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More "Undoing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a great class-war is not only inevitable but desirable. Such conflicts, however, besides their material losses, engender hatred, cruelty, lust, greed, and all sorts of other forms of immorality. No one can predict how far such struggles may go in the future toward undoing the socializing process which at best has so many obstacles to meet and moves so slowly. Many forces are at work, however, for moral uplift. The spread of education, teaching men to think, to discern evils, and to comprehend the reasons ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... told, a curious contrivance in the service of the English marine. The ropes in use in the royal navy, from the largest to the smallest, are so twisted that a red thread runs through them from end to end, which cannot be extracted without undoing the whole; and by which the smallest pieces may be recognized ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... not advisable to be too diligent in eliciting these signs, because of the pain caused by the manipulations, and also because vigorous handling may do harm by undoing impaction, causing damage to soft parts or producing displacement which does not already exist, or by converting a simple into a ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... ejaculations, which he made from time to time, on the too great probability, or even certainty, of their missing the flood-tide. By degrees, however, his wrath subsided; he wiped his brows, relaxed his frown, and, undoing the parcel in his hand, produced his folio, on which he gazed from time to time with the knowing look of an amateur, admiring its height and condition, and ascertaining, by a minute and individual inspection of each leaf, that the, volume was uninjured and ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... of Nature, and I can quite understand that ancient libertine refusing to co-operate in her own undoing. And I can quite understand, too, my father's preference for what he called an illustrative experiment, which was simply an arrangement of the apparatus in front of the class with nothing whatever by way of material, and the Bunsen burner clean and cool, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the natural ending to which was the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie through military force. "The Constituent Assembly" had been proved to be no more than a useful mask behind which the enemies of the revolution could prepare their forces and trick the masses to their own undoing. ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... from the wind I had not appreciated its force, but when we ceased to run I learned to my sorrow, and well-nigh to my despair, how fiercely it was really blowing. The wind balked my every effort, ripping the canvas out of my hands and in an instant undoing what I had gained by ten minutes of severest struggle. At eight o'clock I had succeeded only in putting the second reef into the foresail. At eleven o'clock I was no farther along. Blood dripped from every finger-end, while the nails were ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... apprehensive for Isabinda, her Father's Humour is implacable; and how far his Jealousie may transport him to her Undoing, shocks my Soul ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... in emptying the cart, and placing in it some pillows for the wounded man to rest on; and it was only when the driver had mounted to his place, and was starting for the Surgery, that I bethought me of the strange power I possessed of undoing ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... your Bodkin Your Pocket-dagger, your Steletto, out with it, Or by this hand I'le kill you: such as you are Have studied the undoing of poor Cutlers, And made all manly weapons out of fashion: You carry Poniards to murder men, Yet dare not wear a sword to ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... classes and to guarantee 100 guineas for each class. They were not, however, allowed to receive scholarships, to which their work would have entitled them, on the score that they were women. Mrs Thorne states that their "success in the examination lists was their undoing," as, owing to this, and to the fact that they were unjustly debarred from receiving the distinctions that they had gained, a great deal ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... leagues from here, in such a condition that he will trouble her no more I hope. Add to this, that I have questioned her, and find her honest, meek, and a Christian. She is, as you, will see for yourself, very good-looking: it was near to be her undoing. I cannot tell you, nor will you ask me, first, her name (for I am not certain of it), second, the name of her enemy (for that would involve a great company whereof he is a most unworthy member), nor third, what means I employed to insure immunity for her body, and honour ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... swooper down toward the ship and shot toward it at full rocket power. I had acted so swiftly that I had covered nearly half the distance toward the ship before my mind slowly drifted out of the daze of my emotion. This proved my undoing. Their scopeman saw me too quickly, for in heading directly at them I became easily visible, appearing as a steady, expanding point. Looking through their hull, I saw the crew of a dis ray generator come suddenly to attention. A second later ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... something wrapped in newspaper and tucked under the stern seat. If it should only prove to be food of any description, "even burned mush," thought Winn, grimly, how happy it would make him! In another second he was undoing, with eager fingers, the lunch of crackers and cheese that Sheriff Riley's wife had so thoughtfully thrust into her husband's hands as he left the house the morning before, and which he had as thoughtfully tucked under the stern ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... stared after her, uncomprehending. Slowly it dawned upon her that some one had been telling tales and undoing her careful work. "Minty! Minty!" she cried, "how can you talk ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... person with a small pointed chin that trembled when he spoke. Despite the easy conventions of the alley, he kept his clothes neatly brushed and his shoes polished, and wore a collar on week days. These signs of prosperity were his undoing. Before he had time to realize what was happening to him, he had been skilfully jolted out of his rut by the widow's experienced hand, and bumped over a hurried courtship into a sudden marriage. He returned to consciousness to find himself possessed of a wife and two stepchildren ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... the man, undoing the final fold of paper. "Mr. Young in the High Street of Liverpool had the packets ready. He says you must have them all; and all printed this year. What so many people can want to say, I for my count cannot comprehend. Three more parcels on the stairs, your honour. Mr. Young says you must ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... fellow into Raffles's place in the pantry, locked the door on him, and put the key through the panel. Now was the moment for thinking of ourselves, and again that infernal mask which Raffles swore by came near the undoing of us both. We had reached the steps when we were hailed by a voice, not from without but from within, and I had just time to tear the accursed thing from Raffles's ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... morsel of ill-natured gossip in all the salons and cabarets of Paris. At fifteen the princess was already a woman—tall, handsome, well-formed, with brilliant eyes and the full lips eloquent of a sensuous nature. Already she had had her initiation into the vices that proved her undoing; for in a Court noted for its free-living, she was known for her love of ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... lay-brother was afflicted with heavy sickness by reason of the sun's great heat; and Satan strove with him for his undoing, so that the poor soul foamed at the mouth and roared out blasphemy; yea, verily, and must be held with cords also, lest he do himself or his fellows some grievous hurt. But when the Prior laid his hand between ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... do," she went on in the tone of gentle, unimpassioned reason that women sometimes use in violent anger, to the utter amazement and undoing of their male opponents. "And moreover, I daresay if I really loved you as much as I thought I did, I should be unable to refuse to do what ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... magnificent victory. The historian has a hard task when he tries to fathom the Visconti's schemes, or to understand his motives. Half the Duke's time seems to have been spent in unravelling the webs that he had woven, in undoing his own work, and weakening the hands of his chosen ministers. Conscious that his power was artificial, that the least breath might blow him back into the nothingness from which he had arisen on the wrecks ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Souls undone, undoing others,- Long time since the tale began. You would not live to wrong your brothers: Oh lad, you died ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... enemy planes were constantly appearing, bombing the bridges and the islands in a last desperate effort to hold up our advance. Our planes, too, were never far away, and succeeded in driving off or driving down many of these attackers. But others got through and were constantly undoing the work of ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... evidently come in for one of those spells of fine weather which in those regions so often follow upon such a storm as had proved the undoing of the Royal Christopher. If the conditions had been different our lives would have been sufficiently enviable. Fair Island deserves its name; we had summer, food and water; so far as material comfort went, all ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... succeeded generation, the rulers learned their lesson, building a tradition of rulership and authority that was handed down from father to son; acquiring a vision of world organization and world power that gave them confidence to go forward to their own undoing. The masters of public life in Rome were such people; the present masters of British economic and political ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... very image of this damsel," rejoined the tall archer, pointing to Mabel, "and fair enough to work his ruin, for it was through her that the fiend tempted him. The charms that proved his undoing were fatal to her also, for in a fit of jealousy he slew her. The remorse occasioned by this deed made ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... decision either in favor of the Western Policy that he advocated, or in favor of the Eastern Policy, we should have prevented the development of a situation in the politics of the world which ultimately led to our own undoing. If, during the war, however, we had completely abandoned the U-boat campaign, and had made every possible effort to come to an understanding with America, we should, in my opinion, have been able to extricate ourselves from it satisfactorily. Be this as it may, it is also ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... Clive the son of Thomas, had wrath in their hearts against Barnes, their kinsman, and desired to be revenged upon him, and were eager after his undoing, and longed for an opportunity when they might meet him and overcome him, and put ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... right! It had been only a ruse! Uttering a suppressed hurrah Jack began hurriedly undoing the fastenings of his door, to get out to the detective's assistance. Before he had opened it, however, there was the sound of a heavy fall, and a triumphant shout from Watts. Promptly Jack paused, debated a moment, and restored the fastenings. He would wait. ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... recover himself, and with each fresh loss he drinks deeper to smother his fears and conscience. It is the result of the weakness of his nature—a weakness which I have always known would sooner or later lead to his undoing. Jacky, girl, I fear you will one day have to marry Lablache or your uncle's ruin will ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... to the Gulf of Mexico. All former accessions of territory were small beside it, and to his eyes it seemed the fertile Canaan of French enterprise. Yet the very magnitude of this new success made for the undoing of New France, by scattering her feeble forces over the length and breadth of a continent and distending her line of defence so far that it could be easily pierced. La Salle, however, was driven irresistibly forward by the hot ambition which ruled him. His romantic vision ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... shooting, fishing; nice quiet time generally; back Monday morning in season for biz!" This was certainly satisfactory as far as it went, but I added, by way of parenthesis, "and who else will be present?" knowing well enough that one uncongenial spirit might be the undoing of us all. To this Bartholomew responded, "No one but ourselves, old fellow; now don't be queer." He knew well enough my aversion to certain elements unavoidable even in the best society, and how I kept very much to myself, ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... in marriage. But a certain Jarjarees, the son of Rejmoos, the son of Iblees—may he be for ever accursed!—looked with favour upon the maiden, and, going secretly unto Suleyman, persuaded him that I was preparing a crafty snare for the King's undoing." ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... period we ought to signalise one, Mrs A.S. Green, who to a rare scholarship adds something rarer, the genius of common sense. This is not the place in which to recall the whole substance of her "Making of Ireland and its Undoing" and her "Irish Nationality"; but from borrowings thence and elsewhere we can piece together a plain tale of that first chapter ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... and rather dirty white trousers, with long riding-boots. I remember they were moving along at a wretched pace, which showed that their horses were nearly spent. Once again, notwithstanding all previous bitter lessons, my uncontrollable excitement was my undoing. "Civilisation at last!" I screamed to myself, and then, throwing discretion to the winds, I gave the war-whoop of the blacks and rushed madly forward, yelling myself hoarse, and supremely oblivious of the fantastic and savage appearance I must have presented—with my long hair ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... though time was there was a good deal). In such a district, as you would call it, some neighbours think that something ought to be done or undone: a new town-hall built; a clearance of inconvenient houses; or say a stone bridge substituted for some ugly old iron one,—there you have undoing and doing in one. Well, at the next ordinary meeting of the neighbours, or Mote, as we call it, according to the ancient tongue of the times before bureaucracy, a neighbour proposes the change, and of course, if everybody agrees, there is an end of discussion, ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... air pilot, but with his companion a perfect greenhorn in all that pertained to the art, he would be more or less handicapped. A sudden incautious movement on the part of the novice might prove the undoing of the precious pair. ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... of all mothers, and so would she have remained if she had not believed herself so peculiarly blessed. Her very knowledge of her good fortune was her undoing. ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... on the whole to have been fairly comfortable and happy in Louisville, surrounding himself with books and experimental apparatus, and even inditing a treatise on electricity. But his very thirst for knowledge and new facts again proved his undoing. The instruments in the handsome new offices were fastened in their proper places, and operators were strictly forbidden to remove them, or to use the batteries except on regular work. This prohibition meant little to Edison, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... 'believing integrity of manners and innocence of life are a guard strong enough to secure any man in his voyage through the world in what company soever he travelled, and through what ways soever he was to pass[1],' furnished my enemies with weapons which have been used to my undoing. For this last year I have suffered alternate hopes and fears. Whether my heart is sick of suspence, or the clouds of mischance really thicken around me, I can scarcely ascertain, but my meditations grow more gloomy, and I believe myself doomed to an obscure life ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... and the three boys sat down around a wooden block formed of a tree-trunk with a deep groove running through it. The labour consisted in undoing and taking apart old boots and shoes, which arrived at the shop from every direction in huge, badly tied bales and in sacks with paper designations sewed to the burlap. The boot destined to be drawn and quartered was laid upon the block; there it received a stroke or more from a knife ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... began undoing their fishing tackle, and soon the quartet were fishing as if their lives depended on what they caught that afternoon. And the strangest part about it was that nobody—not even the girls—said a word! Silence reigned supreme. So, although Dorothy had triumphed in showing the boys ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... oh heed our fatal story; I am Hosier's injured ghost, You who now have purchased glory At this place where I was lost! Though in Porto-Bello's ruin You now triumph free from fears, When you think on our undoing, You will mix your ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... his pork to the extremity of the hanger, and arming himself with his lantern and his old sack, he set out on what, in ordinary weather, would have been a twenty minutes' errand. He could not have locked his door without undoing his well-knotted string and retarding his supper; it was not worth his while to make that sacrifice. What thief would find his way to the Stone-pits on such a night as this? and why should he come on this particular night, when he had never come through all ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... having awaited him good two months, seeing that he came not, she caused the broker force open the magazines. Trying first the casks, which she believed to be filled with oil, she found them full of seawater, save that there was in each maybe a runlet of oil at the top near the bunghole. Then, undoing the bales, she found them all full of tow, with the exception of two, which were stuffs; and in brief, with all that was there, there was not more than two hundred florins' worth. Wherefore Biancofiore, confessing herself outwitted, long ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... is desirable, however, to realize that mismating is the real evil. Divorce in such cases is merely a cure for an improper condition. Social condemnation should stigmatize the wrong of mismating, not the undoing of such a wrong. ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... The back of her neck, Dowie realised, was now as slenderly round and velvet white as it had been when she had dressed her hair on the night of the Duchess' dance. Dowie did not know that its loveliness had been poor George's temporary undoing; she only thought of it as a sign of the wonderful change. It had been waxen pallid and had shown ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... will you, till I fix me leg," and he handed me the mushrooms and started undoing his puttee where the blood was soaking through. When he had bound up his wound I handed him his dainties and he held them ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... initiative. Now, Irene knew perfectly well where the brake was, and how to use it. In fact, there were two brakes, operated by different members, and perhaps it was this duplication, intended to insure safety, that was responsible for her undoing. Her first impulse was to use the emergency, but to do so she must remove her hand from the steering wheel, where it was very fully occupied. She did start to put this impulse into effect, but an unusually violent deflection caused her to reconsider that intention. She ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... emptied themselves into Edinburgh demanding justice. The lady-mother of the dead was there, broken-hearted, and Percival Montrose, to whom the title fell; and I had a fine taste of the fealty of Gaelic-folk, for kinsfolk and clansfolk took the duke's undoing as a personal affront, and put their own matters by to get some one hanged ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... started from her chair, Flung her arms up in the air, Clutched her hair: 'Lizzie, Lizzie, have you tasted For my sake the fruit forbidden? Must your light like mine be hidden, 480 Your young life like mine be wasted, Undone in mine undoing, And ruined in my ruin, Thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden?'— She clung about her sister, Kissed and kissed and kissed her: Tears once again Refreshed her shrunken eyes, Dropping like rain After long sultry drouth; ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... far, and the eyes of the girl—pleading—were the only real things. In his hours on the trail through the forest he had thought the ever-present picture of her in his heart might be strange new magic for his undoing, but to hear her tremulous girl voice:—and to see the broken thong, and the symbols of the most primitive of tribal dances, drove into forgetfulness the thought of all magic that was false magic. The gods had sent the vision of her in the dawn of ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... heart, which has often been my undoing. She said she'd seen the most interesting man in the world. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... at him and hooted. "You are a fool!" they shouted. "You will be the undoing of us all. Do you not know that one shot fired, nay, only one musket found, and the enemy puts a torch to the ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... no active existence throughout our Commonwealth, nor had the light spread so as to show up all the abuses. And how true is Buckle's observation in his History of Civilisation that all recent legislation is the undoing of bad laws made in the interest of certain classes. How could there be an active public opinion in the conditions of the times? Everybody was shut off from everybody else. Hear further what Mackenzie says in his History of the Nineteenth Century, ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... some reason of his own not at all clear to Malvina, had forbidden the taking off of the coat. But had said nothing about undoing it. So by way of ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... Perigal having gone to the bedroom to wash after his journey. She contrasted her present misery with the joyousness that had possessed her when last she had been under the same roof as her lover. Tears welled into her eyes, but she held them back, fearing they would further contribute to the undoing of her looks. ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... do but get busy and experience will come as fast as we can absorb it. Our duty is to strive for success and not expect to attain it except by successive steps. A wholesale consignment would be our undoing. Quick successes through luck or good fortune have not the lasting value of those won by virtue of knowing how—of accomplishing what ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... coffee- house, where he showed me the state of his case; how the King did owe him above 6000l. But I do not see great likelihood for them to be paid, since they begin already in Parliament to dispute the paying off the just sea-debts, which were already promised to be paid, and will be the undoing of thousands ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... or half-forgotten meanings. We have seen that the word tension may be used without conscious connection with the idea of stretching. But if we incautiously place the word in the wrong environment, the idea will be resurrected to our undoing. We associate ardor with strong and eager desire. For ordinary purposes this conception of the word suffices. But ardor is one of the children of fire; its primary sense is "burning" (compare arson). Therefore to pronounce the ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... trembling hands, undoing the door of her apartment, she made her way into the long, dark gallery, with which she was perfectly familiar, and soon gained the apartment already referred to. The door fortunately stood nearly ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... bad, nay, I think, worse than the former; for by thus doing, he did, not only run himself under the wrath of God, but has endangered the undoing of his Master and ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... as the Devils Gaol; a World in every Nook whereof, the Devil is encamped, with Bands of Robbers, to pester all that have their Face looking Zion-ward: And are we all this while preserved from the undoing Snares of the Devil? it is, Thou, O keeper of Israel, that hast hitherto been our Keeper! And therefore, Bless the Lord, O my soul, Bless his Holy Name, who has redeemed ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... the welfare of our women exceeds that for our men, because man is so constituted as to be more able to take care of himself." So much was this old prehistoric chief away ahead of his dark, heathen times. But this masculine weakness of his was nearly his undoing with his warriors, as ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... Rebellion has cost us much, even to our undoing; we are content, if need be, to give up the rest, to suppress it. We have stood by you from the beginning of this struggle, and we mean to stand by you, God willing, till the end ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... I am your old teacher, Glory Goldie, I shall speak plainly to you. You want to run away from a duty, but that does not say that you will succeed. I have seen others try to do the same thing, but it has invariably resulted in their undoing." ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... even so far as this. He certainly would have ruled out "an innate propensity to extreme hazards," for in his judgment it was this innate propensity which led Napoleon to abuse the higher form to his own undoing. So entirely indeed does history, no less than theory, fail to support the idea of the one answer, that it would seem that even in Germany a reaction to Clausewitz's real teaching is beginning. In expounding it Von Caemmerer says, "Since the majority of the most prominent military authors ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... silence that the watchful mud turtles barely turned their snaky heads as they passed. So, a full hour before the time, they came slipping around the mouth of the slough and made for a natural ambuscade which the mixed breed had left within a stone's jerk of his cabin to his own undoing. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... Bubble, run its course and that will end it; on the other hand, it may grow to such proportions that it will shut out all human endeavor and bring commercial pursuits to a complete standstill. In any case its foundations are laid in vanity and egotism, and that will eventually prove its undoing. ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... Christian world; none who acknowledged the duty of baptizing at all, but administered the rite to infants, as we do at present. But about three hundred years ago strange opinions were set afloat, and sects arose, doing every thing which had not been done before, and undoing every thing that had been done before, and all this (as they professed) on the principle that it was every one's duty to judge and act for himself; and among these new sects there was one which maintained that Infant Baptism was a mistake, ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... he replied that he could refuse nothing to the greatest of kings. My sister wrote on the day following to the Marquis de Louvois, instead of asking it of the King in person. M. de Luvois, who, probably, wished to despoil M. de Mont-Beliard without undoing his purse-strings, put this overture before the King maliciously, and the King wrote me immediately ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... I know thee," I went on again, "by thy sly and crafty look, by thy scallopped cape and chain of office, I know thee for that same Sheriff of Nottingham that hath sworn to our undoing. Go to! didst' think to take Robin—in the greenwood? Out upon thee! Thy years should have taught thee better ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... nature thrilling in all she did, even when from the hunting-grounds of poesy she brought back now and then a poor day's capture. She was never without charm in her writing; indeed, mere charm was too often her undoing. She could not be impersonal enough, and therefore could not be great; but she could get very near to human sympathies, to domestic natures, to those who care for pleasant, happy things, to the lovers of ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... opened her eyes so suddenly that he started (forgetting that he was invisible), and wounded himself with his own shaft. Heedless of the hurt, moved only by the loveliness of the maiden, he hastened to pour over her locks the healing joy that he ever kept by him, undoing all his work. Back to her dream the princess went, unshadowed by any thought of love. But Cupid, not so light of heart, returned to the heavens, saying not a word of what ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... has ruined me, she will be my undoing! Oh, sir, how can I make you understand? The letter was not intended for you—it was meant for the English Ambassador, an old friend of my mother's, from whom I hoped to obtain assistance—oh, how can I ever ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... There she was, undoing her hair to wash it, with her arms out through the sleeve-holes of her smock. White as the snow of one night were the two hands, soft and even, and red as foxglove were the two clear-beautiful cheeks. Dark ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... not help you against the sorites; inasmuch as it does not teach a man, who is using either the increasing or diminishing scale, what is the first point, or the last. May I not say that that same art, like Penelope undoing her web, at last undoes all the arguments which have gone before? Is that your fault, or ours? In truth, it is the foundation of dialectics, that whatever is enunciated (and that is what they call {GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... of them aside, and showed a ponderous apparatus of bolts and chains for securing the window-shutters, while her father, pressing to her side, seized her gown with a trembling hand, and said, in a low whisper, "Show not the trick of locking and undoing them. Show him not the trick on't, Martha—ugh, ugh—on no consideration." Martha went on, without paying ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... witchcraft, and plead guilty or not guilty, this same good and trusty document will be worth less than the parchment 'tis writ on. 'Tis so with the law. There will be an attainder on't. My sons-in-law that testified to the undoing of Martha and me will have their share, and thou and Olive perchance have naught in this bedlam. I bear no ill will toward my sons-in-law and my daughters, who have been put up by them to deal falsely with Martha and me, but I would not ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... authority in one individual has frequently been the undoing of democratic governments. Repeated elections are essential in popular systems, because nothing is so dangerous as to permit a citizen to remain long in power. The people get used to obeying and he gets used to commanding it, from which spring usurpation and tyranny." ... "We have ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... convinced by this evidence that he had the power of doing everything and of undoing everything at his pleasure, the gods handed to him the sceptre, the throne, the crown, the insignia of supreme rule, and greeted him with their acclamations: "Be King!—Go! Cut short the life of Tiamat, and let the wind carry her blood to the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... have been that the allusion to the tender beings whose fate depended on his care, or that the deeply serious, though mild and gentle manner of his consort, produced some fresher impression on the mind of Content. Instead of undoing the fastenings of the postern as he had intended, he deliberately drew its bolts ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... it was not necessary thereto. Any reasonable person her friend, nay, anybody whose attention was fairly directed to the case, must hold the same view. There was a hideous mistake to be undone, and only one way of undoing it. Permanent unions in marriage, immense and indispensable engines of civilisation, yet exacted their price. One instance of the compensating payment was that deaths sometimes became desirable; you had ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... sign to me that I was done for—wiped out. There wasn't any violence or any hysteria about it, only grief, only pity. It was an entirely simple, gentle and beautiful performance, and it took place in my rooms after Jevons had left us. But, as I say, this was long afterwards. The agony of my undoing was a ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... cried Sir Tristram. "It has been the undoing of many good men and true, who have died for love of her. Her beauty has been a sore ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Tara of Helium that she could scarce take her eyes from the strange creatures—a fact that was to prove her undoing, for in order that she might see them she was forced to expose a part of her own head and presently, to her consternation, she saw that one of the creatures had stopped his work and was staring directly at her. She did not dare move, for it was still possible that ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... him the story of the shocking treachery of Humpy Joe, together with the miserable undoing of the Flying Heart. "Why, those poor fellows are broken-hearted," she concluded. "Their despair over losing that talking-machine would be funny if it were not so tragic. I told them you would win it back for them. And you will, ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... speechless with horror. Before she recovers her selfpossession the suitors rush into the apartment, insolently reminding her of her promise to choose one of them, as soon as the garment, which she has been weaving for so many years for Laertes shall be completed, and wildly upbraiding her with undoing her work during the night Penelope tries to hold them in check, but they only grow more shameless, and at last Antinous tries to embrace her. Quick as thought she draws her dagger, and when it is wrenched from her she snatches his own sword and directs it against him. But Eurymachus, ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... and to get him to do this he must be tactfully warned of his condition. Many, such patients, noting their impaired ability, do not seek medical advice, but think all they need is more exercise; hence they walk, golf, and dance to excess and to their cardiac undoing. ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... their condition by the sentence of the day of judgment. Evil and sad is their condition who can not be contented here nor blest hereafter, whose life is their misery and their conscience is their enemy, whose grave is their prison and death their undoing, and the sentence of doomsday the beginning of an ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... soldiers was a white chief, whom they called Yellow Hair. He was a smashing, dashing, fearless soldier who understood the Indian ways and haunts, and then used this knowledge for the undoing ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... a success, but the success proved the undoing of her furlough. "Instead of going home as I had planned, in order to get strength for a wider range of work, I shall stay on and enjoy the privilege of going over ground impossible for my poor limbs." On one of the first drives she had, she went in search of a site for a new and larger church which ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... dash of "sob stuff," was at once Hilmer's challenge to the strikers and his appeal to the gallery. There was a certain irony in realizing that all these carefully planned effects had been seized upon for Hilmer's own undoing. He was working in the dark, very much as Fred Starratt had worked during those heartbreaking months when he had battled for place in the business world. Then Hilmer had held him in the palm of his hand. Now the situation was reversed—he held Axel Hilmer's fate in his own keeping, ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... thou rend our nearness, and again Bring distance back, and place Poles and equators, mountain range and plain, Between me and thy face, Undoing what the gods divinely planned; Heart, canst thou part? hand, loose me from thy hand? Not twice the gods their slighted gifts bestow; Bethink thee well, ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... delighted. He could hardly wait to get home before undoing the package. The font formed a compact quadrilateral wound around the edges with string. The letters were all arranged in order—four capital A's—A A A A—then the Bs, and so on. It differed from his own font. The one that came with his press had just three of each letter—large ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... one, Leek-sea-bearing goddess, Hawk-keen out of heaven Shone all bright upon me; But that eyelid's moonbeam Of gold-necklaced goddess Her hath all undoing Wrought, and ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous
... fleecy softness of that hair—the thousand ripples breaking up the sunshine—only there wasn't any sunshine to break. Not a silver thread was visible; if there had been several the night before, it was nobody's business but my own. My arms were tired with continual undoing; but, sisters, am I one to faint by the way? No, no, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... gold and silver be not a drug, where they do not promote industry? Whether they be not even the bane and undoing of an idle people? ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... with all the super-added culture and organisation of the Romance nationalities. The Conquest was an inevitable step in the work of severing England from the barbarous North, and binding it once more in bonds of union with the civilised South. It was the necessary undoing of the Danish conquest; more still, it was an inevitable step in the process whereby England itself was to begin its unified existence by the final breaking down of the barriers which divided Wessex from Mercia, and Mercia ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... thought. Her fear to explain to her father the incident of the opening of the safe had given him confidence that no word of the truth regarding the past would ever pass her lips. Yet he saw that his own machinations were now likely to prove his undoing. The web which, with her ladyship's assistance, he had woven about her was now stretched to breaking-point. If it did yield, then the result must be ruin—and worse. Therefore, he was straining every ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... great energy, earnest, zealous, sincere, learned—the Doctor Buckley of his day—showed how that: "if the Copernican Theory should prevail, it would be the absolute undoing of the Bible, and the destruction of the Church, rendering the death of Christ futile. If the earth is only one of many planets, and not the center of the universe, and the other planets are inhabited, the whole ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... UNDOING THE PUZZLE.—To take the puzzle to pieces all that is required is to turn the "key" half round and push the other two cross bars on that arm towards the outer point. The cross bars below may then be removed, and the whole structure ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... to lift his hand against organized society. The first class are the common crooks of the street, and are ofttimes more to be pitied than blamed, for after all, environment has been a great factor in their undoing. The second group are those men who are opposed to all forms of organized society. They are commonly known as Radicals. There is little to be said in their favor. Reared, more often than not, in the lap of a society ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... While I was undoing my trousers, I observed that Miss Frankland had quite lifted up her outer frock, and had sat down, evidently intending to flog me across her knee. Both being ready, she told me to put the footstool by her side and kneel upon it, then desiring me to bend forward over her knees she ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... was supplied by orderly arrangement and for everything he must have an authoritative permit. Had I not been classed as a research chemist, and therefore a man of some importance, this simple business of getting a hair-cut might have proved my undoing. Indeed, as I afterwards learned, the exclusive privacy of my living quarters was a mark of distinction. Had I been one of lower ranking I should have shared my apartment with another man who would have slept in my bed while I was at work, for in the sunless city was ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... helped me to remove my tattered robe, and, undoing the rough bandages upon my arm, washed it gently with warm water, in which he mixed some spirit, and examined it with the ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... at places it rose to splendid points of vantage from which to view the delightful valleys. Then again it lost itself under great over-arching trees, and as we came too rapidly down a steep hill on entering Bodmin, the road was so heavily shaded that we were near our undoing. The loose sand had been piled up by the rain and the dense shade prevented the road from drying. The car took a frightful skid and by a mere hair's breadth escaped disastrous collision with a stone wall—but ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... coherence and continuity in our Government of that great Colony. A good and successful Administrator has sometimes been withdrawn to be superseded by another, equally well-intentioned, perhaps, but whose policy was on wholly different lines, thus undoing the work of his predecessor. This has introduced not only confusion, but sometimes an appearance of real injustice into our management of the colony. In all this chequered history, the interests of the native races have been too often postponed to those of the ruling races. This was certainly ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... done; but his sin found him out, as our sins are sure to find each of us out. The day came when he wanted his birthright and could not have it, and found no place for repentance—that is, no chance of undoing what he had done—though he sought it carefully with tears. He had sown, and he must reap; he had made his bed, and he must lie on it. And so must ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... it was almost his undoing, for he slipped in the mud and went down heavily. For a moment he lay in the slime and water, with the rain beating on him, and the wind whipping about ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... have lit into a sparkle at the charm of the picture. He was not learned in women's stuffs, or the hundred little arts through which an accent, as it were, is put upon a charm already sufficiently gracious, or a beauty brought into yet clearer relief for the luring and undoing of the unsuspecting male, and so could not have told whether Ursula de Vesc was clad in sober grey or sunny lightness. She was Ursula de Vesc, and that was enough, Ursula de Vesc, the woman of a single hour of life, and yet the one ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... such, even though it causes him personal inconvenience, because he has acquired a sense of military values. But if it is either unduly harsh or unnecessarily lax, he likewise knows it and wears it as a hairshirt, to the undoing of his morale. Though the man, like the group, can be hurt by being pushed beyond sensible limits, his spirit will suffer even more sorely if no real test is put upon his abilities and moral powers. The ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... and there was no undoing it. There was no way of aiding the lieutenant, no way of persuading him, nothing but death ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... unexpected a quarter took the horsemen completely by surprise, and they pulled up with a jerk. The action proved their undoing, for as they stood thus for a moment, they gave those in the train the opportunity they desired and the volley that followed turned four more riderless ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... he innocently relates what has happened, and the father warns him that fiends in this fair disguise strive to tempt hermits to their undoing. The next time the father is absent the temptress, watching her opportunity, returns, and persuades the boy to accompany her to her 'Hermitage' which she assures him, is far more beautiful than his own. So soon as Rishyacringa is safely on board the ship sails, the lad is carried ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... gesture of resignation and a half-stifled groan Willems submitted to the stronger will, and the two men paced slowly up and down the resounding planks, while Lingard disclosed to Willems the exact manner of his undoing. After the first shock Willems lost the faculty of surprise in the over-powering feeling of indignation. So it was Vinck and Leonard who had served him so. They had watched him, tracked his misdeeds, reported them to Hudig. They had bribed obscure Chinamen, wormed out confidences ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... when he introduced Richelieu into the council. "You are both of the same temper," it said; "that is, you both desire one and the same thing, which is, to be, each of you, sole governor. That which you believe to be your making will be your undoing." ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... certain things which have puzzled me. Up to now I never quite knew what Shakespeare meant when he made Hamlet say, "My tablets! Quick, my tablets! 'tis meet that I put it down," etc., For now, feeling as though my own brain were unhinged or as if the shock had come which must end in its undoing, I turn to my diary for repose. The habit of entering accurately must help to ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... also a facility in taking turns out of the hose, which no other but a swivel joint affords. By slackening a single turn any twist may be taken out, without undoing the joint or stopping the engine, while, from the number of turns required to close the joints, there is no chance of the screw being by any accident undone. In order to prevent the threads from being easily ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... no look into the mare's glazing eyes to tell him what he had done. He had killed her. The first really honest act of her life had led to the unfortunate creature's own undoing. Her lean ewe neck was broken, as were ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... came more and more to my senses, I knew that these papers had been the cause of my undoing; I could see in it, as plain as day, the hand of Jane Ryder, and I was truly sorry. I thought I had been around the world and back again, and I should have been very wise, but the bandage and Jane Ryder were too much for me. How did ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... his head again, and looked on him long, and muttered: 'To the wood wilt thou go to-morrow or next day; or some day when doomed is thine undoing.' ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... the glass tank upon the table while the Doctor grabbed a note-book and a pencil. Undoing my collar I stood upon the empty packing-case he had been using for a stand and put my right ear down under ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... that it was at the point of being given to her. There had been certain thrilling passages between herself and two men,—an interval of a year between each,—and there had also been a kiss in an alcove designed by her dearest friend, Ella Linton, for the undoing of mankind, a place of softened lights and shadowy palms. It was her recollection of these incidents that had caused her to fumble with the blind cord when her father had been suggesting to her the disadvantages of inexperience in matters of the heart. But the incidents had led to nothing, ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... fraction. Therefore, if any reserve be made, any corner kept for something unconnected with this true work and sincere purpose, the whole is thereby vitiated and accurst. So far as his arm reaches he is undoing whatever in nature is holy: ruining whatever is the real creation of the great worker of all. This truth of purpose is to the soul what life is to the body of man; that which unites and organises the mass, keeping all the parts in due proportion ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... comptroller was wretched. He expressed his readiness to obey her commands, but nevertheless implored his dread sovereign to take merciful consideration of the manifold misfortunes, ruin, and utter undoing, which thereby should fall upon him and his unfortunate family. All this he protested he would "nothing esteem if it tended to her Majesty's pleasure or service," but seeing it should effectuate nothing but to bring the aged carcase of her poor vassal to present decay, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... were better pleased than they would have admitted to themselves by the seeming certainty of Howard's impending undoing. ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... The noblest thing he had ever done, or was ever likely to do, in his life, proved, for a time at least, his undoing. Kitty had made him from generous mean, from unsuspecting suspicious, and during the wretched year they had spent together she had had a disastrous effect on his work. At last, acting on the shrewd ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... to the gallows as her supposed murderer. That part of the plan had gone astray, so the murderer, in the fanatical resolve of his latent fixed idea, had recourse to a further expedient as daring and original as the scheme which failed. The second instrument had been the means of his own undoing. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... harmony with itself as a flat contradiction in terms. For nature hates that any principle should breed, so to speak, hermaphroditically, but will give to each an help meet for it which shall cross it and be the undoing of it; as in the case of descent with modification, of which the essence is that every offspring resembles its parents, and yet, at the same time, that no offspring resembles its parents. But for the slightly irritating stimulant of this perpetual crossing, ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... spreading all the fruits of my education and my familiarity with refinement before her? What did I accomplish by my mastery of mind? I accomplished my undoing! You need not ask how. I will tell you. I made this healthy, glowing Irish lass believe in the beauty of character which I insisted she possessed. I made her believe that she was a noble creature and that she was capable of fine womanly unselfishness. It was like the influence of the hypnotist. ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... was given the place. Attention to small things has made many a successful man, while a little temper, a little indifference, a little cigarette, a little drink or some other little thing has been the undoing of many ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... up, shook us by the hand, his eye sparkling with kind feelings. A third took our mules by the bridles and led us to his own door, when half-a-dozen pretty girls, with flashing dark eyes and long taper fingers, insisted on undoing our leggings ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... that his indefatigable energy might have accomplished in that time. His recklessness in diplomacy, his refusal of all concessions, and his exaggerated cleverness in anticipating his opponents were to prove his undoing from the military point of view. The other elements of his failure were the political factor ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... army, and advised him to beg Achilles at least to allow the Myrmidons to sally forth under Patroclus' leadership, if he would not fight in person. The importance of this episode is emphasised in the poem. The dispatch of Patroclus is called "the beginning of his undoing", it foreshadows the intervention which was later to bring Achilles ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... a day dream, was directed to hustle himself and make camp. While he was busying himself at this, the girls held a further conference. At its conclusion, Grace paid another visit to the scene of Lieutenant Wingate's undoing. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... replenishing King's rummer, while he laughed heartily at his ditty, "I shan't refuse your toast, though my heart don't respond to your sentiments. Ah, Tom! the sex you praise so much will, I fear, prove your undoing. Do as you please, but curse me if ever I pin my life to a petticoat. I'd as soon think of neglecting ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the sun, whilst Good undid his tin box, and produced first a beautiful clean white shirt, just as it had left a London steam laundry, and then some garments wrapped first in brown, then in white, and finally in silver paper. We watched this undoing with the tenderest interest and much speculation. One by one Good removed the dull husks that hid their splendours, carefully folding and replacing each piece of paper as he did so; and there at last lay, in all the majesty of its golden epaulettes, lace, and buttons, a Commander ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... ceased when we rose from table. If by bad luck two or three noises occurred at dinner—and our excessive anxiety in the matter was sometimes our undoing—Mr. Pulitzer was so upset that he would pass a sleepless night. This in its turn meant a day during which his tortured body made itself master of his mind, and plunged him into a state of ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... not remember afterwards whether anybody suggested it, and he believed that the same idea occurred to all of them at once, but in another moment or two they set about undoing the traces from the sled, and making them secure about their bodies. For half an hour they made perilous attempt after attempt to recover the lost provisions, and failed. The snow broke through continuously beneath the foremost man, but it did not break away altogether, and they ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... forehead of snowy white; finely-pencilled brows, and long eyes of the most lustrous violet; a straight, delicately-moulded nose, a firm, beautifully-proportioned chin, and a bewitching mouth. At her bosom was a bunch of heliotrope, which, deftly undoing, she raised to her nose and then laughingly held out to me. I was charmed; I took a step forward towards her. The instant I did so, a wild look of terror distorted her face, she waved me back, something jarred against my knee, and, in ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... it out of curiosity to see whether the power said to be attached really existed. He took it. He got under the power of it. He tried to break loose. He put his hand in the cockatrice's den to see whether it would bite, and he found out to his own undoing. His friends gathered around and tried to save him, but he could not be saved. The father, a minister of the Gospel, prayed with him and counseled him, and out of a comparatively small salary employed the first medical advice of New York, Philadelphia, Edinburgh, Paris, London, and Berlin, for ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... not fail to take the Frenchman's true measurement. He knew that Jean was like live wire and steel, as agile as a cat, more than a match with himself in open fight despite his own superior weight and size. He devised a dozen schemes for Jean's undoing. One was to leap on him while he was eating; another to spring on him and choke him into partial insensibility as he knelt beside his pack or fed the fire; a third to strike a blow from behind that would render him powerless. But there was something in ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... the old woman, undoing the iron hasp with a trembling hand. The door flew open, and there entered a man of a middling stature, and of a handsome but melancholy countenance. He was clad in the Circassian dress: the water trickled down his bourka and bashlik.[22] Without any apologies, he threw it on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... had been left there; its custodian was away upon some mysterious errand. Heaven knows why Trinity Hall exhibited the treasures of its crockery thus stained and deified in the Cambridge streets. But it did—for Benham's and Prothero's undoing. Prothero saw the great wheel over which he was poised entangle itself with the little wheel of the barrow. "God!" he whispered, and craned, fascinated. The little wheel was manifestly intrigued beyond all self-control by the great wheel; it ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... much and too various emotion, went slowly up the grand staircase. In his bedroom the first thing he saw was his bag, which had been opened and its contents suitably bestowed. Thus his hair-brushes were on the dressing-table. This miracle completed his undoing. He sat down on an easy-chair, drew the eider-down off the bed, and put it on his knees, for the temperature was low. He did not intend to go to sleep. But he did go to sleep. It was simply a case ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... eyes of his which could be by turns so fierce, so unrelenting, and—did she not know it to her heart's undoing?—so unutterably tender, besought her. But, for once, they awakened no response. She felt ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... showing his weak points is that he was too careless and forgiving towards the squabbling nest of paid and unpaid murderers who prowled about in disguise, thirsting after his blood. It is certain that he carried clemency to a fault in many instances, and this no doubt contributed to his undoing; but at the same time there is ample proof that he knew well enough where his foes were to be found, and whenever the dignity and safety of the State were imperilled, he was not slow to punish. His habit was not weakness, but only a too careless regard ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... I've lost in wooing, In watching and pursuing The light that lies In woman's eyes, Has been my heart's undoing. ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... took from the side of the pillow a square wooden box tied up with a silken cord and tassels. Undoing this very carefully, she took out of the box the mirror that her husband had ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... the note from Beverly's history. She did so because, having seen Beverly pick it up and place it there she decided, from innate suspicion of all her fellow beings, that Beverly meant to use it to Petty's undoing. It never occurred to her that Beverly could entertain a generous motive toward a girl whom she held in aversion if not contempt. Then the note once in her possession she wished to keep it a day or so, in the hope that Petty might discover ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... a large part hair and its treatment may play in the undoing of strong men. The case of Samson may be recalled in this connection. Kirk, with Ruth ruffling the wiry growth that hid his scalp, was incapable of serious opposition. He tried to be morose and ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... seductive, deadly: but Abel Slattin, a plausible rogue, who, in justice, should be immured in Sing Sing, was chosen out, was enslaved by those lovely mysterious eyes, was taking to his soul the lies which fell from those perfect lips, triumphant in a conquest that must end in his undoing; deeming, poor fool, that for love of him this pearl of the Orient was about to betray her master, to resign herself ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... young— And must so early die! Fair was I too, and that was my undoing. My love is now afar, he then was nigh; Tom lies the garland, the fair blossoms strew'd. Nay, seize me not with hand so rude! Spare me! What harm have I e'er done to thee? Oh let me not in vain implore! I ne'er have seen thee in my ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Truth of God! can man resign thee, Once having felt thy glorious flame? Can rolling oceans e'er prevent thee, Or gold the Christian's spirit tame? Too long we slight the world's undoing; The word of God, salvation's plan, Is yet almost unknown to man, While millions throng the road to ruin. To arms! to arms! The Spirit's sword unsheath: March on! March on! all hearts resolved, To ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... whether there's anything in what I say or whether there's nothing. Something or nothing, I have acted up to Miss Summerson's wishes in letting things alone and in undoing what I had begun to do, as far as possible; that's sufficient for me. In case I should be taking a liberty in putting your ladyship on your guard when there's no necessity for it, you will endeavour, I should hope, to outlive my presumption, and I shall endeavour to ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... and follies," cried Mr. Monson, throwing down an evening paper in a pettish manner, that sufficiently denoted discontent. "We are always puffing our own progress in America, without exactly knowing whether a good deal of the road is not to be traveled over again, by way of undoing much that we have done. Here, now, is a specimen of our march in folly, in an advertisement of Bobbinett's, who has pocket-handkerchiefs ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... of time, and her absence, will defeat all suspicion. Yes, it was a clever idea! If they had left it alone, it is possible the crime might never have been brought home to them. But they were not satisfied. They tried to be too clever—and that was their undoing." ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... policies as one of the prices of the constituent-demanded appropriations. Thus those who would have opposed the machine in the organization of the Assembly realized that failure would probably mean a hammering of their appropriation bills, which would result in their political undoing at home. So the independent movement to organize the Assembly came to a ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... Jerry said. The cowboys had headed the grizzly off so that he was unable to gain the safety of the wild mountain gorges. Doubtless he had been loth to leave his prey at the approach of the riders, and this had contributed to his final undoing. ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... certain interests in Seneca County growing out of the location of a new courthouse, would have greater strength than other more prominent Bucktails. It was known, also, that Thompson had taken a violent dislike to Clinton and could be relied upon to advance any measure for the latter's undoing. To secure his nomination, therefore, Van Buren secretly notified his partisans to be present at the caucus on the evening before ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... 3,500 feet in about three minutes. This is far in excess of the ascensional speed of even the speediest aeroplane, of course, the penalty for such a factor has to be paid: the loss of gas is appreciable and may lead to the craft's ultimate undoing. At the same time, however, it is able to maintain the superior position as compared with the aeroplane for a considerable period: the upper reaches of ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... splendid points of vantage from which to view the delightful valleys. Then again it lost itself under great over-arching trees, and as we came too rapidly down a steep hill on entering Bodmin, the road was so heavily shaded that we were near our undoing. The loose sand had been piled up by the rain and the dense shade prevented the road from drying. The car took a frightful skid and by a mere hair's breadth escaped disastrous collision with a stone wall—but we ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... was sent out on his first two voyages as an explorer, to find new trade routes, or stores of gold and silver or a rich land to exploit. On his third voyage, when a scheme of colonization was in hand, the failure of Roberval to do his part proved the undoing of the entire plan. There is no reason to believe that faint-heartedness or lack of courage had any ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... was that while her heart and soul had gone forward in dumb pain in utter darkness with the single aim of undoing the sin done, the mind still lagged and reasoned. This is a peculiar agony, and Molly had to drink of ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... good Robin, none of these hath been my undoing. My ancestors have all been knights for over a hundred years, and I have not lived wastefully, but soberly and sparely. As short a time ago as last year I had over four hundred pounds saved, which I could spend ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... might live, her seasons had become stormy, unbearably cold and dreary: and the very fact of her knowledge of the Secret of Life, in which men numbered their ages by centuries instead of by years, was her undoing. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... wonder-struck, he gazed upon himself; While from the dust he saw the snake arise A man, and, speaking as Karkotaka, Comfort him thus:— "Thou art by me transformed That no man know thee: and that evil one (Possessing, and undoing thee, with grief) Shall so within thee by my venom smart, Shall through thy blood so ache, that—till he quit— He shall endure the woe he did impart. Thus by my potent spell, most noble Prince! (Who sufferest ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... Mr. Smith would say, is her protection. Our Saxon men have held the ballot in this country for a century, and what honest man can claim that it has been used for woman's protection? Alas! we have given the very hey day of our life to undoing the cruel and unjust laws that the men of New York had made for their own ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... in effect, been undoing with levels and scoops and dredges what nature did in a mighty upheaval. They are practically tipping the bowls back the other way and so making currents to run down the old channel toward the gulf through the valleys of the Des Plaines and ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... thus admonished, began undoing their fishing tackle, and soon the quartet were fishing as if their lives depended on what they caught that afternoon. And the strangest part about it was that nobody—not even the girls—said a ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... order Protopopoff to make a police search at his house in the Vosnesensky. Something will certainly be found there," he said, with insidious cunning, well knowing that Protopopoff's agents-provocateurs had already taken steps to secure the financier's undoing. ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... courage for a last effort to escape from the net which he had woven to his own undoing. With a quick movement he drew from his belt, where his long coat had concealed its presence, hitherto, a gleaming knife, and, with it upraised, rushed at Joe viciously. "I'm a free man, yet," he cried, "an' I'm ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... the gay, thoughtless life of the student; the side-glance of a bright eye had been the undoing of him. Day and night he could not get the image of this most modest damsel out of his mind. He sought the mansion of the padre. Alas! it was above the class of houses accessible to a strolling student like himself. The worthy ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... nimbly on deck to shut the skylight, but the catch was very stiff; it took me some few moments to undo. I noticed, as I worked at it, that the deck was empty, except for the lanky man with the package, who was now forward, apparently undoing his package on the forehatch. I thought that he was a sort of pedlar or bumboatman, come to sell onions, soft bread, or cheap jewellery to the sailors. The carpenter's head showed for an instant at the galley-door, He was looking forward at the ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... banking-house. Moreover, I have been well rewarded for my kindness. When, at the death of my poor Ahmed, the Mouchir, his brother, ascended the throne, the Hemerlingues, restored to favour, never ceased to work for my undoing with the new master. The Bey still keeps on good terms with me; but my credit is shaken. Well, in spite of that, in spite of all the shabby tricks that Hemerlingue has played me, that he plays me still, I was ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... he said in a broken voice. "Sow no more troubles! Already," a shudder shook his tall ungainly form, "I see blood, blood, blood everywhere! Blood? Ah, God, shall I from this time see anything else? But there is no turning back. There is no undoing. So, do you go to Biron. And do you," he went on, sullenly addressing Marshal Tavannes, "take him and tell him what it is needful he ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... character to discourage the stoutest stomach, I gave her a careless thought of pity and speedily forgot her. Two trunks, a holdall, a hatbox—in which reposed, in solitary grandeur, Francesca's picture hat, intended for the further undoing of the Irish gentry—a guitar case, two bags, three umbrellas; all were safe but Salemina's large Vuitton trunk and my valise, which had been last seen at Edinburgh station. Salemina returned to the boat, while Francesca and I wended our way among the heaps of luggage, ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... bears to the unforgotten dead and with the unextinguishable fire of a hopeless passion which only a living, breathing, warm ideal can kindle in our breasts for our pride, for our weariness, for our exultation, for our undoing. ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... but we think that Flippie's grandmother had a hand in the undoing of the security and peace which reigned supreme at Harmony before she came ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... still at work upon my girth buckles, undoing my harness, when of a sudden there came from the street a shouting and a rushing, with the clinking of blades, and my comrade's voice calling upon me for help. Drawing my sword I ran out. Some little way down there was a clear ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with trembling hands, undoing the door of her apartment, she made her way into the long, dark gallery, with which she was perfectly familiar, and soon gained the apartment already referred to. The door fortunately stood nearly closed, and she successfully passed it by and gained the hall, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... didn't. That same wine, let me tell you, will be your undoing. Now that your head is clear you'd better think over my offer. It will at least provide you with a more decent coat and wig than those you're wearing. A young man should dress smartly. What's his life worth to him unless women look ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... the moment it was clasped, he unclasped it with impatience, and was then equally impatient to have it clasped again. But no description can convey an adequate impression of the weary restlessness with which from morning to night he pursued these labors of Sisyphus—doing and undoing—fretting that he could not do it, fretting that he ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... deceitful counsels to that disaster which at length overwhelmed me. Thus did Juno, but in different fashion, veiling the radiance of her deity and transforming herself for the occasion into the exact likeness of her aged nurse, persuaded Semele to her undoing. Woe is me! my resolve to be so advised was the cause—O hallowed Modesty! O Chastity, most sacred of all the virtues! sole and most precious treasure of righteous women!—was the cause, I repeat, wherefore I drove ye from my bosom. Yet do I venture to pray unto ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... man worth doing, which is to be done with the whole of his heart, not the half or any other fraction. Therefore, if any reserve be made, any corner kept for something unconnected with this true work and sincere purpose, the whole is thereby vitiated and accurst. So far as his arm reaches he is undoing whatever in nature is holy: ruining whatever is the real creation of the great worker of all. This truth of purpose is to the soul what life is to the body of man; that which unites and organises the mass, keeping all the parts in due proportion ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... it, she was living through almost the last of those dreams which are the rightful property of youth, but which sometimes, obstinate and deceitful, haunt elderly minds, usually to their undoing. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... gone, Goodman Rogue Magister,' he said, and he adopted a canonical tone that went heavily with his rustic pose. 'A marriage made and consummated and properly blessed by holy friar there is no undoing. You are learned enough to know that. Rogue that you be, I am very glad that you are trapped by this marriage. Well I know that you have dangled too much with petticoats, to the great scandal of this my Court. Now you have lost your preferment, and I am glad of it. Another ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... striking his brow with his clenched hand. "What devil tempted me to my undoing?—My wife trusted to this profligate! ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... singing; men and women who have failed to get before the public, turn to teaching without any practical experience, and, armed only with a few methods, teach these alike to all pupils, ruining many good voices. Should these pupils change teachers, even for the better, then begins the weary undoing of the false method, ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... soft heart, which has often been my undoing. She said she'd seen the most interesting man in the ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to fancy the girl's evil face scowling at the unconscious Queen, before she leaves to pen those inflammatory pamphlets which are to prove the Sovereign's undoing and her own. For by some whim of fate Madame Roland was executed on the very scaffold to which her envenomed writings ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... to, to convince the public that there ain't no ghosts—as the old saying goes—you arrange to have students hear you going into a 'report to the home planet' act. And you use a code they all know. What's the point in undoing it?" ...
— The Fourth Invasion • Henry Josephs
... for one of those spells of fine weather which in those regions so often follow upon such a storm as had proved the undoing of the Royal Christopher. If the conditions had been different our lives would have been sufficiently enviable. Fair Island deserves its name; we had summer, food and water; so far as material comfort went, all was ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... so sorry! I am so sorry!" she whispered. "What was the use of making him happy for fifty-nine minutes, and then undoing it all in the sixtieth? I wish—I wish——" and she had a swift sense of wrong and shame in uttering her wish, and so let it die unspoken on ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Fairy Godmothers should not be conceited. A self-made man may be proud of his money, but his son may not. Pride in what has been given freely to you is an empty pride, and she was prouder of her beauty than a poet is of his odes—it was her undoing in the end. ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... chase was called the 'Spitfire' by the Spaniards because she was much better armed than any other vessel there. But, all the same, her armament was nothing for her tonnage. The Spaniards trusted to their remoteness for protection; and that was their undoing. ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... sweet, seductive, deadly: but Abel Slattin, a plausible rogue, who, in justice, should be immured in Sing Sing, was chosen out, was enslaved by those lovely mysterious eyes, was taking to his soul the lies which fell from those perfect lips, triumphant in a conquest that must end in his undoing; deeming, poor fool, that for love of him this pearl of the Orient was about to betray her master, to resign herself a prize to ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... he was nine months old, and although the regency of the two kingdoms to which he was heir had been arranged by Henry V. before his death, the reign of the third king of the House of Lancaster saw the undoing of much that had been accomplished in the reigns of his father and grandfather. It was during the reign of Henry VI. that Joan of Arc came forward alleging her Divine commission to rescue France from the English invader. But it is not part of our subject ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... they produced some that I fancied would suit my man. My twenty minutes' limit had almost expired and, as it is a matter of pride with me to be punctual, I let the car out a little. That, I suppose, was my undoing, for just as I crossed over the busiest street a motor-lorry swerved out and nearly collided with me. I did some very neat wheel-work, but my new course took me right across to the gutter, and before I had quite realised what had happened I had ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... he gives it any thought, that if I could I would not dare interfere. And then I am so absorbed in color-prints! So I am, and, I pray Heaven, in some way to his undoing. The child has no other friend. Shrinkingly she told me of her one attempt to make friends with some high-class people, and the uncompromising rebuff she had received upon their discovering she was an Eurasian. The pure aristocrats ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... sent innumerable substance— By what means got, I leave to your own conscience— To furnish Rome, and to prepare the ways You have for dignities; to the mere undoing Of all the kingdom. Many more there are; Which, since they are of you, and odious, I will ...
— The Life of Henry VIII • William Shakespeare [Dunlap edition]
... truth will, alas! prove my undoing!" she whispered, in a voice full of fear. "You don't know, dear, how your relentless chase of that man is ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... said,—"strange moving monsters who glide over the sea and bring our foes to our undoing. The gods must have sent them, and will destroy us if we draw bow against these works ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... were often curious and unexpected, though as a rule they were short-lived, for the alternation of the excess of their normal existence and the asceticism of their training undermined their constitution. Their popularity among both men and women was their undoing, and the king of the ring went down at last before that deadliest of light-weights, the microbe of tubercle, or some equally fatal and perhaps less reputable bacillus. The crockiest of spectators had a better ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his ax ready to use but I caught his hand. His hideous mask proved to be his undoing, for as we rolled about it became twisted. I was quick to see my advantage. Relying on one hand to hold his wrist, I used all my quickness and strength and succeeded in turning the mask half-way around, leaving him blind and half-smothered. I killed him with his own ax ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... forty feet away, now thirty and almost ready to drop. Ten feet more and he would fire, Chris resolved. But that ten feet proved the ambitious little darky's undoing. A concentrated drop of buzzing liquid fire struck him above the eye, while hand and legs seemed splashed with molten fire. Down went the rifle with a thud and with a shrieked "Oh golly, oh golly, oh golly!" a black streak cleared the open ground with kangaroo-like ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... itself with them; or they quite unconsciously ally themselves with it, and find that there is a tide that bears them on. Divine will? Not necessarily. There is no understanding of it. Guardian spirits? There are many who so believe, to their utter undoing. (Witness Macbeth). An unconscious drift in the direction of right, virtue, duty? These are banners of mortal manufacture. Nothing is ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... she could scarcely stand. His unmoved certainty was terrifying. "Your father was a very popular man. His vanity was his undoing. Juliet was too smart to let him throw away her money, so rather than lose his reputation as a good sport, rather than not keep up his end, he looked elsewhere for the needful, and he came to me, not once, but many times. At last he wore out my ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... one paying the slightest heed to his presence; and he had a full view of the man as the spear-bearers drew up in two lines whose ends rested on the river, leaving their officers standing by the prisoner, and undoing ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... indignation, and though he did not care much about it, he was glad it was over with. He regarded the transaction which led to it as a shrewd business operation, to be chuckled over, rather than repented of; and he had no idea of spoiling it all, by undoing ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... went back over her years. Always in the past months of suffering she had blamed this or that extraneous circumstance with her undoing; now she saw and recognised and acknowledged that nothing and nobody had brought disaster upon her but herself. It was not because Blatchley Turrentine was a bad, lawless man, not because the boys were reckless fellows, ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... am sure I shall be deserted by a great many. Some people seem so farr from being pleased with the news of the K——'s comeing, that they are visiblie sorry for it; and I wish to God these people had never been with us for they will be our undoing! and what a plague brought them out, since they could not hold it out for so short a time? I shall be blamed, I know, over all Europe for what I am entirely innocent of. It will be my own ruin beside, but if that could advance the K——'s affairs ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... shall have the benediction of the church, less fortunate girls will envy me; but I am not a whit better than the poor creature flaunting her shame on the pavement. Nay, I am worse, for she can plead that love was the cause of her undoing. Father, I can't, can't go through ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... put away her sewing, and every one gathered round the table as Mr. Orban began carefully undoing ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... the ways of heaven to scan, Is not a wise, nor yet a happy man: In this firm truth securely we may rest,— Whatever Providence ordains is best; Had man the power, he'd work his own undoing; To grant his will would be to ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... I answered, lifting the bundle, and laying it as far from him in the shadow of the fence as I dared. Then I bent over it, slowly undoing the rimpis with which it was tied, while the sweat of terror ran down by face blinding me like tears. What would I do if he saw the child? What if the child awoke and cried? I would snatch the assegai from his hand and stab him! Yes, I would kill ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... progress of emancipation in this land, stimulate you to increased exertion; and when you are summoned to the bar of that final tribunal, towards which we are all hastening, may you have the inexpressible consolation of reflecting, that you have performed all you could towards 'undoing the heavy burden and ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... with more sprightliness and emotion in my voice than had ever been in all my life before I became (to my own undoing) a Dramatic Critic. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... threatened to be his own undoing. While he was fighting an imaginary danger, ears and nostrils half-choked by fury, through the calm night Herb Heal, Winchester in hand, had crept noiselessly on, till he reached the very ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... undoing others,- Long time since the tale began. You would not live to wrong your brothers: Oh lad, you died as ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... was still more emphatic. An Act which hemmed them in to the seacoast, established on the American continent a Church they feared and hated, and continued an autocratic political system, appeared to many to be the undoing of the work of Pitt and Wolfe and the revival on the banks of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi of a serious menace to their liberty ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... remember afterwards if anybody suggested it, and he fancied that the same idea occurred to all of them at once, but in another moment or two they set about undoing the traces from the sled, and making them secure about their bodies. Then for half an hour they made perilous attempt after attempt to recover the lost provisions, and signally failed. The snow broke through continuously beneath the foremost man, but it did not break away altogether, and they ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... Shakespeare meant when he made Hamlet say, "My tablets! Quick, my tablets! 'tis meet that I put it down," etc., For now, feeling as though my own brain were unhinged or as if the shock had come which must end in its undoing, I turn to my diary for repose. The habit of entering accurately must help ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... on the bed and was undoing the braid of her hair. She spoke the last words thoughtfully. In a minute or ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... figure appeared before him in his feverish dreams many times that night. He wished the deed undone for which he had labored so. He was not the first that has regretted his own act, or brought about his own undoing. Undoing? Should he write that word in his late years? No, on his knees before heaven, rather be thankful for what then he deemed his misfortune, and which hath caused the whole subsequent ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... so suddenly that he started (forgetting that he was invisible), and wounded himself with his own shaft. Heedless of the hurt, moved only by the loveliness of the maiden, he hastened to pour over her locks the healing joy that he ever kept by him, undoing all his work. Back to her dream the princess went, unshadowed by any thought of love. But Cupid, not so light of heart, returned to the heavens, saying not a ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... that Newton's discoveries meant that everything could be attained without religion, and that the only true and wide vision could be reached by the senses alone. They taught a pure materialism, to their own undoing; for it is not possible to thus lightly throw aside our great links with the past, in which both Christian and heathen, knowingly and unknowingly, in mediaeval poetry, in heroic ballad, and in Egyptian prose, testified ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... upon thy fame and all the years While fortune smiled: but for the ills of life How thou could'st bear them, this men shall not know Save by thy death. Then weigh thou not the shame That waits on thine undoing. Whose strikes, The blow is Caesar's. Men may tear this frame And cast it mangled to the winds of heaven; Yet have I prospered, nor can all the gods Call back my triumphs. Life may bring defeat, But death no misery. If ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... help you against the sorites; inasmuch as it does not teach a man, who is using either the increasing or diminishing scale, what is the first point, or the last. May I not say that that same art, like Penelope undoing her web, at last undoes all the arguments which have gone before? Is that your fault, or ours? In truth, it is the foundation of dialectics, that whatever is enunciated (and that is what they call {GREEK ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... inspires as pitted against the self-confidence of noisy fools. Besides, should it contrive to build up a stately structure, a small dose of folly, with which all human wisdom is largely alloyed, is capable, in an instant, of undoing the work of years.[106] In a word, the wise man is often worse off than the fool; and in any case, no degree of wisdom can influence the laws of the universe; what happens is foredoomed; a man's life-journey is mapped out beforehand, and it is hopeless to struggle with the Will ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... and this was the presence of Andy alongside. Casper Blue might be a daring air pilot, but with his companion a perfect greenhorn in all that pertained to the art, he would be more or less handicapped. A sudden incautious movement on the part of the novice might prove the undoing of the precious pair. ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... ale need apology? No! But there's something to follow, G.! Distilling and Brewing Must work our undoing When branches ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... patients have done with me, I leave them to you and the old Nick, and never trouble myself about them more. What I want to know is, why you have taken upon you to steal a man's grave, after he has had immemorial possession of it. By what right have you dug up this bed, undoing the work of a predecessor of yours, who has long since slept in ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for the preacher. Turner was wedged in the pot, so that he could not extricate himself, and meantime the thick fluid beneath was making a warm acquaintance with his trousers and legs. This unlooked-for disgrace and undoing of the two leaders brought the pitched battle to a close. The unknown rascals, having broken away from their antagonists and seeing the discomfiture of their chiefs, fled up the knob road, while the three principals, Wiles, Turner, Danks, ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... has spoilt some excellent shoemakers, and been accessary to the poetical undoing of many of the industrious poor. Nathaniel Bloomfield and his brother Bobby have set all Somersetshire singing. Nor has the malady confined itself to one county. Pratt, too (who once was wiser), has caught the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Loan of 1908 proved the undoing of the Manchus, and the inevitable sequence, the appointing of European and American engineers,—to the American was assigned the important section between Ichang and Chengtu,—was bringing matters to a head before I left China. The Changsha outbreak in the early summer was directed against the ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... have not said; nor what will happen this present year, before it is struck. It is appointed me to strike it, that is all I know; and follow it with others, sharp and swift, undoing in ten weeks England's long years of costly labor, and setting the crown upon the Dauphin's head—for such is God's will; my Voices have said it, and shall I doubt it? No; it will be as they have said, for they say only that which ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... which came howling round him, had not an old woman come to the rescue and driven them away. With the help of her grand-son—a little naked creature, just able to walk, or rather to stagger—she dragged him to her tent, and, undoing the line that fastened his ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... only thought of an hour ago was accomplished, and there could be no undoing it. This passport and these papers would be forwarded to the embassy at Berne, where doubtless his name was already known as a fugitive criminal. He could not reclaim them, for with them he took up again the burden of his sin. He had condemned himself to a penalty ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... the rulers learned their lesson, building a tradition of rulership and authority that was handed down from father to son; acquiring a vision of world organization and world power that gave them confidence to go forward to their own undoing. The masters of public life in Rome were such people; the present masters of British economic and political affairs ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... went near undoing me, for had it come to my father's ears, he had broke me without mercy. He was a hard man, my father; a ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... who are thus best able to feel that there is nothing in such complete harmony with itself as a flat contradiction in terms. For nature hates that any principle should breed, so to speak, hermaphroditically, but will give to each an help meet for it which shall cross it and be the undoing of it; as in the case of descent with modification, of which the essence is that every offspring resembles its parents, and yet, at the same time, that no offspring resembles its parents. But for the slightly irritating stimulant of this perpetual crossing, we should ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... The man on the floor looked calm, peaceful and strangely dignified. His helpless peacefulness appealed to Joyce. She began to take away all signs of degradation that remained. The inanimate tokens of poor Jude Lauzoon's weakness and undoing. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... the importunities of numerous suitors, who had taken possession of his home and devoured his substance. In order to gain time Penelope had promised to marry one of her lovers as soon as she had finished weaving a robe for the aged Laertes; but by secretly undoing at night {320} what she had done in the day she effectually retarded the completion of the work, and thus deferred her final reply. Just as Odysseus had set foot in Ithaca the angry suitors had discovered her stratagem, and had become in consequence more clamorous than ever. When the hero heard ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... was done and there was no undoing it. There was no way of aiding the lieutenant, no way of persuading him, nothing but ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... been able to get much definite news so far. Our Chinese colds proved so severe that they were nearly our undoing. I fancied myself reposing under a little mound on the plains, after an imposing Chinese funeral. I must say I should have enjoyed a Chinese funeral, with drums and horns, flags and banners, carried along in ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... about paying the interest of the national debt, but leave it, as in loyalty bound, wholly to the wisdom of the honourable House of Commons; I come now to consider by what methods we may be able to put off and delay our utter undoing as long as it ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... screamed and would have flown; I stopt her, and told her I came faithfully and honourably to make her my wife:—her own faith and honour, though sullied, were not extinguished, for she instantly acknowledged the fatal tale of her undoing! ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... brings us down to the year 1823. But by this time, as we follow the chronicles, our attention has already begun to be diverted from the forces which still made for growth and success to those which ere long were to co-operate for the complete undoing of the mission system and the ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson
... away. Perhaps he forgot what he had done; but his sin found him out, as our sins are sure to find each of us out. The day came when he wanted his birthright and could not have it, and found no place for repentance—that is, no chance of undoing what he had done—though he sought it carefully with tears. He had sown, and he must reap; he had made his bed, and he must lie on it. And so must ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... gone!' he said, and added, 'Be certain and take care that no Englishman heareth of wedding betwixt thee and me.' It must in England work his sure undoing. ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... twilight. The wind had come up, the violent strong wind which comes out of the south, and Annie walked very near the barberry hedge which surrounded Doctor Sturtevant's grounds, and the green muslin lashed against it to its undoing. When Annie returned, the skirt was devastated and Aunt Harriet decreed that it could not be mended and must be given to the poor Joy children. There were many of those children of a degenerate race, living on the outskirts of Fairbridge, and Annie had come to regard them as living effigies of ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... said the little woman in a sad voice, and undoing her mask, she looked at him. "You ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "My undoing has been caused by leniency to dogs like thee," said the Dey, with a dark scowl; then, clearing his brow, and drawing himself up with dignity, he turned to Omar, and added, "I decline to take part in mine own death. If I must die, let me be led forth to the place of public execution. I would ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... to this? (Brightening up and undoing the parcels.) Just look here,—see the quality! It's a ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... and devoted all his energies to hastily undoing the bundle he had brought in, and sorting out a ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... law of our own making was our undoing. Of course the 'nester' or 'punkin roller,' as we contemptuously called the small farmer, began sifting in here and there in spite of our guns, but he was only a mosquito bite in comparison with the trouble which our cow-punchers ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... exhorted him also to change at once his policy in regard to my adopted father; not by that consideration, but because that he was, as I said to him, the chief of the nations which inhabited the place where they built the fort, which he promissed me of undoing. After that I went on board ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... his truth," answered Muza; "the Christian king conquers more foes by craft than force; and his spies are more deadly than his warriors. Wherefore this caution against me, but (pardon me) for thine own undoing? Were I a traitor, could Ferdinand himself have endangered thy crown so imminently as the revenge of the leader of thine own armies? Why, too, this desire to keep thee inactive? For the brave every hour hath its ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of the common weal, the subversion of good and politic order in knowledge and distinction of people according to their estates, pre-eminences, dignities and degrees to the utter impoverishment and undoing of many inexpert and light persons inclined to pride, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... could have either! But he must decide, and immediately. Assured as to the nature of the visit, the head man then gave Mr. Worcester a white rooster, symbol of peace and amity, and escorted him in. But the accompanying Igorots came very near undoing all of Mr. Worcester's plans. Not only were they shut in during their stay, an obvious and necessary condition of good order and the preservation of peace, but, on Mr. Worcester's asking food for them, they were told they could have camotes, but no rice; ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... monsieur? Once—it is possible from your point of view, but how twice?" said Monsieur Joseph, with that air of happy curiosity which had often, in earlier years, misled his enemies to their undoing. ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... spring." Waywearer laughed and said: "Sharp are thine eyes to see a sword through all this wrappage of cerecloth; surely they be of the warrior kin. But sooth hast thou said; this is thy sword." And therewith he fell to undoing the cloth, while ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... his promise of providing for his child, and its mother; and inhumanly left them a prey to indigence and oppression. The lady was only happy in being released from the killing anguish, of every day having before her eyes the object of her undoing. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... blunted spirit of Donald Pike. If he had dared to, he would have committed his story to writing, and so brought it to Lee's attention. But things that are written often have an unpleasant way of reappearing, to the discomfiture and undoing of the writer, and Pike's caution warned him against such risks. Words merely spoken, he assured himself, can be denied, if that becomes afterward necessary. Written words, undestroyed, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... others, who must ever be The joyless thralls of like captivity; 3320 He murders, for his chiefs delight in ruin; He builds the altar, that its idol's fee May be his very blood; he is pursuing— O, blind and willing wretch!—his own obscure undoing. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
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