"Irreversible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... imbecility to the eyes of my audience, I know not. It may have been a few minutes only. To me it seemed an age; and I was just endued with a sufficient power of reflection to ask myself whether I had not better sit down at once in irreversible despair, when my wandering and hitherto vacant eyes caught a glance-a single glance—of a ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... inveterate; obstinate &c. 606. transfixed, stuck fast, aground, high and dry, stranded. [movable object rendered unmovable] stuck, jammed; unremovable; quiescent &c. 265; deterioration &c. 659. indefeasible, irretrievable, intransmutable[obs3], incommutable[obs3], irresoluble[obs3], irrevocable, irreversible, reverseless[obs3], inextinguishable, irreducible; indissoluble, indissolvable[obs3]; indestructible, undying, imperishable, incorruptible, indelible, indeciduous[obs3]; insusceptible, insusceptible of change. Int. stet. Phr. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... have laid the foundation of a system of instruction in reading and oratory, which, if adopted and perfected, "will beget a similarity of opinion and practice," and "be found to possess an excellence which must grow into sure and irreversible favour."—Phil. of the Voice, p. 404. "We have been willing," he says, "to believe, on faith alone, that nature is wise in the contrivance of speech. Let us now show, by our works of analysis, how she manages the simple elements of the voice, in the production ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Judge of the universe will "come in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory," "the glory of the Father and all the holy angels," to summon every class, and all the generations of mankind, to his tribunal, and pronounce their final, irreversible, everlasting doom: then, like Moses, his servants will be vindicated from every charge, honoured by witnessing celestials, admitted through the gates into the city of the New Jerusalem, be emparadised forever in the embraces of their God. Then, like Miriam and Aaron, a guilty race, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... Israel.' The death of Christ, if it were but a martyr's death, and if we had to believe that that frame had crumbled into dust, and that heart ceased for ever to beat, would not only destroy the worth of all that He spoke, but would be the saddest instance in all history of the irreversible sway that death wields over all mankind, and would deepen the darkness and sadden the gloom of the grave. True, there were not wanting even in His dying hours mysterious indications, such as His promise ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... solitude, sweep broadening down, And, gathering to itself a thousand streams, Grow sacred ere it mingle with the sea; I see the ungated wall of chaos old, With blocks Cyclopean hewn of solid night, 260 Fade like a wreath of unreturning mist Before the irreversible feet of light;— And lo, with what clear omen in the east On day's gray threshold stands the eager dawn, Like young Leander rosy from the sea ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... poet, feeling the importance of the catastrophe, wished to withdraw from view the personages of less consequence, and to concentrate our attention upon those two alone. The poetic action and description are narrowed in extent, but deepened in interest. The fate of Troy is impending; the irreversible decree of Jupiter is about to be executed; the heroes, whose bravery is to be the instrument of bringing about this consummation, are left together ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... suicide. There is not an interest in the nation which is not concerned in its adherence to the principle, that in it the whole legislative power of the United States government is vested, and that it has the right to exact irreversible guaranties of the Rebel States as the conditions of the admission of their Senators and Representatives. They are not in the Union until they are in its government; and Congress has the same power to keep them out that it has to let them in. By the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... the University of Leyden, warmly opposed this doctrine; maintaining, that by an eternal and irreversible decree God had predestinated some to everlasting life, and others to eternal damnation, without regard to their actions; that the grace given to the Elect was so powerful, they could not resist it; and that Jesus Christ did not die for ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... an affiliated member of a lodge, has the right to visit any other lodge as often as he may desire to do so. This right is secured to him by the ancient regulations, and is, therefore, irreversible. In the "Ancient Charges at the Constitution of a Lodge," formerly contained in a MS. of the Lodge of Antiquity in London, and whose date is not later than 1688,[81]it is directed "that every Mason receive and cherish strange fellows when they come over the country, and set them ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... all been as rapid as the irreversible mingling of waters, for even the eager and jealous Bardo had ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... first acquaintance, entered with a father's interest into all that concerned me. Thus encouraged, I held on my way, and tasted the sweets that I hope to enjoy to the end of my days—those of the original curse brightened by the irreversible blessing: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread;" "Be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor shall not be in ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... coming on, according to the pitiless irreversible certainty of the fixed laws that governed it—coming on like a huge wallowing monster, dumb and blind—knew not, and recked not, of the young life that quivered on the verge of its advance—that ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... saved. He created some men that they might sin and that their punishment might afford an example of God's justice, while He made others that they might be saved to show His overwhelming mercy. The former are condemned to hell by an irreversible decree, the others, the elect, are predestined absolutely to glory. The elect are assured of justification through the merits of Christ, and once justified they are always justified, for justification cannot be lost. Faith such as that advocated ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... can be blotted out of the book. The metaphor has often been pressed into the service of a doctrine of unconditional and irreversible predestination. But rightly looked at, it points in the opposite direction. Remember Moses's agonised cry, 'Blot me out of Thy book'; and the Divine answer, 'Him that sinneth against Me, his name will I blot out of My book.' And remember that it is only to 'him ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... state of mind it was impossible for them to look on their old prophets as true seers, beholding and applying eternal moral laws, and, therefore, seeing the future in the present and in the past. They must be the mere utterers of an irreversible arbitrary fate; and that fate must, of course, be favourable to their nation. So now arose a school who picked out from their old prophets every passage which could be made to predict their future glory, and a science which ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... fostered evil so vital that no repentance can fully blot them out from the present or the future of life. No turning away from the accursed thing, no discipline, no futurity near or far, can ever place Arthur Donnithorne or Godfrey Cass alongside Dinah Morris or Adam Bede. Their irreversible part of self-worship precludes them, by the very laws of our being, from the highest and broadest achievement of life ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... the causes and indicate the character of this sudden and irreversible revulsion of feeling is to relate the story of the public career of James Otis as primus inter pares and leader of the popular party in the Province of Massachusetts. For ten years, with the exception of some brief intervals of popular misunderstanding and disfavor, he stood forth as the eloquent ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... my purpose if I have not shown that there has been so large an increase of the stock of silver as of itself to effect a positive reduction of its value; and that this result has been confirmed and made irreversible by the new and extensive European disuse of silver coinage. I have indicated the advisability of obtaining the co-operation of other leading nations, in fixing upon a common ratio of value between gold and silver, before embarking upon a course of independent action ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... as those of Edwards and Leibnitz, in our opinion, only reflect dishonour and disgrace upon the cause they are intended to subserve. It is better, ten thousand times better, simply to plant ourselves upon the moral nature of man, and the irreversible dictates of common sense, and annihilate the speculations of the atheist, than to endeavour to parry them off by such invented quibbles and sophisms. They give point, and pungency, and power to the shafts of the sceptic. If we meet him on the common ground ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... how he found that he could plausibly enough doubt of everything except of his own existence. He pushed his scepticism to the verge of self-annihilation. There he stopped; there in self, in his consciousness, he found at last an irresistible fact, an irreversible certainty. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... is once settled by a fair vote, we will go to war rather than give it up. As when Lincoln was elected, if an election is valid, it must stand. In such a nation as this, an election is equivalent to a divine decree, and irreversible. But in Great Britain an election means, not the will of the people, but the will of rulers and a favored class, and there is always under them a great wronged class, that, if they get stirred up by the thought that they are wronged, will burst out ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... nominalism was evidently true, because it alone would legitimise the local independence of cities." Lest we should suppose that the historical sequence of these "truths" or illusions is, at least, fixed and irreversible, we are soon informed that the past is always changing, too; that is (if I may rationalise this mystical dictum), that history is always being rewritten, and that the growing present adds new relations to the past, which lead us to conceive or to describe it in ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... bequeathed to him. The influence of the Praetor on Roman jurisprudence differed only in respect of the period at which its amount was ascertained. As was before stated, he was in office but for a year, and his decisions rendered during his year, though of course irreversible as regarded the litigants, were of no ulterior value. The most natural moment for declaring the changes he proposed to effect occurred therefore at his entrance on the praetorship, and hence, when ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... only answer, that if this be a fault on my part, it is a deliberate one. I have spoken, whether rightly or wrongly, concerning what I know—concerning matters which are to me articles of faith altogether indubitable, irreversible, Divine. ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... races and foreign peoples, on the general conception that the chief aim of society and the state is to preserve the germ plasm of the Nordic race.[331] For Spencer, however, the conception that all values were in the organism was modified by the conviction that all life was involved in an irreversible process called evolution which would eventually purge the race and society of the weak, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... principles which alone can be justified, he must leave them at liberty to reject or to avail themselves of the benefit. Their neglect, or their abuse of it, will form a subject of inquiry at another tribunal; and the final, irreversible judgment to be pronounced there, man has no right to anticipate by pain and punishment on earth. These are the true principles of Christianity, and a church departs from the Gospel ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... the Trades' Unions themselves. Do not try to bar these men of their right as free Englishmen to combine, if they choose, for what they consider their own benefit. Look upon these struggles between employers and employed as fair battles, in which, by virtue of the irreversible laws of political economy, the party who is in the right is almost certain to win; and interfere in no wise, save to see fair play, and lawful means used on both sides alike. If you do more; if you interfere ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... divan The mighty chiefs of this prodigious host. He from the throne high-eminent presides, Gives out his mandates proud, laws of the chase, From ancient records drawn. With reverence low, And prostrate at his feet, the chiefs receive His irreversible decrees, from which To vary is to die. Then his brave bands Each to his station leads; encamping round, 370 Till the wide circle is completely formed; Where decent order reigns, what these command, Those execute with speed, and punctual care; In all the strictest discipline ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... skies are cleared, and the oracles have spoken. The ultimate achievement is already determined in the irreversible purpose of the loyal States; and that purpose is, a restored republic from the Gulf to the Lakes,—and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... that, I should think, might satisfy his daughter, in spite of all the Acts of Parliament afterwards devised to restrict and regulate royal marriages. Mademoiselle d'Este's is merely a perpetual protest against an irreversible social decree, and an incessant, unavailing struggle for the observance and respect conventionally due to a rank which is not hers; and though it appears to me as senseless a cause of trouble as ever human being chose to accept, yet as incessant bitterness ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... not so his despair, for his fortitude was as great as his sufferings. His strength of mind was matchless as his strength of body; the vastness of his designs did not surpass the firm, inflexible determination with which he submitted to his irreversible doom, and final loss of all good. His power of action and of suffering was equal. He was the greatest power that was ever overthrown, with the strongest will left to resist or to endure. He was baffled, not confounded. He stood like ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the greatest; the following are among the chiefs who helped to transform the mental fabric of Europe in the age of Louis XIV: Descartes, Newton, Leibnitz, Locke, Boyle. Under these leaders the first firm irreversible advance was made out of the dim twilight of theology into the clear dawn of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... is universal and irreversible; the second is an induction from a vast number of observations, though it may possibly, and even probably, have to admit of exceptions. As a consequence of the second law, it follows that a peculiar relation frequently subsists between ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... England. The real danger of the Cotton dynasty lies not in the hostility of the North, but in the exigencies of the market abroad; they struggle not against the varying fortunes of political warfare, but against the irreversible decrees of Fate. It is the old story of the Rutulian hero; and now, in the very crisis and agony of the battle, while the Cotton King is summoning all his resources and straining every nerve to cope successfully with its more apparent, but less formidable adversary, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... all three cast into a lake of fire "burning with brimstone." But of Death and Hades it is only said that they were cast into a lake of fire. Their being cast into the depths of "a lake" signifies that they become incognizable entities, and "lake of fire" indicates that they remain such by an irreversible law, fire being the symbol of force of law (see Deut. xxxiii. 2). For this reason "the lake of fire" is put in apposition (in v. 14) with "the second death," which is the extinction of death. Now, Satan, the beast, and the false prophet, being regarded as personal existences motived ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... and inhibitions. So long as the emotional influence fails to reach a certain pitch of efficacy, the changes it produces are unstable, and the man relapses into his original attitude. But when a certain intensity is attained by the new emotion, a critical point is passed, and there then ensues an irreversible revolution, equivalent to the production of ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... on Holiness are hortatory rather than argumentative or exegetical. They are spiritual cyclones. It is difficult to see how any Christian could withstand these impassioned appeals to make what Joseph Cook calls "an affectionate, total, irreversible, eternal, self-surrender to Jesus Christ, as both Saviour and Lord," in order to attain that "perfect similarity of feeling with ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth |
