"Mire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... just finished taking the tickets and stood with the ticket-box in his hand, trying to calm the crowd, but he was as a straw in the wind. The maddened people ran over him. When the excitement cleared away he was found almost buried in mud, mire, and oil outside, his clothes torn to shreds, but he still grasped the precious box in ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... restrained contempt, saved him from the silly elation which is the last, and generally successful, struggle of human nature in those who can so far master it to commit a sacrifice. The loss of that brave high young soul-Rose, who had lifted him out of the mire with her own white hands: Rose, the image of all that he worshipped: Rose, so closely wedded to him that to be cut away from her was to fall like pallid clay from the soaring spirit: surely he was stunned and senseless when he went to utter the words to her mother! Now that he was awake, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... him pour forth torrents of eloquence on the Sabbath, and felt the force of a nature exceptionally rich and strong in its conception of religious truths and human needs, only to find him on the morrow floundering hopelessly in the mire of rudimentary science, or getting, by repeated perusals, but an imperfect idea of some author's words, which it seemed to her he ought to ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... the perishing; to delight in the rest of faith while forgetful to fight the good fight of faith; to dwell upon the cleansing and the purity effected by faith, but to have little thought for the poor souls struggling in the mire of sin. If we can put off our coat when He would have us keep it on; if we can wash our feet while He is wandering alone upon the mountains, is there not sad want of ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor
... and then let the fortresses drop one by one into his hands. The change of things has helped this bold system. Formerly there was but one road through a province—it led through the principal fortress—all the rest was mire and desolation. Thus the fortress must be taken before a gun or a waggon could move. Now, there are a dozen roads through every province—the fortress may be passed out of gun-shot in all quarters—and the "grand army" of a hundred and fifty thousand ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... a burst of righteous indignation throughout the parish; nor without reason. Tell me that doctors and graduates must have the dead; but tell it not to Mansie Wauch, that our hearts must be trampled in the mire of scorn, and our best feelings laughed at, in order that a bruise may be properly plaistered up, or a sore head cured. Verily, the remedy is worse ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... stimulants that he is subject to what are known to the records of insanity as hallucinations: that he hears voices whispering blasphemy in his ears, and sees devils coming to meet him, and thinks he is going to be torn in pieces, or trodden into the mire. Suppose that his mental conflicts, after plunging him into the depths of despondency, at last reduce him to a state of despair, so that he now contemplates taking his own life, and debates with himself whether it shall be by knife, halter, or poison, and after much questioning ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... fiction there is probably no more graphic and poignant study of the way in which man loses his grip on life, lets his pride, his courage, his self-respect slip from him, and, finally, even ceases to struggle in the mire that has engulfed him. * * * There is more tonic value in Sister Carrie than in a whole ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... waited. But my pockets proved Empty, in vain I poked and shoved, No hidden penny lurking there Greeted my search. "Sir, I declare I have no money, pray forgive, But let me take you where you live." And so we plodded through the mire Where street lamps cast a wavering fire. I took no note of where we went, His talk became the element Wherein my being swam, content. It flashed like rapiers in the night Lit by uncertain candle-light, ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... watering-place, for the distance of a mile, until it culminated in a gentle and rounded ridge, presented none of those difficulties which troubled us on the other side. There were none of those cataclysms of mire and sloughs of black mud and over-tall grasses, none of that miasmatic jungle with its noxious emissions; it was just such a scene as one may find before an English mansion—a noble expanse of lawn and sward, with boscage sufficient to agreeably diversify it. After ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... these that he collected. If the book were the one desired by him, no anxiety and toil, no payable price, was to be grudged for its acquisition. If the book were an inch out of his own line, it might be trampled in the mire for aught he cared, be it as rare or costly ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... herself to them. She went out that morning, and walked to her milliner's house. There was a long and rather an unpleasant interview between the milliner and her customer, for Lydia Graham had sunk deeper in the mire of debt with every passing year, and it was only by the payment of occasional sums of money on account that she contrived to ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... thou from me to fate, And to my father my foul deeds relate. Now die!' With that he dragg'd the trembling sire, Slidd'ring thro' clotter'd blood and holy mire, (The mingled paste his murder'd son had made,) Haul'd from beneath the violated shade, And on the sacred pile the royal victim laid. His right hand held his bloody falchion bare, His left he twisted in his hoary ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... been falsely set forth again and again that the French peasant of 1789 was down in the very mire of political despond, without a sou to his name; the cock called him to work at dawn, and all for the good of the aristocrats; he was penniless, he was an absurd figure, he was not a man but a beast;—hence his righteous revolt in the ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... thus among themselves, some yet doubting whether the thing were true, cried one of them, "Now shall we know the certainty of this matter, for here cometh a herald with leaves of olive on his head, and he hath dust on his garments and mire on his feet, as one who cometh ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... herds of wild-swine, which keep chiefly in the mountains, as do likewise the wild-goats. These swine are very fat, but so excessively wild that they are never to be got at by a man, unless when asleep, or rolling themselves in the mire. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... intellect. Ten-talent men have often known more than they would do. The children of genius have not always lived up to their moral light. Burns' mind ran swiftly forward, but his will followed afar off. If the poet's forehead was in the clouds, his feet were in the mire. How noble, also, Byron's thoughts, but how mean his life! Goethe uttered the wisdom of a sage, as did Rousseau, yet their deeds were often those we would expect from a slave with a low brow. Even of Shakespeare, ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the name he had not wished her to see in the parish register was Michael Donaldson. That meant, she supposed, that her name was Donaldson, too; a name he had dragged through the mire. ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... about two leagues before me of a road mostly uphill, and now deep in mire. So soon as I was clear of the last street lamp, darkness received me—a darkness only pointed by the lights of occasional rustic farms, where the dogs howled with uplifted heads as I went by. The wind ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dwellers by nature in darkness, and like to the leaves' generations, That are little of might, that are molded of mire, unenduring and shadowlike nations, Poor plumeless ephemerals, comfortless mortals, as visions of shadows fast fleeing, Lift up your mind unto us that are deathless, and dateless the date of our being; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... not perfectly obvious that the races which had made civilization were those which had developed the nobler virtues, such as honor and loyalty and patriotism? And now it was proposed to trample them into the mire of "business"; to abandon the race to a glorified debauch of greed! And this travesty of science was taught in ten thousand schools and colleges throughout America—and all because certain British gentlemen had wished to work their cotton-operatives fourteen hours a day, and certain ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... has long rejected them with scorn, These human gems from out the mire and dust; A lapidary I would make of you, Whilst I some ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... a handkerchief, and laughed as the gay banners danced in air, where was it? Burned to the ground; only a sorry heap of ruin marked where once it stood. No more cotton bales came from the Sea Islands. First one army, then the other, had swept over the Beaufort plantation, trampling its fields into mire. It had been seized, confiscated, retaken, re-confiscated, sold to this person and that. Nobody knew exactly to whom it belonged nowadays; but it was not to little Annie, rightful heiress of all. Stripped of every thing, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... the ship was to be launched. Here the train stopped, and absolutely deposited our whole party of excursionists, under a heavy shower, in the midst of a muddy potato-field, whence we were to wade through mud and mire to the ship-yard, almost half a mile off. Some kind Christian, I know not whom, gave me half of his umbrella, and half of his cloak, and thereby I got to a shed near the ship, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... discontent, though he can be of all religions, therefore truly of none. Thus by naturalising himself some would think him a very dangerous fellow to the State; but he is not greatly to be feared, for this dejection of his is only like a rogue that goes on his knees and elbows in the mire to further his cogging. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... to kill her rather than exact this ultimate love- payment. She told him of the penalty of breaking the taboo of the Red One—a week of torture, living, the details of which she yammered out from her face in the mire until he realized that he was yet a tyro in knowledge of the frightfulness the human was capable of ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... nor deem it unnatural for love so to perish. After learning what she had learned from absolute incontrovertible evidence (it is useless to enter into the circumstances, for no one is benefited by wallowing in unnecessary mire), that she, or any virtuous maiden, should continue to love this man, would have been a thing still more ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... a chance for you here. England is to blame as well as you that you have been sucked by the eddies of life into criminal streams. England also rescues you. It is but dragging out indeed, but you are out of the mire. Take heart, you may carry the British flag proudly yet; the career of the sailor is open to you also, and who shall say that some gallant three-master may not yet be commanded by a sailor bred in the ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... worship, damning means Of an unholy war between his people; To be the beggar of his people's blood, To set that crown upon his false, weak brow, His pale, insolvent, moat dishonour'd brow, From which, too wide, it slipp'd into the mire, To ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... exercise their inalienable right to roll upon the grass and play in the dirt, and which it will trouble no one to see torn or soiled. Do this, if you have a prince's revenue,—unless you would be vulgar. For, although you may be able to afford to cast jewels into the mire or break the Portland vase for your amusement, if you do so, you are a Goth. Jewels were not made for the mire, vases to be broken, or handsome clothes to be soiled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... friends, Sidonie felt that they lived in a different world, a thousand miles from her own; and a deathly sadness seized her, especially when, on her return home, her mother spoke of sending her as an apprentice to Mademoiselle Le Mire, a friend of the Delobelles, who conducted a large false-pearl establishment ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... acquainted. Only last November he had recommended his son to buy a certain clod-crusher, and the clod-crusher had of course been bought. The bright blue paint upon it had as yet not given way to the stains of the ordinary farmyard muck and mire;—and here was the clod-crusher advertised for sale! The archdeacon did not want his son to leave Cosby Lodge. He knew well enough that his son need not leave Cosby Lodge. Why had the foolish fellow been in such a hurry with ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... Chief Seventh Man Who is So Angry He Wallows in the Mire; journey to Vait-hua on Tahuata island; fight with the devil-fish; story of a cannibal feast ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... dun was once a regular name, like Dobbin or Dapple, for a cart-horse; hence the name of the old rural sport "Dun in the mire"— ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... say I, and I mount the donkey, 'Vamonos,' say I, but the donkey won't move. I give him a switch, but I don't get on the better for that. What happens then, brother? The wizard no sooner feels the prick than he bucks down, and flings me over his head into the mire. I get up and look about me; there stands the donkey staring at me, and there stand the whole gipsy canaille squinting at me with their filmy eyes. 'Where is the scamp who has sold me this piece of furniture?' I shout. 'He ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... poet or musician unused to perfect his work with honest labor; that the very disappearance of toil is by the immolating hand of toil itself. He only who bears his own burden can bear the burden of another; he only who has labored shall dwell at ease, or help others from the mire to ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... set in, and up through the vanishing whiteness dawned the dark colours of the wintry landscape. For a day or two the soft wet snow lay mixed with water over all the road. After that came mire and dirt. But it was still so far off spring, that nobody cared to be reminded of it yet. So when, after the snow had vanished, a hard black frost set in, it was welcomed by the schoolboys at least, whatever the old people and the poor people, and ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... of character and countenance. He had once been young and daring; beginning as a mere clerk, he had risen to be a notary; but at this period his face showed, to the eyes of an observer, certain haggard lines, and an expression of weariness in the pursuit of pleasure. When a man plunges into the mire of excesses it is seldom that his face shows no trace of it. In the present instance the lines of the wrinkles and the heat of the complexion were markedly ignoble. Instead of the pure glow which suffuses the tissues of a virtuous man and stamps them, as it were, with ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... to his fashionably tailored, Fifth Avenue coat; he staggered slightly, and the flap of his collar protruded, while his tie, pulled out, sprawled over his vest; also his slouch hat, badly crushed and looking as though it had rolled in the mire of the street, was tilted forward at an unhappy angle until it was balanced on the bridge of his nose. Men, women, and children passed him by—for the street was crowded—paying him not the slightest ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... note-haunted sufferer. In fact, I lived a day at a time. On the first of each month, when I looked over my bill-book, and then calculated my resources, I was appalled. I saw nothing ahead but ruin. Still I floundered on, getting myself deeper and deeper in the mire, and rendering my final extrication ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... himself by accident in the poor quarters near the Manzanares river, is surprised at the spectacle of poverty and sordidness, of sadness and neglect presented by the environs of Madrid with their wretched Rondas, laden with dust in the summer and in winter wallowing in mire. The capital is a city of contrasts; it presents brilliant light in close proximity to deep gloom; refined life, almost European, in the centre; in the suburbs, African existence, like that of an Arab village. Some years ago, ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... Nevertheless one ran between my feet And made me totter, using speech and signs I smart with shame to think of: then my blood Kindled, and I was moved to smite the knave, And the knave howled; whereat the lewd whole herd Brake forth upon me and cast mire and stones So that I ran sore risk of bruise or gash If they had touched; likewise I heard men say, (Their foul speech missed not mine ear) they cried, "This devil's mass-priest hankers for new flesh Like ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... horse-back, suggested the propriety of his bestriding his staff, and following after the funeral. The procession marched at a brisk pace, and on reaching the kirk-yard style, as each rider dismounted, "Daft Jock" descended from his wooden steed, besmeared with mire and perspiration, exclaiming, "Hech, sirs, had it no been for the fashion o' the thing, I micht as weel hae ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... thief Brickney again. He would steal the broad road to hell if he could carry it. He once stole the quarters from a dead man's eyes. Mon Dieu! to save Brickney's life, the courage to do that—like sticking your face in the mire and eating!—But, pshaw!—go on, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... know the stepping-stones across the ford. There as I passed, a certain aged crone, Whom I had fed, and nursed, year after year, Met me mid-stream—thrust past me stoutly on— And rolled me headlong in the freezing mire. There as I lay and weltered,—'Take that, Madam, For all your selfish hypocritic pride Which thought it such a vast humility To wash us poor folk's feet, and use our bodies For staves to build withal ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... for Mechanick Arts; I wondred, that since the grounds thereof were so firm and solid, that nothing more sublime had been built thereon. As on the contrary, I compar'd the writings of the Ancient heathen which treated of Manner, to most proud and stately Palaces which were built only on sand and mire, they raise the vertues very high, and make them appear estimable above all the things in the world; but they doe not sufficiently instruct us in the knowledg of them, and often what they call by that fair Name, is but a ...
— A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason - and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences • Rene Descartes
... He had hoped to serve Art, to keep his service pure; but, having one day let his acid temperament out of hand to revel in an orgy of personal retaliation, he had since never known when she would slip her chain and come home smothered in mire. Moreover, he no longer chastised her when she came. His ideals had left him, one by one; he now lived alone, immune from dignity and shame, soothing himself with whisky. A man of rancour, meet for pity, and, in his cups, contented. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... England cannot desert the President without branding themselves as hypocrites and ingrates. Worse things could happen than for the President to come home without a peace treaty, leaving Europe to wallow in the mire of national rivalries and hates to which reaction would sentence it for all time. There is no compelling reason why America should sign a treaty that would merely perpetuate ancient feuds and make new wars a certainty. Our chief interest in the Conference at Paris, as the President declared at ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... away to a doom Younger than London, older that Tyre! Drum-taps, drum-taps, where are they marching, Regiments, nations, empires, marching? Down thro' the jaws of a world-wide tomb, Doomed or ever they sprang from the mire! ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Him not for lying there, First what He is inquire; An orient pearl is often found In depth of dirty mire. ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... do not speak to the Government. I speak to the House. I appeal to those who, on Monday last, voted with the Ministers against the test proposed by the honourable Baronet the Member for North Devon. I know what is due to party ties. But there is a mire so black and so deep that no leader has a right to drag his followers through it. It is only forty-eight hours since honourable gentlemen were brought down to the House to vote against requiring the professors ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in the space a little in rear of the captured line of works, a spot unclean and malodorous. We built a camp-fire, and tried to clean off spots on which we could sit on the ground; but a heavy rain soon came on, and as we were in the woods, the light soil soon made a mire, and we were forced to stand upright and take the weather as it came. The extreme weariness of standing about, with nothing to vary the monotony, physically tired and sleepy, in the reaction from the excitement of the afternoon, was something ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... the evening, having encountered only a small picket, that at once gave way to our advance. Merritt left Custer at Malon's crossing of Rowanty Creek to care for the trains containing our subsistence and the reserve ammunition, these being stuck in the mire at, intervals all the way back to the Jerusalem plank-road; and to make any headway at all with the trains, Custer's men often had to unload the wagons and lift them out ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... mournful isolation to please a speculative architect; bits of wayside hedge still shivered in fog and wind, amid hoardings variegated with placards and scaffoldings black against the sky. The very earth had lost its wholesome odour; trampled into mire, fouled with builders' refuse and the noisome drift from adjacent streets, it sent forth, under the sooty rain, a smell of corruption, of all the town's uncleanliness. On this rising locality had been bestowed ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... that hath fallen from the green things of life, that is without hope, that hath no summer in its fibres, is torn and whirled by the same wind that but caresses its brethren—it hath no bough to cling to—it is dashed from path to path—till the winds fall, and it is crushed into the mire ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... a skeptical turn of mind—all that I heard as true. I preferred to hope, and wait. I have waited, until I have seen men, the victims of alcohol, in the very gutter of disgrace and despair, lifted from the mire, rescued from the famine of desire, from the grasp of appetite. I have seen them suddenly become men—masters ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... myself I had no power. If I had had any friend, who would have examined the cause of this evil, and made me have recourse again to prayer, which was the only means of relief, all would have been well. I was (like the prophet) in a deep abyss of mire, which I could not get out off. I met with reprimands for being in it, but none were kind enough to reach out to free me. And when I tried vain efforts to get out, I only sunk the deeper, and each fruitless attempt only made me see my own ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... man. He was born at hazard, by misfortune, in a hovel, in a cellar, in a cave, no one knows where, no one knows of whom. He came out of the dust to fall into the mire. He had only so much father and mother as was necessary for his birth, after which all shrank from him. He has crawled on as best he could. He grew up bare-footed, bare-headed, in rags, with no ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... off our shoes and socks, tie them to the barrel of our muskets a little below the muzzle and just above the end of the stock, poise the piece on the hammer on either shoulder, stock uppermost, and roll up our breeches to the knees. Then like Tam O'Shanter, we "skelpit on through dub and mire, despising wind, and rain, and fire," and singing "John Brown's Body," or whatever else came handy. But rainy days in camp, especially such as we had at Benton Barracks, engender feelings of gloom and dejection that have to be experienced in order to be realized. They are ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... to him for help as I was sticking in the mire, and, more propitious than Hercules, he put his own shoulder to the wheel. Through his favourable representations Murray was quickly induced to undertake the future publication of the work which he had previously declined. A further edition of the first volume was put to press, and from that ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... took his seat as Chief Justice at the opening of the first term of Court in Washington, the new capital, on Wednesday, February 4, 1801. The most beautiful of capital cities was then little more than a swamp, athwart which ran a streak of mire named by solemn congressional enactment "Pennsylvania Avenue." At one end of this difficult thoroughfare stood the President's mansion—still in the hands of the builders but already sagging and leaking through the shrinkage of the green timber they had used—two ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... give in exchange for his own soul? Will he sell that? Will he consent to see another man sell his soul? Will he consent to see the conditions of his community such that men's souls are debauched and trodden underfoot in the mire? What shall he give in exchange for his own soul, or any other man's soul? And since the world, the world of affairs, the world of society, is nothing less and nothing more than all of us put together, it is a great enterprise for the salvation of the soul in this world ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... average nineteenth-century Englishman as that of a West African negro is now, in these respects. The modern world is slowly, but surely, shaking off these and other monstrous survivals of savage delusions; and, whatever happens, it will not return to that wallowing in the mire. Until the contrary is proved, I venture to doubt whether, at this present moment, any Protestant theologian, who has a reputation to lose, will say that he believes the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... is fearless as a lion, and says there is no one like him in the world; in the next stage, he is like an ape, and dances, jests, and talks nonsense, knowing not what he is doing and saying; when thoroughly drunken, he wallows in the mire like a sow.[63] To this legend Chaucer evidently alludes in the Prologue to ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... after travelling a long distance by night, and setting out again the next morning to travel thirteen leagues:—"Throughout the day a drizzling rain was falling, which turned the dust of the roads into mud and mire. Towards evening we reached a moor—a wild place enough, strewn with enormous stones and rocks. The wind had ceased, but a strong wind rose and howled at our backs. The sun went down, and dark night presently came over us. We proceeded ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... it, please measure the probable pillage and let me know. I will then give you the amount. In that way you will have the profits of every act of villainy you might commit, while missing the mud and mire of its accomplishment. Remember, Mr. Gwynn; I will not ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... home dat night tell 'way late, an' ef he'd been fox-huntin' it mus' ha' been de ole red whar lives down in de greenscum mashes he'd been chasin'. De way de sorrel wuz gormed up wid sweat an' mire sut'n'y did hu't me. He walked up to de stable wid he head down all de way, an' I'se seen 'im go eighty miles of a winter day, an' prance into de stable at night ez fresh ez ef he hed jes' cantered over to ole Cun'l Chahmb'lin's to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... alien to Dolores's taste than going out to a meet on foot through mud and mire—she who hated the being driven out to take a constitutional walk on the gravel road or the paved path! But she had some hope that while all the others ran off madly, as was their wont, she might secure a little rational conversation with Uncle ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... caring not a straw for peace rhetoric or Quaker gravity, for persuasion or interest. It strikes straight down at right or justice. It tries to hammer them to atoms, and trample them with swinish hoofs into the mire. Now what am I to do? To stand peaceably by and see this thing done, while I study new tropes and invent new metaphors to persuade? Is that my business, to waste the godlike gift of human speech on this ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and parody. When the political danger was past, and people resumed their ordinary occupations, those who loved foreign literature returned to their old favourites—or, as the ultra-patriots called it, to their "wallowing in the mire"—simply because the native literature did not supply them with what they desired. "We are quite ready," they said to their upbraiders, "to admire your great works as soon as they appear, but in the meantime ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... them—they mocked at it. What do they take me for?... A bundle of rags, which to-day they may trample in the mud, and to-morrow stick up for a scarecrow in their gardens! Or a puppet—to bow down to it to-day, and to-morrow to cast it into the mire, with Vuiduibai, father vuiduibai![3] No! they have chosen the wrong man. They may spin their traitorous intrigues with the King of Poland, and hail him their lord; but I will go myself and tell Tver who is her real master. Tease me ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... she?—she never preened her wings, and thought all the world lay before her, and she could fly as straight as any lark of them all, and catch as many flies as any swallow? Ay, nor she never tumbled off into the mire, and found she could not fly a bit, and all the insects went darting past her as safe as if she were a dead leaf? Eh, my lassies, this would be a poor world, if it were all. I have seen something of it, though you ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... a brick at another three-year-old, tattered child, masked with dirt. It is not difficult to perceive that he is destined to lurk, as it were, through life. His bad, flat face—or, at least, what can be seen of it—does not look as if it were made for the light of day. The mire in which he wallows now is but a type of the moral mire in which he will wallow hereafter. The feeble little hand lifted at this instant to smite his companion, half in earnest, half in jest, will be raised against ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... highest hopes! Yes, when we have any. But the mire and clay where one sticks fast over and over again, with no high hopes or high anything else in sight—a man must be a selfish brute to bring any one he pretends to love ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... ovver moor, heath, or mire, Till yor legs seem to totter, an th' stummack feels faint; But yor thowts still will dwell o' that breet cottage fire, Till yo feel quite refreshed bi th' fancies yo paint. An when yo draw nearer, an ovver th' old palins Yo ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... every Sunday? and what would you have more? And as to works, I hate good works. Good works always means doing the very thing you would rather not. 'Tis good works to carry a pudding to old Nanny Crewdson through a lane where I nigh lose my shoes in the mire, right at the time when I want to bide at home and play the virginals. Or 'tis sitting of a chair and reading of Luther's Commentary on the Galatians to one of my betters, when my very toes be tingling to be out in the sunshine. Good lack, but ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... clouded soul to the terrible grief that breaks out in loud denunciations and open and disgusting conflict. And could you draw back the vail that hides the privacies of this life, and see the black waves of distrust and the deep waters of disquietude that cast up mire and dirt continually, which roll and heave in constant commotion out of the world's sight in the seclusion of the Marriage relation, you might doubt that the institution was ordained in mercy, and question its utility. Like every other good, ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... the last waters left of the old bed of the N'yanza. This one in particular was rather large, being 150 yards wide. It was sunk where I crossed it, like a canal, 14 feet below the plain; and what with mire and water combined, so deep, I was obliged to take off my trousers whilst fording it. Once across, we sought for and put up in a village beneath a small hill, from the top of which I saw the Victoria N'yanza for the first time on this march. N'yamgundu ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... in time they not agreeing sd Henry carried ye cetle to them againe & then sd Dibroughs wife was very angry and many hard words pased & yt som time since about two months he lost a cow which was mired in a swampe and was hanged by one leg in mire op to ye gambrill and her nose in the water and sd cow was in good case & saith he had as he judged about 8 pound of tallow out of sd cow & allso yt he had a thre yr old heifer came home about three weeks since & seemed to ale somthing she lay downe & would haue cast herself but he pruented ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... taste of sweat? Many's the gallon I've drunk of it—ay, in the midwinter, toiling like a slave. All through, what has my life been? Bend, bend, bend my old creaking back till it would ache like breaking; wade about in the foul mire, never a dry stitch; empty belly, sore hands, hat off to my Lord Redface; kicks and ha'pence; and now, here, at the hind end, when I'm worn to my poor bones, a kick and done with it." He walked a little while in silence, and then, extending his hand, "Now, you Nance Holdaway," says he, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... they, being heedless, did both fall suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was Despond. Here, therefore, they wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with dirt; and Christian, because of the burden that was on his back, began to sink in the mire. ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... at all. The comfort had been, hitherto, that he didn't realise brutalities. There were certain violins that emitted tentative sounds in the orchestra; they shortened the time and made her uneasier—fixed her idea that he could lift her out of her mire if he would. It didn't appear to prove that he would, his also observing Lady Ringrose's empty box without making an encouraging comment upon it. Laura waited for him to remark that her sister obviously would turn up now; but no ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... truth,' said the porter, ''tis overlate for leaves. They be stuck in the mire of ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... giants? Or what woman could love the bed that genders monsters? Who could be the wife of demons, and know the seed whose fruit is monstrous? Or who would fain share her couch with a barbarous giant? Who caresses thorns with her fingers? Who would mingle honest kisses with mire? Who would unite shaggy limbs to smooth ones which correspond not? Full ease of love cannot be taken when nature cries out against it: nor doth the love customary in the use of ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... which made every gas-jet into a shooting pillar of flame, Norris discerned vaguely the vast bulk of Hyde Park Mansions. 'Good!' he muttered, and at that very moment he was shot through the window into the thin, light-reflecting mire of the street. Enormous and strange beasts menaced him with pitiless hoofs. Millions of people crowded about him. In response to a question that seemed to float slowly towards him, he tried to give his address. He realized, by a considerable feat of intellect, that the ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the year 600 A.D. the triumph of the oriental element in Christendom had well-nigh banished learning and education from the domain of the Church, giving place to a gloomy, unquestioning faith which sank ever deeper and deeper in the mire of superstition. What enlightenment survived had found a home beyond the limits of the Roman Empire,—in Ireland, in the extreme West; in Syria, in the far East." (Davidson, Thomas, History of Education, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... brother of Pope Urbane And Valmond, emperor of Allemaine, Despoiled of his magnificent attire, Bare-headed, breathless, and besprent with mire, With sense of wrong and outrage desperate, Strode on and thundered at the palace gate: Bushed through the court-yard, thrusting in his rage To right and left each seneschal and page, And hurried up the broad and sounding ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... could possibly get water; we were in a sorry plight as the nights grew colder. And if the prospect was bad for us, how much worse for our soldiers across the "dead line," who had no shelter, hardly a scrap of blanket! Every rain made their beds a pool or mass of mire. It is not pleasant, but it is a duty to record some of the shadows of our prison ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... but the impression of light. The candor of boyhood, the simplicity of the villager were still there—refined by intelligence, but intelligence that seemed to have traversed through knowledge—not with the footstep, but the wing—unsullied by the mire—tending towards the star—seeking through the various grades of being but the lovelier forms of truth and goodness; at home as should be the Art that ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... astonished to hear was most highly valued; for it was a weak, washy, dauby, ill-coloured performance, and the design as bad as well could be. It was a scene before a cottage-door, with the children of George the Third as peasant children, in village dirt and mire. The picture had no merit to recommend it; if we remember rightly, it had been painted over, or in some way obscured, and unfortunately brought to light. Although Sir Joshua Reynolds generally introduced ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... in the deep sleep of a full age, A'tim, whose lean stomach tugged at his eyelids and kept them open, stole off into the forest, and searched by the strong light of the moon for a bog that would mire his comrade to death. ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... with due religious rites. And the kings who had been released from confinement worshipped the slayer of Madhu with reverence, and addressing him with eulogies said,—'O thou of long arms, thou hast to-day rescued us, sunk in the deep mire of sorrow in the hand of Jarasandha. Such an act of virtue by thee, O son of Devaki, assisted by the might of Bhima and Arjuna, is most extraordinary. O Vishnu, languishing as we all were in the terrible hill-fort of Jarasandha, it was verily from sheer ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... inquiries After Milton's prose metaphor, drawn from Osiris; But, as Cicero says he won't say this or that (A fetch, I must say, most transparent and flat), After saying whate'er he could possibly think of,— I simply will state that I pause on the brink of A mire, ankle-deep, of deliberate confusion, 350 Made up of old jumbles of classic allusion: So, when you were thinking yourselves to be pitied, Just conceive how much harder your teeth you'd have gritted, An 'twere not for the dulness I've ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... wealth, and (as a necessary consequence) such distinction? Besides, I suddenly felt quite a curiosity to drink some liquor, just to see how it tasted. After all, it was only very low people who got drunk and wallowed in the mire. Gentlemen (I thought) never get drunk, and they always seem so happy and joyous after they have been drinking! How they shake hands, and swear eternal friendship, and seem generously willing to lend or give away all they have in the world! ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... passed out of the Gridiron one thought alone occupied him. Murray McTavish had lied. He had lied deliberately to Bill Brudenell. He had made no attempt to save the boy from the mire into which he had helped to fling him. On the contrary, he had thrust him deeper and deeper into it. Why? What—what was the meaning of it all? Where were things heading? What purpose lay behind ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... that females are born in considerable excess with Bombyx mori, and in greater excess of late years than formerly! Quatrefages writes to me that he believes they are equal in France. So that the farther I go the deeper I sink into the mire. With cordial thanks for your ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... cattle-sheds and stalls. In the midst of it was a quantity of manure, all wet and sloppy, and upon the very top of this heap stood that charming boy, Master Tom, with his shoes and stockings all covered with mire. ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... their hair toward its roots may be warned to read no further. There was another nephew, of a different branch, who had once been the prospective heir and favorite. Being without grace or hope, he had long ago disappeared in the mire. Now dragnets were out for him; he was to be rehabilitated and restored. And so Vallance fell grandly as Lucifer to the lowest pit, joining the tattered ghosts ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... at the door and watched those of his neighbours who were not Roman Catholics making for church and chapel, to which half a dozen tinkly bells invited them. The weather had finally cleared up, and a goodly number of people waded past him through the mire. Among them, in seemly Sabbath dress, went Ocock, with his two black sheep at heel. The old man was a rigid Methodist, and at a recent prayer-meeting had been moved to bear public witness to his salvation. This was no doubt one reason why the young scapegrace ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... our forefathers went into the work of governing themselves and each other with a great deal of vim. They had no well drawn out formulae to work upon as we have, but they went at things in a sort of rule-of-thumb, rough-and-ready style, and when one party had dragged the country into the mire, the other dragged it out again. It was customary for the party that was out of office to say that the party that was in was corrupt and venal—that every man of it was a liar, was a thief, was taking bribes, would soon be kicked out, etc. Then the party that was in had ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... without one thought, one base desire To tarnish that clear vision I gained by fire, One stain in me I would not have thee know. That is great might indeed that moves me so To look upon thy Form, and yet aspire To look not there, rather than I should mire That winged Spirit that haunts ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... is in no man's land. Their food the cattle's scorn, Their rest is mire and their desire The thicket and ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... it now; It's scarce a mile to where the trail strikes off to skirt the slough, And then the dip to Indian Spring, the wooded rise, and—strange! Yet here should stand the blasted pine that marked our farther range; And here—what's this? A ragged swab of ruts and stumps and mire! Sure this is not the sacred grove that hid ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... down; the mire was deep; It was past twelve on a mid-winter night, When peaceful folk in beds lay snug asleep: There, with much work to do before the light, We lugged our clay-sucked boots as best we might Along the trench; sometimes a bullet sang, And droning shells ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... the present town of Fairfield, directly back of the village. The army immediately advanced with all dispatch to the swamp. The bog was so deep and wet, and tangled with underbrush, that it seemed impossible to enter it. A few made the attempt, but they sank in the mire, and were sorely wounded by arrows shot ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... angel, not because you are a superior being. No, not for any reason in all this wide world but because you are you. Do what you will and I shall love you. Whether I had to look up among the stars or down in the mire to find you, I would look just as steadily, ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... once took a young girl—lifted her up from the mire of the streets and carried her in my arms. Next my heart I carried her. So I would have borne her all through life—lest haply she should dash her foot against a stone. For her shoes were worn very thin when I ...
— When We Dead Awaken • Henrik Ibsen
... of his rival, on Cocconnas the cruel—on men with hands unwashed from the slaughter, and on the shameless women who lined the walls; on all who used this sobbing man for their stepping-stone, and, to attain their ends and gain their purposes, trampled his dull soul in blood and mire. ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... almost continually in sight of the Army of Northern Virginia, and the field guns never ceased to pour shot and shell upon it. The sight was tragic to the last degree, as the worn men in gray retreated sullenly along the muddy roads, in rags, blackened with mire, stained with wounds, their horses falling dead of exhaustion, while the pursuing artillery cut down their ranks. Then the news of Custer's exploit came to Grant and Sheridan, and the circle of steel, now complete, closed ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... many an occasion when he wasn't wanted, and to solace himself at Waring's sideboard at any hour of the day or night, for Waring kept what was known as "open house" to all comers, and the very men who wondered how he could afford it and who predicted his speedy swamping in a mire of debt and disgrace were the very ones who were most frequently to be found loafing about his gallery, smoking his tobacco and swigging his whiskey, a pretty sure sign that the occupant of the ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... while a separation would accomplish nothing. When once a man has given his name to a woman, he told me, he cannot take it back; it belongs to her for the rest of her days, and she has a right to dispose of it. She may sully it, cover it with mire, drag it from wine shop to wine shop, and her husband can do nothing. That being the case, my course was soon taken. That same day, I sold the fatal meadow, and sent the proceeds of it to Claudine, wishing to keep nothing of the price ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... sentimentalism has often covered infidelity and vice; Protestant straightness often lauds spirituality and faith, and neglects homely truth, candor, and generosity; and ultra-liberal Rationalistic refinement sometimes soars to heaven in its dreams, and wallows in the mire of earth ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... gurms here as thick as hair on a dog's back, and You and me know it, even if she don't. I don't know what to do, dear Lord—the windy is nelt down. Keep the gurms from gittin' into me, dear Lord. Do ye mind how poor Jeremiah was let down into the mire and ye tuk care o' him, didn't ye? Take care o' me, dear Lord. Poor ma has enough to do widout me comin' home clutterin' up the house wid sickness. Keep yer eye on Danny if ye can at all, at all. ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... her upturned face very tenderly and a little remorsefully. Charles Gould was competent because he had no illusions. The Gould Concession had to fight for life with such weapons as could be found at once in the mire of a corruption that was so universal as almost to lose its significance. He was prepared to stoop for his weapons. For a moment he felt as if the silver mine, which had killed his father, had decoyed him further than he meant to go; and with the roundabout ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... off from the main road and was riding down the track leading to the plantation-wharf, whence all the tobacco was shipped for England and all the merchandise imported for household use unladen. There the way was very wet and the mire was splashed high upon Mistress Mary's fine tabby skirt, but she rode on at a reckless pace, and I also, much at a loss to know what had come to her, yet not venturing, or rather, perhaps, deigning to inquire. And then I saw what she had doubtless seen before, the ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... object,—and now here she is, to show with all the force of truth how far from ideal the real may be. We looked at her as I look at her now, stripped of all God meant her to have when He made her, deep in the mire of the lowest form of idolatry, a devotee of Siva. She had been to Benares and bathed in the sacred Ganges, and therefore she is holy beyond the reach of doubt. She has no room for any sense of the need of Christ. She pities our ignorance when we talk to her. ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... Then the squire, turning his tail to the drummer, he advanced in a retrograde motion, and with one kick of his heels, not only broke the drum into a thousand pieces, but laid the drummer in the mire, with such a blow upon his hip-bone, that he halted all the days of his life. The recruits, perceiving the discomfiture of their leader, armed themselves with stones; the serjeant raised his halbert in a posture of defence, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... discounts bills, turns over and collects all kinds of securities, holds all Paris in its hand, watches over the fantasies of children, spies out the caprices and the vices of mature age, sucks money out of disease. Even so, if they drink no brandy, like the artisan, nor wallow in the mire of debauch, all equally abuse their strength, immeasurably strain their bodies and their minds alike, are burned away with desires, devastated with the swiftness of the pace. In their case the physical distortion is accomplished beneath the whip of interests, beneath the scourge ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... 'inconceivable.' But he is too well satisfied with his own system ever to consider the effect of what is unknown on the element which is known. To the Hegelian all things are plain and clear, while he who is outside the charmed circle is in the mire of ignorance and 'logical impurity': he who is within is omniscient, or at least has all the elements ...
— Sophist • Plato
... it is, if that a priest take keep, A foul shepherd to see and a clean sheep; Well ought a priest ensample for to give By his cleanness, how that his sheep should live. He put not out his benefice on hire, And left his sheep encumbered in the mire, And ran to London unto Sainte Paul's, To seek himself a chantery for souls, Or maintenance with a brotherhood to hold; But dwelt at home, and kepte well his fold, So that the wolf ne'er made it to miscarry; He was a shepherd and no mercenary. And though he holy ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... to imagine a more discomforting atmosphere in which to be abroad: yet Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse was trudging through the mire, and getting wet to the skin, even when he might just as well be sitting beside the fire in ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... marriage bill of 1753. The thought that stirred him was indicated in a phrase or two to his wife at Hawarden: 'July 31.—Parliamentary affairs are very black; the poor church gets deeper and deeper into the mire. I am to speak to-night; it will do no good; and the fear grows upon me from year to year that when I finally leave parliament, I shall not leave the great question of state and church better, but perhaps even ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... revelation of the whole ideal world. The hunted one flees, as men so constantly flee from the Highest, and seeks refuge in every possible form of earthly experience—at least in every clean and noble form, for there is nothing suggestive of low covert or the mire. It is simply the second-best as a refuge from the best that is depicted here—the earth at its pagan finest, in whose charm or homeliness the soul would fain hide itself from the spiritual pursuit. And the Great Huntsman is remorseless in his determination to win the soul ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... overhead are the real earth," explained the astronomer, "and that I'm looking down into the starry heavens, with its Milky Way. I say, though, isn't it jolly up here—soaring above all these moiling mannikins below—wasting their precious lives grubbing in the mire—dead to the glories of the universe—seeking happiness and finding misery. Ugh!—wish I had a packet of dynamite to drop amongst them and ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... understanding being reached, and of subsequent illegal dealings in which one man who is shrewder, wiser, more versed in the subtle ways of Third Street leads the other along over seemingly charming paths of fortunate investment into an accidental but none the less criminal mire of failure and exposure and public calumny and what not. And then they get to the place where the more vulnerable individual of the two—the man in the most dangerous position, the city treasurer of Philadelphia, no less—can no longer reasonably or, let us say, courageously, follow ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... the doors of his lips. The holy place is the renewed mind, and the windows therein may denote divine illumination from above, cautioning a saint lest they be darkened with the smoke of anger, the mist of grief, the dust of vain-glory, or the filthy mire of worldly cares. The golden candlesticks, the infused habits of divine knowledge resting within the soul. The shew-bread, the word of grace exhibited in the promises for the preservation of a Christian's life and glory. The golden altar of odors, ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... and his son were dragged into the mire, and were even committed to prison, though they were soon released," added Mr. Woolridge. "I think he was a great man, and I was exceedingly sorry for ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... Gentlemen, to pursue this reasoning to its extreme limits without offending against the commonest decency. We should have to descend into blood and mire, continuing to declare the while that everything is right. I pause therefore, and leave the rest to your imaginations. Open the most dismal pages of history. Choose out the acts which inspire the ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... tear the other loose, and feel about for a foothold in another direction. At the same time she drew out her body to its full length, and lay flat, so that she might gain as much support as possible by distributing her weight. Because of this sagacity, and because the mire at this point had more substance than in most of the other "honey-pots," she made a good fight, and almost, but not quite, held her own. By the time the tide had once more overtaken her she had sunk but a little way, and was still far from giving up ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... about a property; let us shake hands, and the bargain's made, the property and the price of purchase remain in the same hands.'—Madame Balnokhazy too was jesting when she said to her daughter: 'My dear Melanie, we have fallen up to our necks in the mire, we cannot be very particular about the hand that is to drag us out. Lorand will never come back again, Gyali has deceived us; but only tit for tat,—for we deceived him with that tale of the regained property in which only ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... neighborhood, the loveliest flower in all the sunny south. She might yet have been happy; she was happy. But the destroyer came into this paradise. He plucked the sweetest bud that grew there, and having enjoyed its odor, trampled it in the mire beneath his feet. George Selby, the deceased, a handsome, accomplished Confederate Colonel, was this human fiend. He deceived her with a mock marriage; after some months he brutally, abandoned her, and spurned her as if she were a contemptible thing; all the time he had a wife in New Orleans. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... him, fascinated. I, too, at the outset of my career, had looked forward, and had seen the same peril, but I had avoided it. Wretched figure that he was!—what more wretched, more pitiable than a man groveling and moaning in the mire of his own self-contempt? "Governor!" I said to myself, as I saw awful thoughts flitting like demons of despair across his face. And I shuddered, and pitied, and rejoiced,—shuddered at the narrowness ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... Noting every trace around, Of the travel gone before him, Every mark upon the ground, Down the winding, deep-cut roadway Furrowed out by grinding tire, Where the ruts lead to the water, In the half-dried plastic mire, He beholds the telltale marking Of an odd-shaped band of steel, Welded to secure the fellies Of old ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... who had spoiled her youth and taken away from her every dear illusion of her life and heart? By every right of justice and humanity she was no more the wife of Henry Meydon than if she had never seen him. He had forfeited every claim upon her, dragged in the mire her unspotted life—unspotted, for in all temptation, in her defenceless position, she had kept the whole commandment; she had, while at the mercy of her own temperament, fought her way through all, with a weeping heart and laughing lips. ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... obtained from those who are able to give it, just as the symphony orchestra has been supported for the sake of art. Certainly the time is at hand for philanthropy to come to the aid of worthy and capable stage artists who hope to rescue theatrical production from the mire of commercialism. ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... with painful interest that she followed at this time the developments of the great Church crisis in the homeland. "It tears my heart," she wrote, "to see our beloved Church dragged in and through the mire of public opinion." But she had faith that good would issue out of it all. A keen politician, she thirsted for election telegrams during periods of parliamentary transition. But in all times of public unrest and excitement she fell ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... mounted on his grey mare, Meg, A better never lifted leg, Tam skelpit on thro' dub and mire, Despising wind, and rain, and fire; Whiles haulding fast his gude blue bonnet; Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet; Whiles glowring round wi' prudent cares, Lest bogles catch him unawares; Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh, Whare ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... quantity of water flows from one into another, as into basins, and there are immense bulks of ever-flowing rivers under the earth, both of hot and cold water, and a great quantity of fire, and mighty rivers of fire, and many of liquid mire, some purer, and some more miry, as in Sicily there are rivers of mud that flow before the lava, and the lava itself, and from these the several places are filled, according as the overflow from time to time happens to come to each of them. But ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... questioned his present doings, or even admitted knowledge of them. But like all the rest of the male portion of Rocky Springs, he possessed a soft spot in his vicious heart for the two sisters, who, in the mire of iniquity which flooded the township, contrived a clean, wholesome living out of the soil, and were womanly enough to find interest, and even pleasure, in their sordid surroundings. Now, he hurried off down to his saloon, much in the manner of a man who fears the consequences of ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... the former is "wax, gum, or copal gum," and also, according to Henderson, "root." According to Brinton the Tzental radical chab means "honey, was, bee, a late meal." He refers, however, to the Cakchiquel, where he finds that ch'ab means "mud, clay, mire," and suggests that "as red and black clays were the primitive pigments this may connect the Tzental day name with the Maya." Seler, however, derives the Maya name from ci or cii, "to taste good," ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... "I would I had not;" for such men seldom do any thing that they are not forced to take in pieces again, and are so much farther off from doing it, as they have done already. His friends are with him as his physician, sought to only in his sickness and extremity, and to help him out of that mire he has plunged himself into; for in the suddenness of his passions he would hear nothing, and now his ill success has allayed him he hears too late. He is a man still swayed with the first reports, and no man more in the power of a pick-thank ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... other day that it is probable that the very mire of the London streets contains that mysterious substance known as radium, the most tremendous agent of light and heat ever yet discovered by man; so in man himself, however low his state, there is the spark of God, an ember lit at the altar fires of the Eternal, and it is because we forget this ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... forgiveness no man has ever sinned, nor have you now. So that your repentance is deep and real, and when by some penance that I shall impose you shall have cleansed yourself of all this mire that clings to your poor soul, you shall ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... house. "We had miserable up-putting," the diary continues, "and on both sides of the ferry much anxiety of mind. Our beds were clean straw, and but for the circumstance of the boat, I should have slept as soundly as ever I did after a walk through moss and mire ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of reckless, dashing courage which now and then seemed to have in it an element of grandeur. But it is time that I told you about myself, and gave you some idea of the development of my character in the thick of this filthy mire into which it had pleased God to plunge me, on leaving ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... non-existent. It is rather the Eternal itself that the Mystics are seeking. They have first to awaken the Eternal within them, then they can speak of it. Hence the hard saying of Plato is quite real to them, that the uninitiated sinks into the mire, and that only one who has passed through the mystical life enters eternity. It is only in this sense that the words in the fragment of Sophocles can be understood: "Thrice-blessed are the initiated who come to the realm of the shades. They alone have life there. For others ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... hands and feet when at night they crept to their burrow of hay under the low eaves. Everything with the exception of the old stone floor was scrupulously clean: without, the pigs dabbled in the mire between the rugged rocks, and nettles grew, but beyond, mountains, woods and illimitable space ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... relatives; you might as well take a header into a leech-pond. Come! you're a man; think for yourself. Don't have this affair on your conscience, boy. I tell you, Harry Richmond, I'm against your going. You go against my will; you offend me, sir; you drag my name and blood into the mire. She's Welsh, is she? Those Welsh are addle-pated, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... woman, the woman that bewilders the observer and the oldest Parisian. He often went wandering about at night, vaguely and irresistibly led on by one of those creatures who are neither all vice nor all virtue, and who walk so gracefully along in the mire. Sometimes he was dazzled by one of those fine-looking girls, so often seen in Paris, who seem to brighten everything as they pass along, and he would turn round to look at her and stand there even after she had ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... when awd finished mi wark, An' wor tooastin mi shins anent th' fire, A chap rushes in aat 'o'th' dark Throo heead to fooit plaistered wi' mire. ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... the mire to leave him, till the stars are all burnt out, While, in strange-looking shapes, they frisk about the ground, And, afar in the woods, they raise a dismal shout, Till I shrink into my cell again for terror ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... his throbbing brain demanding hearing. All things were real to this man, this uncouth mass of flesh that his companions sneered at; most real of all, the unhelped pain of life, the great seething mire of dumb wretchedness in streets and alleys, the cry for aid from the starved souls of the world. You and I have other work to do than to listen,—pleasanter. But he, coming out of the mire, his veins thick with the blood of a despised race, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... bears the wispy fire, To trail the swains among the mire, The caitiff upward flung; There like a tortoise in a shop He dangled from the chamber-top, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... taking place. There is no such thing on record. It is shifting the ground from one field of observation to another to make this statement, and when the assertions go so far as to exclude from the domain of science those who will not be dragged into this mire of mere assertion, then it ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... seemes but a dreaming dolt, Still walking like a ragged Colt, 290 And oft out of a Bush doth bolt, Of purpose to deceiue vs. And leading vs makes vs to stray, Long Winters nights out of the way, And when we stick in mire and clay, Hob doth with laughter ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... odium you tread and boast, Yourself enamored of the dirtiest most. One day to be a miser you aspire, The next to wallow drunken in the mire; The third, lo! you're a meritorious liar![C] Pray, in the catalogue of all your graces, Have theft ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... as Croaking comforts Frogs,[46] And Mire and Ordure are the Heav'n of Hogs. As well might Nothing bind Immensity, Or passive Matter Immaterials see, As these shou'd write by reason, rhime, and rule, Or we turn Wit, whom nature doom'd a Fool. If Dryden err'd, 'twas human frailty once, ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte |
