ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... quarrel. It is the letter of a man of honor apologizing for having spoken lightly, for having repeated false rumors without verifying them—in short, retracting all that he had said that reflected in any way on Mademoiselle de Nailles, and authorizing me, if I think best, to make public his retraction. After that we can have nothing more to say ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... hunger, for it was serene, and it was not greed, for it was austere, and yet it certainly signified that he habitually made upon life some urgent demand that was not wholly intellectual and that had not been wholly satisfied. As she wondered a slight retraction of his chin and a drooping of his heavy eyelids warned her, by their likeness to the controlled but embarrassed movements of a highly-bred animal approached by a stranger, that he knew she was watching him, and she took her gaze away. But ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... drawing-room, from which, with a rigorous desire to economize labor, she had excluded all that was superfluous, and there, in the bare, orderly room, the two women—their girlhood definitely behind them—faced each other. Kate noted a curious retraction in Honora, an indescribable retrenchment of her old-time self, as if her florescence had been clipped by trained hands, so that the bloom should not be too exuberant; and Honora swiftly appraised Kate's suggestion of ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... of the assessors[80] were for burning her without further delay; which would have been sufficient satisfaction for the doctors, whose authority she rejected, but not for the English, who required a retraction that should defame King Charles. They had recourse to a new admonition and a new preacher, Master Pierre Morice, which was attended by no better result. It was in vain that he dwelt upon the authority of the University of Paris, "which is the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... told you I said?" Her reply was that I must not blame her for her rhetorical expressions—that I had my way of expressing things and she had hers. I told her I most assuredly did blame her when those expressions were calculated to do such harm. I waited for an honest an unequivocal retraction of her statements based on "hearsay." Not a word of retraction or explanation was said in the convention and I remained misrepresented before that body ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... with an apron. It is soft and glutinous to the touch, but varies in form and even in colour. Its production causes pain and groans from the subject, and any violence towards it would appear also to affect her. A sudden flash of light, as in a flash-photograph, may or may not cause a retraction of the ectoplasm, but always causes a spasm of the subject. When re-absorbed, it leaves no trace upon the garments through which it ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... one who was himself a reviser, and the only pastor in the Company (the Old Testament Company), thus gives his experience, "Never, even once, did the odium theologicum appear. Nothing was said at any time that required retraction or apology {41}." ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... circumstances, either the noblest effort of manliness or the last resource of fear, and it was evident, from the reception which this gentleman experienced every where, that the former, at least, was not the class to which his late retraction had been referred. In this crisis of his character, a Mr. Barnett, who had but lately come to reside in his neighborhood, observing with pain the mortifications to which he was exposed, and perhaps thinking them, in some degree, unmerited, took upon him to urge earnestly the necessity of a ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... was therefore granted for three o'clock, and after a long argument Enver Pasha was persuaded to agree to send only twenty-five French and twenty-five English to Gallipoli 'as a demonstration,' the War Minister arguing that any farther retraction would weaken discipline. It was also agreed to send only the youngest men, and Bedri Bey, the Constantinople chief of police, was at once sent for in order that he might be acquainted with the new limitation of the decision. But he at once protested. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... man saith, hath filled houses, cities, families, countries. It hath even overspread the whole nation, and filled all with darkness, horror, confusion, trouble, and anguish. Once being a holy nation by profession of a covenant with God, and our open, manifest, universal retraction of that, by an unholy, ungodly, and wicked conversation, this hath brought the sword against a hypocritical nation, and this will bring that far greater, incomparably more intolerable day of wrath upon the children of disobedience. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... accredited agents both of Austria and the Pope the system of this mysterious revolutionary combination in and around Ferrara. The latter shrank from extreme measures, and was content with an oath of retraction; but the Austrian government gave instant orders to the chiefs of police, both there and at Venice, to arrest those whom the perjured Count Villa named as adherents of Carbonarism. The decree was executed with military force; and, without warning, preparation, or even a parting interview ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... an inch in length. The operation is then to be repeated in a transverse direction, cutting across the gum, in the centre of the first incision, and forming a cross, thus . The object of this double incision is to insure a retraction of the cut parts, and leave an open way for the tooth to start from—an advantage not to be obtained when only one incision is made; for unless the tooth immediately follows the lancing, the opening reunites, and the operation ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... his head reeled, as though he had been blowing a fire, and she would not blaze for all his blowing—would be governed only by a stupid sentimentality; and when at length she suddenly flashed up in silly anger and accused him of interested motives; and when he had demanded instant retraction or release from her employment; and when she humbly and affectionately apologized, and was still as deep as ever in hopeless, clinging sentimentalisms, repeating the dictums of her simple and ignorant German neighbors and intimates, and calling them in to argue with him, the feeling ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... freely with other boys of his age, he obtained no knowledge of the habit from others. He often heard allusions which he did not understand, and of which he did not, fortunately, discover the meaning. But he was afflicted with congenital phimosis, the prepuce being so tight that retraction was impossible. This, together with urinal irritation,—which occasioned nocturnal incontinence of urine,—constipation, and highly seasoned food, produced so much local irritation as to occasion frequent erections, and an increased secretion. He soon noticed that there was an accumulation ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... themselves to the assembly of the people in a suppliant manner, not without tears in their eyes, requesting that Cato might show the reason and cause of his fixing such a stain upon so honorable a family. The citizens thought it a modest and moderate request. Cato, however, without any retraction or reserve, at once came forward, and standing up with his colleague interrogated Titus, as to whether he knew the story of the supper. Titus answering in the negative, Cato related it, and challenged Lucius to a formal denial of it. Lucius made no reply, whereupon ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough |
