"Undone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kinds and grades throughout the country. It is distressing to witness every day such melancholy proofs of how much is done that ought not to be done, and how much that ought to be done is left undone, ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... on! We follow! Why defer Until tomorrow what today may do? Tell's arm was free when we at Rootli swore. This foul enormity was yet undone. And change of circumstance brings change of vow; Who such a coward as to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... Religion and religious exercises were his choice, and the time he had to spare from his studies he spent that way. He began to have sweet familiarity with God, and to live in near communion with him, before others began seriously to lay to heart their lost and undone condition by nature, and that additional misery they expose themselves to, by walking in a wicked way and sinful course. When he arrived at the thirteenth or fourteenth year of his age, he had even then attained so much experience in the ways of God, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Heyward, apprehensive the unconscious sisters might comprehend the nature of the detention, and conquering his disgust by a train of reflections very much like that of the hunter; "'tis done; and though better it were left undone, cannot be amended. You see, we are, too obviously within the sentinels of the enemy; what course do you ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... too precious to be lavished away in these things. He began to have sweet familiarity with God, and to live in near communion with him, before others began seriously to lay to heart their lost and undone state and condition by nature, &c. so that before he arrived at the 13th or 14th year of his age, he had even attained to such experience in the way of God, that the most judicious and exercised Christians in the place confessed they were ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... to this extent, that it would put them in possession of a cherished secret, which—But why talk of these things? What is done cannot be undone. I can only prepare ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... evening in listening to the organist practising grave anthems and voluntaries in the Cathedral. Every little item he could think of in his business affairs was carefully gone over during the three days he spent in Exeter,—nothing was left undone that could be so arranged as to leave his worldly concerns in perfect and unquestionable order—and when, as "Mr. David," he paid his last daily score at the little Temperance hotel where he had stayed since the Tuesday ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Mrs Goodenough. 'At the first look of the thing, I should not ha' thought Mrs. Gibson was one to hide away her fine relations under a bushel; indeed for that matter we're all of us fond o' turning the best breadth o' the gown to the front. I remember, speaking o' breadths, how I've undone my skirts many a time and oft to put a stain or a grease-spot next to poor Mr. Goodenough. He'd a soft kind of heart when first we was married, and he said, says he, "Patty, link thy right arm into my left one, then thou'lt be nearer to ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Consul, General Bonaparte found France at war with England, Russia, Austria, Turkey, and Naples. These powers had formed a coalition in December, 1798, had defeated the armies that the Directory sent against them, and undone Bonaparte's work in Italy. It now devolved upon him to restablish the prestige of France abroad, as well as to restore order and prosperity at home. A successful campaign would, moreover, fill the empty treasury of the state; for Bonaparte always exacted large ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... she would walk with him in the morning, in the gardens of the hotel, leaning heavily upon his arm, pressing it, sighing, and making him tie the laces of her little shoes, which were always coming undone in that particular place. Then it would be those soft words and things which the ladies understand so well, little attentions paid to a guest, such as coming in to see if he were comfortable, if his bed were well ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... there is Admiral Boscawen has demolished the Toulon squadron, and has made you Viceroy of the Mediterranean. I really believe the French will Come hither now, for they can be safe nowhere else. If the King of Prussia should be totally undone in Germany, we can afford to give him an appanage, as a younger son of England, of some hundred thousand miles on the Ohio. Sure universal monarchy was never so put to shame as that of France! What a figure do they make! they seem to have no ministers, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... thoughts made a leap to the admiration of him, and then to the useless consideration, how happy she might have been with this man had not Evan come between. Why had he come, just to win her and prove himself unworthy of her? But it was done, and not to be undone. Evan had her heart, worthy or unworthy; she could not take it back; there was nothing left for her but to be a cold shadow walking beside this good man who was so full of all gentle and noble affections. Well, she was glad, since he wanted her, that she might lead ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... will not suffer that a single one Of His own creatures, in His image made, Should die, and in irrevocable shade Lie evermore—neglected and undone. It is not thus a father treats his son, And those whose folly credits it, degrade God's love and fatherhood, that never fade, By lies as base as devils ever spun. Man's love is but a pale reflex of God's, And God is love, and never will condemn Beyond remission—though He school with rods— ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... for food,[76] no regard for repose, can draw him away thence; but, lying along upon the overshadowed grass, he gazes upon the fallacious image with unsatiated eyes, and by his own sight he himself is undone. Raising himself a little {while}, extending his arms to the woods that stand around him, he says, "Was ever, O, ye woods! any one more fatally in love? For {this} ye know, and have been a convenient shelter for ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... slight the Father of Spirits! In the name of God, brethren, I beseech you to consider how you will then bear this anger which you now make light of! You that can not make light of a little sickness or want, or of natural death, no, not of a toothache, but groan as if you were undone; how will you then make light of the fury of the Lord, which will burn against the contemners of His grace! Doth it not behoove you beforehand to think ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... with Ferdinand, King of Spain,(*) for his assistance with men and arms. These arms may be useful and good in themselves, but for him who calls them in they are always disadvantageous; for losing, one is undone, and winning, one ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... too, have often heard How men are sold and undone By overturns in carriages, And thieves and fires in London; We know what risks all landsmen run, From noblemen to tailors; So, Bill, let us thank Providence That you ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 1 • Various
... was, Richard left nothing undone to fortify his failing cause; he may be thought even to have overdone. He doubled his spies, enlisted fresh troops, erected fortifications, equipped fleets, twice had Richmond at his fingers' ends, twice saw Providence take his side in the dispersion of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... can do no more. Remember, then, that you perform your part of this arrangement, and, with the blessing of God, I shall leave nothing undone to ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... head, and that Jessica's was tucked under like a boy's, while Jennifer's lay in a soft knot on her neck. But little Joan's was hanging still in its plaits over her shoulders, and one thick plait was half undone, and the loose hair got in her own and everybody's way, and was such a nuisance that Martin was obliged at last to gather it in his hand and hold it aside for the sake of the bubble-blowers. And when they lifted their heads he was looking at them so gravely that Joyce laughed, and ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... pleasure fulfilled amidst of thy blindness is set; More glorious than gaining of all thine unfaltering hand that shall fail: For what is the mark on thy brow but the brand that thy Brynhild doth bear? Lone once, and loved and undone by a ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... and fight; while others of us cannot find time in the four and twenty hours to do half the things we wish to achieve. Although your orator has nothing to do but "write a few headlines and go home," as Old Bill Byrne says, night overtakes him with half his chores undone. ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... falteringly he proffers his request. A moment's hesitation and the family circle opens to receive him, its members crowd round him with words of comfort and small deeds of love. They are not doing right, but they will do well. Nothing is left undone to restore and refresh the exhausted fugitive, who soon finds himself in a perfect haven ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... this is a place of wizards and evil things. Methinks I see the red eyes of the Esedowana glaring at us through the dark of the trees and smell their smell. Yet these wizards must be caught, for know this, my brother: if we return to Umgugundhlovu with the king's command undone, then there are stakes hardening in the fire of which we shall taste the point. If we are all killed in the catching, and some, it seems, are missing already, yet they must be caught. Say, my brother, shall we draw on? ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... extremis is sure to go wrong, For the pendulum swings with a multiplied force When sloped from its even legitimate course. I have known—who has not?—that a profligate son Has been through his fanatic father undone; Restrained till the night of free licence arrives, And then he breaks out to the wreck ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... very comfortable life if you take care of your health; you have a good sixty years before you. You can do a good deal in sixty years, and now for goodness' sake stop talking about the matter. It is done and cannot be undone. I want to say something ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... in my bed beneath the vast canopy of the sky, all my sins seem forgiven me. Fate alone—Fate who bears all things on his shoulders—is to blame, and I wish nothing undone. ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... the same month, and contains assurances of the "anxious wish" of the Mexican Government "not to delay the moment of that final and equitable adjustment which is to terminate the existing difficulties between the two Governments;" that "nothing should be left undone which may contribute to the most speedy and equitable determination of the subjects which have so seriously engaged the attention of the American Government;" that the "Mexican Government would adopt as the only guides for ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk
... scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith: but these ye ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone. Ye blind guides that strain out the gnat, and swallow ...
— His Life - A Complete Story in the Words of the Four Gospels • William E. Barton, Theodore G. Soares, Sydney Strong
... the autumn of 1861, it seemed as if all the masterful work of the Northern navy would be undone by the Northern people themselves in backing up the rashness of Captain Charles Wilkes, of the war-ship San Jacinto. On the high seas he overhauled the British mail steamer, Trent. Aboard her were two Confederate diplomatic ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... been determined before, ten times more now was I resolved never to yield. No cowardly surrender could bring me back my child. The boy was dead, and what was done could not be undone, for the will of ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... replied, "I shall proceed; because I would not that my conscience should hereafter reproach me for having left anything undone to escape this misery. My lord, I implore you to spare me; force me not over the brow of this dreadful precipice; have compassion ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... madly into oblivion, was affixed to a proclamation of the governor convening the legislature in special session on the 20th of November. It was Morton Bassett's legislature, declared, the Republican press, brought back to the capital to do those things which it had left undone at the regular session. The Democratic newspapers proved conclusively that the demands of the state institutions said to be in dire need were the fruit of a long period of Republican extravagance, for which the Democratic Party, always ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... estate, with three boroughs upon it—six members—Why, what an acquisition! what consequence! what dignity! what weight till the house of Macsycophant! O! damn the fellow! three boroughs, only for sending down six broomsticks.—O! miserable! miserable! ruined! undone! For these five and twanty years, ever since this fellow came intill the world, have I been secretly preparing him for ministerial dignity,—and with the fellow's eloquence, abilities, popularity, these boroughs, and proper connections, he might certainly, in a little time, have ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... known of the army operations within the last five days to claim our especial gratitude to God, while what remains undone demands our most sincere prayers to and reliance upon Him, without whom all human efforts are in vain. I recommend that all patriots, at their homes, in their places of public worship, and wherever they may be, unite in common ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... back, poor wretch, all pale and undone. Alas! alas! for her condition. At his feet she throws herself and craves forgiveness. Then, with a bursting heart, he flings his arms round her neck. He weeps, he sobs, he roars, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... pecuniary resources are, I am sure, quite small, so it is necessary for his friends to support him, and I want you to promise me that nothing shall be left undone that might help to prove his innocence if I make myself responsible for any costs that he is unable to meet. I should prefer, of course, not to appear in the matter, if it ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... might become irksome to Christian, if he inherited a love for outdoor life, and for moving from place to place. I thought I would say that perhaps I was wrong ever to have taken him away from his own people; but as it was done and could not be undone, we might perhaps make the best of it together. I hope you understand me, though you say nothing? You see, if he is a gipsy at heart, he has also been brought up to many comforts you cannot give him, and with the habits and ideas ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... the cedar's breaking up was actually so unimportant, and yet her husband's attitude towards it made it so significant. There was nothing that he said in particular, or did, or left undone that frightened, her, but his general air of earnestness seemed so unwarranted. She felt that he deemed the thing important. He was so exercised about it. This evidence of sudden concern and interest, buried all ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... and his murderer met, those of the dying man full of scorn. Craven's glance fell before that steady look. He muttered a hope that the wound was but slight; then, in torture, burst out: "'Twas a slip. By Heaven, it was, Volney! I would to God it were undone." ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... can never be undone. My career is ended, and I can never look you in the face again. At first I thought I should show the letters, one by one, to the man she married, and ask him what he thought of his wife, but that is too low. I hold them because I have a mad longing to see her again and heap reproaches ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... and when your mouth is stopped by violence, or the noose tightens round your neck. A word spoken to some one preserves an indestructible influence, just as any movement whatever may be metamorphosed, but not undone. Here, then, is a reason for not mocking, for not being silent, for affirming, for acting. We must have faith in truth; we must seek the true and spread it abroad; we must love men and ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... travellers; some attention also should be paid to the weather, if the climate is to be praised. In the railroad cafe at Potsdam there was a waiter so rude to the Marches that if they had not been people of great strength of character he would have undone the favorable impression the soldiers and civilians of Berlin generally had been at such pains to produce in them; and throughout the week of early September which they passed there, it rained so ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... my distinguished predecessor in the high office which I hold, and partly because I thought you might be willing to give me some hints as to my conduct, for I should like to leave nothing undone that might make me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... was an enthusiastic clapping when Miss Celia sat down, but even while hands applauded, consciences pricked, and undone tasks, complaining words and sour faces seemed to rise up reproachfully before many of the children, as well as their own faults ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... to be all she might have been, for the work of seventy selfish years couldn't be undone in a minute. But with regret, rose the sincere wish to earn a little love before the end came, and the old perversity gave a relish to the reformation, for even while she resolved to do the just and generous thing, she ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... dangerously graceful callings, and destroy their work when it is done, rather than see it wrested from them, and with it all that is left to them of freedom, to serve the whim of a covetous and cruel master. All that P'hra Narai did to foster the sciences and arts in his land has been undone by the ruinous selfishness of his successors; and of the few suicides recorded in the annals of Siam since his time, one of the most remarkable is that of a famous painter, who poisoned himself the day after his installation at court. Thus all natural ambition has been ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... of February 1587 it was executed on Mary in the very hall where the sittings of the court had been held. As compared with Elizabeth's painful disquiet, who shrank from doing what she held to be necessary, and when she at last did it wished it again undone and thought she could still recall it, the composure and quiet of soul, with which Mary submitted to the fate now finally decided, impresses us very deeply The misfortune of her life was her claim to the English crown. This led her into a political labyrinth, and into those entanglements which ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... And anger have undone us. 'Tis not you Should tell me for a novelty you're young, Thoughtless, unable to recall the past. Be but your pardon ample ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last—into positive real enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment! I ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... not equal her calmness. He had been strung up when he spoke, and the interruption had undone him. He reflected ruefully that he might have said something to the point if he had been allowed to go straight on; now he had forgotten what he had meant ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... respectably removed from the partialities and injustice of her father's house, and settled so permanently near herself. But in this case, Anne had left nothing for advice to do; and though Lady Russell, as satisfied as ever with her own discretion, never wished the past undone, she began now to have the anxiety which borders on hopelessness for Anne's being tempted, by some man of talents and independence, to enter a state for which she held her to be peculiarly fitted by her ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... St. George's Channel. We were well within sight of land, the land in this instance being the shore of Albion, before I deemed it wise and expedient to leave my couch and venture into the open air. Once there, however, I experienced a speedy recovery from the malady that had so nearly undone me and I may safely affirm that none in all the company aboard that great floating caravansary evinced a blither spirit than the undersigned at the moment of debarking ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... weak mortals was so enormous that gods, as well as men, were equally at the mercy of these all but omnipotent ascetics, and it is remarkable that even the gods are described as engaging in penances and austerities, in order, it may be presumed, not to be undone by human beings." ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... I heartily thank you, that you would not sympathize with me in my sorrow for the desertion of his own work by George Cruikshank, that he may fight in the front of the temperance ranks. But you do not know what work he has left undone, nor how much richer inheritance you might have received from his hand. It was no more his business to etch diagrams of drunkenness than it is mine at this moment to be writing these letters against anarchy. It is "the first mild day of March" ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... fugues, but not with the solo parts of Jesus and Mary, which were in the florid cantata style of that day. He subsequently determined to re-write them; but "when about to begin," he says, "it seemed to me as though I could no longer enter into the spirit of the subject, and so it remained undone. To publish the work as it was, I could not make up my mind. Thus in later years it has lain by without any use ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... Pigeonswing had slain his late fellow- guest, le Bourdon had no doubt, and he sickened at the thought. Although he had himself dreaded a good deal from the hostility of the Pottawattamie, he could have wished this deed undone. That there was a jealous distrust of each other between the two Indians had been sufficiently apparent; but the bee-hunter could not have imagined that it would so soon lead to results as ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... mean a renewed heart, because there are no perfect hearts by nature. There is no one in this sense that doeth good and sinneth not, for every child of Adam has gone astray like a lost sheep, has done the things he ought not, and left undone the things he ought to have done, and the whole world has become guilty before God. There are no naturally perfect hearts. It must mean, then, a heart renewed by the Holy Ghost, put right with God, and then kept right. A heart cannot be kept right until it has been ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... formed, is a national and historical fact; it is a matter of the past and the present, and can be as little ignored as the present, as little undone as the past. We can deny, supersede, or change it, then only, when we can do the same towards the race or language which it represents. Every great people has a character of its own, which it manifests and perpetuates in a variety of ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... are of much value—whether, indeed, some of them are based upon either wise or noble grounds of action. They question if it be wise to tell people that you will do for them, out of fear of their power, what you have left undone, so long as your only motive was compassion for their weakness and their sorrows. And, if ignorance of everything which is needful a ruler should know is likely to do so much harm in the governing classes of the future, why is it, they ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... rode Humphrey at a good pace, but he found no Hugo there. "Here is a snarl to be undone!" he cried. "The lad is too headstrong. Perchance he hath already run into the noose of the other king's man. For who knoweth where he is? And I shall be held to answer for it. This cometh of a man being servant to a boy and a stranger ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... Maurice and Clara and Paul jumped. Paul won, because he was light. Clara's blood was roused. She could run like an Amazon. Paul loved the determined way she rushed at the hay-cock and leaped, landed on the other side, her breasts shaken, her thick hair come undone. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... year's vintage crowds our cellars, tun on tun: With wealth of wine for yours and mine, dare the work go undone? ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... entirely unprovided for. Messrs. Grandly begged to submit these facts to the consideration of Mr. Hubert Price. Miss Watson was now residing at Ashwood. She was there with a friend of hers, Mrs. Bentley; and should Mr. Hubert Price feel inclined to do what Mr. Burnett had left undone, Messrs. Grandly would have very great pleasure in ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... Wherefore, an he be wise, he'll devour the way, although a milk-white maid doth thousand times retard his going, and flinging both arms around his neck doth supplicate delay—a damsel who now, if truth be brought me, is undone with immoderate love of him. For, since what time she first read of the Dindymus Queen, flames devour the innermost marrow of the wretched one. I grant thee pardon, damsel, more learned than the Sapphic muse: for charmingly has the Mighty ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... and I longed for his kisses. I seemed to live only that he might caress me. All that time I never felt myself to be wrong,—because he was all in all to me. I was his own. That has been changed,—to my great misfortune; but it cannot be undone or forgotten. I cannot be the girl I was before he came here. There are things that will not have themselves buried and put out of sight, as though they had never been. I am as you are, mamma,—widowed. But you ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... to sum up the amount and estimate the result of all this iniquity. The Rajah himself is punished, he is ruined and undone; but the 500,000l. is not gained. He has fled his country; but he carried his treasures with him. His forts are taken possession of; but there was nothing found in them. It is the report of the country, and is so stated by Mr. Hastings, that he carried away with him in gold ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... do it!" roared Storri, his anger taking renewed edge. "You must, you shall! What! am I to be thwarted, affronted, undone by a girl? Two things I demand: she is to see me; and she is not to see that Storms. Do I ask much? It is little for a child to pay for a father's safety; little for a man to pay for his own. What forger or what forger's daughter has ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... there is some deeper feeling in his mind. The correspondence that has been passing between him and me may have been somewhat imprudently managed on my part. I may have committed myself to a certain extent in it in more ways than one. It is needless to regret what cannot be undone; at all events, I perceive that it is now over with us for the present. I do not, however, believe but that he will continue to do what he has been used to do for the Review; indeed, unless he makes the newspaper business ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... about to get into bed one evening, and found himself slow about it. His conscience was worrying him about some duty left undone, and he could not remember what the duty was. Of a sudden his terrible omission flashed into his mind: in his patient application to the task of shadowing and annoying Mr. Arthur Courtnay he had forgotten his daily bolt into the ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... one can see the truth as it is without loving it. The more you talk about what is right, or even about the doing of it, the more you are in danger of exemplifying how loosely theory may be allied to practice. Talk without action saps the very will. Something you have to do is waiting undone all the time, and getting more and more undone. The only refuge is to do." To know the thing he ought to do was a matter of import, to do the thing he knew he ought to do was a matter of life and death to Andrew. He never allowed even a cognate question to force ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... says Parson, speaking in a subdued voice. "The fact is, my shoe-lace came undone just when I was putting it on at ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... and earnestly requested me to spare nothing to secure for him the consolations of the Church. I obeyed him. I caused masses to be said for him. I procured for him the visits of his priest. I left nothing undone to give him peace and joy. Would it not have been monstrous had I acted otherwise? He was morbidly anxious for the future: he, righteous man, who was as pure in spirit, as guileless, as an infant! I alone ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... had got his wife. The marriage could not be undone. Mr. Wharton had money enough for them all, and would not certainly discard his daughter. Mr. Wharton could place him on a really firm footing, and might not improbably do so if he could be made ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... many commonplaces denouncing the thirst for wealth; but if men should take these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in the people, lest civilization should be undone." ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... have been trusting to fate, while keeping silence, that something from you was to come to-day and make me specially happy. And it has: bless you abundantly! You have undone and got round all I said about "jewelry," though this is nothing of the sort, but a shrine: so my word remains. I have it with me now, safe hidden, only now and then it comes out to have a look at me,—smiles and goes back again. Dearest, you must feel ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... done, but even then something was still left undone; for it yet remained to be proved that Lady Purbeck was actually in the house at the time when the writ was thrown into it. The Ambassador conceived the idea of obtaining such proof by means of a female witness. For this purpose, he very ingeniously contrived to find ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... started there; the water'll do what the fire left undone. Pretty bad trap, sir, I should say, if ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... strength of a brawny hand. We are the Army Stevedores, and work we must and may, The cross of honor will never be ours to proudly wear and sway. But the men at the front could not be there, and the battles could not be won. If the stevedores stopped in their dull routine and left their work undone. Somebody has to do this work; be glad that it isn't you. We are the Army Stevedores—give ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... would have been a few months ago. However it interfered with the general policy of the Executive, no one doubts that as a military and local measure it was eminently wise. Sooner or later it will be adopted—meanwhile what has been done has been productive of results which can not be undone. The great cause is the cause of God—and every struggle only aids ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... he, endeavoring to raise her from the ground, while he shook as if with ague shiverings. 'I do not spurn you; but why should I live, with a brand blacker than Cain's on my heart and soul,—crushed, smitten, dishonored, and undone?' ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... work out of them until they had rested for an hour or two. Indeed, there did not appear to be any good and sufficient reason why I should call upon them for more hard work just then. It is true that much that I intended to do still remained undone, the most important task of all being the getting up of something in the nature of a jury rig; but, short-handed as we now were, that would prove a very formidable task—much too formidable and too protracted to justify the hope that it could be accomplished before the expected gale came; and as ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... hands and mouth and said to Merjaneh, "Tell me what has befallen me." So she told her what had passed and how she had found her, lying on her back, with the blood running down her thighs, wherefore she knew that the King had played the traitor with her and had undone her and taken his will of her. At this she was afflicted and shut herself up, saying to her damsels, "Let no one come in to me and say to all that I am ill, till I see what God will do with me." The news of her illness came to the King, and he sent her cordials and sherbet of sugar and confections. ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... imprudent as to tell Jasper I was your mother? I have explained that you regard me as a mother, though really my nephew. You must give the same explanation. Jasper is at home now, not very well pleased to find that he has a step-mother. But it is done, and he will find it can't be undone. Be prudent, follow my directions implicitly, and you will ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... and undone at the thought of defeat in his chosen profession, turned to commercial life and then to the theater. At his first stage appearance he trembled with diffidence and all but fled in fright. He persevered, for he could do nothing else. He arose step by ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... bluejay's not a whit the worse for it, remember; in fact, he's all the better off, for his stomach is full and his mischief satisfied, and that's all that ever worries a bluejay. And there isn't any redress for the mother-bird. The thing's done, and can't be undone. But between them they've shown John Flint something that forces a man to take sides. Doesn't the bluejay deserve some little credit for that? And is there ever any redress for the ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... the utmost speed to Whalley," replied Nowell, "and, acquainting Sir Ralph with all that has occurred, claim his assistance; and then, with all the force we can jointly muster, return hither, and finish the work I have left undone." ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... very seriously. The Commission was in the habit of carrying on its functions perfunctorily and unobtrusively. But nothing could be perfunctory where Roosevelt was. He would never permit things to be done—or left undone unobtrusively, when what was needed was to obtrude the matter forcibly on the public mind. He was a profound believer in the value ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... I'm quite undone, All things against my peace conspire; Unworthy rivals many a one, I find, despising song ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... tremble before every insult;—call them pro-Germans, international financiers, or profiteers, and they will give you any ransom you choose to ask not to speak of them so harshly. They allow themselves to be ruined and altogether undone by their own instruments, governments of their own making, and a press of which they are the proprietors. Perhaps it is historically true that no order of society ever perishes save by its own hand. In the complexer world of Western Europe the Immanent Will ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... called in upon him this morning, and in the course of conversation it came out what he had done about Verner's Pride. And now he wants it undone." ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... passed through a small door, which was closed behind her, and then found herself between the two doors alone, with the doctor and the executioner's man. Here the rosary, in consequence of her violent movement to cover her face, came undone, and several beads fell on the floor. She went on, however, without observing this; but the doctor stopped her, and he and the man stooped down and picked up all the beads, which they put into her hand. Thanking them humbly ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... jewellery, etcetera, which had already more than half escaped from their covers. There were also frail cardboard boxes, so squeezed and burst that their contents were protruding, and parcels containing worsted and articles of wearing apparel, which had been so carelessly put up as to have come undone in the mail-bags. All these things were being re-tied, re-folded, patched up here and there with sealing-wax, or put into new covers, by the postal surgeons, and done with as much care, too, as though the damage ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... receiving any answer either from the Minister or M. Del Campo. The time when our bills would be due was drawing very nigh. My expectations of aid from France were at best uncertain, and every consideration urged me not to leave anything in my power undone here, to avoid the catastrophe I had so much reason to apprehend. I therefore concluded to wait on the Minister, and in a plain and pointed manner enter into a detail of the reasons given us to expect supplies from this Court, and ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... incorporated and packed that there would be good electrical contact throughout. This proved to be a most knotty and intricate puzzle—tricky and evasive—always leading on and promising something, and at the last slipping away leaving the work undone. Edison's remarkable patience and persistence in dealing with this trying problem and in finally solving it successfully won for him more than ordinary admiration from his associates. One of them, in speaking of the seemingly ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... subtly developed, a flawless woman, beautiful, self-reliant, witty, a woman with the strange gift of making all others beside her seem plain or vulgar. And then—this sudden thrust. God only knows what I have done, or left undone. Something unpardonable is laid to my charge. Only last night she saw me, and there was horror in her eyes.... I have written, called—of what avail is anything—against that look.... What the devil ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this event? A few words will tell. Ferdinand the emperor had, with the aid of Tilly and Wallenstein, laid all Germany prostrate at his feet. Ferdinand the zealot had, by this effort to impose Catholicism on the Protestant states, speedily undone the work of his generals, and set the war on foot again. Gustavus Adolphus, the hero of Sweden, had come to the aid of the oppressed Protestants of Germany, borne down all before him, and quickly won back northern Germany ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... having passed the August of mine age, When more than half my tap of life was run, Rich by rewards given by your mother sage, For merits past, and service yet undone, I longed to leave this wandering pilgrimage, And in my native soil again to won, To get some seely home I had desire, Loth still to warm ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... keeping up this unnatural position. Then he tried again, but still the bolt would not move. So now he tied his handkerchief—the one with the bacon-fat and marmalade on it—to the bolt, and Robert's handkerchief to that, in a reef knot, which cannot come undone however much you pull, and, indeed, gets tighter and tighter the more you pull it. This must not be confused with a granny knot, which comes undone if you look at it. And then he and Robert pulled, and the girls put their arms round their brothers ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... of our meeting it is impossible at present to say more than that it must have cleared away misconceptions on all sides If they have learnt anything as to the finality of the act of annexation—that I have no power to undo it, and do not believe that it will ever be undone, in the only sense in which they will ask it—I have, on the other hand, been shown the stubbornness of a determination to be content with nothing else, for which I was not prepared by the general testimony of officials ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... that "Joshua was full of the spirit of the Lord and of WISDOM," Deut. xxxiv. 9. (of course, he could not have been ignorant of the meaning of those commands,)—that "the Lord was with him," Josh. vi. 27; and that he "left nothing undone of all that the Lord commanded Moses;" and further, that he "took all that land." Joshua xi, 15-23. Also, that "the Lord gave unto Israel all the land which he swore to give unto their fathers, and they possessed it and dwelt therein, and there stood not a man ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... necessity is involved in the former creation; and thence we have a right to ask help of our creator, for he requires of us what he has created us unable to effect without him. Nay, nay!—could we do anything without him, it were a thing to leave undone. Blessed fact that he hath made us so near him! that the scale of our being is so large, that we are completed only by his presence in it! that we are not men without him! that we can be one with our self-existent creator! that we ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... wherefore Allah sent Prophets and Apostles and gave to them Books and they taught us the divine commandments and expounded to us what was therein of admonitions and precepts and made clear to us and manifest the way of righteousness and explained to us what it behoved us to do and what to leave undone. Now we are endowed with Freewill and he who acteth within these lawful limits winneth his wish and prospereth, while whoso transgresseth these legal bounds and doeth other than that which these precepts enjoin, resisteth the Lord and is ruined in both ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... How ye venture too near, Love doubly is armed to wound; From her eyes if you run, You are surely undone If she reach but your ears with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... writer of fiction. Yet one rises from his books with a feeling of repulsion, or at least with the glad conviction that his ignoble views of life are as untrue as the characters who illustrate them. Here is a melancholy case of a novelist, not only clever but sincere, undone by want of sympathy.... The author's want of sympathy prevents 'Mehalah's' rising to the highest art; for though we shudder at the end, there the effect of the story stops. It illustrates the futility of battling with fate, but the theme is not ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... maternal English tongue—some bound in boards, some in leather, and some in parchment, and them sell by retail, whereby many of the king's subjects, being binders of books, and having no other faculty therewith to get their living, be destitute of work, and like to be undone, except some reformation herein be had,—Be it therefore enacted, &c." By the 4th clause or provision, if any of these printers or sellers of printed books vend them "at too high and unreasonable prices," then ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... are knit in one, Sometimes by discord, severed and undone." See Stanley's "Lives of ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... of so fair a vision Pietro was undone; he fell violently in love with her long before he exchanged a word with her, and although no one knew better than he the gulf that separated the daughter of a nobleman and a Senator from the drudge of the quill, he determined to win her. Youth and good-looks such as his, with ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... property of murdered victims! Now, then, thou hast a notable occasion for displaying those illustrious qualities of thine, that wonderful endurance of hunger, of cold, of destitution, by which ere long thou shalt feel thyself undone, and ruined. This much, however, I did accomplish, when I defeated thee in the comitia, that thou shouldst strike at the republic as an exile, rather than ravage it as a consul; and that the warfare, so villanously evoked by thee, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... washed an Aethiop. You're undone; Y' are in the toils; y' are taken; y' are destroyed: Her eyes do ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... done can't be undone, they say!" declared the other, with a reckless laugh, which was Steve all over; "better luck next time, I say. Here, Toby, what d'ye think of that for a saddle? Do the needful to him, won't you ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... rich cloth of Arras I made my prize in such a Ship, this Plate Was my share in another; these fair Jewels, Coming a shore, I got in such a Village, The Maid, or Matron kill'd, from whom they were ravish'd, The Wines you drink are guilty too, for this, This Candie Wine, three Merchants were undone, These Suckets break as many more: in brief, All you shall wear, or touch, or see, is purchas'd By lawless force, and you but revel in The tears, and grones of such as were ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont
... that if it be thy chance to conquer, this benefit shalt thou reap of thy goodly conquest, to be chronicled the plague and destroyer of thy country. And if fortune overthrow thee, then the world will say, that through desire to, revenge thy private injuries, thou hast for ever undone thy good friends, who did most lovingly and courteously receive thee.' Martius gave good ear unto his mother's words, without interrupting her speech at all, and after she had said what she would, he held his peace a pretty while, and answered not a word. Hereupon ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... go, I suppose. I'm sorry. I should have liked so much to be of use." She looked up at him appealingly, and sudden tears came and stood in her eyes, and would perhaps have undone his hurt but that he was staring ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... of senile heads of red-tape-bound departments; nor was he particularly hidebound by respect for the laws of evidence. When he knew a thing, he knew it; then he either acted or did not act, as the circumstances might dictate. And when the deed was done or left undone, and was quite beyond the reach of criticism, he would send in a verbose, voluminous report, written out in several colored inks, on all the special forms he could get hold of. The heads of departments would be too busy for the next twelvemonth trying to get the form of the report straightened ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... I followed the bearers and the surgeon into the whitewashed room where the dead man was laid out to be undressed. I had a burning spot at the pit of my stomach while his clothes were ripped off him and the bandages undone: I couldn't take my eyes from the surgeon's face. But the surgeon, with a big batch of wounded on his hands, was probably thinking more of the living than the dead; and besides, we were near the front, and the body before him was ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... think I have been idle, or that I have left anything undone that I could think to do? Child, the sun has never risen on me since I saw him last! They say I am dead to the world. But they who say it know not how terribly true their words are. Shall I tell you how many times, when the weary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... myself to God, who can alone forgive sins, as a lost, undone sinner, though washed in the precious blood of Jesus, and redeemed through faith in His perfect and complete sacrifice. I have, therefore, become one of the Church of the first-born. I am reconciled to God, from whom I was ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... elegance, and strength, in all his poetical compositions. Though Dryden thus polished our English numbers, and thus harmonized versification, it cannot be said, that he carried his art to perfection. Much was yet left undone; his lines with all their smoothness were often rambling, and expletives were frequently introduced to compleat his measures. It was apparent therefore that an additional harmony might still be given ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... be pointed out. As regards the seeming function of the thyroid, it may be said that the surviving relic of an ancient functional organ is quite capable of varying in structure and taking upon itself a new function, of minor value, which in its absence would be left undone or be performed by some ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... up old stories; what is done cannot be undone. You, as a father, ought to excuse little subterfuges, contrived in order to get a daughter off one's hands. I was so anxious to ally myself with your distinguished family that I did sail rather near the wind. But I have come to offer you some amends by putting you ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... not seem as if she had intentionally done precisely what she ought most studiously to have left undone? Her sale of the star had been only an unfortunate act of weakness, but the dance, the luckless dance! Not once only, several times Charles had stated plainly enough how unpleasant it was to him ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... spring wind was still moving and she stood on Cap'n Hanscom's doorstone and looked at the dark lilac buds at her hand, the tears came, and the cap'n, bearing in his last armful of wood for the night, saw them and was undone. He went in speechlessly and piled the wood with absent care. He stood a moment in thought, and then he ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... forward by Lord Kelvin in 1858; he showed that the special characteristics of the rotation of the plane of polarization, discovered by Faraday in light propagated along a magnetic field, viz. that it is doubled instead of being undone when the light retraces its path, requires the operation of some directed agency of a rotational kind, which must be related to the magnetic field. Lord Kelvin was thereby induced to identify magnetic force with rotation, involving, therefore, angular momentum in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... is always something stirring in the city; somebody born, married, or dead; somebody courted, won, lost, or undone; somebody's name up, somebody's reputation down! Tell me all you know, Mere Malheur! and then I will tell you something that will make you glad you came to Beaumanoir to-day. Take another sip of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... apartment." He stooped to undo the buckles of his shoes, and when Balby wished to assist him, he resisted. "No, no; you shall not loosen my shoes—you are too worthy for that. Madame Witte might think that I am a very assuming person—that I tyrannize over my brother. There, madame, the buckles are undone, and there lie my shoes, and now we are ready to enter your ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... mirth continued some time, Herman Mordaunt appearing to be particularly pleased, and applauding his kinsman's directness with several 'bravos' very distinctly uttered. As for Anneke, I saw she looked touched, while she looked concerned, and as if she would be glad to have the thing undone. ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper |
