|
|
|
More "Unforgivable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the corridor he could see the interior of the room and all that went on there during the next few moments. A candle burned on the bureau, exposing the feminine neatness and delicacy of the furnishings. The presence of the three men was a desecration; what they were about to do, an unforgivable act of vandalism. ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... affair was committed to an incorrigible snob, and he decided that a young lady who earned her own living was not a fit theatrical associate for the patrician daughters of successful soap-boilers and pork-packers, thereby offering an unforgettable and unforgivable affront to all the legions of labor. I do not approve of Miss Whitney's sale of her photo to a cigarette firm; but I do say that the act is infinitely more excusable than the practice among high-fly society ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... I think our love for Dr. Hemingway in itself would have kept the Sabbath sacred. He never found fault with our Sunday visiting. All days were holy to him, and his evening sermons taught us that frivolity, and idle gossip, and scandal are as unforgivable on week days as on the Sabbath Day. Somewhere in the wide courts of heaven there must be reserved an abode of inconceivable joy and peace for such men as he, men who preach the Word faithfully through the years, whose hand-clasp means ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Scandinavian languages, and of the Celtic, abound in our midst. Borrow was a forerunner with Bowring of much of this 'useless' learning. Borrow came to consider Bowring's apparent neglect of him to be unforgivable. But that time had not arrived, when in 1842 he wrote to ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... Hazlitt was consciously the aggressor, but his attacks were never wanton. He denounced Wordsworth and Coleridge and Southey because they were renegades from the cause which lay nearest to his heart. Their apostasy was an unforgivable offence in his eyes, and his wrath was proportioned to the admiration which he otherwise entertained for them. It is true that he treated their motives hastily and unjustly, but none of his opponents set him the example of charity. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... living at too great a distance to see her; the other was kept out of her reach, for a considerable part of the time, by her father. In addition, a third member of the Barrett family, her brother Alfred, earned excommunication from his father's house by the unforgivable offence of matrimony. Altogether it was not without a certain feeling of relief that, in the middle of October, Mrs. Browning, with her husband and child, left England for Paris. The whole visit ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... smiled at him serenely. "I would not bury myself with you in an Ionian island for more than two months in a year for anything on earth. On my part, it would be the unforgivable sin. No woman has the right, however much she loves him, to ruin a man, any more than a man has the right to ruin a woman. But if you won't marry me, I'm perfectly willing to spend two months a year in an Ionian island with you," and she ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... most dissevered the people from the Pope,—the unforgivable thing,—the breaking point between him and them,—has been the encouragement and promotion he gave to the officer under whom were executed the slaughters of Perugia. That made the breaking point in ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... gentle reproof, as to a child caught in some trespass well-nigh unforgivable, but to whose offense he had closed his eyes out of considerations which only the forgiving understand. He looked her full in the eyes as he spoke, the disappointment and pain of his discovery in his face. The color blanched out of her cheeks, ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... life (or he were not human, but an angel) it dawns on a man that he has done the unforgivable. It dawns on most men oftener than once a week. ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... it just now don't count. I'm going to let you alone a while to think it over, and then I'm coming back to tell you more about it," and with that Sam stalked from the room, leaving Miss Josephine Stevens gasping, dazed, quite sure that he was unforgivable, indignant with everything, still rankling, in spite of all Sam had said, with the thought that she had been made a mere part of a commercial transaction. Why, it was like those barbarous countries she had read about, where wives are bought ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... inhabit it is found absolutely essential that the father and the mother, three daughters, two maidservants, the nurse, and even, I believe, the infant son, should rise from their beds at 5 o'clock when reveille is, at the whim of the G.O.C., put at that unforgivable hour. It is only myself who may lie ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... could not see her because it was so dangerous for him to look round, but he could imagine her indignant and pitiless. He felt an unspeakable idiot. One had to be so careful what one said to Young Ladies, and he'd gone and treated her just as though she was only a Larky Girl. It was unforgivable. He always WAS a fool. You could tell from her manner she didn't think him a gentleman. One glance, and she seemed to look clear through him and all his presence. What rot it was venturing to speak to a girl like that! With her ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... Indian talks of food, or discusses it while taking it. He must neither commend nor condemn it, and a child who remarks upon the meals set before him, however simple the remark may be, instantly feels his disgrace in the sharpest reproof from his parents. It is one of the unforgivable crimes. ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... life—the simplest life ignored,—removes what never will reappear through the eternity of eternities,—since every being is the sum of a chain of experiences infinitely varied from all others.... To some Cyrillia's happy tears might bring a smile: to me that smile would seem the unforgivable sin against the Giver ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... of his absence the girl had never been out of his mind, and he had striven hard to reconcile his unconquerable love for her with the sense of his own unworthiness. His unforgivable cowardice was a haunting shame, and the more he dwelt upon it the more unspeakably vile he appeared in his own sight; for the Blakes were honorable people. The family was old and cherished traditions common to fine Southern houses; ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... robust, hearty, brutal in a way, and its morality is none too lofty. Daudet's is French, softer, more enervating, and with an almost complacent dwelling on the sins of the flesh. But neither Fielding nor Daudet is guilty of sentimentality, the one unforgivable crime in art. In his treatment of the relation of the sexes Daudet was above all things truthful; his veracity is inexorable. He shows how man is selfish in love and woman also, and how the egotism of the one is not as the egotism of the other. He shows ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... fallen even on their young hearts; the tiny children, who, young as they are, know that some great sorrow has come to every one; the children of the war countries, with their terror-stricken eyes and pale faces; the unspeakable, unforgivable wrong that has been done to youth ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... He felt sure that the head-master would consider such an escapade by boys of the Sixth Form an unforgivable crime, and that expulsion would follow discovery; and knowing the hot temper of his uncle, he feared that the latter would view the matter in the most serious light. It was therefore with a light heart that he went across to the Black Dog and placed the note ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... talk without any learning, being Cap'n Jack Prince's grand-darter," said old Goodsoe; for Captain Parish had removed himself to a little distance, and was again investigating the condition of the ship's galley, which one might suppose to have been neglected in some unforgivable way, judging ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... to do, you say?—when at a word I might have had all the help I needed in guarding the pay-money? No; it wasn't altogether foolhardiness; it was partly weakness. For, twist and turn it as I might, there was always the unforgivable thing at the end: the fact that by calling in help and betraying Dorgan to others, I, once his prison-mate, and even now, like him—though in a lesser degree—a law-breaker, would become a "snitch," an informer, a traitor to my ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... eagerness in pursuit of an object that could not possibly be attained; never was heard such a tremendous outbreak of growling, snarling, barking, and snapping,—as if one end of the ridiculous brute's body were at deadly and most unforgivable enmity with the other. Faster and faster, round about went the cur; and faster and still faster fled the unapproachable brevity of his tail; and louder and fiercer grew his yells of rage and animosity; until, utterly exhausted, and as far ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... greatly in fault she had ascribed it to the recoil of a proud man from the dread of social humiliation. But it took another aspect under the strong light just thrown upon his early life by her discovery in the room below. Nothing but some act, unforgivable and unforgettable would account for that black mark drawn between a father's eyes and his son's face. No bar sinister could tell a stronger tale. But this was no bar sinister; rather the deliberate stigmatising ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... his eyes fell, "please tell me. I suppose I have been unforgivable, but—well, there's nothing to say!" Northrup bowed his head to take whatever ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... it were simply a case of teasing me, I could let it pass, for I can take care of myself; but you have done your sister a wrong, and that is unforgivable. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... compare an Italian church with a French cathedral would be to compare two altogether different things, a fault in logic, and in criticism the unforgivable sin; for a work of art must be judged in its own category, and praised only for its own qualities, and blamed ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... anything for him now. As he opened his eyes, one at a time, he thought of Boyd. Once, long ago, ages and ages ago, he had had to wake Boyd up, and he recalled how rough he had been about it. That had been unforgivable. ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... even known that he was coming down last night. And worst and most unforgivable of all, she had not been told that Make-Way-There was ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... promise me, too, that you'll forgive the absolutely unforgivable way I've acted all summer, and give me a chance to show ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... the unforgivable sin. Had my mother discovered me poring over the half intelligible but wholly fascinating story of Adam and Eve and the Devil, she would have beaten me with the first implement to her hand. I had a moment's terror lest the possession of a work of literature ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... cared for old pictures—the National Gallery, and all that; and read no novels but French—Balzac and George Sand—and that only for practice for he was a singularly pure young man, the purest in all Cambridge, and in those days I thought him a quite unforgivable prig. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... self-ownership of soul and body. Respectability could easily forgive the teaching of theoretic Anarchism; but Emma Goldman does not merely preach the new philosophy; she also persists in living it,—and that is the one supreme, unforgivable crime. Were she, like so many radicals, to consider her ideal as merely an intellectual ornament; were she to make concessions to existing society and compromise with old prejudices,—then even the most radical views could be pardoned in her. ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... practice of the Jesuits to stir up strife in families, to resort to espionage, to abuse the confessional, to make the Seminary priests their puppets, and to deny the king's right to license the brandy trade. What seemed to the Jesuits an unforgivable affront was Frontenac's charge that they cared more for beaver skins than for the conversion of the savages. This {55} they interpreted as an insult to the memory of their martyrs, and their resentment must have been ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... is simplicity of heart and life; that one's relations with others should be direct and not diplomatic; that power leaves a bitter taste in the mouth; that meanness, and hardness, and coldness are the unforgivable sins; that conventionality is the mother of dreariness; that pleasure exists not in virtue of material conditions, but in the joyful heart; that the world is a very interesting and beautiful place; ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... bridge with the great skill and sweet temper which were natural to her, excused herself, went to her room, and cried half the night. It was not the shame of having been forcibly kissed that sickened her of herself, but the unforgettable, unforgivable fact that toward the last of that furious kissing she had found a certain low feline pleasure in the kisses. She wished that she might die, or, infinitely better, that ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... I realise the position of those poor devils I have seen in lunatic asylums and who believed they have committed the unforgivable sin. It came upon me suddenly in Waterloo Place this evening, that I had done so; and I went straight to the Royal Institution to make confession, and if possible get absolution. But I heard you had gone to Hindhead, and so ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... Mademoiselle Olivia," said Count Victor with an inclination; "he might have been indifferent to your charms, and that were the one thing unforgivable. But soberly, I consider his folly scarce bad enough for the punishment of ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... behest of all his clear insight into this Universe, the message of Heaven through him, which he could not suppress, but was inspired and compelled to utter in this world by such methods as he had. There for him lay the first commandment; this is what it would have been the unforgivable sin to swerve from and desert: the treason of treasons for him, it were there; compared with which ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... I was ignorant, the mysteries of the human mind were a sealed book to me as yet, and I stupidly looked upon myself as a tough and unforgivable criminal. I wrote to Dr. Holmes and told him the whole disgraceful affair, implored him in impassioned language to believe that I had never intended to commit this crime, and was unaware that I had committed it until I was confronted with the ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... the first time in his guileless life Septimus met it face to face. To read of human depravity in the police reports is one thing, to see it fall like a black shadow across one's life is another. It horrified him. Mordaunt Prince had committed the unforgivable sin. He had stolen a girl's love, and basely, meanly, he had slunk off, deceiving her to the last. To Septimus the lover who kissed and rode away had ever appeared a despicable figure of romance. The fellow who did it in real life proclaimed himself ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... the very start, had committed the unforgivable sin of being born a female. Therefore, no pet-seeker wanted to buy her. Even when she was offered for sale at half the sum asked for her less handsome brothers, ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... staggered sharply, and choked back a cry. For out of her recollections leaped two sentences of his—the first careless, imprudent, unforgivable; the second pregnant with meaning. "Ah, a star shoots!" he had said. "That means a kiss!" and again, to the clergyman, "I came here without the slightest expectation of getting what I asked for. There is another way, but I ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... glass. The drink he mixed and swallowed contained little soda. It increased the fire in his heart and throat. He paced the long room in crazy indignation. Every nerve in his body quivered with a sense of unforgivable insult and deadly outrage. Austin's face loomed before him like that of a mocking devil. He had hell in his throat, and again he tossed down a dose of whiskey, and threw himself into the arm-chair. The daily paper ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... he said almost hopelessly. "You must stick to your belief, and I to mine. All I hope, Miss Kate, is that when I've done with this matter the pain I've inflicted on you will not be unforgivable." ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... said Winter. "They disagreed, and she divorced him, thinking he would remain poor. The whirligig of time changed their relative positions, and to a jealous-minded woman that was unforgivable." ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... to the letter of Knox's work. The unforgivable offence in him is, that he wished to set-up Priests over the head of Kings. In other words, he strove to make the Government of Scotland a Theocracy. This indeed is properly the sum of his offences, the essential sin; for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... she very nearly "took a lot out of us," if one may borrow a phrase from "Mr Hopkinson." Obviously anything that reminds one of the ghastly horrors at the Royal College of Surgeons or the Polyclinic Institute is quite unforgivable. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... composed, that it should be judged as so much more precious than the Body?—the dear Body, which we pamper and feed and clothe and cosset and cocker, till it struts on the face of the planet, a mere magnified Ape of conceit and trickery, sloth and sensuality, the one unforgivable anachronism in an otherwise perfect Creation! For Body without Soul is a blot on the Universe,—a distortion and abomination of nature, with which nature by and by will have nothing to do. Yet I freely grant that while ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... when anything particularly disagreeable occurred to the latter. An ironic smile used to light up Rhodes' face and a sarcastic chuckle be heard. But still, whenever one attempted to explain to him that the Raid had been an unforgivable piece of imprudence, or hazarded that Jameson had never been properly punished for it, Rhodes invariably took the part of this friend of his younger days, and would never acknowledge that Doctor Jim's desire to enter public ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... some mad zealot—and, by all the Saints! I believe I can name him, too," he suddenly broke out, wheeling eagerly round upon his fellow hostages and excitedly addressing them. "What say you, senores; does not the whole complexion of this unforgivable outrage point your suspicions almost irresistibly toward one particular man? Are we to believe that our worthy alcalde is capable of imperilling the lives of his fellow townsmen, as ours have been imperilled this night, by an act of such base, wanton betrayal as all ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... action. The Countess was flushed with triumph. Be that meeting never so innocent—and Madame von Platen could not, being what she was, and having seen what she had seen, conceive it innocent—it was in an Electoral Princess an unforgivable indiscretion, to take the most charitable view, which none would dream of taking. So the Elector, fiercely red in the face, hurried off to the pavilion with Madame von Platen following. He came too late, despite the ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... "Honey, the unforgivable thing, to a woman, is not the sin, but the deceit. And, besides, Eleanor loves him enough to forgive him. She would die ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... sun is high or the moon is blown across heaven, she demands that they should pay her long homage at the sun's rising. The initiate may not enter lightly upon her mysteries. For, if a bad complexion be inexcusable, to be ill-painted is unforgivable; and, when the toilet is laden once more with the fulness of its elaboration, we shall hear no more of the proper occupation for women. And think, how sweet an energy, to sit at the mirror of coquetry! See the dear merits of the toilet as shown upon old vases, or upon the walls of Roman ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... the East Lancashire area—Manchester, Oldham, Bury, &c., and they looked upon us rather as intruders. The Northumberlands were of course not the people to let slip so admirable an opportunity of accepting a feud: and in October 1918 they committed the unforgivable sin of winning the Divisional Association Football Cup, which completed ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... loomed momentous, unforgivable, incalculable. It assumed to her the proportions of a murder. Bigamy, perjury, deceit—what hadn't she done! Richard, in her estimation, was not what he thought himself, a somewhat ordinary man in ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... necessities of the popular song go, rhymes may occur regularly or irregularly, with fine effect in either instance, and the rhymes may be precise or not. To rhyme moon with June is not unforgivable. The success of a popular song depends on entirely different bases. Nevertheless, a finely turned bit of rhyming harmony may strike the ear and stand out from its fellows like a lovely symphony of fancy. If you have given any ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... stenographic report, was in excellent form, and committed a good deal of unforgivable syntax. He was somewhat apprehensive when he saw the bill of fare inscribed "Ye Olde Chop House," for he asserts that the use of the word "Ye" always involves extra overhead expense—and a quotation from ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... to keep reminding herself, it seemed, of Lawford Tapp's most glaring faults. Improvidence and a hopeless leaning toward extravagance were certainly unforgivable blemishes in the character of a young man in the position ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... Whitefield and the Scottish Covenanters. No, Cary, she will not survive that. I never yet knew a worldly woman forgive that one crime of crimes—Calvinism. Anything else! Don't you see why, my dear? It sets her outside. And she knows that I know she is outside. Therefore I am unforgivable. However absurd the idea may be in reality, it is to her mind equivalent to my setting her outside. She is unable to recognise that she has chosen to stay without, and I am guilty of nothing worse than unavoidably ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... wife runs. Well, as he has had to study to work up his side, why let hers be such a "jump in the dark," for him? Let the home become a study, even a science, and let not so many wives reach a forgivable level of domestic excellence on the "dead bodies" of so many unforgivable "bloomers." Remember that in matrimony, as in everything else it is the premier "bloomer" which blows up les chateaux en Espagne. Afterwards you have to use concrete—and ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... I think it's only fit for sick folks myself; but I suppose, as the saying is, we must eat by the card;" at which everybody laughed good-naturedly, her worried feeling wore off, and she began to think it would not, perhaps, be an unforgivable offence if one of them did commit a blunder ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... me.' I cannot trust myself to a love which has no standard of right and wrong. We look at it from different points of view. You see only the man and his temptation. I knew the priceless treasure of the love; therefore the sin against that love seems to me unforgivable." ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... although if she would, she could exterminate them with her wit. And some could so easily be spared. It seems, too, that she is great enough to be a target, so she is under fire continually. This, while it causes her exquisite suffering, is from no fault of her own—save the unforgivable one of being original. "A frog spat at a glow-worm. 'Why do you spit at me?' said the glow-worm. 'Why do you shine so?' said the frog." And as to Percival—the man I used to know was Percival in embryo. He is maturing now, and is radiant in Rachel's ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... an unforgivable error of tact I might have stood by the old brontosaurus to the bitter end. One evening he and I were listening to a concert given by the "Fluffy Furbelows" in the camp Nissen Coliseum, and a Miss Gwennie Gwillis was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... had not been sure before Stephen arrived whether he should reveal the situation or not. But the temptation was too great. That the son's mind and soul should finally have escaped his father, "like a bird out of the snare of the fowler," was the unforgivable offence. What a gentle, malleable fellow he had seemed in his school and college days!—how amenable to the father's spiritual tyranny! It was Barron's constant excuse to himself for his own rancorous feeling—that Meynell had robbed ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... or Saturday unnecessarily;" not confessing and communing at Easter, a mortal sin which "deprives one of the grace of God and merits eternal punishment" as well as "to slay and to steal something of value." For all these crimes, unforgivable in themselves, there is but one pardon, the absolution given by the priest, that is to say, confession beforehand, itself being one of the observances to which we are bound by strict obligation and at the very least once ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... educated and large-minded, are estimating the same thing: one judges as disgusting, odious, revolting, and bestial what the other judges to be delicious, exquisite, ineffable, divine. What, for one, is in Christian phraseology, an unforgivable sin, is, for the other, the state of true grace. Acts that for one seem a sad and occasional necessity, stains that must be carefully effaced by long intervals of continence, are for the other the golden nails from which all the rest of conduct and existence is ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... else there haunted me the fear of the "Unforgivable Sin." What this was I was never able to discover. I dreaded to enquire too closely, lest I should find I had committed it. Day and night the terror ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... not, with equal brilliance, plausibility and success, according to his desire to dispose of you or the subject. He either finessed with the ethical basis of his intellect or had none. This made him unintelligible to the average man, unforgivable to the fanatic and ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... trouble, and after committing some unforgivable offense against the United States, Running Bear rallied his young men, and they fled the reservation and the ways and protection of the white men, and took to the mountains, where they lived by raiding the ranches in the neighborhood, and maintaining ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... be more than a match for a mace and a majority." All the fuel for a conflagration was ready. There was race hatred, there was party hostility, there was commercial depression and there was a sincere, though exaggerated, loyalty, which regarded rebellion as the unforgivable sin, and which was in constant dread of the spread of ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... Billiard bounced through the kitchen, slammed the door of his room, turned the key in the lock and—stood still in the middle of the floor. Whipped by a girl not four years his senior! Whipped by a girl! It was an unforgivable outrage. He would get even for that. But what was he to do? Would could he do? She had beaten him at every turn, she had set Toady against him, she had made him the laughing stock of his cousins. He—he—he would do ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the night that Mrs. Gallant had displayed her antipathy for her. He realized also that his mother would not be able to comprehend why Consuello met him in Gibson's absence and would probably consider it an unforgivable breach of etiquette. ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... seriously wounded of all in the ward, who never failed with his unending requests to the patient orderlies and his eternal complainings, until a public dressing-down from me brought him to heel. And Glover who wept that I had lost his bullet, that unforgivable carelessness in a surgeon that allows a bullet, removed at an operation, to be thrown ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... them arrive together. With great strides he crossed the strip of desert between the two tents, and thrust his red face close to the blanched face of Max. His eyes spoke the ugly thing that was in his mind before his lips could utter it. But Sanda gave him no time for words that would be unforgivable. ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... God grant your powers of forgiveness may never be put to the test!" he ejaculated fervently. "The one unforgivable sin according to our Lord, is treachery;—may THAT never come ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... a good citizen should be are all at sixes and sevens. No two people will be found to agree in every particular of such an ideal, and the extreme divergences upon what is necessary, what is permissible, what is unforgivable in him, will span nearly the whole range of human possibility and conduct. As a consequence, we bring up our children in a mist of vague intimations, in a confusion of warring voices, perplexed as ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... she answered. "Do you not know that to speak disrespectfully of the ancestors of a Chinaman is unforgivable? To all appearances Prince Shan never moved from his wonderful palace in Pekin, many thousands of miles away. Yet he lifted his little finger and ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sullenly at her, fearful, in the face of her relationship to Carl, of committing still another unforgivable offense. ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... upbringing and popularity, even though he said it rather scornfully in the fewest words. The scorn was really for himself, and I could well understand it. Nay, I was glad to have something to forgive in the beginning, I with my unforgivable mission, and would have laughed the matter off without another word if Bob had ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... her eye—a light of such desperate satisfaction as betokened one gladly driven to commit the unforgivable Sissy moved toward the sensitive-plant in ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... of bliss out of a lifetime! Would it be a terrible sin, Theodora wondered, a terrible, unforgivable sin to let him kiss her—to let him hold her just once in ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... was beginning to think they were real. And although he had found himself at liberty to say to her things that were harder to hear, he felt a curious repugnance to giving her any inkling of what he thought about this. It would be a hideous thing to do, he concluded, an unforgivable thing, and an actual hurt. Kendal had for women the readiest consideration, and though one of the odd things he found in Elfrida was the slight degree to which she evoked it in him, he recoiled instinctively from any reasoned action which would distress her. But his sense ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... was lodged in his mind. And when he found this country critical of the Shantung settlement, that doubt became a conviction; the British through social attentions, had wheedled House into a position favorable to their allies, the Japanese. The loyal House was convicted of the one unforgivable offense, disloyalty. ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... of conduct at the musicale is to maintain absolute silence during the selections. It is an unforgivable breach of etiquette to speak, fidget or otherwise disturb the guests while the numbers are being performed. Encores are permissible, but loud applause is undeniably vulgar. Silence, interest and attention characterize the ideal ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... Victorian phrenologists. They speak and write with ineffable profundity about the "criminal" ear, the "criminal" thumb, the "criminal" glance. They gain access to gaols and pester unfortunate prisoners with callipers and cameras, and quite unforgivable prying into personal and private matters, and they hold out great hopes that by these expedients they will evolve at last a "scientific" revival of the Kaffir's witch- smelling. We shall catch our criminals ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... last word, did an unforgivable thing. He laughed and laughed, while the match he had just lighted flared, sent up a blue thread of brimstone smoke, licked along the white wood and scorched his fingers painfully before ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... to follow, but it was not her command which held him back. It was the command laid upon him by himself. In a light merciless as the crude glare of electricity he saw himself standing stricken, a fool who had done an unforgivable thing, a clumsy and brutal wretch who had broken a crystal vase in a sanctuary. For the blinding light showed him a new image of Mary, even as she had suddenly revealed herself to Hannaford: a perfectly innocent creature whose ways were strange as a dryad's way would be strange ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... effect upon their powers of speech, and each was busy with thoughts which they were powerless to interpret into words. "Lord" James was a name they had reason to hate. It was a name synonymous with theft, and even worse—to them. He had stolen from their community, which was unforgivable, but this—this was something new to them, something which did not readily come into their focus. Wild Bill was the first to ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... sharply, and choked back a cry. For out of her recollections leaped two sentences of his—the first careless, imprudent, unforgivable; the second pregnant with meaning. "Ah, a star shoots!" he had said. "That means a kiss!" and again, to the clergyman, "I came here without the slightest expectation of getting what I asked for. There is another way, but I ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... man; the behest of all his clear insight into this Universe, the message of Heaven through him, which he could not suppress, but was inspired and compelled to utter in this world by such methods as he had. There for him lay the first commandment; this is what it would have been the unforgivable sin to swerve from and desert: the treason of treasons for him, it were there; compared with which ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... who lifted me from my sketching stool and stood me on my feet in the plaza of the Hippodrome one morning just in time to prevent my being trodden under foot by six Turks carrying the body of their friend to the cemetery—in time, too, to save me from the unforgivable sin among Orientals, of want of reverence for their dead. I had heard the tramp of the pall-bearers, and supposing it to be that of the Turkish patrol, had kept at work. They were prowling everywhere, day and night, ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... socialism no more unfortunate step could have been taken. It immediately stamped the socialists as wilful destroyers of the unity of labor. To the trade unionists, yet fresh from the ordeal of the struggle against the Knights of Labor, the action of the socialists was an unforgivable crime. All the bitterness which has characterized the fight between socialist and anti-socialist in the Federation verily goes back to this gross miscalculation by DeLeon of the psychology of the trade union movement. DeLeon, on his part, ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... soul and body. Respectability could easily forgive the teaching of theoretic Anarchism; but Emma Goldman does not merely preach the new philosophy; she also persists in living it,—and that is the one supreme, unforgivable crime. Were she, like so many radicals, to consider her ideal as merely an intellectual ornament; were she to make concessions to existing society and compromise with old prejudices,—then even the most radical views could be pardoned in her. But ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... wandered. He wondered whether it would be unforgivable to dash quickly out and slam the door behind him. But in the next breath escape was forgotten and he was looking about him in sheer amazement. Here was his hallway, but no longer empty. A shield-backed chair stood beside the parlor door. A settle ran ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... part of the thigh, by far the least seriously wounded of all in the ward, who never failed with his unending requests to the patient orderlies and his eternal complainings, until a public dressing-down from me brought him to heel. And Glover who wept that I had lost his bullet, that unforgivable carelessness in a surgeon that allows a bullet, removed at an operation, to be ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... me, Molly, I think it's only fit for sick folks myself; but I suppose, as the saying is, we must eat by the card;" at which everybody laughed good-naturedly, her worried feeling wore off, and she began to think it would not, perhaps, be an unforgivable offence if one of them did ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... herself at the delicate attention paid her, but Oliver's eyes, the scribe is ashamed to say, were not fixed on the particular pair of green blinds that concealed this adorable young lady, certainly not with any desire to break through their privacy. One of the unforgivable sins—nay, one of the impossible sins—about Kennedy Square would have been to have recognized a lady who looked, even during the daytime, out from a bedroom window: much less at night. That was why Sue did not ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... so discover them for himself, and thus at last be able to take action. The Countess was flushed with triumph. Be that meeting never so innocent—and Madame von Platen could not, being what she was, and having seen what she had seen, conceive it innocent—it was in an Electoral Princess an unforgivable indiscretion, to take the most charitable view, which none would dream of taking. So the Elector, fiercely red in the face, hurried off to the pavilion with Madame von Platen following. He came too late, despite the ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... that the father and the mother, three daughters, two maidservants, the nurse, and even, I believe, the infant son, should rise from their beds at 5 o'clock when reveille is, at the whim of the G.O.C., put at that unforgivable hour. It is only myself who may lie ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... Friday or Saturday unnecessarily;" not confessing and communing at Easter, a mortal sin which "deprives one of the grace of God and merits eternal punishment" as well as "to slay and to steal something of value." For all these crimes, unforgivable in themselves, there is but one pardon, the absolution given by the priest, that is to say, confession beforehand, itself being one of the observances to which we are bound by strict obligation and at the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... which has the most dissevered the people from the Pope,—the unforgivable thing,—the breaking point between him and them,—has been the encouragement and promotion he gave to the officer under whom were executed the slaughters of Perugia. That made the breaking point in many honest hearts that had clung to him before."—HARRIET BEECHER ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... heavenly place in which there was no marrying or giving in marriage, a sexless quiet windless place where mankind lived in a state of bliss. For some unknown reason mankind had been thrown out of that place, had been thrown down upon the earth. It was a punishment for an unforgivable sin, the sin ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... estimable. Students of the Scandinavian languages, and of the Celtic, abound in our midst. Borrow was a forerunner with Bowring of much of this 'useless' learning. Borrow came to consider Bowring's apparent neglect of him to be unforgivable. But that time had not arrived, when in 1842 he wrote ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... leniency of Jesus toward sex offenders, and his permission to divorce, must seem like mistakes to churchmen who consider extramarital sex relations the unforgivable sin. And everyone must see the danger of having our judges adopt as a principle of justice the dismissal of offenders on the ground that the ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... embarrassing. In return, I inquired after several young American poets, whose work, seldom seen here, interests me, and I named their books. He had never heard of them. This enthusiast did not even appear to have the beginning of an idea that his was unforgivable ignorance seeing that he knew more than a native ought to know about some of our taverns. Had he been an Englishman and a friend of mine I should have told him that I thought his love of letters was as spurious as the morality ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... made too commonplace and everyday a matter, or as something so far removed from human affairs as to be mysterious and remote to a child. To mix Old and New Testament indiscriminately, as, for example, by taking them on alternate days, is unforgivable, and no teacher who has studied the Bible seriously could do so, if she cared about the religious training of her children, and ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... at him, I saw that a different McGeorge was evident, different even from when I had seen him at the Italian restaurant where he had been so oppressed by the fear not of death, but of life. In the first place, he was fatter and less nervous, he was wearing one of those unforgivable soft black ties with flowing ends, and he had changed ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "That is what you young poets want. At present you are too unperplexed and glib. Suffering! It would enlarge your repertoire; it would make you more human, individual, and truthful. What is the unforgivable sin in poetry? Lack of candour. How shall there be candour if the poet lacks worldly experience? Suffering! That is what you people want. It would make men ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... not! If it were simply a case of teasing me, I could let it pass, for I can take care of myself; but you have done your sister a wrong, and that is unforgivable. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... of reality is very different from make-believe, and a terrible thing. To the child—deception in regard to real things, whatever excuses adults may put forward in its defence, is well-nigh unforgivable. To be one who never says "it is" when it is not, nor "it will be" when it will not be—that is to be a friend on whom a child rests ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... did anything for him now. As he opened his eyes, one at a time, he thought of Boyd. Once, long ago, ages and ages ago, he had had to wake Boyd up, and he recalled how rough he had been about it. That had been unforgivable. ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... souls, which is more than can be said of most men and women acquainted for half a lifetime. As for our pasts, you haven't had one, and I—well, if I swear to you that I've never murdered anybody, or been in prison, or committed an unforgivable crime, will you take ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... an adversary's pony is the unforgivable sin," he cried, smiling at her, and she hastily averted her eyes, having discovered an unnerving similarity between his ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... unforgivable, were at once condoned by the tender-hearted lad, who only remembered his mother's caresses and her constant anxiety for his welfare from the day of his birth. It was the loss of Dora that stung him ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... skiff landing at Walnut Log, and being themselves far overtaken in liquor and vainglorious with a bogus alcoholic substitute for courage, the brothers had accused him, wantonly and without proof, of running their trot-line and stripping it of the hooked catch—an unforgivable sin among the water dwellers and the shanty boaters of the South. Seeing that he bore this accusation in silence, only eyeing them steadfastly, they had been emboldened then to slap his face, whereupon he turned and gave them both the beating ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... only cared for old pictures—the National Gallery, and all that; and read no novels but French—Balzac and George Sand—and that only for practice for he was a singularly pure young man, the purest in all Cambridge, and in those days I thought him a quite unforgivable prig. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... bitterness he saw a darkness of mood that could not have been caused by her present weak and feverish state. She hated the life she had led, that she probably had been compelled to lead. She had suffered some unforgivable wrong at the hands of Oldring. With that conviction Venters felt a shame throughout his body, and it marked the rekindling of fierce anger and ruthlessness. In the past long year he had nursed resentment. He had hated the wilderness—the ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... handed down to shuddering posterity a definition of the act of eating which might have been framed by a dyspeptic ghoul. "Eat: to devour with the mouth." It is a shocking view to take of so genial a function: cynical, indelicate, and finally unforgivable by reason of its very accuracy. For, after all, that is what eating amounts to, if one must needs express it with such crude brutality. But if "the ingestion of alimentary substances"—to ring a modern change upon the ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... he grew the longer he fasted, and it became a point of honor to beat his record every successive year. Last time he had brought his breakfast down till late in the afternoon, and now it would be unforgivable if he could not see the fast out and go home, proud and sinless, to drink wine with the men. He turned so pale, as the afternoon service dragged itself along, that his father begged him again and again to go home and eat. But the boy was set on a full penance. And every now and again he forgot his ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... away to-morrow. When we were alone in the hall for a moment he told me that he was going. "If you can ever forgive me," he said, "will you write and tell me? What I have done may seem unforgivable. But when a man dreams a great deal he sometimes thinks that he can make ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... the deed of some mad zealot—and, by all the Saints! I believe I can name him, too," he suddenly broke out, wheeling eagerly round upon his fellow hostages and excitedly addressing them. "What say you, senores; does not the whole complexion of this unforgivable outrage point your suspicions almost irresistibly toward one particular man? Are we to believe that our worthy alcalde is capable of imperilling the lives of his fellow townsmen, as ours have been imperilled this night, by an act of such base, wanton betrayal as ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... follow, but it was not her command which held him back. It was the command laid upon him by himself. In a light merciless as the crude glare of electricity he saw himself standing stricken, a fool who had done an unforgivable thing, a clumsy and brutal wretch who had broken a crystal vase in a sanctuary. For the blinding light showed him a new image of Mary, even as she had suddenly revealed herself to Hannaford: a perfectly innocent creature whose ways were ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... world beside her own. She was not aware of this; she was only thinking that if he had not shot Halsey she would have been able to speak freely to him now. It was so wicked of Ephraim, above all others, to do such a thing. It was, in fact, unforgivable because of the stain upon Ephraim's own character more than because of Halsey's blood. But that again she did not analyse. She only knew that her feeling kept ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... early Victorian phrenologists. They speak and write with ineffable profundity about the "criminal" ear, the "criminal" thumb, the "criminal" glance. They gain access to gaols and pester unfortunate prisoners with callipers and cameras, and quite unforgivable prying into personal and private matters, and they hold out great hopes that by these expedients they will evolve at last a "scientific" revival of the Kaffir's witch- smelling. We shall catch our criminals by anthropometry ere ever a criminal thought has entered ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... detests the ocean, and when he comes over in his favorite month of June he does not dare return until the following June. Others who have never visited America must get their idea of American travel from some such account as that of Charles Dickens in his unforgivable American Notes (1842), in which he said, in describing ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... the Sagoth interpreter, I received the reply that having spared my life they considered that Tu-al-sa's debt of gratitude was canceled. They still had against me, however, the crime of which I had been guilty—the unforgivable crime of stealing the great secret. They, therefore, intended holding Dian and me prisoners until the manuscript ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... when he believed that the girl would materialize in his own safeguarded world. He had seen a resemblance now and then that turned him cold, but when all was said and done there was no reason, no unforgivable reason, for him to exile ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... never sinned? It feels that it has sinned, though it cannot say how or when, but it feels that this sin was direct as between itself and God, and is the cause of its separation from God; and it feels this sin to have been an infidelity. It is with this part of the soul that we sin the unforgivable sin against the Holy Ghost, which cannot be sinned by mere natural man: (here we touch the mystery of the two orders of sinning which, to the initiated, are seen both to be covered by the same commandments). This higher part of the soul mourns and longs for God with a terrible longing, and can be ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... hands with me! His handshake was firm and strong, but he looked at me boldly with his black eyes—too boldly, I thought. You see, I was a creature of environment, and at that time had strong class instincts. Such boldness on the part of a man of my own class would have been almost unforgivable. I know that I could not avoid dropping my eyes, and I was quite relieved when I passed him on and turned to greet Bishop Morehouse—a favorite of mine, a sweet and serious man of middle age, Christ-like in appearance and goodness, and ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... flawless faith in the authority of the priesthood, his implicit belief that whatsoever they ordered was to be obeyed as the literal command of God, his unshaken conviction that to disobey the priesthood was to commit the unforgivable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. "If you trifle with the commands of any of the priesthood," he himself had preached but a few days before, "you are trifling with Brigham; if you trifle with Brigham, you are ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... glance even her brazen face fell. Six months previously that creature had stolen Wilkins, the best cook I ever had. Mere man may not understand the enormity of this offence; but every woman knows there is no crime more heinous, more despicable, more unforgivable. She might find it in her heart to condone larceny, think lightly of arson, or even excuse murder; but there is not one who would extend even a deathbed pardon to the person who had robbed her of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... and proud among men abasing itself in humility and pouring out the generous tenderness of an affectionate nature. In these moments of contrition small peccadilloes took on tragic importance in his mind. Rising late in the morning and the untidy state of his papers seemed unforgivable sins. There is hardly any more moving picture in the history of mankind than that of the rugged old doctor pouring out his innocent petitions for greater strength in ordering his life and bewailing his faults of sluggishness, indulgence at table and disorderly thoughts. Let us begin with his ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... life, he realised how easily he could slip into that life and be engulfed. No one would mind; his position would be the same; no one would think worse of him. Unless, of course, he was caught. Then probably everyone would turn round upon him; that was the one unforgivable sin—to be found out. But it was rarely that anyone was caught; and the descent was so easy. In his excitement he ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... should be judged as so much more precious than the Body?—the dear Body, which we pamper and feed and clothe and cosset and cocker, till it struts on the face of the planet, a mere magnified Ape of conceit and trickery, sloth and sensuality, the one unforgivable anachronism in an otherwise perfect Creation! For Body without Soul is a blot on the Universe,—a distortion and abomination of nature, with which nature by and by will have nothing to do. Yet I freely grant that while Soul animates and inspires all creation, man cannot or will not comprehend ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... returning from his father's house to the Mission with equally mixed emotions. He knew he had dealt an almost unforgivable blow to those beloved parents whom he had honored and obeyed from his babyhood. Once he almost turned back. Then a vision arose of a fair young English girl whose unhappy childhood he had learned of years ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... that the slaughtering of animals for food is not an evil, but that what is really unforgivable is the infliction of physical suffering on animals. And all the time for her, as well as for man, calves and lambs are being emasculated to make her meat succulent; wild animals are painfully done to death to provide her table with delicacies; birds with ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... town that old J. G. Whitmore had fired the Happy Family in a bunch for some unforgivable crime against the peace and dignity of the outfit, and that the boys were hatching up some scheme to get even. From the gossip that was rolled relishfully upon the tongues of the Dry Lake scandal lovers, the Happy Family must have ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... report, was in excellent form, and committed a good deal of unforgivable syntax. He was somewhat apprehensive when he saw the bill of fare inscribed "Ye Olde Chop House," for he asserts that the use of the word "Ye" always involves extra overhead expense—and a quotation from Shakespeare on the back of the menu, he doubted, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... with her wit. And some could so easily be spared. It seems, too, that she is great enough to be a target, so she is under fire continually. This, while it causes her exquisite suffering, is from no fault of her own—save the unforgivable one of being original. "A frog spat at a glow-worm. 'Why do you spit at me?' said the glow-worm. 'Why do you shine so?' said the frog." And as to Percival—the man I used to know was Percival in embryo. He is maturing now, and is radiant in Rachel's sympathetic comprehension ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... him through every trial go, Nor leave him though in flames below— God help me in his fire!" So in the South; vain every plea 'Gainst Nature's strong fidelity; True to the home and to the heart, Throngs cast their lot with kith and kin, Foreboding, cleaved to the natural part— Was this the unforgivable sin? These noble spirits are yet yours to win. Shall the great North go Sylla's way? Proscribe? prolong the evil day? Confirm the curse? infix the hate? In Unions name ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... home, the sacred faith in the British Empire is still kept passionately alive. And, at all events, Charlie Webster may truly be said to have one article of faith—the glory of the British Empire. To him, therefore, the one unforgivable sin is treason against that; as probably to die for England—after having notched a good account of her enemies on his unerring rifle—would be for him not merely a crown of glory, but the purest and completest joy that ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... you say?—when at a word I might have had all the help I needed in guarding the pay-money? No; it wasn't altogether foolhardiness; it was partly weakness. For, twist and turn it as I might, there was always the unforgivable thing at the end: the fact that by calling in help and betraying Dorgan to others, I, once his prison-mate, and even now, like him—though in a lesser degree—a law-breaker, would become a "snitch," an ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... be taught that it is unforgivable not to walk erect, to talk in good English and in a ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... the time, but being herself so greatly in fault she had ascribed it to the recoil of a proud man from the dread of social humiliation. But it took another aspect under the strong light just thrown upon his early life by her discovery in the room below. Nothing but some act, unforgivable and unforgettable would account for that black mark drawn between a father's eyes and his son's face. No bar sinister could tell a stronger tale. But this was no bar sinister; rather the deliberate stigmatising of one yet loved, but banned for a reason which was little short of—Here her ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... the devil! And with the feeling that to waste this swift-travelling commodity was unforgivable folly, he took up his brush. But it was no use; he could not concentrate his eye—besides, the light was going. 'I'll go up to town,' he thought. In the hall a servant ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... but such is my hopelessly open mind in the matter of goodness and wickedness, that I often find it harder to forgive some people for doing their duty than others for being wicked. In fact, some do their duty in a way that is perfectly unforgivable, while others fail in such an affecting and attractive manner that they make you all the ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... But for an unforgivable error of tact I might have stood by the old brontosaurus to the bitter end. One evening he and I were listening to a concert given by the "Fluffy Furbelows" in the camp Nissen Coliseum, and a Miss Gwennie Gwillis ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... of the visitors. For by this time Mere had accumulated so many absolutely unforgivable grievances against her absolutely impossible husband that she felt qualified for that crown of comfortable martyrhood, that womanly ideal, "a wife in name only"—and only that "for the sake ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... was ignorant, the mysteries of the human mind were a sealed book to me as yet, and I stupidly looked upon myself as a tough and unforgivable criminal. I wrote to Dr. Holmes and told him the whole disgraceful affair, implored him in impassioned language to believe that I had never intended to commit this crime, and was unaware that I had committed it until ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Beatrice's first great triumph in the face of her enemies. They were all there and all armed to the teeth with spite and envy. There was, for instance, Mrs. Berry with her marriageable if somewhat plain daughter, and many more women besides to whom the beautiful girl was of necessity an unforgivable opponent. The more the men laughed at her quick and occasionally rather pointed observations, the more an obvious admiration shone out of their criticisms, the more determined the hatred became. Among themselves they had already fulfilled Travers' prophecy and ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... Paul Ellison, son and brother, and they had blotted him out of their lives by destroying all physical signs of him. There was something inhuman in the deliberateness of it, something unforgivable. ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... severe and a bitter hail beat upon them. It was obvious that Areskoui did not yet forgive, although it must surely be a sin of ignorance, of omission and not of commission, with the equal certainty that a sin of such type could not be unforgivable for ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... relieved. He felt sure that the head-master would consider such an escapade by boys of the Sixth Form an unforgivable crime, and that expulsion would follow discovery; and knowing the hot temper of his uncle, he feared that the latter would view the matter in the most serious light. It was therefore with a light heart that he went across to the Black Dog and placed the note ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... against Maddalena, sinned when he had kissed her, when he had shown her that he delighted to be with her? Was he not sinning now when he promised to buy for her the most beautiful things of the fair? For a moment he thought to himself that his fault against Maddalena was more grave, more unforgivable than his fault against Hermione. But then a sudden anger that was like a storm, against his own condemnation of himself, swept through him. He had come out to-day to be recklessly happy, and here he was giving himself up to gloom, ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of Hardy's gaunt frame. He was losing his temper, and he was wise enough to know that that would never do. The unforgivable sin was to lose control of oneself. He must hold on to his voice, his movements; but a nest of hornets, under attack, could not have been angrier. "I protest!" he said, as calmly as he could. "Here I been settin' around waitin' for this place for ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... bewailed the absence of duns and lack of sport. We loitered there with our rods spiked, and smoked sadly. I then, and not for the first time, repeated the tale of my former experiences, and at last begged Halford not to be shocked, not to think me an unforgivable brute, but would he give me free permission to try the wet fly in the old way, and without prejudice. He at first laughingly protested, but saying he would ne'er consent, consented. I was to do my best or worst. The difficulty was to find a fly that could be fished wet, and ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... he made the most of them. Indeed, Marishka sat leaning forward looking at him appealingly, aware that after all here was the only prop she had to lean upon in this extremity. She did not speak. The wrong he had done her and Austria was great—unforgivable, but the merit of his service in this situation was unmistakable. Inimical as he might be to the sentiments in her heart, there was no disguising the relief his presence gave her or the confidence that radiated from his ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... metaphor be preferred) after the fashion of a family-tree involves of itself no inconsiderable call on the tale-telling faculties. That the writers pay little or no attention to chronological and other possibilities is hardly much to say against them; if this be an unforgivable sin it is not clear how either Dickens or Thackeray is to escape damnation, with Sir Walter to greet them in their ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... particularly disagreeable occurred to the latter. An ironic smile used to light up Rhodes' face and a sarcastic chuckle be heard. But still, whenever one attempted to explain to him that the Raid had been an unforgivable piece of imprudence, or hazarded that Jameson had never been properly punished for it, Rhodes invariably took the part of this friend of his younger days, and would never acknowledge that Doctor Jim's desire to enter public life as a member of the ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... anywhere with John May, burst into tears and ran into the house. In the darkness of her own room she began to think of her father's words. For some reason she could not understand, the attack made on her spirit seemed more terrible and unforgivable than the attack upon her body made by the farm hand in the shed. She began to understand vaguely that the young man had been confused by her presence on that warm sunshiny afternoon as she had been confused by the ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... see her because it was so dangerous for him to look round, but he could imagine her indignant and pitiless. He felt an unspeakable idiot. One had to be so careful what one said to Young Ladies, and he'd gone and treated her just as though she was only a Larky Girl. It was unforgivable. He always WAS a fool. You could tell from her manner she didn't think him a gentleman. One glance, and she seemed to look clear through him and all his presence. What rot it was venturing to speak to a girl like that! With her education she ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... waste of human energy and of educational momentum to be appealing for its abolition when we might be hastening its proper control. On the other hand, if the saloon is destined to be abolished as a public nuisance and a private wrong, as a menace to industry and social order, is it not a frightful, unforgivable waste of energy to permit prohibition laws to fail, and thus to discredit the principle of prohibition? Philanthropists have provided millions for scientific research, for medical research, for the study ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... clearly teaches in Article xvi. that wilful sin after baptism is not, as some have taught, the unforgivable sin, but it seems rather to be "obstinate, resolute, and wilful impenitence, after all the means of grace and with all the strivings of the Spirit, under the Christian dispensation as distinguished from the Jewish, and amid all ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... the boy muttered. "I have read that somewhere, and it comes home to me. Failure is the one unforgivable sin. If I have to commit every other crime in the decalogue, I will at ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... answered. "Do you not know that to speak disrespectfully of the ancestors of a Chinaman is unforgivable? To all appearances Prince Shan never moved from his wonderful palace in Pekin, many thousands of miles away. Yet he lifted his little finger ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "There is this deep, tremendous link,—some secret power they emanate that keeps me well and happy and—alive. If you cannot understand, I feel at least you may be able to—forgive." His tone grew tender, gentle, soft. "My selfishness, I know, must seem quite unforgivable. I cannot help it somehow; these trees, this ancient Forest, both seem knitted into all that makes me live, and ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... a diabolical affair, Jervis," Thorndyke said at length, in an ominously quiet and even gentle tone. "A sordid, callous, cold-blooded crime of a type that is to me utterly unforgivable and incapable of extenuation. Of course, it may have failed. Mr. Graves may even now be alive. I shall make it my very especial business to ascertain whether he is or not. And if he is not, I shall take it to ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... was by choice a warrior and a sailor, a wanderer to other lands, a plougher of the desolate places of the "vasty deep," yet withal a lover of home, who trod at times, with bitter longing for his native land, the thorny paths of exile. To him physical cowardice was the unforgivable sin, next to treachery to his lord; for the loyalty of thane to his chieftain was a very deep and abiding reality to the Anglo-Saxon warrior, and in the early poems of our English race, love for "his dear lord, his chieftain-friend," takes the place of that love of woman which other races ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... idleness, and had made fast the main-sheet, instead of holding it in his hand, ready for all emergencies. This, and not unnaturally, on such a squally coast, Rob MacNicol had constituted an altogether unforgivable offence; and his first impulse was to jump down to the stern of the boat and give the helmsman, caught in flagrante delicto, a sounding whack on the side of the head. But a graver sense of justice prevailed. He summoned a court-martial. Nicol, catching the eye of his brother, ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... made way for the King of Rome, not for a Directory which included one traitor and two babies. His indignation was just. An abdication forced on by idealogues was hateful; to be succeeded by Fouche seemed an unforgivable insult; but he touched the lowest depth of humiliation on the 25th, when he received from that despicable schemer ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... at the very start, had committed the unforgivable sin of being born a female. Therefore, no pet-seeker wanted to buy her. Even when she was offered for sale at half the sum asked for her less handsome ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... there. I think our love for Dr. Hemingway in itself would have kept the Sabbath sacred. He never found fault with our Sunday visiting. All days were holy to him, and his evening sermons taught us that frivolity, and idle gossip, and scandal are as unforgivable on week days as on the Sabbath Day. Somewhere in the wide courts of heaven there must be reserved an abode of inconceivable joy and peace for such men as he, men who preach the Word faithfully through the years, whose hand-clasp means fellowship, and in whose tongue is the ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... of his State, and has undertaken, at no small cost to his Exchequer, one of the most important irrigation works yet attempted in any Native State. But he committed what Tilak and his friends regarded as two unforgivable offences: he fought against the intolerance of the Brahmans and he is a faithful friend end ally of the British Raj. Hence they set in motion against him, the descendant of Shivaji, in his own State, exactly the same machinery of agitation and conspiracy ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... Consuello's name had never been mentioned between them since the night that Mrs. Gallant had displayed her antipathy for her. He realized also that his mother would not be able to comprehend why Consuello met him in Gibson's absence and would probably consider it an unforgivable breach of etiquette. ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... blame of the whole conspiracy was on him. A big crime, well carried out, is its own excuse for being; but failure, like unto genius, is unforgivable. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... Pink and the Silent One at his heels. He had forgotten that Harry Conroy ever had a sister of any sort whatsoever. All he knew was that Harry had done him much wrong, of the sort which comes near to being unforgivable, and that he had sneered insults that no man may overlook. All he thought of was to get ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... before Stephen arrived whether he should reveal the situation or not. But the temptation was too great. That the son's mind and soul should finally have escaped his father, "like a bird out of the snare of the fowler," was the unforgivable offence. What a gentle, malleable fellow he had seemed in his school and college days!—how amenable to the father's spiritual tyranny! It was Barron's constant excuse to himself for his own rancorous feeling—that Meynell had robbed him ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that it was the practice of the Jesuits to stir up strife in families, to resort to espionage, to abuse the confessional, to make the Seminary priests their puppets, and to deny the king's right to license the brandy trade. What seemed to the Jesuits an unforgivable affront was Frontenac's charge that they cared more for beaver skins than for the conversion of the savages. This {55} they interpreted as an insult to the memory of their martyrs, and their resentment must have been the greater because the accusation was not made publicly in ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... had to study to work up his side, why let hers be such a "jump in the dark," for him? Let the home become a study, even a science, and let not so many wives reach a forgivable level of domestic excellence on the "dead bodies" of so many unforgivable "bloomers." Remember that in matrimony, as in everything else it is the premier "bloomer" which blows up les chateaux en Espagne. Afterwards you have to use concrete—and build as ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... necessary. Therefore let us work and faint not; remembering that though it be natural, and therefore excusable, amidst doubtful times to feel doubts of success oppress us at whiles, yet not to crush those doubts, and work as if we had them not, is simple cowardice, which is unforgivable. No man has any right to say that all has been done for nothing, that all the faithful unwearying strife of those that have gone before us shall lead us nowhither; that mankind will but go round and round in a circle for ever: no man ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... regretful sigh. He recognized in the stinging contempt of his wife's words, the voice of their world. If Doris Dane of the sextette were really Rose—and in the bottom of his heart, despite his valiant pretense, he couldn't manage more than a feeble doubt of it—she had committed the unforgivable sin. Or so he thought, leaving out of his calculations one ingredient in the situation. She had done an unconventional thing for the sake ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... General Court, wherein all of her judges in the Ecclesiastic Court also sat. After a long, laborious and insulting trial, with no one but herself to raise a voice in her defense, pitted against the eight clergymen, she ably defended her cause and actually put them all to rout—an unforgivable thing, and an error in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... made out that that was NOT the vase Cousin Jane had sent us as a wedding present, Aunt Selina had examined the card. Then she glared across at me and, stooping, put the card in the fire. I did not understand at all, but I knew I had in some way done the unforgivable thing. Later, Dal told me it was HER card, and that she had sent the vase to Jim at Christmas, with a generous check inside. When she straightened from the fireplace, it was to a new theme, which she attacked with her usual ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... grant your powers of forgiveness may never be put to the test!" he ejaculated fervently. "The one unforgivable sin according to our Lord, is treachery;—may ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... knowing more than the other fellow thinks you do. The more a man lies the less you want to contradict him, because if you do he'll know that you know he's lying and that's giving away information, which is the unforgivable sin." ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... sat down by the bunk, after she had given Maigan a big feed of oats, with a small remnant of the bacon grease. She felt humbled now, as if her accusations constituted some unforgivable, despicable sin. This man had never intended to do her the slightest harm. He really never knew that she was coming. And through her stupid clumsiness his life was now ebbing. The doctor's long words sounded dreadfully in her ears: general sepsis, blood poisoning, a ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... knew, as well as if each one had whispered to him privately, that this shady incident had shaken them. Something unsettling to their notions of propriety-something dangerous and destructive of complacency—had occurred, and this was unforgivable. Each had a different way, humorous or philosophic, contemptuous, sour, or sly, of showing this resentment. But by a flash of insight Shelton saw that at the bottom of their minds and of his own the feeling was the same. Because he shared in their resentment he was enraged with them and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... delicate but strong handwriting—the hand of one accustomed to forming the smaller letters of ancient tongues into a current script. "To Mistress Winifred Charteris," it ran. "Dear Lady: That I have offended you by the hastiness of my words and the unforgivable wilfulness of my actions, I know, but cannot forgive myself. Yet, knowing the kindness of your disposition, I have thought that you might be better disposed to pardon me than I myself. For I need not tell you, what you already know, that the sight ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... unknown brook, and are deputed to catch the necessary trout for breakfast, it is wiser to choose the surest bait. The crackle of the fish in the frying-pan will atone for any theoretical defect in your method. But to choose the surest bait, and then to bring back no fish, is unforgivable. Forsake Plato if you must,—but you may do so only at the price of justifying yourself in the terms of Aristotelian arithmetic. The college president who abandoned his college in order to run a cotton mill was free to make his own choice of a calling; but he was never pardoned for ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... not to stare openly at the colonel's scar. But, indeed, an officer need have been very young in his profession not to have heard the legendary tale of that duel originating in some mysterious, unforgivable offence. ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... of his apostasy appeared most to come home to Lady Agnes was the loss for the Dormer family of the advantages attached to the possession of Mrs. Dallow. The larger mortification would round itself later; for the hour the damning thing was that Nick had made that lady the gift of an unforgivable grievance. He had clinched their separation by his letter to his electors—and that above all was the wickedness of the letter. Julia would have got over the other woman, but she would never get over ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... help but—love you after all. And now, pray go—I beseech you, leave me ere the devil break loose and I speak the unforgivable thing ... ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... management of the affair was committed to an incorrigible snob, and he decided that a young lady who earned her own living was not a fit theatrical associate for the patrician daughters of successful soap-boilers and pork-packers, thereby offering an unforgettable and unforgivable affront to all the legions of labor. I do not approve of Miss Whitney's sale of her photo to a cigarette firm; but I do say that the act is infinitely more excusable than the practice among high-fly society women of paying for the publication of decollete portraits ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Max was not one in whose heart hatred could thrive, but every man should have a just sense of injury received, and no one should leave all vengeance to God. In Max's heart this sense was almost judicial. The court of his conscience had convicted Calli of an unforgivable crime, and he felt that it was his God-appointed duty ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... as to the letter of Knox's work. The unforgivable offence in him is, that he wished to set-up Priests over the head of Kings. In other words he strove to make the Government of Scotland a Theocracy. This indeed is properly the sum of his offences, the essential sin; for which what pardon ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
