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Maze   Listen
noun
Maze  n.  
1.
A wild fancy; a confused notion. (Obs.)
2.
Confusion of thought; perplexity; uncertainty; state of bewilderment.
3.
A confusing and baffling network, as of paths or passages; an intricacy; a labyrinth. "Quaint mazes on the wanton green." "Or down the tempting maze of Shawford brook." "The ways of Heaven are dark and intricate, Puzzled with mazes, and perplexed with error."
4.
A complex and confusing system or set of rules that causes bwilderment; as, a maze of environemntal regulations.
Synonyms: Labyrinth; intricacy. See Labyrinth.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Maze" Quotes from Famous Books



... her." The war was over; he had been ordered from the column when his wound had broken afresh, and in a maze of fever he had been irresistibly impelled toward Linden Row. "I'll take her ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... sat in her own snug little den, her toy ruby spaniel on a cushion at her feet, her lap full of samples of white, shimmering crepes and satins. She fingered them absent-mindedly, her mind caught in a maze of wedding intricacies and dates, and whirled between an ultimate choice between October and June of the ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer

... The President rose and walked over to the window, looking out at the sky-scraper apartments which loomed across what had once been the Mall. He was trying to find the dwarfed spire of Washington's Monument in the tangled maze of stone. ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch

... maze of walls that it was difficult to tell where the road ran for more than a score or so of yards ahead. But at last I traced its sweep close by where a great single-slab altar stood on its massive ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... cries, as reached far over the prairie, and might have appalled the stoutest heart. The picture that was soon offered to the eye was not less terrific than the sounds which assailed the ear. Hundreds of savages, in their war-paint, armed, and in a crowded maze, arose as it might be by one effort, seemingly out of the earth, and began to leap and play their antics amid the trees. The sudden spectacle of a crowd of such beings, nearly naked, frightfully painted, and tossing their arms here and there, while each yelled like a demon, was enough ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... food to a terrible monster, the Minotaur. When the mournful tribute was to be paid for the third time, the king's son Theseus accompanied it to Crete. On his arrival there, Ariadne, the daughter of Minos interested herself in him. The Minotaur dwelt in the labyrinth, a maze from which no one could extricate himself who had once got in. Theseus desired to deliver his native city from the shameful tribute. For this purpose he had to enter the labyrinth into which the monster's booty was ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner

... descended, then another, which I descended also, and found a glass door at the end, on opening which I entered a hall well known to me: we were in the ducal chancery. I opened a window and could have got down easily, but the result would have been that we should have been trapped in the maze of little courts around St. Mark's Church. I saw on a desk an iron instrument, of which I took possession; it had a rounded point and a wooden handle, being used by the clerks of the chancery to pierce parchments for the purpose of affixing the leaden seals. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... teach," she said; "I don't understand it myself. I shouldn't have the least idea what to say to anyone about the Bible lesson." And then they all turned and stared in a maze of surprise and perplexity at ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden

... to the ground and buried his face in the cold dust. His thoughts were jumbled in a maze of pain and sorrow. He could neither pray nor think. Gasping, dying a thousand deaths, he lay there groveling in the dust. But at last he rose, dashed the dust from his eyes and again faced the sky. He would ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow

... view, he set out, nor did he pay much attention to the country that lay before him. After he had trotted along several days on his horse, he suddenly lost his way in a maze of rocks, from which he was unable to discover any egress. Finally he met an old peasant who showed him a way out, leading past a water-fall. He started to give him a few coins by way of thanks, but ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... enabled them to repudiate their debts. Jay, Marshall, and their like, thought that they could impose the same moral standard upon the states as upon private persons; they were unable to do so, but in making the attempt they involved the American judicial system in a maze of difficulties whose gravity, I fear, can hardly be exaggerated. Before entering upon this history, however, I must say a word touching the nature of ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams

... chatted gayly, while the flickering of the blaze Led the shadows on their faces in a wild and devious maze; And among them, one I noted, unto whom the rest gave place, Which was token he was foremost in the fight or ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis

... thou nothing? Such thou art as when The woodman winding westward up the glen At wintry dawn, when o'er the sheep-track's maze The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze, Sees full before him, gliding without tread, An image with a glory round its head: This shade he worships for its golden hues, And makes (not knowing) that which ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various

... kitchen when they went in with the one candle. Because the kitchen was whitewashed, but the dining-room was dark wood from floor to ceiling, and across the ceiling there were heavy black beams. There was a muddled maze of dusty furniture—the breakfast-room furniture from the old home where they had lived all their lives. It seemed a very long time ago, and a very ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit

... laws the widest wanderers bind, Copies creation in his forming mind, Sees in his hall the total semblance rise, And mimics there the labors of the skies. There student youths without their tubes behold The spangled heavens their mystic maze unfold, And crowded schools their cheerful chambers grace With all the spheres that cleave the vast ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... heart is beating in time with mine, And Cupid's rhyme rings louder—clearer, As I draw you nearer, my love divine! In the twilight dim we have found love's tether, And are linked together, no more to part; While the white stars swing in a maze of glory, To hear the ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles

... notice. He was talking again very fast, but incoherently. Hampden, Pym, Fairfax, Falkland—the great names clattered past every now and then, like horsemen, through a maze of words, but with no perceptible order or purpose. The phrases concerning them came to nothing; and though there were apparently many voices speaking, nothing intelligible ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... master of the house had enveloped the lad's thoughts with an impenetrable maze. The day before Jack had come on a flying visit from Harvard, but even he was unable to free Ernest's soul from the obsession of ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck

... wrong. As soon as he learned, at the end of about twelve months, that Horne was coming out again, he decamped with everything he could lay his hands on; and from the position of affairs you may guess that he made a very good haul. Well, poor Horne found himself in a maze of difficulties; in fact, his clerk's fraud ruined him. Everything that could be sold or mortgaged had to go to the settlement, and when his affairs had been finally put straight, there was only a little bit left, that had been so settled upon his wife that no one could touch ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden

... he looked for the source of this dismaying interruption. He recognized with a start one of the past season's debutantes whose mamma had spread a maze of traps and labyrinths for him—Miss Sybil Hawker-Sponge of New York, Newport, Tuxedo ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie

... when Slone climbed to a cedared plateau that rose for a whole day's travel, and then split into a labyrinthine maze of canyons. There were trees, grass, water. It was a high country, cool and wild, like the uplands he had left. For days he camped on Wildfire's trail, always relentlessly driving him, always watching for the trap he hoped to find. And the red stallion ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... control of even the most basic decisions made about the essential services of government, such as schools, welfare, roads, and even garbage collection. And they're right. A maze of interlocking jurisdictions and levels of government confronts average citizens in trying to solve even the simplest of problems. They don't know where to turn for answers, who to hold accountable, who to praise, who to blame, who to vote for or against. The main reason for this is the overpowering ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan

... dreary life is passing — and we move amid its maze, And we grope along together, half in darkness, half in light; And our hearts are often burdened by the mysteries of our ways, Which are never all in shadow and ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)

... it, and all the time gazing at Summerhay, who, dipping his sculls gently, gazed at her—all this was like a voyage down some river of dreams, the very fulfilment of felicity. There is a degree of happiness known to the human heart which seems to belong to some enchanted world—a bright maze into which, for a moment now and then, we escape and wander. To-day, he was more than ever like her Botticelli "Young Man," with his neck bare, and his face so clear-eyed and broad and brown. Had she really had a life with another man? And only a year ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... threaded its way through the maze of traffic in the city. Presently it drew up before a huge, ugly factory that covered a square block on the upper west side, near the river. Ward and his sister jumped out of the tonneau and entered the building. They found themselves in a busy office, consisting of a single ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... lightly on mine, we wandered about those gardens, the saintly lady and myself; her mind dwelling, maybe, on memories of that one classic love-adventure and the part she came nigh to playing in the history of Europe, while mine was lost in a maze of vulgar love-adventures, several of which came nigh to making me play a part in the ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... as if they were a vast pack of human hounds—as indeed they were, and as bloodthirsty; but they were at this disadvantage: everything about them was new, while to the fugitives, especially to one, the maze of streets was familiar, and their ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... till his classes were over and a mouthful of luncheon swallowed before he betook himself, in a swift droschky along the bank of the river, till he came to the bridge across which lay the Student Quarter. Thence he proceeded, on foot, through the maze of ugly little streets, wherein the spring sunshine only showed up all the more pitilessly their meanness, and filth, and ugliness. Once at the house in which the brother and sister lodged, he went up the rickety stairs unheeding any ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... his graceful way, spreading out his hands in mock humility. Etta did not answer him. For the moment she could see no outlet to this maze of trouble, and yet she was conscious of not fearing De Chauxville so much as she ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... Defoe was thoroughly master of his subject; he had read every history that he could lay his hands on, and his connexion with King William had guided him to the mainsprings of political action, and fixed in his mind clear principles for England's foreign policy. Such a mass of facts and such a maze of interests would have encumbered and perplexed a more commonplace intellect, but Defoe handled them with experienced and buoyant ease. He had many arts for exciting attention. His confinement in Newgate, from which the first number ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... was discharged from the army with that lung wound of mine. We were driving back in the car from some munition works near Baling, and the chauffeur took a wrong turning near Wormwood Scrubs and got into a maze ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... as he was, and Hawke and Tiddler, both hard as nails, were puffed and blown before they had run very far; and so confusing was the maze of craters and battered trench-lines that Dennis suddenly realised that he ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry

... equipment that was already there, adding only what we absolutely had to—small things, a few strands of wire, a tiny relay, things that can be hidden in out of the way places. After all, he has his own alarm system in the maze of tunnels, and we've deliberately kept away from his detecting devices. He knows about the rats and ignores them; they're part of the environment. But we don't dare use anything that would tip him off to our knowledge of his whereabouts. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... to lead the way out, choosing a winding path through the maze of tables. Not until they were traversing the great gold and crimson lounge, with its ornate furnishings, did Tabs catch up with him to ask his question. "How did you know about my engagement and whether it ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... Cromwel, as soon as he missed him, sent all ways after him, with a promise of a great reward to any that should bring him alive or dead. When Mr. Thoroughgood saw his friend Lindsey come into his yard, his horse and himself much tired, in a sort of a maze, he said, 'How now, colonel? We hear there is likely to be a battle shortly: what, fled from your colours?' 'A battle,' said the other; 'yes there has been a battle, and I am sure the king is beaten. ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... rest with the Gypsies. I must be alone. Soon I left the camp and returned to London, where I took a suite of rooms in a house not far from Eaton Square—though to me London was a huge meaningless maze of houses clustered around Primrose Court—that horrid, fascinating, intolerable core of pain. Into my lungs poured the hateful atmosphere of the city where Winifred had perished; poured hot and stifling as sand-blasts of the desert. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... persevered till all had left the room except Richard, who quietly took the crimson tangle on his wrists, turned and twisted, opened passages for the winder, and by the magic of his dexterous hands, had found the clue to the maze, so that all was proceeding well, though slowly, when the study door opened, and Harry's voice was heard in a last good night to his father. Mary's eyes looked wistful, and one misdirection of her winder tightened an obdurate loop ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... out towards the Carracks, which are three points of rock lying just within the main barrier of Menawhidden, where it breaks up towards its western end into a maze of islets. While I pulled, the Vicar knelt on the bottom-boards and made fast the stone to ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... there was reason for my doubts, but he confided to me that to find these Coquina hills, was like traversing a maze. Doubling to and fro among forests and swamps, he insisted, was the only possible path of access to the undiscovered Coquina hills of Florida. Otherwise, he argued, these Coquina hills would long ago have ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers

... right. When at length they comprehended its apparition, they looked at one another in complete bewilderment. Miss Emma began to cry; but Flor took it as only a fresh complication of this world, that was becoming for her feet a maze of intricacy. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... heavy-leaved flower is withered and refreshed by sun and dews. Surely, the youth ceased not to listen, and oblivion of cares and aught other in this life, save that hidden luting and piping, pillowed his drowsy head. At last there was a pause, and it seemed every maze of music had been wandered through. Opening his eyes hurriedly, as with the loss of the music his own breath had gone likewise, he beheld a garden golden with the light of lamps hung profusely from branches and twigs of trees by the glowing cheeks of fruits, apple and grape, pomegranate ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... mental gymnastics could explain him the fact. Were this real, then was his steamboat adventure a dream, the revelation of the ring a delusion, and his water-stained haversack a phantom. He wandered clewless in a maze of mystery. Nor was this the first paradox he had encountered since overleaping the brick wall. He began to question whether supernaturalism had not teen too hastily dismissed ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... half-poised for flight, listening, bending, swaying, whirling, faster, swifter, they broke into "The Grand Spectacular Ballet of the Fairies," as the advertisements of the opera phrased it. Faster, swifter still, noiselessly they spun, here, there, in, out, in bewildering maze until, as the red and yellow lights cast upon the stage changed into green, their footsteps slackened, faltered, their heads, like tired flowers, drooped, and each on its mossy bank of green,—the fairies sank ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin

... little tables. He picked up the slender volume, and holding it, approached the crimson-shaded lamp. The fiery tint deepened on the cover, and contorted gold letters sprawling all over it in an intricate maze, came out, gleaming redly. "Thorns and Arabesques." He read it twice, "Thorns and Ar . . . . . . . ." The other's book of verses. He dropped it at his feet, but did not feel the slightest pang of jealousy or indignation. What did he know? . . . What? ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... is ready, and the maze of love Looks for the treaders; everywhere is wove Wit and new mystery; read, and Put in practice, to understand And know each wile, Each hieroglyphic of a kiss or smile; And do it to the full; reach High in your own conceit, and some way teach Nature ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... glide up and down—seemed to be writhing in pain. Near the end of the swamp an open hillside rose before us, and upon its snowy slopes the sun showed thousands of rabbit-runs intersecting one another in a maze of tracks that made one think of a vast gray net cast over ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... that I could almost fancy we had been transported to one of the floating cities of Fairyland. The rapid motion, too, of our ship, in what appeared a dead calm, added much to the magical effect of the scene. A light but steady breeze urged her along with considerable velocity through a maze of ponds and canals, which, from the immense quantity of ice that surrounded them, were calm and unruffled as the surface of ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... gazed upon one another, lost in a maze of extravagant surmise, a riotous rush of feet took the staircase by storm, and the door crashed open before two hilarious Irishmen, of whom the spokesman wore the reddest thatch of hair it has ever been my lot to cast eyes on. The other, ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... It was not very easy to find the father's hut at all; he might have been a priest of Reformation days, so hidden and secluded was his dwelling, and after partaking of the old man's hospitality, it was well-nigh impossible to find your way out of the maze again. As we approached, the volume of smoke that poured out of the chimney assured us our friend was holding high revel, and sure enough, when we opened the door, the atmosphere that rushed out was like that of an oven, ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt

... maze of perplexities, his tense, agonized soul sought in vain for some solution, some conclusion. At times he sat in his lodge and brooded over these things till he seemed wrought up almost to madness, till his form trembled with excitement, and ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... now I had divined his errand. He was at too great pains to cover his tracks. The trail had plunged among a maze of slender cotton-woods, and twisted so that I was sore troubled to keep him in view. Always he increased his gait and I followed breathlessly. There were few cabins hereabouts; it was a lonely place to be so near to town, very ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... thickets and lost in the forest and the night, came the young goddess, the daughter of Light and Beauty, to take the sightless poet by the hand and lead him up the heavenly heights. Sometimes intellect seems sightless and wanders lost in the maze. Then comes the heart to lead man along the upward path. For even in its dreams the heart hears the sound of invisible music. Oft before reason's eye the heart unveils the Vision Splendid. The soul ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... Dryden like his age was conscious that new currents of feeling and opinion were sweeping him from the old moorings of mankind. But he shrank in terror from the wide ocean over whose waters he drifted. In religion he was a rationalist, a sceptic, whether he would or no; but he recoiled from the maze of "anxious thoughts" which spread before him, of thoughts "that in endless circles roll without a centre where to fix the soul," and clung to the Church that would give him, if not peace, at least quiet. In politics he was as much a rationalist as in religion, ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... way through a maze of boats, ropes, and curious-shaped steel structures which the architect of the ship seemed to have tacked on at the last moment in a spirit of sheer exuberance. Above him towered one of the funnels, before ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... Hecker was one athirst for God from the first dawn of its conscious being. Upon Him, its Creator and Source, it never lost hold, and never ceased to cry out for Him with longing and aspiration, even during that bitter and protracted period of his youth when his mind, entangled in the maze of philosophic subjectivism, seemed in danger of rejecting theism altogether. But the underpinning of his faith, so far as that professed to be Christian and to come by hearing—to have an intellectual basis, that ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... only her quarry. For the rest she left the road to her pony. With slack reins she leaned forward, carrying her featherweight over the horn of the saddle. The woods meant nothing to her. The maze of tree-trunks as they sped by conveyed no threat of danger. She was concerned only with the obviously limping beast which was to provide venison for the pot for the next two ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... Theodore blessed Rick, and the livery stable, and the man who fifty years before had taken for his motto: "Learn everything you possibly can about everything that can be learned," as with skillful hand he guided the fidgety span carefully and safely through the maze of cart and carriage and omnibus wheels that lined the streets. And even then and there he laughed a half-nervous, half-amused laugh, as he passed the Euclid House, and saw one of the waiters looking out at him from a dining-room window; at the thought that that ...
— Three People • Pansy

... finding a house of this kind in such a situation? Who would have expected, on passing through that mouldy wooden gateway in the wall, to find himself in a courtyard that recalled the exquisite proportions and traceries of the Alhambra—to be able to wander thence under fretted arches through a maze of marble-paved Moorish chambers, great and small, opening upon each other at irregular angles with a deliciously impromptu effect? The palace had been built regardless of expense. It was originally laid out, Keith explained, by one of the old ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... Like nothing I ever saw before, or hope ever to see again. A crooked three-acre lot built over with rotten structures that harbored the very dregs of humanity. Ordinary enough to look at from the street, but pierced by a maze of foul alleys, in the depths of which skulked the tramp and the outcast thief with loathsome wrecks that had once laid claim to the name of woman. Every foot of it reeked with incest and murder. Bandits' Roost, Bottle Alley, were names synonymous with ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... lighted by three glass doors which stood wide open on to a verandah or rather loggia running its brick arches along the garden side of the house. It was really a magnificent garden: smooth green lawns and a gorgeous maze of flower-beds in the foreground, displayed around a basin of dark water framed in a marble rim, and in the distance the massed foliage of varied trees concealing the roofs of other houses. The town might have been ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... two poems which are as famous as any in our language. Perhaps the rumour of his conceits has frightened his reader. It must be granted they are now and then daunting; there is a poem on "Princess Louisa Drawing" which is a very maze; the little paths of verse and fancy turn in upon one another, and the turns are pointed with artificial shouts of joy and surprise. But, again, what a reader unused to a certain living symbolism will be apt to take for a careful and cold conceit is, ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell

... an hour the hillside was still a maze—a maze of bodies of men wandering they knew not whither, crossing and recrossing, circling, stopping and returning on their stumbles, slipping on smooth rock-faces, breaking shins on rough boulders, treading with hobnailed ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens

... he showed his judgment and his knowledge of hunter-craft; for, had he grown impatient and taken a wider range to find the trail, he might have fallen upon his last-made tracks, and thus have brought himself into a regular maze. ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... Screw was out, yes—but Mr. Scratch would accompany him. No trouble at all. Better "go around right off," as Mr. Barker would probably go to Newport by the boat that evening. So they went "around right away," and indeed it was a circular journey. Down one elevator, through a maze of corridors, round crowded corners, through narrow streets, Claudius ploughing his way through billows of curbstone brokers, sad and gay, messenger-boys, young clerks, fruit vendors, disreputable-looking millionaires and ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... interesting subject I am graciously given the benefit of it to the extent of some French or German word the meaning of which, Igali has discovered, I understand. During the afternoon we wander through the intricacies of a yew-shrub maze, where a good-sized area of impenetrably thick vegetation has been trained and trimmed into a bewildering net-work of arched walks that almost exclude the light, and Igali pauses to favor me with the information that this maze is the favorite trysting place of Slavonian nymphs and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... the supposed parasites to which the shell might be attributed, since this shell appears not to be a Beetle's? The reader would hardly suspect how my slight acquaintance with entomology was unsettled by this inextricable maze of contradictory facts. But patience! We ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... day—the ragged cushions, the raveled tassels, the limp-swinging shutters, and, glimmering in the midst, wild and disheveled, herself in all the little wavy mirrors. She sat looking out at the maze of moving lights and figures without seeing them, intent on an idea that was growing clearer, larger, moment ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... in the warm May night, and had walked a little way up the steep flank of Lycabettos till they reached a wooden bench near which were a few small fir trees. Somewhere among these trees there was hidden a nightingale, which sang with intensity to Athens spread out below, a small maze of mellow lights and of many not inharmonious voices. Even in the night, and at a distance, they felt the smiling intimacy of the little city they loved. Its history was like a living thing dwelling among the shadows, hallowed and hallowing, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... canter, and wondered more and more as we rode at the solitude, where so few hours before there had been such a deafening roar. We plunged straight into the maze of narrow streets, and then suddenly, before we were aware of it, our mounts were swerving and snorting in mad terror! For corpses dotted the ground in ugly blotches, the corpses of men who had met death in a dozen different ways. Lying in exhausted attitudes, they covered ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... two conferences, and Ned speedily lost himself in a maze of figures. His nimble fancy was recalcitrant to mental discipline, and he excused his inattention with the plea that he had ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... that the political clothes of Brother Jonathan fitted him admirably, and allowed that he can and does think straighter (c'est le bonheur des hommes quand ils pensent juste) than we can in the maze of our unnatural and antiquated complications; he wholly admired the natural, unselfconscious manner of the American woman; he saw that the wage-earner lived more comfortably than in Europe; he noted that wealthy Americans were ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... surprise and satisfaction, he ceased rowing, and, as the boat came to a stand-still on the glassy surface of this subterranean sea, he uttered an exclamation of wonder, and looked around him in a maze of doubt and admiration. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various

... purple tissue splits if you look at it, and I got it all for three dollars. Felicia made it up mostly with glue, I think, and I will be a dream in it—a dream that dissolves easily. Let's go shopping." As she thus led me into the maze of dishonest trousseau-buying, Bess ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... villages; but these, it is said, were afterwards killed by the Spaniards. The greater number attempted to reach the vessels at the mouth of the river. Of the latter was Le Moyne, who, despite his former failure, was toiling through the maze of tangled forests when he met a Belgian soldier with the woman described as Laudonniere's maid-servant, the latter wounded in the breast, and, urging their flight towards the vessels, they fell in with other fugitives, among them Laudonniere himself. As they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... Tom! Put on your Linnen first! Here! (continu'd he to his Servant) Bid 'em light some Faggots here! For, tho' 'tis Summer, the Linnen may want Airing, and there may be some ugly cold Vapours about the Room, which a good Fire will draw away. Miles was still in a Maze! But the Fire being well kindled, the Gentleman himself took a Shirt, and air'd it; commanding one of his Servants to help Tom to undress. Miles was strangely out o' Countenance at this, and told his Friend, that he was of Age and Ability to pull off his own Cloaths; ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... nasty, but I got well. Instinct had "indicated" tansy to Caspar Hauser. He refused the panacea dumbly, and made, still feebly, for the parsley patch. I let him go a yard or more, when, fearing lest he might lose himself in the maze of luxuriant herbage, I dragged him tenderly back by the tail to ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... to sleep, Conn sat alone in reverie deep, And saw before him in a maze The mute procession of his days, In gloom and glamour wending fast— His heart a-hungering for the past— Again he leapt, a tender boy, To greet his sire with eager joy, When he came over the wide North Sea, Enriched ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie

... at one of the little marble-topped tables, was in too great maze and exaltation of spirit and of senses to be conscious of its glare and babel, even of its beauty. He sat so very still that his neighbours, with the instinctive aversion of the human creature to what is too remote from its ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the inward man with the outward, as he looks around his congregation, all whose secret sins are known to him." But Hawthorne does not let this hissing serpent either rout him or poison him. He is determined to visit the ways of life, to find the exit of the maze, and so tries every opening, unalarmed. The serpent is in all: it proves to be a deathless, large-coiled hydra, encircling the young explorer's virgin soul, as it does that of every pure aspirer, and trying to drive him back on himself, with a sting in his heart that shall curse him with a ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... issues, and engages other than literary interests. And thus, by easy and natural corollaries, Baudelaire has been made a subject of appeal not only to judgment, but even to conscience. At first sight, therefore, he appears surrounded either by an intricate moral maze, or by a no less troublesome confusion of contradictory theories from opposing camps rather than schools of criticism. But no author—no dead author—is more accessible, or more communicable in his way; his poems, his theories, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... he left Barry in a maze of wonder and gratitude. That the battalion were glad to have him back, that all the old feeling of latent hostility of which he had been conscious was gone, and that they felt that they really needed him stirred ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... My fevered eyes are weak To look into this glowing maze of fire With vision. All the ramparts of the world Reel round me. I have scoffed God all my days, Believing pain—your province of the world— Proof of His non-existence. And you come Crying His glory, testifying His faith, Exhorting me to seek ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke

... than in those of a mean-spirited knave whom I despised? Besides I might one day, somehow or other, make it up to thee—but I could not to him. But was it sin, Richard?—tell me that. I have thought and thought over the matter until my mind is maze. Thou seest it was my lord marquis's business, not mine, and thou hadst ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... repulsed—put aside, so she took it—and by one of the kindest and most generous of men! She moved along the terrace in a maze, seeing nothing, biting her lip to keep back the angry tears. All that obscure need, that new stirring of moral life within her—which had found issue in this little futile advance towards a man who had once loved her and could now, it seemed, only despise and dislike, her—was ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... powerful, the East is obstinately unreceptive of western influences, and more than once it has taken its captors captive. Therefore, while, for the sake of convenience and to avoid entanglement in the very ill-known maze of what is called "Hellenistic" history, I shall not attempt to follow the consecutive course of events after 330 B.C., I propose to add an epilogue which may prepare readers for what was destined to come out of Western Asia ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth

... is the child of sin who, being born for the service of the devil, cares not what villainy he does in the world. His wit is always in a maze, for his courses are ever out of order; and while his will stands for his wisdom, the best that falls out of him is a fool. He betrays the trust of the simple, and sucks out the blood of the innocent. His breath is the fume of blasphemy, and his tongue the firebrand ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... was to distinguish all the works of his mature years, is already manifest in this effort of his boyhood. It seems to foretell the sweep of the Virgin's drapery in the Sistine Madonna, and the delightful maze of curves flowing together and away again and returning upon themselves which outline the face, the arms, hands, and draperies of St. Catherine in the National Gallery. You will find it well worth a little trouble to look long and ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway

... imposing crash succeeded this order, though not before several heavy blows had been struck into the massive mast itself. As before, the sea received the tumbling maze of spars, rigging, and sails; the vessel surging at the same instant, from its recumbent position, and rolling far ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... the yellow, stale lights of a third-rate street of shops. She heard Olive remarking on her sunburned face and arms; she became aware of the renewed inflammation in her blistered arms; she heard her own curious voice answering. Everything was in a maze. To the beat of the car, while the yellow blur of the shops passed over her eyes, she repeated: 'Two hundred and forty ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... Harley she had been in a maze, a whirl. Wrapped in a cloud of fear, she had reached out blindly through the awful fog of it and seized upon the dear fact of Richard. By Richard she held on; by Richard she sustained herself. She entertained no quaking doubts as to his loyalty; loyal herself, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... Wilkes ministers had surrounded themselves with a maze of perplexity. Actions were brought by the printers, and others arrested under the general warrant, to recover damages for false imprisonment, and a verdict was universally given in their favour. These actions were brought against the messengers: Wilkes had nobler ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... bought back from the Government by their proper owners, was one (whose Order, for selfish reasons, I prefer not to specify), situated in the maze of narrow streets between the Piazza Navona and the Piazza Colonna; this, however, may be said of the Order, that it is one which, although little known in Italy, had several houses in England up ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson

... the formation of a special committee to sit on suffrage in the House, the President was doing the smallest thing, to be sure, that could be done, but he was doing something. This was a distinct advance. It was our task to press on until all the maze of Congressional machinery had been used to exhaustion. Then there would be nothing left to do but ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... toward New Orleans and the promised blow. Had some fool or knave or sickly conscience among the motley that was conspiring with him turned coward or been bought? It was possible. Burr might be betrayed, but hardly Lewis Rand. That was a guarded maze to which Mr. Jefferson could ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... intricate as to render it difficult to find the way out, and sometimes in. Of these structures the most remarkable were those of Egypt and of Crete. The Egyptian to the E. of Lake Moeris, consisted of an endless number of dark chambers, connected by a maze of passages into which it was difficult to find entrance; and the Cretan, built by Daedalus, at the instance of Minos, to imprison the Minotaur, out of which one who entered could not find his way out again unless by means of a skein of thread. It was by means of this, provided him ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... aviation field and flew over Troy—Kum Kale—Sedil Bar, to the old English position. The flight was beautiful, and the islands of Imbros and Tenedos were as if floating on the clear sea. In the Bay of Imbros we could plainly see the English ships. Outside of the usual maze of trenches we could plainly see the old English camps. Close to Thalaka there was an English U-Boat and a Turkish cruiser, both sunk, and lying partly out of water. At Sedil Bar, a number of steamers and a French battleship ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke

... syringas, and laburnums. This was the guard of the cliffs. On the other side was the high garden wall, over which we caught dissolving views of dormer-windows, of gabled roofs, vine-clad walls, and a maze of peach and pear blossoms. This was not precisely the kind of lane through which one hurried. One needed neither to be sixteen nor even in love to find it a delectable path, very agreeable to the eye, very suggestive to the imaginative faculty, exceedingly satisfactory ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... maze of hazel bushes with much less dignity than haste. Two men sped by an instant ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon

... I. Like hell's grim furies, dreams of dreadful shape Pursue me still. My better genius strives With the fell projects of a dark despair. My wildered subtle spirit crawls through maze On maze of sophistries, until at length It gains a yawning precipice's brink. O Roderigo! should I e'er in him Forget the father—ah! thy deathlike look Tells me I'm understood—should I forget The father—what were ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... moments the mind of Claire was strongly excited and in a perfect maze of confusion. The blood mounted to his face, and he felt a rising and choking sensation in his throat. Wisely he forbore any answer until he had regained his self-possession. Then, with a coolness that surprised ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur

... which is spread over the thatch, as each piece measures about fifty yards. When this work is in progress in half the cottages of the village, the road has a curious look, and one has to pick one's steps through a maze of twisting ropes that pass from the dark doorways on either ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... laws from insult to protect, To cherish peace, to cultivate respect; The rich from wanton cruelty restrain, To smooth the bed of penury and pain; The hapless vagrant to his rest restore, The maze of fraud, the haunts of theft explore; The thoughtless maiden, when subdued by art, To aid, and bring her rover to her heart; Wild riot's voice with dignity to quell, Forbid unpeaceful passions to rebel, Wrest from revenge the meditated harm, For ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... door, and plunged into the bright daylight. Up the alley we tore, out into the street, across it and down another, then through a perfect maze of by-lanes. Tom led and I followed behind, panting and clutching my bursting pockets lest the coin should tumble out. Still we tore on, although not a footstep followed us, nor had we seen a soul since Tom struck my assailant down. ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... expected to read a great deal in the hammock, but often the book slipped unnoticed to the moss, and she lay looking upward at the little discs of blue sky visible through the checkering maze of green leaves. One afternoon, deserted by the latest piece of fictional literature, marked in plain figures on the paper cover that protected the cloth binding, one dollar and a half, but sold at the department stores for one dollar and eight ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... which she did not awake till daylight. On the evening of the day on which Valentine had learned of the flight of Eugenie and the arrest of Benedetto,—Villefort having retired as well as Noirtier and d'Avrigny,—her thoughts wandered in a confused maze, alternately reviewing her own situation and the events she ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the teaching of Muggleton, we find ourselves in a tangled maze of nonsense far too inconsequential to allow of any intelligible account being given of it. Jacob Boehm's mistiest dreams are clearness itself compared with the English prophet's utterances. Others might talk of the divine cause or the divine power or the divine ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... were further cumbered by a whitened driftwood frieze over which the men must clamber warily, clawing for a foothold on the great battered trunks, or smashing through a tangle of brittle limbs. At times they were stopped altogether by a maze of washed-up timber no man could struggle through, and the axes were plied for an hour or more before ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... climbing, plant common to the New Zealand bush. It grows in long thread-like tendrils, as thick as whip cord, armed with myriads of sharp hooked thorns turned backwards. The tendrils grow hundreds of feet in length, stretching from branch to branch, and often forming a maze or web extending over a large area. A person getting entangled in their embraces rarely escapes with a whole skin, and never with a ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth

... sides of the lonely gorge, and sought to pierce the maze of the trail ahead. But as it wound in and out, following the windings of the defile, he could not see far in ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker

... but as I passed its threshold I heard her move across the inner room, and then a bell rang, away down in the lower part of the house. There is no describing the feeling that was in me when, with the sound of that uncanny signal in my ears, I opened the door into the grizzly maze of passageways. ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain

... I must be frugal or my provisions would never hold out; so, after a light lunch, I began to make my way slowly to the beach through the tangled maze of trees and vines. Coming in sight of the blue waters I lay down to sleep again and awoke when the stars were out. The moon would not go down till late, but as there was a deep, broad shadow cast by the ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... some damned arrow pierced him When he escaped last night from the Dark Tower. He never spoke of it when first he reached us; And, suddenly, he swooned. He is asleep Now. He must not be wakened. They will take Some time yet ere they thread our forest-maze. ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... whenever they found it inconvenient to nourish his extravagance with further supplies. Notwithstanding these accumulated oppressions, he still persevered with fortitude in his endeavours to disentangle himself from this maze of misery. To these he was encouraged by a letter which about this time he received from his sister, importing, that she had good reason to believe the real will of her father had been suppressed for ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... really one of those singular chances which sometimes happen against all ordinary calculations; or whether Mannering, bewildered amid the arithmetical labyrinth and technical jargon of astrology, had insensibly twice followed the same clue to guide him out of the maze; or whether his imagination, seduced by some point of apparent resemblance, lent its aid to make the similitude between the two operations more exactly accurate than it might otherwise have been, it is impossible to guess; but the impression upon ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... not upbraid me; Nothing is left me now but shame or death. I fear she feareth not foul murder's guilt, Nor do I fear to lose a servile breath. I know my blood was given to be spilt. What is this life but maze of countless strays, The enemy of true felicity, Fitly compared to dreams, to flowers, to plays! O life, no life to me, but misery! Of shame or death, if thou must one, Make choice of death and both ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith

... at his heels, marveling at his skill in threading the maze with never a snapped twig to betray him. For though I have called him a youthling, he came of great, square-shouldered English stock, and was well upon fourteen stone for weight. Yet upon occasion, as now, he could be as lithe and cat-like as an Indian, stealthy ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... and worked some levers, and the rhythmical chunking of the engine gradually ceased. Gliding at a speed that was still high, the train curved to the left, and swung down a sharp incline, to move with an imperial dignity through the railway yard at Rugby. There was a maze of switches, innumerable engines noisily pushing cars here and there, crowds of workmen who turned to look, a sinuous curve around the long train-shed, whose high wall resounded with the rumble of the passing express; ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... a maze. But at last, when every man started back for fear, Christian saw a man of a very stout countenance come up to him that sat there with the inkhorn to write, saying, Set down my name, sir! At which there was a pleasant voice heard from those that were within, even of those who walked ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... to the nearest hospital without the loss of a single moment's time. Round the monstrous building, with it's spreading maze of pavilions, he went through a court, and stopped at a doorway which opened directly on ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine

... thought, "how lonely and dismal! Warfare is what I need. Dear Lord, let me soon be killing men briskly, and warming myself in the burning streets of Ferrara. That is what I was begotten for. I have been lost in a maze." ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... always moved, in a maze of complications. She saw them tiny yet intense, like ants in their hill. They stirred minds, hearts, as the ants stirred twigs, leaves, blossoms, and carried them to the hill for their own purposes. In this maze free will was surely lost. The beautiful woman of the world seems ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... delights of hunting, and being hunted, in a pond; where the light comes down in fitful rays and reflections through the water, and gleams among the hanging roots of the frog-bit, and the fading leaves of the water-starwort, through the maze of which, in and out, hither and thither, you pursue, and are pursued, in cool and skilful chase, by a mixed company of your neighbours, who dart, and shoot, and dive, and come and go, and any one of whom at any moment may either eat you ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... its policies. For this reason, I consider civil service reform to be absolutely vital. Worked out with the civil servants themselves, this reorganization plan will restore the merit principle to a system which has grown into a bureaucratic maze. It will provide greater management flexibility and better rewards for better performance without compromising ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... the way to a spot where the earth bore marks of footsteps; here it was evident men had recently entered the maze which stretched before them. ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... appointed by Imperial Edict Viceroy of Hupeh and Hunan and ordered to proceed at once to the front to quell the insurrection, until the 1st November, when he was given virtually Supreme Power as President of the Grand Council in place of Prince Ching, a whole volume is required to discuss adequately the maze of questions involved. For the purposes of this account, however, the matter can be dismissed very briefly in this way. Welcoming the opportunity which had at last come and determined once for all ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... been dead long ago. Perhaps, if the fat old book-keeper had known it, he would have said that the man was better than he knew. But then,—poor Huff! He passed slowly through the long alleys between the great looms. Overhead the ceiling looked like a heavy maze of iron cylinders and black swinging bars and wheels, all in swift, ponderous motion. It was enough to make a brain dizzy with the clanging thunder of the engines, the whizzing spindles of red and yellow, and the hot daylight glaring over all. The looms were watched by women, most of them bold, tawdry ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... a maze of contradictions and surprises that one moves in Japan. When I go into a Japanese home, for example, it is a hundred times more important to take off my shoes than it is to take off my hat—even though, ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... fine day, a picturesque and taking appearance, speedily dissipated, how ever, on closer acquaintance; for Bushire is indescribably filthy. The streets are mere alleys seven or eight feet broad, knee-deep in dust or mud, and as irregular and puzzling to a stranger as the maze at Hampton Court. ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... muse on dromedary trots, Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots; Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue, Wit's forge and ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... there be aught beyond, or aught pass'd o'er, Which thou canst utter, of her woe-worn maze, Speak on! if all is said, then grant to us That which we ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... vehemence usual to his class and touched his hat, a shrill whistle sounded, the great engine gave several vehement not to say petulant snorts, and the long train glided slowly out of the terminus. Gaining speed with every second, it whirled along through the maze of buildings which form the ramparts of London—on past rows of dingy backyards where stunted bushes show no brighter colour than that of the family washing which they support every week—on through ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... but as we had several distant places to visit, we took sedan chairs, and went shouting along, four coolies each, Indian file, through the town, forming quite a cavalcade, with our guide in front. It was the same interminable maze of narrow, crowded thorough-fares, crammed with human beings, that we had seen for the first time yesterday. A great commotion was seen ahead at one place, out of which emerged several men in crimson robes, bearing banners, clearing the way and ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... that beckon and recede—, Thy strange allurements, City that I love, Maze of romance, where I have followed too The dream Youth treasures of its dearest need And stars beyond thy towers bring ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger

... which were to prove so fatal for him. In January, 1696, King William III. issued to his "beloved friend William Kidd" a commission to apprehend certain pirates, particularly Thomas Tew, of Rhode Island, Thomas Wake, and William Maze, of New York, John Ireland, and "all other Pirates, Free-booters, and Sea Rovers ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse



Words linked to "Maze" :   tangle, Labyrinth of Minos, snarl, mazy



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