"Rut" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of her escapade, that would at least shake him out of his soft and well-lined rut. Indeed, Io was frank enough with herself to admit that a perverse desire to explode a bomb under her imperturbable and too-assured suitor had been an element in her projected elopement. Never would that bomb explode. It would not even fizzle ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Rut in the world of physical nature productive function of this sort is not the only kind of function with which we are familiar. We have also releasing or permissive function; ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... mind, and he was afraid. At that moment, when his fate was being decided, he hesitated to go deeper into the rut where he had already been walking too long. He stood silent and undecided. Confused thoughts crowded his brain; his temples throbbed, and a buzzing noise sounded in his ears. But the thought of giving up his liberty, and again subjecting himself to Madame Desvarennes's ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... where a man might ride to his death at every stride of his horse. And down the road they raced, till they saw by the loom of the open bush where the boundary fences ceased. The leader turned his horse in his stride, and the four behind turned theirs. A fallen log; a rut; a snag; and one rider's race would be done; for the pace they were going left no escape if once a horse came down. Through the low-grown brush they crashed. A rider ducked to miss a branch that was level with his head; a horse swerved sharp to the right to dodge an ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... would give the impression of vigilance on our part. And every creature that met us would rely upon us for quartering. [Footnote: "Quartering":—This is the technical word, and, I presume, derived from the French cartayer, to evade a rut or any obstacle.] All this, and if the separate links of the anticipation had been a thousand times more, I saw, not discursively, or by effort, or by succession, but by one flash of ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... went up like a crab, sideways. Presently we reached a ledge, narrow enough at first, but which widened as we followed it, and moreover sloped inwards like the petal of a flower, so that as we followed it we gradually got into a kind of rut or fold of rock, that grew deeper and deeper, till at last it resembled a Devonshire lane in stone, and hid us perfectly from the gaze of anybody on the slope below, if there had been anybody to gaze. This lane (which appeared to be a natural formation) continued for ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... found that its floor was about 20 feet below that of the cavern above. It was equally level and covered to a great but unascertained depth with the same dry red earth which had been worn down about five feet in a hollow or rut. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... alone so long that we've got ourselves into a rut. Everyone we meet may give us something, and receive something from us ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... clout, She is quite shut out! She might call and shout, But no one about Would ever call back, "Who's there?" There is never a hut, Not a door to shut, Not a footpath or rut, Long road or ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... visible cloud across their path. Then suddenly the whole avenue was full of little red lights, like the garden in "Faust" when Mephistopheles performs his magic on it. Here and there the huge headlights of a car shone on the roadway, magnifying every rut in the asphalt, and bringing out strange, vivid shades in the grass and the hydrangea bushes. They were passing a frowning palace set on a piece of velvet turf as small as a pocket handkerchief—so small that the lighted windows were ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... and blind, and fill my eyes with tears, so that I cannot see the paper. I mean such things as are being done where our heroes are dying as Shaw died. It is not wise that all our literature should run in a rut cut through our hearts and red with our blood. I feel the need of a little gentle household merriment and talk of common things, to indulge which I ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... scales to grocers keeps before him the image of a small dealer in his home town. The merchant had fallen into the rut, the dust was getting thicker on his dingy counters and trade was slipping away ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... in East Dennis four years I began to feel that I was getting into a rut. It seemed to me that all I could do in that particular field had been done. My people wished me to remain, however, and so, partly as an outlet for my surplus energy, but more especially because I realized the splendid work women could do as physicians, I began to study medicine. The ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... does not choose to answer; some he is not yet ready to answer, and when he is ready he prefers to select his own organ of publication. I do not find fault with all the brain-tappers. Some of them are doing excellent service by accumulating facts which could not otherwise be attained. Rut one gets tired of the strings of questions sent him, to which he is expected to return an answer, plucked, ripe or unripe, from his private tree of knowledge. The brain-tappers are like the owner of the goose that laid the golden eggs. They would have the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... little in it to inspire him with high ideals or arouse his ambition to achieve greatness. He leads a hard life among rough men and receives only coarse fare and rougher treatment. His life is narrow and he works in a rut that prevents him from taking a broad view of life. All that he has is his monthly wages, and, possibly, a hope that at some future day he may have a herd of cattle of ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... never come, if we sink deep into our souls the conviction that a great effort is required, and fling our hearts into it; that the ever increasing new needs and foes of to-day cannot be met with the antiquated weapons of the past; that the old rut must be abandoned and the new ground broken: then the future is secure. The old citadel of Catholic Christendom will continue a fortress, flying the old flag, towering above the Atlantic breakers with a strength impregnable and a Faith ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... of these same roads were, as little Mr. Bouncer feelingly remarked, facts that must be felt to be believed. For, when the wheel of any vehicle is suddenly plunged into a rut or hole of a foot's depth, and from thence violently extracted with a jerk, plunge, and wrench, to be again dropped into another hole or rut, and withdrawn from thence in a like manner, - and when this process is being simultaneously repeated, with discordant variations, by other three wheels ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... much of a task, just hunt for the obsolete features. Above all things, we must not try to follow another's work. We too often follow unwittingly and to our misfortune even when we try to keep out of the rut. ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... that overhung the broken path; I rode in advance, my face and arms bleeding with countless scratches, while at each rip of a thorn I gave a warning shout— "Thorn!" for those behind, and a cry of "Hole!" for any deep rut that lay in the path. It was fortunately moonlight, but the jungle was so thick that the narrow track was barely perceptible; thus both camels and donkeys ran against the trunks of trees, smashing the luggage, and breaking all that could be ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... incomparably greater advantages of soil and climate than Ulster, with better harbours and a better trading position. But instead of working they stand with folded hands complaining. Instead of putting their own shoulders to the wheel they wait for somebody to lift them out of the rut. Instead of modern methods of agriculture, fishing, or what not, they cling to the ancient ways, and resent advice. The women will not take service; the men will not dig, chop, hammer. They are essentially bone-idle—laziness is in their blood. They will not ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... heaving the lead continually as we advanced, we at length struck ground in forty-three fathoms. Proceeding nearer the land, our sounding lessened to twenty-two fathoms, when we anchored on good ground; and though we distinctly heard the rut of the shore at no great distance, we could not perceive the land till next day, when the weather was somewhat clearer. We then sent our skiff in shore, to see if any place could be discovered of more security for our ship to ride ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... permit our marriage to drag us down into the kind of rut we see all about us. Take Flora and Vincent. Married five months and she never so much as wears corsets when she takes him to the street car, mornings. And he used to be such a clever dresser, and look at him now. All baggy. Let's not ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... one street and down another. When any one was ill a sentinel was placed at the gate to hail the doctor, who was as sure to pass as the passenger-train. It was a familiar joke in Clayton that the buggy had a regular track, and that the wheels always ran in the same rut. Once, when Carter Nelson had taken too much egg-nog and his aunt thought he had spinal meningitis, the usual route had been reversed, and again when the blacksmith's triplets were born. But these ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... follow. Parsons and his wife called on everyone they felt should not be neglected, later inviting to their own home those who seemed in a position to help them. During these second visits, the conversation was turned to what might be done by "people like ourselves" to prevent getting into a rut. Dozens of helpful activities were recommended, and they made it a business to explore the most valuable, so that they could tell others about forthcoming meetings of discussion groups, plays, lectures, and the like. Within six months, they had entirely overcome the president's ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... of a beast, (O Ioue, a beastly fault:) and then another fault, in the semblance of a Fowle, thinke on't (Ioue) a fowle-fault. When Gods haue hot backes, what shall poore men do? For me, I am heere a Windsor Stagge, and the fattest (I thinke) i'th Forrest. Send me a coole rut-time (Ioue) or who can blame me to pisse my Tallow? Who comes heere? my Doe? M.Ford. Sir Iohn? Art thou there (my Deere?) My male-Deere? Fal. My Doe, with the blacke Scut? Let the skie raine Potatoes: let it ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... love disappears. It is only in the higher animals that we see a more or less durable sympathy develop between the two sexes. However, here also and even in man the sexual passion intoxicates for the moment all the senses. In his sexual rut even man is dominated as by a magic influence, and for the time he sees the world only under the aspect inspired by this influence. The object loved appears to him under celestial colors, which veil all the defects and miseries ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... expansion of the paper's interests; wider than he knew. She had a belief that there were possibilities for a country newspaper, and she brought a fresh point of view to operate in a situation where Harkless had fallen, perhaps, too much in the rut; and she watched every chance with a keen eye and looked ahead of her with clear foresight. What she waited and yearned for and dreaded, was the time when a copy of the new "Herald" should be placed in the trembling hands of the man who lay ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... suffered a violent reaction, and wept like a woman. It was the first time he had encountered an open expression of scorn from any man higher than Raffles; and with that scorn hurrying like venom through his system, there was no sensibility left to consolations. Rut the relief of weeping had to be checked. His wife and daughters soon came home from hearing the address of an Oriental missionary, and were full of regret that papa had not heard, in the first instance, the interesting things which they tried to ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... be expected, that it was far too large a place for any attempt of theirs. But they have not altogether thrown away their time. Their Indian lad has discovered that a gold-train is going down from Santa Fe toward the Magdalena; and they are waiting for it beside the miserable rut which serves for a road, encamped in a forest of oaks which would make them almost fancy themselves back again in Europe, were it not for the tree-ferns which form the undergrowth; and were it not, too, for the deep gorges opening ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... bond of kin, and perhaps—such is our vanity in the new lands—to show them what the stock had come to overseas. They tended to be depressing these visits: the married sister was living in a small way; the first cousin seemed to have got into a rut; the uncle and aunt were failing, with a stooping, trembling, old-fashioned kind of decrepitude, a rigidity of body and mind, which somehow one didn't see much ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Frank Edwards emerged into the road, he was nearly jammed against the railings in front of the thatched cottage, by the rapid approach of a post-chaise. While he looked in at the window, the wheel dipped into a rut, the axle instantaneously broke, and the body of the carriage bumped upon the ground. In an instant he had secured the horses, and the Chobb family, rushing out, advanced to the door of the vehicle. With some difficulty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... King do make him believe that all is safe: and so he hath heard my Lord Chancellor openly say to the King, that he was now a glorious prince, and in a glorious condition, because of some one accident that hath happened, or some one rut that hath been removed; "when," says Sir W. Coventry "they reckoned their one good meal, without considering that there was nothing left in the cupboard for to-morrow." After this discourse to my Lord Sandwich's, and took a quarter of an hour's walk in the garden with him, which I ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... unusually dark twilight seemed to be coming on. And for one second the old nightmare of the sceptic put its finger on my nerve. What was certainty? Was anybody certain of anything? Heavens! to think of the dull rut of the sceptics who go on asking whether we possess a future life. The exciting question for real scepticism is whether we possess a past life. What is a minute ago, rationalistically considered, except a tradition and a picture? The darkness grew deeper from the road. The cabman calmly gave me ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... as my job," continued Robb. "There's no difference between one post and another—except in the amount of work done, of energy wasted. It's all a matter of getting into a rut and plugging along there, like a plowman. A fellow needs certain qualifications like accuracy, speed, and a rhinoceros' constitution; but what is there to it, from the standpoint of prospects? Nothing—except work. I began in this very office twenty-five years ago. In two years I was almost as ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... down the rut-rifted lane Where the wild roses hang and the woodbines entwine, And the shrill squeaking bat makes his circles again Round the side of the tavern close by the sign. The sun is gone down like a wearisome queen, In curtains the ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... tufts of heather and furze. Over them and through them went horse and man—horse rising seven and man twenty off, a well-matched pair in age for a wild ride—headlong towards the north, till a blind rut somewhat deeper than usual put an end to their career, and sent the good horse staggering forward some thirty feet on to his nose and knees, and Tom over his shoulder, on to his back in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... should say so," continued the wise woman, "but you see, my girl, when you go back, you get right in the same rut again, and all those mill girls would just make life miserable for you. I am not encouraging you to stay away from home, but as Molly says, she is a leader in the scout girls you know—she always says when a thing goes wrong in one place ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... carrying two boxes of oranges and a crate of California cabbages in out of the sun, and a limp individual in blue gingham shirt and dirty overalls had shouldered the mail sack and was making his way across the dusty, rut-scored street to the post-office. ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... not, Laura. Environment controls the making of men. Some rise above it, the majority do not. We might have followed in the well-worn rut. But let us not spoil this delightful evening by speaking of anything sad or gloomy. This is your daily life; to me it is like a scene from a play, over which one sighs to see the curtain fall—all enchantment, all ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... express train speed now and it rocked from side to side like a ship in a gale as it tore down the rough country road! Bruce clutched the big steering wheel with deathlike grip and tried his mightiest to keep the cumbersome vehicle straight! He realized that a loose stone or a deep rut meant death to him and destruction to the motor car! His teeth were clenched and his face was white! The wind had whisked away his ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... observe anything with any degree of comfort. With my arms bound, I sprawled out upon the smooth, curved bonnet of the confounded car, only held on by a cord which I expected to break and send me flying into the next world every time we touched a stone, or crossed a rut. My heart was in my mouth for the next hour or so, but afterwards I think I grew careless or callous. He had pulled the cord round my arms pretty tightly; that numbed me all over, and the exposure to the air did the rest. I fell into a dreamy condition. I only know that never ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... mean just for a little trip. I mean to live. Take a little two-room apartment in one of the new buildings—near my studio—and relax. Enjoy yourselves. Meet new men and women. Live! You're in a rut—both of you. Besides, dad needs it. That rheumatism of his, ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... has succeeded in impressing his heart. We are almost driven to fear that in the case of his rich talent the poverty of heart alone determined his choice of satire. And how could we otherwise explain the fact that he could pursue so long a road without ever issuing from its narrow rut? Whatever may be the variety of matter and of external forms, we see the inner form return everywhere with its sterile and eternal uniformity, and in spite of his so productive career, he never accomplished in himself the circle of humanity, that circle which we see joyfully traversed ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... life—why, he himself, before his marriage, had smiled at the old-fashioned stability represented by such families as the Mortons; had talked of 'getting into ruts', of 'mouldering', and so on. He saw it from another point of view now, and if the choice were between rut and whirlpool—— ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... looking at his back; while the sister frowned nervously and stretched when, trying to bring back the past, he attempted to share his enthusiasms with her. Every evening she complained of being bored, and talked about independence of mind and those who are in the rut of tradition. Carried away by her new ideas, Vera Semyonovna proved that the work that her brother was so engrossed in was conventional, that it was a vain effort of conservative minds to preserve what had already served its turn and was vanishing from the ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... that work of his which most nearly made as well as marked an epoch in American church history was the treatise of "Christian Nurture" (1847). This, with the protracted controversy that followed upon the publication of it, was a powerful influence in lifting the American church out of the rut of mere individualism that had been wearing deeper and deeper from the days of the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... honesty, with due ability; but its business is to do no more, and to leave alone all questions of practical consequences and applications, questions which will never fail to have due prominence given to them. Else criticism, besides being really false to its own nature, merely continues in the old rut which it has hitherto followed in this country, and will certainly miss the chance now given to it. For what is at present the bane of criticism in this country? It is that practical considerations cling to it and stifle it. It subserves interests ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... winding like a long red rut, went the narrow road, and was so deeply cut into the soil that a horseman passing down it could see nothing of its bordering fields; but about fifty yards from the first great oak the land suddenly dipped, and showed on the left a steep cup-like ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... other, whence he looks to the right and left and sees a great deal that is good and new. Then, in some unguarded moment, he asks himself: "But what the devil has all this to do with me?" In the meantime he has grown old and has become accustomed to it all; and therefore he continues in his rut—just as ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Jeff, "for farmers, shad, maple trees and the Connemaugh river. I know something about farmers. I thought I struck one once that had got out of the rut; but Andy Tucker proved to me I was mistaken. 'Once a farmer, always a sucker,' said Andy. 'He's the man that's shoved into the front row among bullets, ballots and the ballet. He's the funny-bone and gristle of the country,' said Andy, 'and I don't ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... force fell in a rut At Ctesiphon; Turks made things hum. We found that we had got to Kut, Whilst Russians found ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... the night of the encounter before crossing the snowy pass, and once their driver had, to use the horsey phrase, given them their heads, and urged them on to their top speed, their hot, wild blood had been bubbling through their veins, making them snort and tear along heedless of rock, rut, and the roughest ground. Marcus had told the driver to check them twice over, but as soon as Lupe was in the chariot and both Marcus and Serge busy seeing to his wound, the speed began to increase, till the chariot was bumping over the ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... doing this. Even as he skipped, he was conscious of a wish that he had studied harder at college and was now in a position to be doing something better than hack work for a soulless publishing company. Never before had he been so completely certain that he was sick to death of the rut ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... monarchs seeing him stop, stood there to become spectators of the coming encounter between him and Salya. The two then began to exhibit their prowess (upon each other) like roaring bulls of great strength at the sight of a cow in rut. Then that foremost of men, king Salya covered Bhishma, the son of Santanu with hundreds and thousands of swift-winged shafts. And those monarchs seeing Salya thus covering Bhishma at the outset with innumerable ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... do many things when the emergency comes," replied Mollie, as she turned out to avoid a rut in the road. ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... rather and their needs Give thought with me. What comfort in their swords Have they, robbed of the might of two such lords As Peleus' son and Telamon's? What art Can drive the blood back to the stricken heart? Like huddled sheep cowed obstinate, as dull As oxen impotent the wain to pull Out of a rut, which, failing at first lunge, Answer not voice nor goad, but sideways plunge Or backward urge with lowered heads, or stand Dumb monuments of sufferance—so unmanned The Achaians brooded, nor their chiefs had care To drive them forth, since they too knew ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... attempts smacked so decidedly of the older manner that we cannot censure the critic for failing to foresee that Wordsworth was destined to glorify the "poetry of nature," and to rescue it from the rut of listless and soporific topographical description. Both poems, in the definitive text, are readable, and exhibit here and there a glimmer of the poet's future greatness; yet it must be borne in mind ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... the trap lurched deep into a rut. And he wakened to the point in his journey. He had travelled some distance since ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... from "favorable mention" in that column, it was because we forgot or Mr. Stone's blue pencil came to the rescue of his absent friend. Ballantyne was party to the conspiracy, because he had often remonstrated against the rut of expression into which Field ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... you ain't so deep in your rut you can't see the stars!" said Christopher. "But I guess you see them in a pretty black sky sometimes. In the beginning, why did I have to come into the ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... as they were passing the priest, made the wheel of the wagon, which was going at full speed, sink into a rut, splashing the abb with mud from ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the great cities in this country, the man who fell in love, and was in that city a character at least a little above the ordinary rut of men. He had talent and energy, and there had come to him a hard schooling in city ways, though he was born in the forest, and his youth had been passed upon a farm sloping downward to the shore of the St. Clair River, that wonderful strait and stretch of water which flows between broad meadowlands ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... ballet for eight clowns. And he is reported to have said, "I should like to bring it about that music be performed in street-cars, while people get out and get in." For he finds his greatest enemy in the concert-room, that rut that limits the play of the imagination of audiences, that fortress in which all of the intentions of the men of the past have established themselves, and from which they dominate the musical present. The concert-room has succeeded in making music a drug, a sedative, has created a "musical ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... wouldn't mind just settin' here an' readin', while I go an' c'nsult with my foreman," Dan said, and went away and presently returned with a big thick book, which was very heavy, and gave it to Whitey. "This here's my fav'rut book," Dan continued, "an' is very absorbin'. Set in my chair there, an' read y'self t' death, 'f you feel like it," ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... hundred yards, when they began opening their throats and flapping with their wings, which startled my horse and sent him off at full speed. I lost the rein on one side, and, in attempting to pull him up with the other, I brought his foot into a rut, and down he came, sending me head-foremost into a wet ditch! When I got on my legs, and shook myself a little, I saw each particular hen galloping across the field, screeching with all its might, while the horse was off in a different direction; and, casting a rueful look at ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... road was being repaired, so, at a certain place, the boys had to turn off on a side road for a distance of nearly a mile. Here the going was anything but good, and they went down in more than one rut or hollow. ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield
... not marry at present, far be it from us to offer violence to your inclination! So much prudence as you have shewn in all your conduct, would make it very wrong in us to mistrust it in this, or to offer to direct you in your choice. Rut, alas! my child, what can we do for you?—To partake our hard lot, and involve yourself into as hard a life, would not help us, but add to your afflictions. But it will be time enough to talk of these things, when ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... time Washington was too busy with its domestic programme to consider such a proposal seriously. "Your two letters," wrote Colonel House in reply, "have come to me and lifted me out of the rut of things and given me a glimpse of a fair land. What you are thinking of and what you want this Administration to do is beyond the power of accomplishment for the moment. My desk is covered with matters of no lasting ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... much reason there was to fear that treachery might be exercised towards Maitland, he would surely not have suffered him thus to risk his valuable life. Rut he was ignorant of all the peculiar circumstances that had occurred to show that he was a special mark for the vengeance of Coubitant: and the confidence he felt in his courage and ability led him—on this occasion, as on many others—to select ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... mother and I made has left its mark on me. The friends we left in the rut behind us looked for my failure, and it seemed then that all the men with money had leagued themselves together to stop me from going on. Somehow I beat them, one by one—big engineers, financiers, financiers' syndicates, corporations—working ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... dined in a new inn, or rather tavern, kept by a French Canadian, and then pursued our journey for a few miles on a decent new road, amidst fine settlements and good farms, and, crossing a beautiful stream, plunged into the undisturbed forest by a road in which every rut was a canal, and every stone as big as a bomb-shell at the very least. How the waggon stood it, and the roots and stumps of the trees with which these boulders were diversified, I am still unable to explain; for my part, I walked the greater part of it, for the bones of my body seemed ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... clearly enough the hopelessness of their position; probably with the intensity of youth she exaggerated it, which was scarcely necessary, as a small rut is apt to widen into a bottomless pit if it crosses the path of those who are living up to the utmost verge of a narrow income. As she reviewed the endless instances of her mother's self-abnegation which memory supplied—her cheerful industry, her brave struggle to live like a gentlewoman ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... beheld the waitress with his seeing eye, he liked to have her slap his dishes down before him with a genial crash. A gentleman has his little foibles, and being waited on at meal-time was one of his. Occasionally, to prove to himself that he wasn't one of those fogies who get in a rut, he ordered wheat cakes with maple syrup for breakfast. They always ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... at last, and it arose from King Arthur's fondness for the ladies. There was nothing remarkable in the appearance of the old lady who was Mrs. Nagsby's favorite lodger, who had held the rooms above mine for three years. Rut the lady had a most beautiful sealskin jacket, trimmed with tails of sable. King Arthur had unluckily a feminine affection for furs, and I never dared to take him into any of the fashionable thoroughfares, as he had a way of following the ladies, not for their own dear sakes, but for the ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... individuality and reduce everyone to the "dead level" of the commonplace, under the mistaken idea of universal equality. Gifted persons daring to lift up their heads above the common ruck of mankind, are at once shoved back into the narrow groove the heads of the cult have decided to be the proper rut for ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... partially cleared, light fleeces of cloud drifting across the silvery disk. There was every sign that a frost was going to set in later on. For these reasons the distant rising road was even more distinct now between its high banks than it had been in the declining daylight. Not a track or rut broke the virgin surface of the white mantle that lay along it, all marks left by the lately arrived travellers having been speedily obliterated by the flakes ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... perfectly prepared to be depraved; the former would provoke only curiosity and amusement to see bearded men such mere babes, and the latter would breed infinitely more disgust than desire. The man must be prurient and lecherous as a dog-faced baboon in rut to have aught of passion excited by either. And most inept is the conclusion, "So long as Mr. Payne's translation remains defiled by words, sentences, and whole paragraphs descriptive of coarse and often horribly depraved sensuality, it can never stand beside Lane's, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... and seizing her son's hand, "Give him a cut with the whip!" she exclaimed. The young man did not do that, but he urged on his horse and then, just as they were passing the Abbe, suddenly let the wheel of the gig drop into a deep rut. There was a splash, and, in an instant, the priest was covered with mud from head to foot. Rosalie laughed all over her face, and turning round, she shook her fist at the abbe as he stood wiping himself down with ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... was a little damaged. We left word for Tom to see to it, and I'll write and get my father to pay for mending it. We're all awfully sorry, sir. Dr Winter sends his regards, and we shall hear the result of the exam. on Thursday. One of the wheels came off, but I fancy it will go on again. It was a rut did it. We were coming along at a very good pace, and should have been here an hour ago if it hadn't been for the accident. We're ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... Thorarin of Acres, was healed; a stout man he was, and had to wife Steinun, daughter of Rut of Combeness; Thorleif of Lavadale, the father of Steinulf, was a very mighty man, and from him are ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... upon the edge of the stream itself. Then, turning up it, and pressing on for another hundred yards, they arrive at the cavern's mouth, just as the first puff of the chilly wind sweeps down the deep rut-like valley through which the ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... those who have passed away in the latter part of the period under study the power of initiative has gone. New proposals are hushed. Variation is discouraged; the rut of custom and convention is preferred. And a subtle stifling air of the impossibility of all active purposes pervades social and religious and business activity ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... together into a rocky gorge, with the rut of the road perched high on one side, and the stream brawling away fifty feet below. Goats with tinkling bells were flitting about the crags like so many brown flies. One began to wonder whether the road was not a cul-de-sac, and whether Valledemosa did not lie in some other direction. ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... then Dorothy quite lost control of herself. She wept piteously. And then she grew calmer. She had faced the reluctant fact when I spoke Zoe's name. We had stumbled up and over that roughness in the road. Any rut or obstacle in it might now be easier endured ... if worse ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... while sorrow kept Marie much to the rut in which she had moved since Osborn's departure; but the grief for a parent is so natural and inevitable a grief; it is not as the grief for a husband or a child; and when the first warm days of April came Marie took some very definite steps forward ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... a tremendous speed. It has to be just so high for the eye to pick it up. A great deal we do not get. For instance, we can only catch one-twelfth of the solar spectrum. Until recently we have believed only what we could see. Science has pulled us out of the rut. It may pull us through the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... plinty Flahertys in it now, glory be to God!" answered the charioteer, with enthusiasm. "I 'd have no mother meself but for the Flahertys." He leaped down to lead the stumbling horse past a deep rut and some loose stones, and beckoned the little girl sternly from her proud seat. "Run home, now!" he said, as she obeyed: "I 'll give you a fine drive an' I coming down the hill;" but she had joined the travelers with full intent, and trotted gayly alongside ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... a woman, hez fer a man, but I never got no chanst to meet men folks. I wuz raised here, and folks allers hed it all cut out fer me to be an old maid. When a woman onct gets that name fixt on her, it's all off with her chances. No man ever comes nigh her, and she can't git out of her single rut. I never could get to go nowhars, and I wa'n't that bold kind that makes up to a man fust, afore he gives ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... all this activity and cheerfulness from him, but she did. With her woman's enjoyment of a little mystery, and her high resolve to show herself worthy of him, she kept in the old rut as nearly as possible when he was at home. He saw only that she was stronger, and it ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... riven gulch and scrub-grown valley. And then it was that Ram Nath proved his mettle. Hardened himself, he showed no mercy to his passenger, and never once drew rein, though the tonga danced from rock to ridge and ridge to rut and back again, like a tin can on the tail of an astonished dog. As for Amber, he wedged his feet and held on with both hands, grimly, groaning in spirit when he did not in the flesh, foreseeing as he did nine hours more of this heroic torture ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... difficult expression. Apparently it refers to the harsh grating of the wheel against the side of the rut. ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... it were, in sight of port, while he crossed the road, his horse happened to plunge into a cart-rut with such violence, that he was thrown several yards over his head; and, the beast's shoulder being slipped by the fall, he found himself disabled from plucking the fruit, which was almost within his reach; for he had left his servants at a considerable ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... possible in the use of expression. Don't follow in the old rut but try and strike out for yourself. This does not mean that you should try to set the style, or do anything outlandish or out of the way, or be an innovator on the prevailing custom. In order to be original ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... I was very abrupt this afternoon, Miss Blakiston. My excuse is that I have always feared change. I have lived in a rut too long, I'm afraid. But of course, if you feel you would like to move the telephone, or put in an upstairs instrument, you may ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... they reached the top, and the team plunged furiously down the slope. He straightened himself in his seat with both hands on the reins, and Agatha held her breath when she felt the light vehicle tilt as the wheels on one side sank deep in a rut. Then something seemed to crack, and she saw the off-side horse stumble and plunge. The other beast flung its head up, Hawtrey shouted something, and there was a great smashing and snapping of undergrowth and fallen branches as they drove in among the birches. Then the team stopped, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... For all the world sees it as well as England. These meteors came and went before our day, Not harming any: it threatens us no more Than French or Norman. War? the worst that follows Things that seem jerk'd out of the common rut Of Nature is the hot religious fool, Who, seeing war in heaven, for heaven's credit Makes it on earth: but look, where Edward draws A faint foot hither, leaning upon Tostig. He hath learnt to love our ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... as the daily round is concerned. The home, or shop, or store, or office is their daily horizon, with practically the same round of duties day after day, year in and year out. The very narrowness of the round tends to make narrow people. They get into as much of a rut in their thinking as their daily action is apt to become. Their work runs in fixed grooves that are apt to become fixed ruts. And this makes ruts in their thinking. Their souls seem to grow small by the very smallness and sameness ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... service between Urga and Kalgan. As usual, the native chauffeur was dashing along at thirty-five miles an hour when he should not have driven faster than twenty at the most. One of the front wheels slid into a deep rut, the car turned completely over and the resulting casualties numbered one man dead and our Czech seriously injured. It was three days before another car carried him back to Urga, where the broken bones were ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... supper past, An' Nancy darnin' by her ker'sene lamp,— I love, I say, to start upon a tramp, To shake the kinkles out o' back an' legs, An' kind o' rack my life off from the dregs Thet's apt to settle in the buttery-hutch Of folks thet foller in one rut too much: Hard work is good an' wholesome, past all doubt; But 't ain't so, ef the mind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... cannot easily go to bed. The thoughtful Treasurer bet his money and deplored this luck. It seemed likely to trap himself and the Governor in a predicament they had not foreseen. All had taken a hand at first, and played for several hours, until Fortune's wheel ran into a rut deeper than usual. Wingo slowly became the loser to several, then Hewley had forged ahead, winner from everybody. One by one they had dropped out, each meaning to go home, and all lingering to see the luck turn. ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... The clean, fragrant hay attracted her as it had attracted me. One would have thought that in a haymow she had nesting material near at hand. But no; her nest-building instincts had to take the old rut; she must bring her own material from without; the haymow was only the mossy bank or the wood-side turf where her species had hidden their nests for untold generations. She did not weave one spear of the farmer's hay into her nest, but brought in the usual bits of dry ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... an expedition into the artistic fakery of London, and he would have dismissed the whole affair as a stimulating and amusing diversion from the ultra-aristocratic rut if the personality of Elise Durwent had not remained with him like ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... contemplates suicide, you should take that man out-of-doors and walk him about: Nature will do the rest. To normal people like ourselves living under abnormal circumstances Nature could do much to lift our thoughts out of the rut of everyday affairs, but she loses much of her healing power when she cannot be seen, but only felt, and when that feeling is ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... THE SHOULDER JOINT.—This is liable to occur from any of the causes mentioned above or from the animal slipping suddenly into a rut or hole. When such an accident occurs, sudden lameness will attract attention. The animal will be noticed to drag the leg when walking and to carry it in a circular direction, outward and forward, at each step. The leg should be carefully examined, pressure over the joint causing the animal ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... chum, seriously. "For all we know they may have run across some sign of the rustlers, and thought it best to get out of the beaten rut here before ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... She passed from a feeble disgust at their closer relations into what promised to be ardent affection, but it drooped into bored routine. Yet she existed only for him and for the children, and she was as sorry, as worried as himself, when he gave up the law and trudged on in a rut of listing ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... difficulties, and when there, hauls him so that he cannot see, or exert himself to get out of them, and expecting chastisement, the horse springs and struggles to avoid it before he has recovered his feet, and goes down with a tremendous impetus. If he has to cross a rut to the right he probably forces his horse across it when the right foot is on the ground. In this case, unless the horse collects himself and jumps—if he attempts to step across it, the probability is that in crossing his legs he knocks one against the other and falls. The reverse ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... rut. For an hour or more Miss Strong's fingers flew as she noted down his dictation, and at the end of that time the letters were answered, and the communications which had so perplexed Amidon were filed away among other things done. The office force breathed freely once more, ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick |
