"Unpardonable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... There is no reliable evidence to support these claims, but a constant accumulation of facts to indicate the danger from the use of spirits. To give alcohol or any other drug without some rational theory in accord with the scientific researches of to-day is unpardonable."—DR. T. D. CROTHERS, Hartford, Conn., Editor of ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... acting. I recommend you to read his discourse in full assembly, and I especially recommend the citizens charged with presiding over the destinies of Greece to follow his counsels point by point. With an authority so applicable to the existing circumstances, it would be unpardonable presumption in me to address to you other than his own words. 'If, Athenians, you will now, though you did not before, adopt the principle of every man being ready, where he can and ought to give his service ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... nimble-witted reporter scoop him on the news of his beat, he had better begin making himself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness to receive him into their habitations; for a scoop, even of a few minutes, by a rival publication is the unpardonable sin with the city editor. The wise reporter never neglects any news source on ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... Churchmen, however, it would be unpardonable were we to omit all reference, at such a time as this, to what he did on behalf of the church of his adoption. Dr. Chalmers did not err when, self-oblivious, he spake of Mr. Miller, as he so often did, as the greatest Scotchman alive ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... defensive subterfuges; confess that you are but uttering excuses, and acknowledge that you have conducted this affair with a clumsiness unpardonable in one equipped with your ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... tacked on the door of the meeting-house or the notices that had been read from the pulpit. The men talked in loud voices of the points of the sermon, of the doctrines of predestination pedobaptism and antipedobaptism, of original sin, and that most fascinating mystery, the unpardonable sin, and in lower voices of wolf and bear killing, of the town-meeting, the taxes, the crops and cattle; and they examined with keen interest one another's horses, and many a sly bargain in horse-flesh or exchange of cows and pigs was suggested, bargained over, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... home than, in the weary lack of interest, the feelings which, half lamenting, half rejoicing, he had imagined extinct, began to revive, and he went to the town vaguely hoping to get a sight of Eppy. Coming upon her tete a tete with her old lover, first a sense of unpardonable injury possessed him, and next the conviction that he was as madly in love with her as ever. The tide of old tenderness came throbbing and streaming back over the ghastly sands of jealousy, and ere they parted he had made ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... popes, who claimed the spiritual allegiance of all Christendom, regarded heresy as treason against themselves, and, as such, deserving all the penalties, which sovereigns have uniformly visited on this, in their eyes, unpardonable offence. The crusades, which, in the early part of the thirteenth century, swept so fiercely over the southern provinces of France, exterminating their inhabitants, and blasting the fair buds of civilization ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... reached the fountain, he did, out of ill-humour and parade, an unpardonable act. He gave the money bodily to the dishonest groom. "Keep this for me," he said, "until I call for it to-morrow. It is a great sum, and by that you will judge that I have not condemned you." And he strode ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the world, are done for the sake of appearance. What a dreadful thing it would be, were he to ride about with his gown crumpled up under his seat! It would be the cause of lifelong unhappiness, remorse and shame, and no doubt cost his servants a sound flogging for their unpardonable carelessness. ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... sentiments about Miss Palliser were of no friendly nature He had tried that young lady, and had found her wanting,—wanting in that first principle of admiration and reverence for himself, the lack of which was an unpardonable fault. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Second—The most unpardonable act of Mary's life, in the judgment of her critics, was the execution of Lady Jane Grey. But Lady Jane was guilty of high treason, having usurped the throne of England, which she occupied for nine days. ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... Britain; and we look on every man as an enemy, who does not in some line or other, give his assistance towards supporting the same; at the same time we consider the offence to be heightened to a degree of unpardonable guilt, when such persons, under the show of religion, endeavor, either by writing, speaking, or otherwise, to subvert, overturn, or bring reproach upon the independence of this continent ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... is told of it is true?' There is not a word of it true! It is all an unpardonable fabrication," said Victor Hartman, so indignantly and solemnly that Alden burst out laughing ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... God hid the fossils in the rocks in order to tempt geologists into infidelity." Gosse had the real answer under his eyes which Fallopius had not, for the riddle was unread in the latter's days. Yet Gosse's really unpardonable mistake was attributed to himself alone, and "Plymouth Brethrenism," which was the sect to which he belonged, was not saddled with it, nor have the Brethren been called obscurantists ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... not committing unpardonable trespass on that useful part of your publication in which books and odd volumes are asked for, I will go on to say that I should be glad to have a copy of the volume of Whichcot's Sermons (1698) which the third Lord Shaftesbury edited, at a ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 30. Saturday, May 25, 1850 • Various
... unexpectedly and firmly with two fingers by the nose, and succeeded in leading him two or three steps across the room. He could have had no grudge against Mr. Gaganov. It might be thought to be a mere schoolboy prank, though, of course, a most unpardonable one. Yet, describing it afterwards, people said that he looked almost dreamy at the very instant of the operation, "as though he had gone out of his mind," but that was recalled and reflected upon long afterwards. In the excitement of the moment all they recalled was ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of statesmanship in the beginning of the war with Spain, and in the discussion of the treaty of Paris; he missed both. So far as the war was concerned, he never had an idea beyond a little cheap renown as a paper colonel of volunteers; so far as the treaty was concerned, he made the unpardonable blunder of playing into the hands of his opponents, and leaving the sound and conservative sentiment of the country without adequate leadership ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... stupefaction. How on earth should he deal with this purse-proud egotist, who took the liberty of paying his hotel bill, giving up his apartments and ordering his servants? and doing all this without the faintest idea that he was committing an unpardonable impertinence. ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... they are rather the cavilling refinements of a predetermined opposition, than the well-founded inferences of a candid research after truth. To those who are disposed to consider, as innocent omissions in the State constitutions, what they regard as unpardonable blemishes in the plan of the convention, nothing can be said; or at most, they can only be asked to assign some substantial reason why the representatives of the people in a single State should be more impregnable ...
— The Federalist Papers
... only the troubles we have gone through. I have seen it coming—the moment when I should write that letter. Through cowardice, I have put it off. It was very unjust to you; you have every right to condemn my behaviour; I am unpardonable. And yet I hope—I do so hope—that some ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... his ride, Robert, astonished that the bridge was not at once lowered for him, at first loudly called upon the soldiers on guard at the fortress, threatening severe punishment for their unpardonable negligence; but as the gates did not open and the soldiers made no sign of fear or regret, he fell into a violent fit of rage, and swore he would hang the wretches like dogs for hindering his return home. But the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... had committed what in a Colonial Cabinet is the one unpardonable crime—it had encountered a commercial depression, with its concomitant, a shrunken revenue. When Hall and Atkinson succeeded Grey with a mission to abolish the land-tax, they had at once to impose a different but more severe burden. They also reduced—for a time—the cost of the public ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... unintentional, more especially when the religious views of the trustees differ from those of the testator. The trust in this particular instance being connected with the study of a language held in esteem by all religious denominations, the act becomes much aggravated, nay, unpardonable." ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... an unpardonable breach of politeness, respected sir, if I ventured to hint that the illusions your pupils have been trying to impose upon this venerable man have in some small measure impaired the confidence with which I was originally inspired by ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... thinking of our common woes; when I reflect upon the sad state of public affairs, I find Roger doubly culpable. Possessing so brilliant a mind, such superb talents, he could by his influence bring these young fools back to the path of honor. How unpardonable it is in him to lead them further astray by ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... to a fright. I suppose she happened unawares to look at her husband." It is possible that Miss Austen's sense of the comic ran away with her at times as Emma Woodhouse's did. I do not know of any similar instance of cruelty in conversation on the part of a likeable person so unpardonable as Emma Woodhouse's witticism at the expense of Miss Bates at the Box Hill picnic. Miss Austen makes Emma ashamed of her witticism, however, after Mr. Knightley has lectured her for it. She sets a limit to the rights of wit, again, in Pride and Prejudice, when Elizabeth defends her sharp ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... stake in the struggle with Damascus; in such circumstances every ally would of course be welcome, every enemy of the enemy would be hailed as a friend, and the political wisdom which Max Duncker attributes to Ahab would have been nothing less than unpardonable folly. The state of matters was at the outset in this respect just what it continued to be throughout the subsequent course of events; the Assyrian danger grew in subsequent years, and with it ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... enigmatically. "Men do not steal up here: that is the unpardonable crime; any other may occur and go unpunished; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... strange you must have thought my visit to your rooms that night, Ralph. It was unpardonable, I know—only I wanted to ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... Hindus calm and stately, as if preparing for some mystic celebration, we ourselves feeling awkward and uneasy, fearing to prove guilty of some unpardonable blunder. An invisible choir of women's voices chanted a monotonous hymn, celebrating the glory of the gods. These were half a dozen nautch-girls from a neighboring pagoda. To this accompaniment we began satisfying our appetites. Thanks to the Babu's instructions, ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... the Madeiras and Canary Islands, and determined the latitude of the middle of the Great Salvage to be 30 deg 12 min north, and the longitude of its eastern side to be 15 deg 39 min west. It is no less extraordinary than unpardonable, that in some very modern charts of the Atlantic, published in London, the Salvages are ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... feet long. Behind the house there appeared to be a garden, which undoubtedly had once been extensive, but was now infringed upon by other enclosures, or shut in by habitations and out-buildings that stood on another street. It would be an omission, trifling indeed, but unpardonable, were we to forget the green moss that had long since gathered over the projections of the windows, and on the slopes of the roof; nor must we fail to direct the reader's eye to a crop, not of weeds, but flower-shrubs, which were growing aloft ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... seem my neglect in writing you is unpardonable. I used to be a pretty fair correspondent, but in that as in ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... and salt, falling from the eyes, instead of a drop of ink, falling from the pen! This is crime! this is shame! this is immodesty, for you! That is to say, that whatever is cold and artificial is innocent in the artist, but what is warm and natural is unpardonable in the man. That is to say, modesty in a writer consists in exposing what is false, immodesty in setting forth what is true. If you have talent, show it, but not your soul, carrying mine away! Oh, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... that I had done everything I could, I told them pray no more, as evidently there was no forgiveness for me. So I withdrew to a distance, and sat down upon an old tree, lamenting my hard case very seriously. I was sure I had committed the unpardonable sin. A friend, who sat down beside me, and of whom I inquired what he supposed the unpardonable sin was, endeavored comfort me by suggesting that, whatever it might be, it would take more sense and learning than ever ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... than the course we had undeviatingly pursued in infancy, and from which we did not dream of swerving in manhood, became a subject for unqualified censure. What had been considered laudable enterprize in the English Colonist, became unpardonable ambition in the American Republican, and acts affecting the national prosperity, that carried with them the approbation of society and good government during our nonage, were stigmatized as odious and grasping, the moment we had attained ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... with a tract which alarms him about the state of his soul. If he be a man of excitable nerves and strong imagination, he thinks himself given over to the Evil Power. He doubts whether he has not committed the unpardonable sin. He imputes every wild fancy that springs up in his mind to the whisper of a fiend. His sleep is broken by dreams of the great judgment-seat, the open books, and the unquenchable fire. If, in order to escape from these vexing thoughts, he flies to amusement or to licentious indulgence, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... convenient for trading with the Carolineans. Hitherto they despised the French, whom they called light as a feather, fickle as the wind, and deceitful as serpents; and, being naturally of a very grave cast, they considered the levity of that people as an unpardonable insult. They looked upon themselves as a great and powerful nation, and though their number was much diminished, yet they could bring from their different towns about three thousand men to the field. At this time they had neither arms nor ammunition ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... Bartlome de las Casas is the chief source of information about the islands after Columbus arrived. Other historians overlooked the Indian slave trade, begun by Columbus; Las Casas denounced it as "among the most unpardonable offenses ever committed ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... worst, and most hideous, of all, we are not so much hypocrites as self-deceived. Let us not forget the old Greek doctrine of Ate, goddess of judicial blindness, sent down only upon those who were living the unpardonable ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... light? I must be going. And by the way, I wish you would let me sell your Turks for you. I always told you, it meant smash. I tell you so again. Indeed, it was partly that that brought me down. You never acknowledge my letters—a most unpardonable habit.' ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dare to assert that you are chaste," retorted the faithful and indignant priests, by the Abbe de Valmeron. "How absurd! Chaste, at the moment when you confess the most unpardonable inclinations; when you attract a woman from the bed of her husband—her duties as a mother—when you take about every where this infatuated female, attached to your footsteps, in order to display her ostentatiously to the public gaze! And who ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the presence of some object of terror. The young man was often upon the point of awakening his brother, but was as often restrained by the fear of incurring ridicule and the reproach of timidity, at that time an unpardonable blemish in the character of a Kentuckian. At length hasty steps were heard in the yard, and quickly afterward, several loud knocks at the door, accompanied by the usual exclamation, 'Who keeps house?' in very good English. The young man, supposing from the language that ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... about his perfect ease of manner as he stood waiting which showed that although he would not condescend to notice it, he was both conscious of the War Minister's unpardonable rudeness and intended to make ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... habits or inefficiency, slipped through even formal examination; commanders whose ships were run by their subordinates, lieutenants whose watch on deck kept their captains from sleeping, midshipmen whose unfitness made their retention unpardonable; for at their age to re-begin life was no hardship, much less injustice. Of one such the story ran that his captain, giving him the letter required by regulation, wrote, "Mr. So and So is a very excellent young ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... itself interfered to stop the sacrilege and only a splinter scratched the Lord's foot. Then he arranged for a mad elephant to be let loose in the road at the time of collecting alms, but the Buddha calmed the furious beast. It is perhaps by some error of arrangement that after committing such unpardonable crimes Devadatta is represented as still a member of the order and endeavouring to provoke a schism by asking for stricter rules. The attempt failed and according to later legends he died on the spot, but the Vinaya merely says that hot blood gushed ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... sufficient to stir the rancor of born frontiersmen, and they of Arizona in the days of old were an exaggeration of the type in general circulation on the Plains. He was something of a dandy in dress, another thing they loathed; something of a purist in speech, which was affectation unpardonable; something of a dissenter as to drink, appreciative of "Cucumungo" and claret, but distrustful of whisky—another thing to call down scorn illimitable from the elect of the mining camps and packing "outfits." But all these disqualifications might ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... and was different from the names of the girls he knew—Betsy and Kirsty and Jessie and Marget and Jinny. It was finer somehow than these, and seemed to suit better a city girl. He wondered if she would be nice, but he decided that doubtless she would be "proud." To be "proud" was the unpardonable sin with the Glengarry boy. The boy or girl convicted of this crime earned the contempt of all self-respecting people. On the whole, Ranald was sorry she was coming. Even in school he was shy with the girls, and kept away from them. They were always ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... were, in a parlor chilling and awkward from its unfamiliarity with man, and keep us carefully away from the kitchen-chimney-corner, where they would feel at home, and would not look on a lapse into nature as the unpardonable sin. But what do we want of a hospitality that makes strangers of us, or of confidences that keep us at arm's-length? Better the tavern and the newspaper; for in the one we can grumble, and from the other learn more of our neighbors than we care to know. John Smith's autobiography ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... startling gymnaste, with a beauty and a grace of movement that gave to her audacious performance almost an air of prudery. Watching her wondrous dexterity and pliant strength, both exercised without apparent effort, it seemed the most natural proceeding in the world that she should do those unpardonable things. She had a way of melting from one graceful posture into another like the dissolving figures thrown from a stereopticon. She was a lithe, radiant shape out of the Grecian mythology, now poised up there above the gaslights, and now gleaming ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... Marjory said, "and many other good prelates of our church side with him, and surely they must be good judges whether his sins are unpardonable." ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... Christ came to set up the Church upon earth. The Kingdom of Heaven, of course, is not of this world, but in Heaven; but it is only entered through the Church which has been founded and established upon earth. And so a frivolous play upon words in such a connection is unpardonable and improper. The Church is, in truth, a kingdom and ordained to rule, and in the end must undoubtedly become the kingdom ruling over all the earth. For that we have the ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... plainly that he was hungry. But this is what I saw done by a little girl of six; the circumstances were much more difficult, for not only was she strictly forbidden to ask for anything directly or indirectly, but disobedience would have been unpardonable, for she had eaten of every dish; one only had been overlooked, and on this she had set her heart. This is what she did to repair the omission without laying herself open to the charge of disobedience; ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... forgotten one mark of the tribe that is, perhaps, more material than all the rest, which must not be omitted, and is this:—If he happen to be a man who prefers his own pursuits to public life, and is regardless of "popularity," he is just guilty of the unpardonable sin. The "people" will forgive anything sooner than this; though there are "folks" who fancy it as infallible a sign of an aristocrat not to chew tobacco. But, unless I return to Joshua, the reader will complain that I cause ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... mannerism, and be not over-timid at the outset. Be discreet and sparing of your words. Awkwardness is a great misfortune, but it is not an unpardonable fault. To deserve the reputation of moving in good society, something more is requisite than the avoidance of blunt rudeness. Strictly keep to your engagements. Punctuality is the ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... she done so, she might have felt alarm at being thus alone with him. But his presence, so far from inspiring her with terror, had something unaccountable of attraction. His self-accusation she considered exaggerations of a morbid fancy that converted common errors into unpardonable sins. Hers was a charity that could think no evil, and in her imagination she had long since formed a theory that, to her pure mind, made him an object of deep interest. In Holden she saw a man of superior endowments and breeding—his manners and language so far above those of most around ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... friend in these forbidden assemblies. The King heard the details of an orgy so unpardonable, and the precocious misconduct of his cherished son gave him so much pain, that I saw his tears fall. The assistant governor of the young criminal was dismissed; his valet de chambre was sent to prison; only three ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... changed the conditions of the contest, and to be defeated now, driven out of the field for good and all, would be a far more mortifying termination of the war than it could have been, if we had already failed utterly. We have committed the unpardonable sin against slavery, and to fail now would be to place ourselves in the same position that is held by the commander of a ship of war who nails his colors to the mast, and yet has to get them down in order to prevent his conqueror from annihilating him. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... young Kinsman and Counsellor? (said he to Goodland.) With all Respect due to your sacred Title, (return'd Valentene, rising and bowing) Sir Philip spoke as became a truly affectionate Husband; and it had been Presumption in him, unpardonable, to have seem'd to prefer her Majesty, or that other sweet Lady, in his Thoughts, since your Majesty has been pleas'd to say so much and so particularly of their Merits: 'Twould appear as if he durst lift up his Eyes, with Thoughts too near ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... up from her writing-table. Perhaps perversely she felt that she would mind meeting Cynthia Clarke less if her treachery had been rewarded by the accomplishment of her purpose. A useless treachery seemed to her peculiarly unpardonable. She hated having done a wrong without securing a quid pro quo. Even if Father Robertson was right, and Rosamund Leith's departure from the Sisterhood were the first step on the road to Constantinople, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... described as "a guid man, and verra canny, but hard on the failings of the young." What youthful failings in our comrade had helped to snap the ties of home we did not know, but we knew enough of Alister by this time to feel sure they could not have been very unpardonable. ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... couchent en calecon" (Night lxxx.). It was mere ignorance to confound the arbalete or cross-bow with the stone-bow (Night xxxviii.), but this has universally been done, even by Lane who ought to have known better; and it was an unpardonable carelessness or something worse to turn Nar (fire) and Dun (in lieu of) into "le faux dieu Nardoun" (Night lxv.): as this has been untouched by De Sacy, I cannot but conclude that he never read the text with the translation. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... The unpardonable sin might consist in a want of love and reverence for the human soul; in consequence of which, the investigator pried into its dark depths,—not with a hope or purpose of making it better, but from a cold, philosophical curiosity,—content that it should be wicked ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... a menace even, in the full, deep voice, that dispelled all hope in the minds of the two thus under judgment. They had committed the one unpardonable sin. In vain Hazon elaborately explained the whole affair, diplomatically setting forth that the act being accidental, and done by strangers and white people, in ignorance, no ill-luck need befall the nation, as might be the case were the symbol of its veneration offended ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... the look of a lowland merchant than of a chief of clan. He was a man at least twenty years the senior of his visitor—a handsome man of his kind, dark, deliberate of his movements, bred in the courtesies, but seemingly, to the acuter intuitions of Montaiglon, possessed of one unpardonable weakness in a gentleman—a ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... as in the best tailor-made gown. It was on this subject that she and Geraldine differed most. No amount of spoken wisdom could make Audrey see that she was neglecting her opportunities to a culpable degree; that while other forms of eccentricity might be forgiven, the one unpardonable sin in Geraldine's code was Audrey's refusal to ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... refuses to pay the just demand," thundered the President, "but accompanies his refusal with an unpardonable insult." ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... even in the best regulated families, whether these be composed of red men or white. Just as the last canoe was disappearing behind its leafy screen, one of the young braves, who was guilty of the unpardonable offence of carrying his gun on full-cock, chanced to touch the trigger, and the piece exploded with, in the circumstances, an appalling report, which, not satisfied with sounding in the ears of his exasperated comrades like a small cannon, went on echoing from cliff to cliff, as if ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... illustrated not only in the Maori legends just cited, but also in the Arawak story given in the last chapter, where the husband is received into the vulture race until he desires to visit his mother. He is then discarded as if he had committed some unpardonable breach of custom; and he cannot be restored to his former privileges. Although the Greeks had before the dawn of history ceased to practise mother-right, a trace of it lingers in a modern folk-tale from Epirus. There a man had ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... suffering from incurable disease, mental or physical, most of us, however useless and superfluous we may at times believe ourselves to be, have, willy-nilly, the fate of some fellow-creature bound up with our own; and it is surely an act of unpardonable cowardice to make our escape from a world of difficulties, leaving others to bear the burden ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... the New Hotel. The dinner was ill-cooked (an unpardonable fault at Monrovia, where good cooks, formerly in the service of our southern planters, might be supposed to abound), and not served up in proper style. But there was abundance to eat and drink. Though the keeper of the house is a clergyman and a temperance-man, ale, porter, wine, and ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... any case, suicide seemed to me to be an unpardonable error, even in the man who, through a false conception of greatness of soul, takes his life a few moments before the executioner's axe falls. In humbling himself to the death of the cross, did not Jesus Christ set for us an example of obedience to all human laws, even when carried out unjustly? ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... am sincerely so sorry to have offended you, that I venture to ask your pardon for an unpardonable piece of rudeness. I have come to hold myself at your disposition; if you decline my escort, you will not only be inflicting upon me an amply deserved mortification, but you will leave me still more unhappy than I have ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... must tell you that the princess has known for many days that I am Dantan. I told her the truth when Christobal came that day with the news. It was all well enough for me to pass myself off as a vagabond, but it would have been unpardonable to foist him upon her as ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... being dancing and bell-ringing. The overwhelming power of his imagination led him to contemplate acts of impiety and profanity, and to a vivid realisation of the dangers these involved. In particular he was harassed by a curiosity in regard to the "unpardonable sin," and a prepossession that he had already committed it. He continually heard voices urging him to "sell Christ," and was tortured by fearful visions. After severe spiritual conflicts he escaped from this condition, and became an enthusiastic and assured believer. In 1657 he joined the Baptist ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... persuading me to rise, curbing her own feelings as she kissed the tears from my cheeks, promising never to wound my peace again. But it was gone—gone for ever; my crime burst on me in all its magnitude; I felt that I had been guilty of a grievous and unpardonable sin, and had ruined the one I loved as well as myself. She was still on her knees; kneeling by her side, I prayed to offended Heaven for mercy and forgiveness. She joined me in my fervent aspirations; and, with ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... comparing myself with the above great worthies, who are so deservedly distinguished in the world of literature, I shall be accused of unpardonable presumption and ridiculous egotism—but I care not what may be said of me, inasmuch as a total independence of the opinions, feelings and prejudices of the world, has always been a prominent characteristic ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... you that the fugitive and schismatic Don Cossack, Emelian Pugatchef, after being guilty of the unpardonable insolence of usurping the name of our late Emperor, Peter III.,[49] has assembled a gang of robbers, excited risings in villages on the Yaik, and taken and oven destroyed several forts, while committing everywhere robberies and murders. In consequence, when you shall receive ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... that, According to the various interpretations of the sin against the Holy Ghost, there are various ways in which it may be said that it cannot be forgiven. For if by the sin against the Holy Ghost we understand final impenitence, it is said to be unpardonable, since in no way is it pardoned: because the mortal sin wherein a man perseveres until death will not be forgiven in the life to come, since it was not remitted by ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... "Now, countess, that is unpardonable malice. Believe me if I go to the Opera, I shall be as surprised to find myself there as you were to find yourself supping tete-a-tete with a man not ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... before me. Were I to do so, what an enormous volume I should write, and how the reader would be bored! Now, to bore a reader, is, in my eyes, one of the greatest crimes of which an author can be guilty. It is the unpardonable sin, indeed, in a writer. For which reason, and acting upon the theory that a drama ought to explain itself and be its own commentator, I spare the worthy reader of these pages all those reflections which I indulged in, after hearing General ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... to deal with as ladies' attire; as various in its hues and forms, as fanciful in its conceits, as changeable in its fashions, and as touchy in the temper of its wearers. To pull a guardsman by his coat-tail would be as unpardonable an offence as to tread on a lady's skirt; and to offer an opinion upon a lancer's cap might be considered as impertinent as to criticise a lady's bonnet. Having, however, been bold enough to commit offences of the latter ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... not deny that the sight of a kind and familiar face would be a boon to a lonely and friendless man—but with a deep desire to advance Mr. Trevor's happiness. Lest you may imagine I am committing an unpardonable impertinence and thereby totally misunderstand me, I may say that this happiness can only be achieved by the aid of powerful friends both ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... I am going to ask," he continued presently, "is one which you may consider unpardonable. Let me first express an opinion. You have not told all that you know of that ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... of them were en penitence, having slighted their lessons, as the teacher slily intimated, by reason of the great Church festival. This I thought not unlikely, and he did not appear to regard it as an absolutely unpardonable offence, while the juvenile criminals themselves were evidently quite cheery in their minds. In a room near the gymnasium were racks filled with wooden guns. These the teachers pointed out with pride. They were a gift from the company to his battalion of ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... industry to make his way for him. A monstrous crime indeed that, under such circumstances, he could not popularize his naturally grave, quiet manners all at once; could not be jocular, and free, and cordial with a strange peasantry, as you are with your fellow-townsmen! An unpardonable transgression that when he introduced improvements he did not go about the business in quite the most politic way, did not graduate his changes as delicately as a rich capitalist might have done! For errors of this sort ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... likewise against him. When Thorold had entered the "Golden Borough," hoping to fatten himself with all its treasures, he had found it a smoking ruin, and its treasures gone to Ely to pay Sweyn and his Danes. And such a "sacrilege," especially when he was the loser thereby, was the unpardonable sin itself in the eyes of Thorold, as he hoped it might be in the eyes of St. Peter. Joyfully therefore he joined his friend Ivo Taillebois; when, "with his usual pompous verbosity," saith Peter of Blois, writing on this very matter, he asked him to ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... every meal, leaves no stone unturned to find employment for him. First a written petition is drawn up by the local petition writer, in the following terms "Most Honoured and Respected Sir,—Although I am conscious that my present step will apparently be deemed an unjustifiable and unpardonable one, tantamounting to a preposterous hardihood in presuming to trespass (amidst your multifarious vocations) on your valuable time, yet placing implicit reliance on your noble nature and magnanimity of heart, I venture to do so, and ardently trust you will pardon ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... seize all those brutes of porters, and cause them to be hanged." Fearful of occasioning the death of so many innocent persons, I said, "Sir, I should be sorry so great a piece of injustice should be committed. Pray refrain; for I should deem myself unpardonable, were I to be the cause of so much mischief." "Then tell me sincerely," said he, "how came you by this wound." I answered, "That it was occasioned by the inadvertency of a broom-seller upon an ass, who coming behind me, while he was looking ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... part which Thomas Russell fills in the history of the United Irishmen, the worth of his character, the purity and nobility of his sentiments, and the spirit of uncompromising patriotism displayed in his last address, would render unpardonable the omission of his name from such a work as this. "I mean to make my trial," said Russell, "and the last of my life, if it is to close now, as serviceable to the cause of liberty as I can," and he kept his word. To-day, we try in some slight way to requite ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... and when, on the 6th of September, 1846, he saw for the first time the Great Salt Lake, he compares himself to Balboa, when that famous Spaniard gazed upon the Pacific. Fremont, too, says that he was the first to sail upon its saline waters, but again, as in many of his statements, he commits an unpardonable error; for Bridger's truthful story of the old trappers who explored it in search of streams flowing into it, in the hopes of enlarging their field of beaver trapping, antedates ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... inexpressible disgust that the efforts which they had made were rendered futile by the capture of these documents; and they were highly incensed at the action of one of the very men whose lives they believed they had saved by surrendering on January 7. The affidavit was looked upon as unpardonable, and the unnecessary statement regarding the genuineness of the signatures was interpreted in ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... You have an unpardonable weakness to which you sacrifice your feelings and submit your conduct—the fear of ridicule. It makes you dependent upon the opinion of fools; and your friends are not safe from the impressions against them which fools choose ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... of hell the angriest devils bristled with range because it lasted such a long time until I committed a mortal sin, an unpardonable offence for which God in His justice must ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... unbalanced talents, the poetes damnes of every craft. They strew the passions that enrich a lordlier art than their own. They fight valiantly, a little at the expense of their fame, against the only unpardonable sins, stupidity and indifference. Greco should always be an honoured ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... this unpardonable error. Bernadotte advanced from Hanover, with the troops which had occupied that electorate, towards Wurtzburg, where the Bavarian army lay ready to join its strength to his; five divisions of the great force lately assembled on the coasts of Normandy, under the orders of Davoust, Ney, Soult, Marmont, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... Fiske kept on with his meetings until Charley Douglas put an end to his career in the Glen. Mrs. Charley had been out in California all winter. She'd been real melancholy in the fall—religious melancholy—it ran in her family. Her father worried so much over believing that he had committed the unpardonable sin that he died in the asylum. So when Rose Douglas got that way Charley packed her off to visit her sister in Los Angeles. She got perfectly well and came home just when the Fiske revival was in full swing. She stepped off the train at the Glen, real smiling and chipper, ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and the red blood of indignation set her cheeks afire. No wonder that she speaks the name of the Red-Flower with an unloving accent to this day, although she has forgiven the enemies who did her greater wrong. The bride is a princess on her wedding day. To put upon her an indignity is an unpardonable offense. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... precarious and high questions? The office was usurped. It might have become a stranger; in a son - there was no blinking it - in a son, it was disloyal. And now, between these two natures so antipathetic, so hateful to each other, there was depending an unpardonable affront: and the providence of God alone might foresee the manner in which it would be resented ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that we felt scarcely anything of a shock. Cecilia, to be sure, left her breath about two-thirds of the way up, and suffered some inconvenience till she accumulated more, and the curate forgot to loosen his hold on Elise for an unpardonable length of time, while he gathered his wits, and I could feel that he was blushing when he came to his senses. It was in adjusting our attire that we discovered the necessity and value of our leathern aprons. Had we been plunged into a pool of water we should have sizzled. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... word in stark black letters; and opposite it another word, writ large in the color of blood. The first is "Sheep-murder"; the second, "Death." It is the one crime only to be wiped away in blood; and to accuse of the crime is to offer the one unpardonable insult. Every sheep-dog knows it, and ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... and into Doctor Baring Hartley's face there came a look of painful self-consciousness, as of one unexpectedly detected in an unpardonable action. He sprang up. ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... be so good as to take your leave, Lady Caroline Adair? I wish to treat you with all due courtesy, as you are Margaret's mother," said Wyvis, setting his teeth, "but you are saying unpardonable things to a ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... if he had been present. He contended that it was not altogether an effect of Hohenzollern pride, which could not suffer a joke or two from the arch-humorist; but that Heine had said things of Germany herself which Germans might well have found unpardonable. He concluded that it would not do to be perfectly frank with one's own country. Though, to be sure, there would always be the question whether the Jew-born Heine had even a step-fatherland in the Germany he loved so tenderly and mocked so ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... middle couplet, so as I hope partly to do away with W.'s objection. I do think, in the present state of the stage, it had been unpardonable to pass over the horses and Miss Mudie [1], etc. As Betty is no longer a boy, how can this be applied to him? He is now to be judged as a man. If he acts still like a boy, the public will but be more ashamed of their blunder. I have, you see, now taken it for granted ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... than Lady Kitty, or Susan and Kitty Livingston, by this," he mused. "She would be worth knowing, did a driven mortal but have the time to idle in the wake of so much intelligence—and beauty. Not to answer this were unpardonable—I cannot allow the lady to die." He wrote her a brief note of graceful acknowledgement, which caused Mrs. Croix to shed tears of exultation and vexation. He acknowledged her but breathed no fervid desire for another letter. It is not to be expected that ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... remember it is not the first time a Musgrave has figured in an entanglement of the sort. A lecherous race! proverbial flutterers of petticoats! His surname convicts the man unheard and almost excuses him. All of us feel that. And, moreover, it is not as if the idiots had committed any unpardonable sin, for they have ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... pilgrim's girl did not know. She thought he had done a brave thing to ignore the insult, and that night she rode with him, and upon the rim of the bench, as they paused to look down upon the twinkling lights of the little town Purdy committed the unpardonable sin of the cattle country. He attacked her—dragged her from her horse. And then the pilgrim came. Purdy heard the sound of the furious hoof-beats, and grinned evilly as he watched the man dismount clumsily when he came upon the two horses grazing with empty saddles. When the ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... Pompey, is to a general of his age and standing the greatest of disgraces. For, granting that a young commander might by clamor and outcry be deprived of his fortitude and strength of mind, and weakly forsake his better judgment, and the thing be neither strange nor altogether unpardonable, yet for Pompey the Great, whose camp the Romans called their country, and his tent the senate, styling the consuls, praetors, and all other magistrates who were conducting, the government at Rome, by no better title than that of rebels and traitors, for him, whom they well knew ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... introspection, but who has had little contact with men. Many of them were shadowy, and others were morbid and unwholesome. But their gloom was of an interior kind, never the physically horrible of Poe. It arose from weird psychological situations like that of Ethan Brand in his search for the unpardonable sin. Hawthorne was true to the inherited instinct of Puritanism; he took the conscience for his theme, and in these early tales he was already absorbed in the problem of evil, the subtle ways in which sin works out its retribution, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... under the name of 'duelling,' I recognize as a crime, a heinous crime, which I abhor and detest above all other crimes! Sir, I call things by their proper names, stripped of the glozing drapery of conventional usage. You say 'honorable satisfaction'; I say murder! aggravated, unpardonable murder; murder without even the poor palliation of the sudden heat of anger. Cool, deliberate, willful murder, that stabs the happiness of wives and children, and for which it would seem that even the infinite mercy of Almighty God could scarcely accord forgiveness! Oh! save ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... fortunes in their profession. The noblesse of the province have their balls and assemblies almost weekly during the summer months; and even in the winter, Tours is by many preferred to Paris. It would be an unpardonable omission, whilst I am upon this subject, not to notice the uncommon beauty of the younger women; a beauty, the effect of which is much raised by their vivacity, and unwearied gaiety. Love and gallantry seem the main business of the town, and whilst we were there, we were amused ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... head was high that afternoon when McTurpin came upon her suddenly in the patio of the Windham hacienda. She rose haughtily. "Senor, this intrusion is unpardonable. If my brother was within call—" McTurpin bowed low. There was a touch of mockery in his eye. "It is about your brother that I've come to talk with you, ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman |
