"Unforgivable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 she believed ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... have it invaded by a young American who not only threw their pictures upon his canvas, but standing behind it, reproduced their eccentricities of speech for applauding Northern audiences, was a crime unforgivable ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... 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
... 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 loneliness of the uplands. ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... guilty in his eyes of the one unforgivable sin—they were ugly. Ugly alike in feature, dress, and bearing, they had for him absolutely no excuse for existence. He felt no bond of common humanity with them. In his lexicon what was not beautiful was ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... commission of a heinous crime. Tempted by the light and steady breeze, Nicol had given way to 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, ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... 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 ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... right of 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. But that she takes her radicalism seriously; ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... lad to say, at that age, and with Bob's 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 ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... 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 from ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... bishop, and his successor at Durdlebury might possibly have regarded that time-worn wonder of spiritual beauty merely as a stepping-stone to higher sacerdotal things. Such a man, he considered, having once come under the holy glamour of the cathedral, would have been guilty of the Unforgivable Sin. He had therefore saved two ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... 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
... 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
... shamed, 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 ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... includes all the lower ones, this of solemnly calling Chief Captain, and King by the Grace of God, a gentleman who is NOT so (and SEEMS to be so mainly by Malice of the Devil, and by the very great and nearly unforgivable indifference of Mankind to resist the Devil in that particular province, for the present), is the deepest fountain of human wretchedness, and the head mendacity capable of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... anything to be said for his, but then she didn't try to, it was so manifestly unforgivable. All she could do, faced by this bitter sorrow, was to leave Edward to God. Sternly, as he flung out of the room at last, unsoftened, untouchable, deaf to her even when she used the tone he had always obeyed ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... 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 along the wall beyond. A pink-cheeked moon ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... aright, How a mere bragging was my purity. But now to pardon askt, I must add thanks.— I had forgot Manasses! Even love Was driven forth of me by these loud mouths! Whether in death he waits for me, I know not; But it had been an unforgivable thing To have made this the end; not to have gone To death as unto spousals, leaving life As one sets down a work faithfully done, And knows oneself by service justified, Worthy of love, whether love be or not. But, soiled with detestation, to have ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... so 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 most—the thought that she had believed him dead and disgraced. ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... amusing. A boy is a boy, and if he's alive, he's very apt to be lively. Mother could tell you a few pranks that Leon has put us through; but they're only a boy's foolishness, they are not unusual or unforgivable. I've gone over the evidence your son brings, with extreme care, so has father. Both of us are quite familiar with common law. He has every proof you can possibly desire. You can't get around it, even if your heart wasn't worn out with rebellion, and you were not crazy to have the loving ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... 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 ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... is the unforgivable sin," he cried, smiling at her, and she hastily averted her eyes, having discovered an unnerving similarity ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... 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
... is one form of theft utterly unforgivable it is the theft by a writer of another writer's undeveloped ideas. Borrow the plot of Sir J. M. Barrie's last play, and you do him no harm; you only write yourself down a plagiarist. But listen to the scenario ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... more 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, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... 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
... God's heart and will. To blaspheme Him is 'the external symptom of a heart so radically and finally set against God that no power which God can consistently use will ever save it.' 'The sin, therefore, can only be the culmination of a long course of self-hardening and depraving.' It is unforgivable, because the soul which can recognise God's revelation of Himself in all His goodness and moral perfection, and be stirred only to hatred thereby, has reached a dreadful climax of hardness, and has ceased to be capable of being influenced ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... such enormous strides, when moved with a sudden desire to punish some lost soul, whom he might suspect of the heinous crimes of idleness or "cribbing"—both unforgivable offences in his calendar—that the aforesaid gown, I recollect, seemed frequently to float over his head—forming in conjunction with his square college cap, alias "mortar board," a regular "nimbus," like that surrounding the heads of the ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... 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 suspended, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and wind were more 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 all time. ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... said, "that I shall have to replace James. His defection is unforgivable, and he has misplaced ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... public or his private record is searched; and yet being clean of life will not avail him if he is either foolish or timid. He must walk warily and fearlessly, and while he should never brawl if he can avoid it, he must be ready to hit hard if the need arises. Let him remember, by the way, that the unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... age in the 4th century for persons to be baptized, in imitation of Christ. It is still the age preferred by the Baptists of Armenia. But it was often delayed until the deathbed, for the primitive idea that mortal sins committed after baptism were sins against the Holy Spirit and unforgivable, still influenced men, and survived among the Cathars up to the 14th century. The fathers, however, of the 4th century emphasized already the danger of deferring the rite until men fall into mortal sickness, when they may be unconscious or paralysed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... 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 from the goal as ever, the foolish old ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... right!" 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 least ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... taught that it is unforgivable not to walk erect, to talk in good English and in a soft ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... mysteriously sardonic. Young officers were warned kindly by their more experienced comrades 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
... could hear the crowd now very distinctly, egging one another on to commit the unforgivable offense and storm a woman's gates. They were shouting for the Gray Mahatma in chorus; it had grown into a chant already, and when a crowd once turns its collective yearnings into a single chant, it is only a matter of minutes before the gates go down, and blood flows, ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... 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, attributed the action of the Federation to a ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... refuse abruptly, being rather old-maidish about some things and not always ready with a smile for what I don't approve; but Narayan Singh interrupted in time to prevent the unforgivable offense of preaching my own code of ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... 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 ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... without comment. No 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
... which seems to call for disapproval. The reproving Censor is nominally entitled to complete immunity from punishment; but in practice he knows that he cannot count too much upon either justice or mercy. If he concludes that his words will be unforgivable, he hands in his memorial, and draws public attention forthwith by committing ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... or on fete-days;[5336] eating meat on 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
... these others, but only through the door of dreams, and was walking in a vision, a living man among the blessed dead. Would it be right for him to go with them into the heavenly city? Would it not be a deception, a desecration, a deep and unforgivable offense? The strange, confusing question had no reason in it, as he very well knew; for if he was dreaming, then it was all a dream; but if his companions were real, then he also was with them in reality, and if they had died then he must have died too. ...
— The Mansion • Henry Van Dyke
... 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 ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... confidence and just as much claim as the 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 ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... 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
... a clear idea how things were not to be done. There were Civil Service Reform Protectionists and Civil Service Reform Free Traders. There were a few politicians, who were discovered to be spoilsmen, the unforgivable sin, and quickly dismissed ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... 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 ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... called, were really refugees from British territory, for the most part deserters from corps that had mutinied, or outlaws who had participated in some unforgivable outrage; some, however, were clean-handed patriots, who, on principle, refused to bow to the decree of destiny, or to become peaceful subjects of the Queen. If the latter had remained quiet and inoffensive members of tribes or communities beyond our borders, ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... 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 ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... the 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 Shakespeare on the back of the menu, he doubted, might mean a couvert charge. But he was ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... 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 commit a ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... smiled complacently to 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 open ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the least, not have hinted that they were "little better than drivelling." But I do not think that when Jeffrey wrote these things, or when he actually perpetrated such almost unforgivable phrases as "stuff about dancing daffodils," he was speaking away from his sincere conviction. On the contrary, though partisanship may frequently have determined the suppression or the utterance, the emphasising or the softening, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... were pretty stanch in our Presbyterianism 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, ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... after denying that she had ever been 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 words ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... somewhat sordid example of cousin Alaric and Montgomery Hawkes in proposing for her hand because, in a few years, she would benefit by her uncle's will. Such a suggestion was not only unworthy of her—it was an unforgivable thing to say to him. He had always treated her with the greatest courtesy and consideration, and because he did not flaunt his gentility before her, she had taken unwarranted umbrage and had said something that raised an impassable ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... cannot 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
... 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 ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... 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 was bound ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... answered. "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 ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... rubbers of 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 she had ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... 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 might perhaps forget ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... a 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 lay on a stool at his hand. He took it up ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... 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 Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... principle of light. The bitter generalizations of this afterthought explain Sufficiently why it was excluded. To the later Strindberg—the man who wrote Advent, for instance—it must have seemed one of his most unforgivable offences. ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... 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. In the earlier years of their acquaintance Coleridge had ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... gusher. They had seen the same man borrow five dollars three months later to carry him over until he got a job. Riches were pouring out of the ground for the gambler who would take a chance. Thrift was a much-discredited virtue in Malapi. The one unforgivable vice was to ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... between them when I first saw the man, and it was doubly to be noted now. It was blood against blood as they faced each other. And it came to me that it was more than a personal duel. No wrong is so unforgivable as one from our own family whose secret weaknesses we know and share, and I felt that the repulsion in the woman's eyes was part for herself and part for her pride of race. Yet I was uncertain of the issue. The tie of blood is strong, ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... 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, she stared at him a moment in waking ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... through the fleshy 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 thrown ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... with 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
... spur to the blood-bay's flank and rode straight for the Great House. The boy stood staring after him; he did not notice the trickle of blood from the cut in his ear; he was not even conscious that he was still in life. He remembered only the unforgivable affront which this man had put upon him, the mark which was the infamous badge of the bondman, the slave. Quinton Edge! Ah, yes; he would remember that ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... 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
... must take his Master's degree, but he had no foreign language. Three terrible, wicked, unforgivable professors assured him that, if he could be in Germany six weeks during summer vacation, he could get enough German to pass the examination for the A.M. We believed them, and he went; though of all the partings we ever had, that was the very worst. Almost at the last ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... 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
... indeed 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 ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... 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 guest ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... thereto in his hand. He 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
... was nearly eleven.... A great heaviness of futility and despair weighed him down. He felt incapable of action. He felt that he had done some terrible deed—like striking his mother in the face—something unforgivable, unreversible, struck through and through with finality.... He felt more and more cold and brutal, with the sullenness of the criminal who can't undo his crime and won't ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 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 ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... rolled back to where they were before Brumaire by his biting comment that he had 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 an ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... 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 expressing an ardent desire to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... 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 ruins, or, ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... 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 ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... fool?" 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 ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... still they dwelt upon her. "How much more beautiful you are than any other woman I ever saw, Grizel!" he said. And it was not only true, but he knew it was true. What was Lady Pippinworth beside this glorious woman? what was her damnable coldness compared to the love of Grizel? Was he unforgivable, or was it some flaw in the making of him for which he was not responsible? With clenched hands he asked himself these questions. This love that all his books were about—what was it? Was it a compromise between affection and passion countenanced by God for the continuance ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... she will concede 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 ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... 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 ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... 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
... 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 in perfect ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... in the Constitution that the representatives from the West should never exceed in number those from the East,—a proviso which would not have been merely futile, for it would quite properly have been regarded by the West as unforgivable. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... been a major scandal. An epidemic of measles on the maternity floor of a modern hospital indicates the unforgivable medical sin—carelessness. It was hushed up as much as possible, pending the time when the top people could shake off the shock and recover their wits. The ultimate recovery of thirty babies was a tribute to ...
— I'll Kill You Tomorrow • Helen Huber
... 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, to absurd self-torture. ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... audible in the pauses. Then Hilda began to speak, steadily, calmly. You, too, would have forgotten her folly in what she found to say, as Arnold did; you, too, would have drawn faith and courage from her face. One would not be irreverent, but if this woman were convicted of the unforgivable sin she could explain it and ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... on their imperfections: some physical harshness or a general lack of personal delicacy—but a girl who was usher at Keith's was approached with a different attitude. One could tolerate qualities in an intimate valet that would be unforgivable in a mere acquaintance ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... friendship for Rodney never wavered. Like all the boys, he disliked Denham, who was a fat little man with a greasy smile and eyes like a pig's. He was said to be a miser, and a cheat, and a coward, which, in the eyes of the boys, was an unforgivable weakness. ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... 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
... 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 Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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? ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... that beneath that emotionless exterior there lay a subtle, indescribable something inadequately termed soul, with the supercilious superiority of the white he had ignored. Before he had been merely a puppet: the play actor of an inferior, conquered race. Injustice, horrible, unforgivable injustice, with this being one of the injured, had been done in the white man's sight; and instinctively he had come to him as the agent of Providence calculated to mete out retribution. That an irresponsible, relentless savage lurked ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... 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 to carry out ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... 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 seeing that she is there. That I should be able to see ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... 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 ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... eating-house, feeling the stigma of their contempt, yet afraid to go out into the street where his enemy might be waiting for him. Much of death and blood and recklessness "Town" had seen and condoned, but cowardice was the unforgivable sin. It balked the rude justice of these frontiersmen and tampered with their code, and Simpson knew that the ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... notified that the 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
... that's the unforgivable part of it," he cried in quick protest. "It's not only that I did you a great wrong, Tabby, but I did her a worse one. I coolly exploited something that I should have at least respected. I manipulated and used a woman I should have been more generous with. There ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... delicious bread and fish. When he was seven or eight this breakfast came at mid-day, but the older 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 ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... "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"
... 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 should be so ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... 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
... going 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 his dreams ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... of this fact did not lessen their animosity. As for the Boston people, they felt, as they faced the emissaries of their oppressors on that wintry night, the accumulated exasperation of generations of injustice, and perhaps a stern thrill of joy that now, at last, the final, unforgivable outrage ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... habitat—has 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 older formula—is in itself a process ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... become respectable and even 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
... the thing 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 the forties whose life had already held poverty ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... Levantine 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, and during ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... awakening; for he knew now how deep had been that slumber wherein he dreamily celebrated the superiority of "friendship"! The sleep-walker had wakened to bitter knowledge of love and life, finding himself a failure in both. He had made a burnt offering of his dreams, and the sacrifice had been an unforgivable hurt to Mary. All that was left for him was the work he had not chosen, but at least he would not fail in that, though it was indeed no more than "dust in his mouth." If there had been ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... me, too, that you'll forgive the absolutely unforgivable way I've acted all summer, and give me a chance to show that I can ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... the novel suffered, perhaps deservedly, for what was involved in these intentions—for its quality of unexpectedness in particular—that unforgivable sin in the critic's sight—the immediate precursor of 'Ethelberta' having been a purely rural tale. Moreover, in its choice of medium, and line of perspective, it undertook a delicate task: to excite interest in a drama—if such a dignified word may ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... 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 a sort of defensive partnership with Whipple's ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... 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 only for its ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... 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 ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... I forgot the new and unforgivable grudge I had against him now. I forgot his very hand across my mouth, even before he paid me the compliment of removing it. There was the only girl in all the world: I had eyes and brains for no one and for nothing ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... war; he 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 ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... made her angry with herself and with Burnaby that she should feel this way; be so moved by "primitive virtues." She detested puritanism greatly, and righteously, but so much so that she frequently mistook the most innocent fastidiousness for an unforgivable rigidity. "If they once do," she concluded, "once do fall in love with their husbands again, they're safe, you ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 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
... quivered. The unforgivable insult had been offered. Question the legitimacy of Mr. Brewster's parentage, knock Mr. Brewster down and walk on his face with spiked shoes, and you did not irremediably close all avenues to a peaceful settlement. But make a remark like that about ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... character, and that unless she behaved herself she could not stay. She tempered her behaviour somewhat during the first term, but it was no use. Like every dog with a bad name, all the mischief in the school was attributed to her. According to schoolgirl canons of loyalty it was an unforgivable sin to tell tales or "give people away," so Isabelle shouldered the iniquity of the whole school. The teachers ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... outrageous" people, 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 sympathetic comprehension of him. He ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... unforgivable," she read "you'll forgive me for not being here when you come down. 'Circumstances over which I have no control have called me away.' May we let it ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... 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
... man whom I loved—the man I afterwards married, Geoffrey Lovell—" for an instant her eyes glowed with a sudden radiance of remembrance—"and he and I became secretly engaged, in spite of the fact that I had already promised to marry Maurice. I expect you think that was unforgivable of me," she seemed to search the intent faces of her little audience as though challenging the verdict she might read therein; "but there was some excuse. I was very young, and at the time I promised myself ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... 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 system overwhelmed ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... of Gentiles. And then, too, he saw it against his own 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 trifling with ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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 ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... I forgive you. In the first place there is nothing to forgive. The unforgivable thing would have been the sacrifice of your happiness and your future to a dream and a memory. I hope you will be very happy. I am sure you will be, for Blanchard is, I know, a fine fellow. The best of fortune ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Basil Field were there, and we stood and 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 ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... admirable, yet 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
... my warmth is stirred—and yet I know that an angry old man out of Parliament, and that can do nothing but be angry, is a ridiculous animal." The war against America he described as "a wretched farce of fear daubed over with airs of bullying." War at any time was, in his eyes, all but the unforgivable sin. In 1781, however, his hatred had lightened into contempt. "The Dutch fleet is hovering about," he wrote, "but it is a pickpocket war, and not a martial one, and I never attend to petty larceny." As for mobs, his attitude ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... to me, the unforgivable sin," came Dick's reply. "It would not be playing the game—for her. I cannot conceive the fairness, nor the satisfaction, of holding the woman one loves a moment longer than she loves to be held. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... I spoke, Clarkson," he apologized humbly. "It certainly seemed to have slipped my memory that I myself—I can't think how I managed to make such hideous, unforgivable mistakes." ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... affairs pained Prince Trevannion excessively—hours on end of gorging uninspired cooking and guzzling too-sweet wine and watching ex-slave performers whose acts were either brutal or obscene and frequently both, and, more unforgivable, stupidly so. The ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper |
