"Untangle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... largely over-fished. Out in the deeps are fish that have never had smell or sight of bait or net. Here, near shore, the lines get badly tangled sometimes, and committees have to be appointed to try to untangle the lines and sweeten ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... "I'll untangle that for you," offered Rosemary, holding out her hand for the line. "We went to see Rainbow Hill and now Mother is crazy to go there for the summer. Hugh is as pleased as pleased can be, for he wants her to go somewhere before Mr. Greggs starts the ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... of sirens now. Fire trucks, repair trucks, and police cars pulled up in front of the house. Everyone in the block turned out to see what had happened. It took the repair men an hour to untangle the wires and fix them. And all the time policemen were going through the crowd, asking questions and writing things down in their notebooks. They were ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... island. Regardless of the number of lanes, if one automobile breaks down, traffic is immobilized for miles. Multiply that by several dozen, all at the same time, on all the entrances and exits to the island, and no earthly power could untangle that situation in less than a ...
— "To Invade New York...." • Irwin Lewis
... Discovery which I thought my self obliged to make to Thee, I proceed to tell thee, that our Friend Aurelian had by this time danced himself into a Net which he neither could, nor which is worse desired to untangle. ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... some help. I know I can't retrieve the past now. It is too late. It seems too preposterous—perfectly lurid—that I could have been going to tell you what a tangle I'd got myself in, and to ask you to help untangle me. I must choke in the infernal coil, but I'd like to have the sweetness of your pity ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of their everyday life to be able to do such things well. The two town boys, and, to Bob's surprise, one of his lumberjacks, furnished the comic relief. They frightened the horses allotted them, to begin with; threw the saddles aboard in a mess which it was necessary to untangle; finally clambered on awkwardly and rode precariously amid the yells and laughter ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... fashion, with extended arms, while Evilena smiled at the Judge from the window. His answering smile grew somewhat constrained as his hostess deliberately put her pretty arm half way around the young man's shoulder in her efforts to untangle him. ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... can untangle the tracks of the many bands as described by the annalists of each expedition. Some went the ruggedest way; some the smoothest. Alexius made a prisoner of a shipwrecked count, only to have Godfrey shake him into frenzies of fear by attacking ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... like me. If you were like me, we wouldn't think of what would happen later on, we'd just go away together. It's so complicated and foolish to think we can't. Laws and people make such a snarl of things. I wouldn't try to untangle it, I'd just cut it all to pieces, and then I ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... him comfortable. He was not in a smelly forecastle, but in a bunk in a cabin that must open off the main room of the schooner. Why had they treated him with such consideration? He dozed off, for all his wretchedness, exhausted by his efforts to untangle the snarl. When he awoke again his mouth was ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... impact of the horses in full career had sent both men and animals to the plain in a floundering heap. Again the Numidian was quicker, and, gaining his feet, he sprang, weaponless as he was, upon the decurion still struggling to untangle himself from his fallen horse. The buckler, with the African's knife thrust through it, had rolled away, and the possession of Decius' sword, which hung in its sheath upon his right thigh, became the object of the struggle. Perhaps the strength of the men was ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... something; there was the crash of a falling body, the slam of the outer door, and, for an instant, quiet. I screamed, I think. Then I remember turning on the lights and finding Halsey, white with fury, trying to untangle himself from something warm and fleecy. He had cut his forehead a little on the lowest step of the stairs, and he was ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... till several months had passed, and every phase of the problem had been thrashed over and over, that the various reactions began to untangle themselves. When once a clear understanding had been obtained there was no difficulty in designing a suitable propeller, with proper diameter, pitch, and area of blade, to meet the requirements of the flier. High efficiency in a screw-propeller is not ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... switched on the light and threw off my coat. Collar and tie followed the coat into the berth. I passed into the bath room and washed. At the moment I flung the towel back on the rack a sound came to me from my bedroom. I turned quickly, to see a diminutive figure roll from the back of the bed and untangle ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... victim of much, and as guilty of much. And then inspiration came upon her, or perhaps it was merely a high frenzy of desperation, and she saw that the responsibility for the whole situation was upon her alone; she saw it as her duty, the role assigned her, to try to untangle alone this tangled situation, to try to measure ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... knowing to these letters when Judge Hawkins received them. [The Colonel's memory was a little at fault here. Mr. Hawkins had never gone into detail's with him on this subject.] He used to show them to me, and say, 'Col, Sellers you've a mind to untangle this sort of thing.' Lord, how everything comes back to me. Laura was a little thing then. 'The Judge and I were just laying our plans to ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... said nothing. The eyes of both Braxton Wyatt and Yellow Panther flashed vindictively, but they, too, said nothing. Big Fox judged that they were not yet wholly beaten, but he had accomplished much; if each tribe received peace belts from the others, it would take a long time to untangle the snarl, and unite them for war. Meanwhile, the white ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... one step, the question then becomes, who controls the State? However, I'm not arguing political economy with you, sir. You didn't let me finish. I was going to say, I'm turning it over to the government to untangle, even while making use of the inventories of radioactives. There's going to be a lot of untangling to do. Reimbursing the prospectors and small operators who were blackjacked out of their holdings by our super-corporation. Reimbursing of ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... afternoon, where the great tree-trunks rose like pillars of black granite from a marble floor, and the branches of spruce and fir wove a dark green roof above their heads, these two stray shoots of a noble stock tried to untangle their family history. It was little that they knew about it. They could get back to their grandfathers, but beyond that the trail was rather blind. Where they crossed neither Jean nor Pierre could tell. In fact, both of their minds had been empty vessels for the plausible lawyer to fill, and he ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... Sue was moved by other than religious reasons. 'I get up so early, Mardie,' she said, 'and it takes so long to unsnarl and untangle me, and I get so hot when I'm helping in the hayfield, and then I have to be curled for dinner, and curled again for supper, and so it seems like wasting both our times!' Her hair would be all the stronger for cutting, I thought, as it's so ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... were subsidized by the State. By the Peace of Utrecht, the house of Habsburg had been defeated in its claims to the Spanish throne, and the foreign and internal affairs of the Austrian government were involved in many perplexities, which, it was hoped, the philosopher's counsel might help to untangle. He was often present at the private meetings of the cabinet, and received from the Emperor the honorable distinction of Kaiserlicher Hofrath, in addition to that, which had previously been awarded to him, of Baron of the Empire. The highest post in the gift of government ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... eyes, to hold you to my heart. If you were only with me, my love, I should drink so freely of your tender sympathy, that with it as a tonic to my weary waiting heart, I could go forth into the midst of the news-mongers, into the nest of wasps, and conquer and untangle the web of difficulty in a few short days. But you, alas! are far away, and I have only a few minutes of past bliss to feed on when I kissed your sweet lips, when you made life a paradise by leaning your dear head on my breast. My ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny |
