"Undoing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wise would pray to possess, and when this boastful piper had been defeated in the contest and had been skinned as though he were a two-footed bear, they left him with his entrails torn and exposed to the air. Thus did Marsyas sing for his own undoing, and such was his fall. As for Apollo he was ashamed ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... remember afterwards whether anybody suggested it, and he believed that the same idea occurred to all of them at once, but in another moment or two they set about undoing the traces from the sled, and making them secure about their bodies. For half an hour they made perilous attempt after attempt to recover the lost provisions, and failed. The snow broke through continuously beneath the foremost man, but it did not break ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... whether they be on the right side or the wrong. Nature, as I said in "Life and Habit," hates that any principle should breed hermaphroditically, but will give to each an helpmeet for it which shall cross it and be the undoing of it; and in the undoing, do; and in the doing, undo, and so ad infinitum. Cross-fertilisation is just as necessary for continued fertility of ideas as for that of organic life, and the attempt to ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... skirmish. It was not from Fred's gun, or Will's. It was the phantom rifleman at work again. Schillingschen—Schillingschen's ghost—or whoever he was, he could not have timed his fusillade better for our undoing. The first shot was followed by six more in swift succession. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... suspicious of the ultimate ending of the affair. St. Pierre had almost no cause for complaint, for it was his own carelessness, coupled with his opponent's luck, that had been his undoing—and luck and carelessness are legitimate factors of every fight, Carrigan told himself. But with Bateese it was different. He had held up his big jaw, uncovered and tempting, entreating some one to hit him, ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... end; and just as I reached this box a vivid flash of lightning revealed its interior, and there, bolt upright, stood a tall Spanish grenadier, with his musket resting in a corner of the hut, close to his hand. I realised instantly that the briefest period of hesitation now meant our undoing; for as I had seen the soldier, he had also undoubtedly seen me; so the man no sooner stood revealed before me than, with one bound, I was in the sentry-box with him, one hand grasping his throat to prevent him ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... to try to influence you, Charles," she said, "except as anyone tries to help those about one. And certainly you've been the one that has put us all in our present position. That's why it distressed me for you even to talk of undoing your work." ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... his meal, Brady got up from the box he had been seated on. He went over to the bundles he had brought, undoing one of them. He took out a long black dress coat. This he tried on. It buttoned up to his neck closely, ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... apprehensive for Isabinda, her Father's Humour is implacable; and how far his Jealousie may transport him to her Undoing, shocks my Soul ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... Rocks and lakes and mountain-floods, The warriors come, in armed might Careering, careless of the right! Their leader he who sternly bade Freedom fall; and glory fade, The scourge of nations ripe for ruin, Planning oft their own undoing! But who in yonder swarming host Locust-like from coast to coast, Reluctant move, an alien few, Sullen, fierce, of sombre hue, Who, forced unhallow'd arms to bear, Mutter to the moaning air, Whose curses on the welkin cast Edge the keen and icy blast! Iberia, sorrow ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... were implacable faces. The grins were gone. There was no misunderstanding the sentiments which those men entertained toward a woman who had wrought the undoing of a square man. She presented completely then the pathetic spectacle of a baited, cowering, wild creature at bay. She was bitterly alone among them. Even Crowley of the city was against her. In ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... are the wiser man; for many a man's tongue shakes out his master's undoing: to say nothing, to do nothing, to know nothing, and to have nothing, is to be a great part of your title; which is within a ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... and when I have got together enough of them, and have selected from that number those whom I deem most available for my purpose and competent to carry out my directions as I shall give them, I shall organize them into a Band of Hatred, the sole object of which shall be your undoing and, ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... time to time, the clumsy and complacent Dave whiled away his days, and comforted himself that he had the persimmon-tree all to himself, as he expressed it. Meanwhile, the notes of Westcott were fast undoing all that Albert had done to separate him from ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... was his undoing. The light fall of snow a few days before had gathered in the little hollows of the wood deceptively. The detective plunged into one of these and fell sprawling on all fours,—a calamity that caused his comrades to pause uneasily. Larry was upon his enemy in a flash, wrenched his pistol away and ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... trouble for the man. On the other hand, it must be owned I had not much reason to count upon a general run of good luck. And suppose I had the misfortune to pile her up high and dry on some beastly shoal? That would have been the final undoing of that voyage. It was plain that if Falk refused to tow me out he would also refuse to pull me off. This meant—what? A day lost at the very best; but more likely a whole fortnight of frizzling on some ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... must cooperate, and to get him to do this he must be tactfully warned of his condition. Many, such patients, noting their impaired ability, do not seek medical advice, but think all they need is more exercise; hence they walk, golf, and dance to excess and to their cardiac undoing. ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... Nupton will not have read the later passages of this memoir. Such lack of thoroughness is a serious fault in any one who undertakes to do scholar's work. And I hope these words will meet the eye of some contemporary rival to Nupton and be the undoing of Nupton. ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... country. It was not an issue that could be left to arbitration in the hereafter, or threshed out by judge and jury. The situation called for instant action. To do his obvious duty rather than to know it, seemed to our hero the only honorable exit from the dilemma, even though it resulted in his own undoing. ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... male, increasing in strength through the long course of time, which places him in woman's power. Man is the slave of woman, often when least he thinks so, and still woman uses her power, even like the spider, not infrequently, for his undoing. ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... part of the plan had gone astray, so the murderer, in the fanatical resolve of his latent fixed idea, had recourse to a further expedient as daring and original as the scheme which failed. The second instrument had been the means of his own undoing. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... me, and we will douse them in the pond." Two large footballs, but very flaccid-looking, were brought out, and by tying a stone and a line to them they were both very soon thoroughly soaked. He then took them out, and brought them into the house. First he took one, and undoing the lacing which confined one side, he drew out a flaccid bladder. "This is the sort of football we use here," he said, holding it up to Selby. "It cannot be easily rendered unserviceable by thorn, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier and her noble friends, all of whom she so transcended in beauty, purity, goodness, and breeding (although she was but an untaught, wandering gypsy girl, out of the gutter); and there, before them all and the gay archer, she was betrayed to her final undoing by her goat, whom she had so imprudently taught how to spell the beloved name ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... from whom he had inherited his title, had killed the grandfather of Miss Chaworth in a duel, lent a romantic tinge to the matter—the boy was doing a sort of penance, and in one of his poems hints at the undoing of the sin of his kinsman by the lifelong devotion that he will bestow. This calling up the past, and incautious revealing of the fact that the ancestor Chaworth could not hold his own with a Byron, but allowed himself to be run through the body by ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Heaven speed thee, poplar tree, May thy wooing happy be. GENERAL: Yet, the breeze is but a rover, When he wings away, Brook and poplar mourn a lover Sighing,"Well-a-day!" MEN: Well-a-day! GENERAL: Ah! the doing and undoing, That the rogue could tell! When the breeze is out a-wooing, Who can woo ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... me from Frankfurt," said the doctor, rising, and he went up to the package and began undoing it, Heidi looking on in great expectation. After he had released it from its heavy outer covering, "There, child," he said, "now you can go on ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... thereto by some influence malign or fate sinister, the loyal portion of two of the southern tribes, the Creeks and the Seminoles, took in April, 1862, a certain action that, all unbeknown to them, expedited the northern schemes for Indian undoing. The action referred to was tribal reoerganization. Each of the two groups of refugees elected chiefs and headmen and notified the United States government that it was prepared to do business as a nation.[646] The ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... commissioners appointed to check them at the point of successful ambition or magnificent victory. The historian has a hard task when he tries to fathom the Visconti's schemes, or to understand his motives. Half the Duke's time seems to have been spent in unravelling the webs that he had woven, in undoing his own work, and weakening the hands of his chosen ministers. Conscious that his power was artificial, that the least breath might blow him back into the nothingness from which he had arisen on the wrecks of his ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... The Earl was my undoing. At a critical point in the unfolding of the plot there was talk of his having been connected with a scandal in St. Petersburg. This he attempted to deny, and though I am unable to quote the exact words of his denial, the sound of it lingers sweetly in my memory. Nor would the exact words, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... of icy air as the door at the end of the compartment is pushed open, and I realise the train has stopped at a station. The native guard stands in the doorway apologetically fumbling with the key which he has just used in undoing the door. "Mem-sahib coming in," says he hopelessly, and a very disagreeable high-pitched voice makes itself heard behind him. Pushing rudely past come a man and woman so much alike they must be brother and sister; they have both coarse features and clumsy squat figures; ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... would not let Tordenskjold go when peace was made, but he had his way in the end. To his undoing he consented to take with him abroad a young scalawag, the son of his landlord, who had more money than brains. In Hamburg the young man fell in with a gambler, a Swedish colonel by name of Stahl, who fleeced him of all he had and much ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... of native treachery is frequently repeated, and explains the enslavement, the downfall, and in parts, the extermination of the American tribes. Everywhere they betrayed one another to the final undoing of all.] ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... constantly in the habit of pestering his intimates. But without waiting for a reply Dr. Heidegger hobbled across the chamber and returned with the same ponderous folio bound in black leather which common report affirmed to be a book of magic. Undoing the silver clasps, he opened the volume and took from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what was once a rose, though now the green leaves and crimson petals had assumed one brownish hue and the ancient flower seemed ready to crumble to dust ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... untoward thing had not so cruelly happened, had cast no such cloud over the fair future before him! Nor were his selfish regrets unmingled with annoyance that Isy should have yielded so easily: why had she not aided him to resist the weakness that had wrought his undoing? She was as much to blame as he; and for her unworthiness was he to be left to suffer? Within an hour he had returned to the sermon under his hand, and was revising it for the twentieth time, to perfect it before finally ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... that after this the poor youth would have been left in peace; but no, his enemy the stableman hated him as much as ever, and laid a new plot for his undoing. This time he presented himself before the king and told him that the youth was so puffed up with what he had done that he had declared he would seize the king's ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... victory may bring ruin, and disappointment endanger their heads.... Acquisition alone can make burdens palatable, and in a war with our own colonies we must inflict instead of acquiring them, and we cannot recover them without undoing them. I am still to learn wisdom and experience, if these things are not so." (Letter to Mann, January 25, 1775.) "A war with our colonies, which is now declared, is a proof how much influence jargon has on human ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... to acquire her African possessions were peculiarly typical. Like the madness that plunged her into a struggle with civilization they were her own undoing. Into a continent whose middle name, so far as colonization goes, is intrigue she fitted perfectly. Practically every German colony in Africa represented the triumph of "butting in" or intimidation. The Kaiser That Was regarded himself as the mentor, and sought to recast continents in ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... memories of wasted soil fertility and forest destruction. Slowly but surely they are rebuilding and rehabilitating worn out tracts at tremendous expense. The ruin which ignorance accomplished with alacrity, education is slowly and painfully undoing. Americans should heed the lessons of history and profit by the mistakes of other countries. The production of food, clothing and other necessaries of life which is of vital importance to a nation, cannot, with safety, be left to blind forces or to revered but ignorant traditions. For ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst
... and preventing any real coherence and continuity in our Government of that great Colony. A good and successful Administrator has sometimes been withdrawn to be superseded by another, equally well-intentioned, perhaps, but whose policy was on wholly different lines, thus undoing the work of his predecessor. This has introduced not only confusion, but sometimes an appearance of real injustice into our management of the colony. In all this chequered history, the interests of the native ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... the letters," said Harding, "that we write at three in the morning to tell her how enchanting she was; it is the flowers we send, the words of love that we speak in her ear, that are our undoing. So long as we ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... "feather-voyages." The feathers sought were those of the Labrador Duck and the Eider. These adventurous bird pirates secured their booty either by killing the birds or taking the down from the nests. The commercializing of the Labrador Duck meant its undoing. The last one known to have been taken was killed by a hunter near Long Island, New York, in 1875. Forty-two of these birds only are preserved in the ornithological collections of the ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... which converted the politically divergent Swedish nation into the irreconcilable foe of the unional government (see CHRISTIAN II.). Christian's contempt of nationality in Sweden is the more remarkable as in Denmark proper he sided with the people against the aristocracy, to his own undoing in that age of privilege and prejudice. His intentions, as exhibited to his famous Landelove (National Code), were progressive and enlightened to an eminent degree; so much so, indeed, that they mystified the people as much as they alienated the patricians; but his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... voice was such as to hurl the woman pell-mell over the cliff of discretion down into the depths of her own undoing. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... intuitions, yet gullible, Easily used at times, of erratic judgment, Analytic but pursuing with incredible swiftness The falsest trails to her own undoing— All in all the strangest mixture of colors and scent Derived from father and mother, But mixed by ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... young—so young! and am to die already! I was fair, too; that was my undoing. My true love was near, now he ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... in a corner, the trunk he had bought while at college, small and cheap in itself, not in what it held. For here were David's books—the great grave books which had been the making of him, or the undoing of him, according as one may have enough of God's wisdom and mercy to decide whether it were the one ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... While I was undoing my trousers, I observed that Miss Frankland had quite lifted up her outer frock, and had sat down, evidently intending to flog me across her knee. Both being ready, she told me to put the footstool by her side and kneel upon it, then desiring me ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... a petticoat, but a piano was the cause of my undoing. Vaulting ambition and all that sort of thing. My parents were easy in circumstances and I was brought up to be a pianist. Deliberately planned to be a virtuoso. I was sent to Leschetizky, to Von Buelow, to Rubinstein, to Liszt. I studied scales in Paris with Plante, trills in Bologna ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... dined, I gathered up this basketful. Methought the more I cast mine eye upon the whole discourse, the more I saw lie in it. Wherefore setting myself to a more narrow search, through frequent prayer to God, what first with doing, and then with undoing, and after that with doing again, I thus ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... their paste of masticated leaves, have piled their cells one above the other; in the deserted chambers and vestibules, Megachiles have arranged their leafy jars; in the live wood, filled with juicy saps, the larvae of the Capricorn (Cerambyx miles), the chief author of the oak's undoing, have set up ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... evidence of the hypocrisy with which our Senate parades our national honor and our vital interests to the undoing of a grand work? Search our history and you will find it in abundance. In the great case of the Alabama claims, Charles Francis Adams pronounced the construction of Confederate ships in English ports to be a violation of the international law of neutrality. This certainly was a question of national ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... shall have the benediction of the church, less fortunate girls will envy me; but I am not a whit better than the poor creature flaunting her shame on the pavement. Nay, I am worse, for she can plead that love was the cause of her undoing. Father, I can't, ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... Monday morning in season for biz!" This was certainly satisfactory as far as it went, but I added, by way of parenthesis, "and who else will be present?" knowing well enough that one uncongenial spirit might be the undoing of us all. To this Bartholomew responded, "No one but ourselves, old fellow; now don't be queer." He knew well enough my aversion to certain elements unavoidable even in the best society, and how I kept very much to myself, except on Monday nights when ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... at the time of Bismarck's retirement, we had made a timely and resolute decision either in favor of the Western Policy that he advocated, or in favor of the Eastern Policy, we should have prevented the development of a situation in the politics of the world which ultimately led to our own undoing. If, during the war, however, we had completely abandoned the U-boat campaign, and had made every possible effort to come to an understanding with America, we should, in my opinion, have been able to extricate ourselves from it satisfactorily. Be this ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... the tall, leather-clad figure out of sight than a crowd of small boys and youths pressed boldly round the handsome car. Her splendour was her undoing, for a plain, every-day sort of automobile might ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... through Intellect, gives it a meaning and value to the percipient. That would involve the rejection of all that our culture has accumulated, all our social heritage from the past, the overthrow of our civilization, the undoing of all that has developed in our world, since man's Intelligence came into it. We cannot obtain Intuition without intellectual labour, for it must have an intellectual or scientific basis. Yet, however valuable Intellect is, it is not final. "It is reality itself, in the profoundest ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... Riding on a razor, to my mind. Come down, and have a lark," said Osmond; while Martin, undoing the gate, proceeded to swing it backwards and forwards, to John's extreme terror; but the more he clung to the spikes, and cried for mercy, the quicker Martin swung it, shouting with laughter at his fright. Henry meanwhile scrambled and tumbled to the ground, and ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Muza; "the Christian king conquers more foes by craft than force; and his spies are more deadly than his warriors. Wherefore this caution against me, but (pardon me) for thine own undoing? Were I a traitor, could Ferdinand himself have endangered thy crown so imminently as the revenge of the leader of thine own armies? Why, too, this desire to keep thee inactive? For the brave every hour hath its chances; but, for us, every hour increases our peril. If we seize ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the story of the shocking treachery of Humpy Joe, together with the miserable undoing of the Flying Heart. "Why, those poor fellows are broken-hearted," she concluded. "Their despair over losing that talking-machine would be funny if it were not so tragic. I told them you would win it back for them. And you will, won't ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... final question, that although he should submit as a quiet citizen, he should seize the first moment that offered for shaking off the yoke in a constitutional way. I suspect the plan will be to encourage two thirds of the legislatures in the task of undoing the work; or to get a Congress appointed in the first instance that will commit suicide on their ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... will. He sent for Leon, you see, and must have seen at a glance that he had for a son—a mule, of the worst sort. He probably saw that to leave money to Leon was to give it to the Church, which meant that it would be spent for the further undoing of Spain and the ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... snow on the ground, and Aunt Louisa had allowed herself the unaccustomed luxury of a fire in her bed-room; but in Philip's little room it was so cold that his fingers were numb, and he had great difficulty in undoing his collar. His teeth chattered. The idea came to him that he must do something more than usual to attract the attention of God, and he turned back the rug which was in front of his bed so that he could kneel on the bare boards; and then it struck him that his nightshirt ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... suddenly endowed with that clearness of mental vision so often granted to the dying. She saw how she had wrought her own undoing by consenting to accept the perfidious role imposed upon her by her father, and how she, herself, had paved the way for the falsehoods, slander, crimes and misfortunes of which she had been ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... effect, been undoing with levels and scoops and dredges what nature did in a mighty upheaval. They are practically tipping the bowls back the other way and so making currents to run down the old channel toward the gulf through the valleys of the Des Plaines and the Illinois ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... organised conquest of Nature, and I can quite understand that ancient libertine refusing to co-operate in her own undoing. And I can quite understand, too, my father's preference for what he called an illustrative experiment, which was simply an arrangement of the apparatus in front of the class with nothing whatever by way of material, and the Bunsen burner clean and cool, and then a slow luminous ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... movement, she stopped short, as though seized with a sudden fear.... Fear of what? Fear of the monstrous chance that might be her undoing? Or fear rather of the dread weapon which she was about to deliver against herself? In any case nothing accused her with greater directness than this last hesitation, which was incomprehensible if she was innocent, but clear as ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... house easily enough, by sacrificing a window-pane in the kitchen and then undoing the catch. A sweet kitchen it was, or ought to have been if the servants hadn't avenged their wrongs by leaving a lot of dishes and dish towels unwashed. We wandered about, Patsey pretending to remember this ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... and even the rising colour in Miss Hartley's cheek did not serve to enlighten him. But he was glad to notice that she was becoming reserved again. Mr. Vyner noticed it, too, and, raging inwardly against a tongue which was always striving after his undoing, began with a chastened air to criticise the architecture of the new chapel in Porter Street. Architecture being a subject of which the captain knew nothing, he discussed it at great length, somewhat ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... presence of mind shewed by Perkins in amusing the mob with meat and drink and huzzas, till Sir Philip Jennings Clerke could get the troops and pack up the counting-house bills, bonds, &c. and carry them, which he did, to Chelsea College for safety,—could have saved us from actual undoing. The villains had broke in, and our brewhouse would have blazed in ten minutes, when a property of L150,000 would have been utterly lost, and its once ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Minna's: the mating of a man and a woman whose brains were not oversensitized by too complicated mentality; of a man and a woman direct and sincere, primarily and clearly a man and a woman. Such happiness could never be for her now; for her who had let a man make love to her for his own undoing. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... be common to the whole human race. In primitive times religious interest was prompted by fear, and the early customs of sacrifice and worship were established by the group to bring its members into friendly relations with the Power outside themselves that might work to their undoing. Temples and shrines testified to man's devotion and stirred his emotions by their symbols and ceremonies. A special class of men was organized, a priesthood to mediate with the gods for mankind. Children were taught to respect and fear the higher powers, and their elders ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... impertinence to her and a shame to yourself. But to pour forth such worship, such offers of service, at the feet of an unhappy woman—age-old sophistry, so often ruling the speech and actions of men to their fatal undoing!—this is praiseworthy and legitimate, a matter not of privilege merely, but of obligation to whoso would ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... night, September 8th, Lord Salisbury had his opportunity of undoing this great effect—of reasserting that intellectual as well as mere voting dictatorship which he holds in the House of Lords; and he signally failed to rise to the occasion. I do not like the policy of Lord Salisbury, but there is a lucidity, a point, and sometimes a vigour ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... the suitors rush into the apartment, insolently reminding her of her promise to choose one of them, as soon as the garment, which she has been weaving for so many years for Laertes shall be completed, and wildly upbraiding her with undoing her work during the night Penelope tries to hold them in check, but they only grow more shameless, and at last Antinous tries to embrace her. Quick as thought she draws her dagger, and when it is wrenched from her she snatches his own sword and directs ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... some of those who take part in it, and may result in the temporary political success of others, in the long run every such movement will either fail or else will provoke a violent reaction, which will itself result not merely in undoing the mischief wrought by the demagog and the agitator, but also in undoing the good that the honest reformer, the true upholder of popular rights, has painfully and laboriously achieved. Corruption is never so rife as in communities where the demagog and the agitator bear full sway, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... plays a lively air as the coach rattles through the ill-paved streets of a country town; and the coachman, undoing the buckle which keeps his ribands together, prepares to throw them off the moment he stops. Mr. Pickwick emerges from his coat collar, and looks about him with great curiosity; perceiving which, the coachman informs Mr. Pickwick ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... while father was laid up, she looked in on us. "Polly, my girl, there's no use trying to beat up in the teeth of a gale with a five-knot current against one," she exclaimed, as, dropping down into out big arm-chair and undoing her bonnet-strings and the red handkerchief she wore round her neck, she threw her bonnet over the back of her head. "I'm dead beat with to-day's work, and shall be worse to-morrow. Now, my dear, what I've got to say is this, I want ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... so, drawing his pork to the extremity of the hanger, and arming himself with his lantern and his old sack, he set out on what, in ordinary weather, would have been a twenty minutes' errand. He could not have locked his door without undoing his well-knotted string and retarding his supper; it was not worth his while to make that sacrifice. What thief would find his way to the Stone-pits on such a night as this? and why should he come on this particular ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... which came howling round him, had not an old woman come to the rescue and driven them away. With the help of her grand-son—a little naked creature, just able to walk, or rather to stagger—she dragged him to her tent, and, undoing the line that fastened his ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... imagine how angry I was, and how I tried to find some means of undoing the mischief she had done; but there was no help for it. I could only bring Prince Pink to the place where you were being brought up, hoping that when you grew up he might love you, and by your care be restored to his natural form. ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... the three boys sat down around a wooden block formed of a tree-trunk with a deep groove running through it. The labour consisted in undoing and taking apart old boots and shoes, which arrived at the shop from every direction in huge, badly tied bales and in sacks with paper designations sewed to the burlap. The boot destined to be drawn and ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... instantly animated my own latent imagination. And immediately it occurred to me that perhaps, in the humble letter from the wilds of Baffin Land, which I was now opening with eager and unsteady fingers, might lie concealed the professional undoing of Professor Jane Bottomly, and the only hope of my ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... refusing to let her speak at once, when she wanted to tell him all about Dickerson. That was her instinct; she had been right, and he wrong; she might be to blame for everything since, but he was to blame then and for that. Now it was all wrong, and past undoing. She tried, in the reveries running along with what she was hearing of Charmian's talk, every way of undoing it that she could imagine: she wrote to Ludlow; she sent for him; she went to him; but it was all impossible. She did not wish to undo ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... sitting there so still Before that little shrine beside the way, And wondered where your thoughts might be astray; Your knitting lying idle on your knees, And worse than idle—like Penelope's, Working its own undoing! ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... so much since the days of apostasy from the Apostles, take heed that thou lose not thy power; but keep Kingship off thy head, which the world would give to thee:" so had Fox written in one letter, ending, "O Oliver, take heed of undoing thyself by running into things that will fade, the things of this world that will change; be subject and obedient to the Lord God." There was something in all this that really reached Cromwell's heart, while it amused him; and, though he would begin by bantering Fox at an interview, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... from which to view the delightful valleys. Then again it lost itself under great over-arching trees, and as we came too rapidly down a steep hill on entering Bodmin, the road was so heavily shaded that we were near our undoing. The loose sand had been piled up by the rain and the dense shade prevented the road from drying. The car took a frightful skid and by a mere hair's breadth escaped disastrous collision with a stone ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... those blue eyes of his which could be by turns so fierce, so unrelenting, and—did she not know it to her heart's undoing?—so unutterably tender, besought her. But, for once, they awakened no response. She felt cold—quite ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... unlocked one of her trunks and took out a little white package with a red cross scored on it. Undoing the sealed waxed paper she uncovered several neatly cut strips of meat. She regarded them with disgust. It was by no means the first little white package she had opened since her arrival at Grey House, but none of the previous ones had ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... the very nature of slavery, and fostered by their long defense of slavery. That genesis of the movement is all the more impressive when we recognize the high personal character of its leaders, and acquit them of conscious motives of personal ambition. Slavery was their undoing. The habit of absolute control over slaves bred the habit of mastery whenever it could be successfully asserted. There grew up a caste, its members equal and cordial among themselves, but self-assertive and haughty to all besides. They brooked no opposition at home, and resented ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... standing up not far from Hollyhock. She resolved in her own mind to take no notice whatever of Hollyhock. Jacko was to the Lady Leucha as one who did not exist, but in her busy, vain little brain she was forming schemes for the undoing of this ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... deep shadow over his features. But his voice was peculiarly melodious and persuasive, and there was a nameless attraction about him that Cuthbert was quick to feel. Others in the days to follow felt it to their own undoing, but of that the lad knew nothing. He only wished to retain the good opinion this stranger seemed ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... until now. He had forgotten the traitor responsible for his undoing. So much was Jessie in his life that James had counted for little when he thought of her. But now the scoundrel swept all other thoughts pell-mell out of his head. He was suddenly ablaze with a rage such as he had never before experienced. All that was human in him was in a state of fierce resentment. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... county of Longford, three-fourths of nine hundred and ninety-nine cartrons, the property of the O'Farrells, were granted to adventurers, to the undoing and beggary of that princely family. Twenty-five of the septs were dispossessed of their all, and to the other septs were assigned mountainous and barren tracts about ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... uncle's, and must be applied to his use in the first instance? If I mistake not greatly, there is not a Jew or Lombard who would not advance the necessary sums on such security.—Therefore, dog," he continued, addressing the jailer, "hasten thy unclenching and undoing of rivets, and be not dainty of giving me a little pain, so thou break no limb, for I cannot afford to be stayed on ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... he had ever done, or was ever likely to do, in his life, proved, for a time at least, his undoing. Kitty had made him from generous mean, from unsuspecting suspicious, and during the wretched year they had spent together she had had a disastrous effect on his work. At last, acting on the shrewd advice of one of those instinctive men of the world of which Bohemia ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... When, during the course of their first conversation, she casually mentioned that she could command millions if she wanted them, his immediate interest in MacNair cooled appreciably—not that MacNair was to be forgotten—merely that his undoing was to be deferred for a season, while he, the Pierre Lapierre once more of student days, played an old game—a game long forgot in the press of sterner life, but one at ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... bring in another Whig. The widowed mother, in a letter written with all the excellent sense and feeling which distinguished her, refused to sacrifice her son to her party. His education, she said, would be interrupted; his head would be turned; his triumph would be his undoing. Just at this conjuncture the Admiral arrived. He made his appearance before the freeholders of Middlesex assembled on the top of Hampstead Hill, and was returned ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... With his latest gasp he said, "Alas, the books deceived me; they do not tell the whole story. Beware of the struggling young author, my friends. Whom God sees fit to starve, let not man presumptuously rescue to his own undoing." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... cutting and tying together bundle after bundle of canes, till we had six which roughly resembled as many big trusses of straw. These we secured to four of the stoutest canes we could find, passing them through the bands crosswise, and after a good deal of difficulty, and at the risk of undoing our work, we managed to thrust it off the bank into the river, where, to my great delight, upon trying it, the buoyancy far exceeded my expectations. In fact, though we could not have stood upon it, lying down it supported us well, and without any hesitation, after cutting ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... interest and profound indignation; for they, as he told them, were themselves insulted in the person of their general: they all swore, on their honour, that if he would put the matter in their hands, and not yield to his rage, which could only work his own undoing, either his bride should be rendered up to him without a smirch upon her bridal veil, or else a punishment should be dealt out proportioned to the affront. And without delay, as a proof of the energy wherewith the noble tribunal would take action in the affair, Luigi Manenti, secretary to the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... about to rise, his glance fell on something wrapped in newspaper and tucked under the stern seat. If it should only prove to be food of any description, "even burned mush," thought Winn, grimly, how happy it would make him! In another second he was undoing, with eager fingers, the lunch of crackers and cheese that Sheriff Riley's wife had so thoughtfully thrust into her husband's hands as he left the house the morning before, and which he had as thoughtfully tucked under the stern seat of his skiff. He ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... has seen better times has usually a poor tale to tell, some mean and trivial thing has been his undoing, but they that dined in that basement had mostly fallen like oaks on nights of abnormal tempest, had fallen mightily and shaken a nation. Those who had not been kings themselves, but claimed through an ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... do better than fight; and Rawdon, in spite of his true love, can do better than follow the quarrel up to his own undoing. The marquis, on the spur of the moment, gets the lady's husband appointed governor of Coventry Island, with a salary of three thousand pounds a year; and poor Rawdon at last condescends to accept the appointment. He will not see his wife again, but ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... hands, undoing the door of her apartment, she made her way into the long, dark gallery, with which she was perfectly familiar, and soon gained the apartment already referred to. The door fortunately stood nearly closed, and she successfully passed ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Achilles at least to allow the Myrmidons to sally forth under Patroclus' leadership, if he would not fight in person. The importance of this episode is emphasised in the poem. The dispatch of Patroclus is called "the beginning of his undoing", it foreshadows the intervention which was later to bring Achilles himself back ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... teeth, determined to reach the top in time to get away before he could join her. In her eagerness she took a chance that proved her undoing. A rock gave beneath her foot and clattered down. Clinging by one hand and foot, she felt her body swing around. From her throat a little cry leaped. She ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... is that admirable alimentary harmony sustained by the Church. During the whole year we are authorized to eat terrestrial animals, and in Lent aquatic ones only. Promiscuous as we are, we are undoing the equilibrium between the maritime and the land forces, we are attacking the peaceful rotation of ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... of wolves, that at any time may fall upon and destroy a weaker one, the boisterous antics of these children of the forest fascinated me. Filled with the curiosity that lures many a trader to his undoing, I rose and went across to the thronging, shouting, shadowy figures. A man darted out of the woods full tilt against me. 'Twas he of the pointed beard, my suspect of the Hudson's Bay Company. Quick as thought ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... regained sanity. The man on the floor looked calm, peaceful and strangely dignified. His helpless peacefulness appealed to Joyce. She began to take away all signs of degradation that remained. The inanimate tokens of poor Jude Lauzoon's weakness and undoing. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... before he resigned his command at the end of the war was to thank Steuben for his invaluable aid. Charles Lee did not believe that American recruits could be quickly trained so as to be able to face the disciplined British battalions. Steuben was to prove that Lee was wrong to Lee's own entire undoing at Monmouth ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... Court held that Sir Charles was no longer a party, and that he could not be allowed to intervene. Thus the first judgment, by declaring him innocent and awarding him costs as one unjustly accused, led straight to his undoing. He had been struck out of the case; he was now a mere member of the general public. There never were, probably, legal proceedings in which from first to last law and justice ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... the gleam of hot desire commingled with a glitter of revenge as his thoughts flew swiftly to Wolf River—the Texan's open insult and the pilgrim's swift shot in the dark. Here, helpless, completely in his power to do with as he pleased, lay the woman who had been the unwitting cause of his undoing! Vengeance was his at last, and he licked his lips in wolfish anticipation of the wrecking of that vengeance. The thought of revenge was more sweet in that he never anticipated it. The Texan had disappeared altogether, and he had heard from ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... again, Miriam! What's eatin' you to-day?" cried the foreman, as he came along to inspect the work; and seeing Miriam undoing my blunders, asked, "Who ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... gay, thoughtless life of the student; the side-glance of a bright eye had been the undoing of him. Day and night he could not get the image of this most modest damsel out of his mind. He sought the mansion of the padre. Alas! it was above the class of houses accessible to a strolling student like himself. The worthy padre had no sympathy with him; he had never been ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... groaned. "It may be some satisfaction to you," he said, "to know that this may mean my undoing, disgrace, a ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... come to? I was used to hear say, in Queen Mary's days, that the great Council to London were busy undoing what had been done in King Harry's and King Edward's time: but I ne'er heard that the Lord had ta'en His Word in pieces, and laid up an handful thereof ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt |
