I would have given the world to take back what I had said; but a word once spoken, who can recapture it?

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet

Novel (1886), Kidnapped, ch. 24 “The Flight in the Heather: The Quarrel”
    (Source)

This chapter was originally published in Young Folks Paper, Vol. 29, No. 815 (1886-07-10).