"Brier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the German army, realizing that, if captured, we should undoubtedly be sent either backward or forward along the German line of communication in conquered Belgium. Once within the German outposts we pleaded like Brer Rabbit not to be thrown into the German brier patch. So of course we landed in it. After a few days in Brussels they shipped us Eastward to Aix-la-Chapelle by way ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... cloak (of a monk), And didst confront invisible potentates, Having received instead (of thine own armour) a strong panoply from God. Therefore I will construct for thee this tomb as a pearl oyster shell, Or shell of the purple dye, or bud on a thorny brier. O my pearl, my purple, rose of another clime, Even though being plucked thou art pressed by the stones So as to cause me sheddings of tears. Yet thou thyself, both living and beholding the living God, As a mind pure from material passions, Prepare for me again thy home. Martha,[254] ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... discussed the burglary at the Hall with Styles. As Mrs. Styles' topic of conversation was Drake—Drake as a lad and a young man—Nell was in no hurry to go; but suddenly she remembered Falconer—he might be wanting her—and she got up and went to Drake, who, his beloved brier in his mouth, leaned back in an easy-chair and talked to the farmer as if time were of no consequence. He sprang ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... walk, sir?" She turned into a narrow path in the shadow of arches, clothed by a great Austrian brier, on which here and there a yellow flame still glowed. "Mr. Boyce—when I meet you in company you shrink and cower detestably; when I meet you alone, you fence with me impudently enough and shrewdly; and always ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... slow and painful. Dangling brier vines drew blood from arms and face, and sharp thorns repeatedly lacerated hands and knees. At each move forward he had to pause and remove the dead branches and twigs from his path lest their cracking should ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... buried in Marie's kirk, The tither in Marie's quire, And out o' the tane there grew a birk, And out o' the tither a brier. ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... hands in his pockets and his short brier pipe clenched firmly between his teeth, Gardiner, Hillton's head coach, watched grimly the tide of battle. Things had gone worse than he had anticipated. He had not hoped for too much—a tie would have satisfied him; a victory for Hillton had been ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... in the rapids probably. I remembered the grave on Deadman's Island, hard by the favorite haunt of the bass, which was still kept up after thirty years, even as the memory of its lonely tenant lived on the lake where another generation of woodsmen had replaced his. But what was the old black brier-wood pipe doing on the head-rail between the two graves? I looked about me with an involuntary start as I noticed that the ashes of the last smoke were still in the bowl, expecting I hardly knew what in the ghostly twilight ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... Obedient, he looked hard at it, and the cactus and rocks thrust through the watery image of the lake like two photographs on the same plate. He shouted with strangling triumph, and continued shouting until brier-roses along a brook and a farm-house unrolled to his left, and he ran half-way there, calling his mother's name. "Why, you fool, she's dead!" He looked slowly at his cut hands, for he had fallen among stones. "Dead, back in Kentucky, ever so long ago," he murmured, softly. ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. And instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree; and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and man shall nowhere crush man on all the holy earth. Tomorrow's sun shall rise," said the stranger, "and it shall flood these dark kopjes with light, and the rocks shall glint in it. ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... white moons may go— She sleeps where early blossoms blow: Around her headstone many a seed Shall sow itself; and brier and weed Shall grow to hide it from men's heed, And ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... as though refreshed by food. The noise increased as he looked. There were people there—men and women—light, bustle. It was like new life to him. He darted onward—straight, headlong—dashing through brier and brake, and leaping gate and fence as madly as his dog, who careered with loud and sounding bark ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... parley they concluded to get some more dogs and be on the ground before daylight, so as to make sure of me. As soon as they had gone out of my hearing I emerged from the brier thicket. I found my limbs had become sore and benumbed from the exposure and hardships I had undergone, and I was intensely hungry. I worried along, however, to get out of that neighborhood as soon as possible. The sky was now clear, the air frosty, and my rags were but a scant protection to ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson
... of the cave and there the others saw an automobile runabout standing and on the seat two men dressed for a tour. They were talking to a third man, who was lounging against a front wheel, smoking a brier-root pipe. ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... thing am I afraid," answered Brother Rabbit, in a low voice. "I am afraid you will turn me loose in the brier patch. Please do not throw me ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... for the summer is waning, Who 's for the road? Sun-flecked and soft, where the dead leaves are raining, Who 's for the road? Knapsack and alpenstock press hand and shoulder, Prick of the brier and roll of the boulder; This be your lot till the season grow older; Who 's for ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... of a ravine, which, after a deep and tortuous course, terminated in the declivity heretofore described as forming the park boundary. Luke plunged into the heart of this defile, fighting his way downwards, in the direction of the brook. His progress was impeded by a thick undergrowth of brier, and other matted vegetation, as well as by the entanglements thrown in his way by the taller bushes of thorn and hazel, the entwined and elastic branches of which, in their recoil, galled and fretted him, by inflicting smart blows on his face ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... lambs, the dripping sedges, quit the bramble and the brier, Leave the fields of barley stubble, for we light the watching fire; Twinkling fires across the twilight, and a bitter watch to keep, Lest the prowlers come a-thieving where ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... of true sportsmanship, they must have those annual massacres I certainly should admire to see what execution a picked half dozen of American quail hunters, used to snap-shooting in the cane jungles and brier patches of Georgia and Arkansas, could accomplish among English pheasants, until such time as their consciences mastered them ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... heavenly hill, Or from the shade of saintly palms, Or silver reach of river calms, Do those large eyes behold me still? With me one little year ago:— The chill weight of the winter snow For months upon her grave has lain; And now, when summer south-winds blow And brier and harebell bloom again, I tread the pleasant paths we trod, I see the violet-sprinkled sod, Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak The hillside flowers she loved to seek, Yet following me where'er I went With dark eyes ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... she was as fresh and innocent and dewy, in the hot whirl and glitter and glare of New York, as a waving spray of sweet-brier, brought in fresh with ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch Turn, and return, indenting with the way; Each envious brier his weary legs doth scratch, Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay: For misery is trodden on by many, And being low never relieved ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... up. In the sequel Brer Rabbits begs Brer Fox that he may "drown me as deep ez you please, skin me, scratch out my eyeballs, t'ar out my years by the roots, en cut off my legs, but do don't fling me in dat brier patch;" which, of course, Brer Fox does, only to be informed by the cunning Brer Rabbit that he had been "bred en bawn in a brier patch." The story is a favourite one with the negroes: it occurs in Col. Jones' Negro Myths of the Georgia Coast (Uncle Remus is from ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... this same hot evening the sergeant in charge of the little signal-party at the Picacho came strolling forth from his tent puffing at a battered brier-root pipe. Southward and a few hundred feet below his perch the Yuma road came twisting through the pass, and then disappeared in the gathering darkness across the desert plain that stretched between them and the distant Santa Maria. Over to the east the loftiest crags of the Christobal ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... of Mary, Hope divine. If Thou wilt but smile upon me, I will twine Blossoms for Thy garlanding. Thou'rt so little to be King, God's Desire! Not a brier Shall be left to grieve Thy brow; ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... season was spent in learning the lay of the land, and the bramble and brier mazes. And Rag learned them so well that he could go all around the swamp by two different ways and never leave the friendly briers at any place for more ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... highway primitive woodland that will give you an impression of what it must have been three hundred years ago. Here you will see heavy forest growths consisting of oaks, for the most part, with maple and elm, and here and there a tangle of green brier and barberry, interspersed with several varieties ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... mad as with store of new wine; Oh, they cheered him, they capped him, they roared as he rode down the line: He that fled us at Worcester, the boy, the green brier-shoot, the son Of the Stuart on whom for his sin the great judgment ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... window to the east there was a solitary female Promethea moth, that day emerged from a cocoon sent me by Professor Rowley. I hurried to the room and found five male moths fluttering before the screen or clinging to the wild grape and sweet brier vines covering it. I opened the adjoining window and picked up three of the handsomest with my fingers, placing them inside the screen. Then ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the sluggard; I hear him complain, You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again. I passed by his garden, I saw the wild brier, The thorn, and the thistle, grow broader and higher; The clothes that hang on him are turning to rags; And his money he wastes, till ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... guest at a great dumb dinner-party. A cold suck of wind just proved its existence, by toothaches on the north side of all faces. The spiders having been weather-bewitched the night before, had unanimously agreed to cover every brake and brier with gossamer- cradles, and never a fly to be caught in them; like Manchester cotton-spinners madly glutting the markets in the teeth of 'no demand.' The steam crawled out of the dank turf, and reeked off the ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... the end of the house beside the brier bush, where George was to sit on summer afternoons before he died, and a flash passed between Domsie and the lad's mother. Then she knew that it was well, and fixed her eyes on the letter, but Whinnie, his thumbs in his armholes, ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... retired, and not an unlovely spot. A brick wall, splashed with ochre and gray lichens, enclosed six generations of dead Burwells and their next of kin. A locked gate kept out trespassers. Long streamers of brier and wild berry bushes, purple and ashy with the mantling sap drawn upward by the March sunshine, were matted over the older graves; a spreading "honey-shuck" tree arose near the middle of the badly kept square, and smaller trees flourished here and there. ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... frush saugh wand! And wae betide the bush of brier! That bent and brake into his hand, When strength of man ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... o'er the Roman wall, And roaring up the lane, Their torches tossed a ladder of fire, Higher their hymn was heard and higher, More sweet for hate and for heart's desire, And up in the northern scrub and brier, ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... cut of the glen there was very little snow, only a few veins and patches here and there, threading and seaming the steep, as if a white-footed hare had been coursing about. Little stubby brier shoots, and clumps of russet bracken, and dead heather, ruffling like a brown dog's back, broke the dull surface of withered herbage, thistle stumps, teasels, rugged banks, and naked brush. Down in the bottom the noisy brook was scurrying over its pebbles brightly, or plunging into gloom of its ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Son, Thou art me dear, Oh why have men hanged thee here? Thy head is closed with a brier, O why have men so ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... bear grass [U.S.], tine, yucca. nib, tooth, tusk; spoke, cog, ratchet. crag, crest, arete [Fr.], cone peak, sugar loaf, pike, aiguille^; spire, pyramid, steeple. beard, chevaux de frise [Fr.], porcupine, hedgehog, brier, bramble, thistle; comb; awn, beggar's lice, bur, burr, catchweed^, cleavers, clivers^, goose, grass, hairif^, hariff, flax comb, hackle, hatchel^, heckle. wedge; knife edge, cutting edge; blade, edge tool, cutlery, knife, penknife, whittle, razor, razor blade, safety razor, straight ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... that is a true-born gentleman, And stands upon the honour of his birth, If he suppose that I have pleaded truth, From off this brier pluck a ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... wild roses make the wood paths beautiful, and the indescribably delicious fragrance of the sweet-brier betrays its location on the dry banks ...
— Harper's Young People, June 8, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... booming echoes of his heavy gun, I saw two birds keeled over, and, almost at the same instant, the cheery shout of Tim announced to me that he had bagged my towered bird! After a little pause, again we started, and, hailing one another now and then, gradually forced our way through brake and brier toward the outward verge of the dense covert. Before we met again, however, I had the luck to pick up a third woodcock, and as I heard another double shot from Archer, and two single bangs from Draw, I judged that my companions had not been less successful than myself. ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... down the hill in the known direction of a distant cabin. When it came night and the hemlocks began to sob they had not returned. The little man sat close to his companion, the campfire, and encouraged it with logs. He puffed fiercely at a heavy built brier, and regarded a thousand shadows which were about to assault him. Suddenly he heard the approach of the unknown, crackling the twigs and rustling the dead leaves. The little man arose slowly to his feet, ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... nearly dead, cut down and questioned as before: but still asserted his ignorance. The same inhuman part was acted on him a third time, but with no better success; for the brave fellow still continued faithful to his master, who squatted and trembled in his place of torment, his brier bush, and saw and heard all ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... tending the store) and made his way to where the Irishman sat he found him conning the head-lines of the morning paper. That worthy man-of-all-work, never having laid eyes on him before, at once made a mental note of the intruder's well-cut English clothes, heavy walking-shoes, and short brier-wood pipe, and, concluding therefrom that he was a person of importance, stretched out his hand toward the bell-rope in connection with the breakfast-room above, at the same time saying with great urbanity: "Take a chair, or, if yer cold, come up near the ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... way through fiscal brake and brier, the open becoming more discernible with each effort, till in February, 1876, Congress rounded off their strong box with the neat capping of a million and a half. The entire cost of administration and construction ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... cutery corn, Apple seed and apple thorn; Wire, brier, limber-lock, Five geese in a flock, Sit and sing by a spring, O-u-t, ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)
... of destruction and want—in scanty larder, patched, refurbished clothing, servantless homes—in dismantled outhouses, broken fences and neglected, brier-choked fields. Even the staples of life were fast diminishing for every man who could shoulder a gun had gone to fight with Lee, and few animals were left and ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... 27th, 1864.—We have lost communication with the front. A small cavalry raid cut the Savannah Railroad and telegraph, this morning, at Brier Creek, twenty-six miles from here. Gen. Wheeler was, yesterday, confronting the enemy's infantry at Sandersville. An officer, who left Macon on the 23d, states that one corps of the enemy was still confronting us there; our force not exceeding 5000, nearly all militia. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... off one side, he did, an' he say, 'Le's give 'im his chice, wheder he'd er ruther be tho'd in de fire or de brier-patch; an' ef he say de fire, den we'll fling 'im in de briers; an' ef he say de briers, den we'll fling 'im in de fire.' So dey went back ter de Rabbit, an' ax 'im wheder he'd er ruther be tho'd in ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... me by the bracken bush, Beneath the blumin' brier; Let never living mortal ken That ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... your tender, wounded arm Bends back the brier that edges life's long way, That no hurt comes to heart, to soul no harm, I do not feel the thorns ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... into a lot of brush and blackberry bushes that are down there, and just then I got that back knot untied, and I stepped over and looked down at Mr. Dog, who had lodged in a brier patch on a shelf about ten feet below the edge, where Mr. Man would have to get him up with ...
— How Mr. Rabbit Lost his Tail • Albert Bigelow Paine
... bitter. He was thankful when her thoughts were distracted to her young ones, whose coats had to be nicely smoothed before they went to bed. Ere long they were all curled up under the thorny branches of a wild brier. Phil crept in between them, and was soon asleep, while the two old Beavers watched in turn to see ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... door opened and there came in a youth of seventeen, tall and well-built, with clothing that testified to an encounter alike with brier and bog. The hound Bran followed him. He blinked at the lights and the fire, then with a gesture of deprecation crossed the hall to the stairway. ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sun-flower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... he said aloud, addressing the wide silence complainingly. He drew a faded tobacco-bag and a brier pipe from his coat pocket and filled and lit the pipe. "One taste—and they quit," he finished, gazing solemnly upon the shining little town down the road. He twirled the pouch mechanically about his finger, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... erbout as fast as he can. An' byme-by somefin' grab' li'l' Mose by de aidge of he coat, an' he fight' an' struggle' an' cry out: "Dey ain't no ghosts. Dey ain't no ghosts." An' dat ain't nuffin' but de wild brier whut grab' him, an' dat ain't nuffin' but de leaf ob a tree whut brush' he cheek, an' dat ain't nuffin' but de branch ob a hazel-bush whut brush' he arm. But he downright scared jes de same, an' he ain't lose no time, 'ca'se de wind an' de owls an' de rain-doves dey signerfy whut ain't no good. ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... tattered gown, Alone I puff my brier brown, And watch the ashes settle down In lambent flashes; While thro' the blue, thick, curling haze, I strive with feeble eyes to gaze, Upon the half-forgotten days That left ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... passed his forefinger across his forehead, brushing the sweat away from above his quiet eyes. He moistened the tip of his thumb and slid it along the blade of his hemp hook—he was using that for lack of a scythe. Turning, he walked back to the edge of the brier thicket, sat down in the shade of a black walnut, threw off his tattered head-gear, and, reaching for his bucket of water covered with poke leaves, lifted it to his lips and drank deeply, gratefully. Then he drew a whetstone ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... upon the bench they found a little old man, his legs extended, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, and a look of calm meditation upon his round and placid face. Between his teeth was a black brier pipe, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... like a weaver's shuttle weaving fine wefts, has got into my head; not "bee-bonneted," but bird-bonneted, I go. Yes, this day shall be given to the king, as our country-folk say, when they go a-pleasuring. I am off with the little wool-gatherers, to see what thorn and brier and fern-stalk and willow-catkin will give ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... opened the cellar door and went down a flight of stone steps into the first cellar. He looked all about him, and there was nothing at all there but a switch made of brier lying on a shelf behind the door. "That is not much for the Master to have made such a fuss about," said the lad. "I could see as much as that any day without coming into a cellar for it;" and he went upstairs again and shut ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... night's hunting began, with greater zeal than before. He was hungry now; his nose grew keen as a brier for every trail. A faint smell stopped him, so faint that the keenest-nosed dog or fox would have passed without turning, the smell of a brooding partridge on her eggs. There she was, among the roots ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... on brier and weed, Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountain-side or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling his name: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Snug and safe is this nest of ours, Hidden among the summer flowers, ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... sea breeze is delicious," she said, as the wind whirled the aromatic smoke of his cigarette up into her face. "Don't move, Mr. Siward; I like it; there is to me always a faint odour of sweet-brier in the melange. Did you ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... is a very tough brier; we sometimes bring it closer, when its thorns prick us more painfully in the struggles to cast ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... already we want to take a longer one. Whither? To Sparta, to Mycene, to Delphi? There are a hundred places at whose names the heart beats with the desire of travel. On horseback we go up the mountain paths, through brake and through brier. A single traveller makes an appearance like a whole caravan. He rides forward with his guide, a pack-horse carries trunks, a tent, and provisions, and a few armed soldiers follow as a guard. No inn with warm beds awaits him at the end of his tiring day's journey: the ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... cell, the whole wide heavens and earth that God has made lifts up one's soul to finer thoughts than mumbling over beads or worshiping a Christ on the cross. And you will be much too handsome, my brier rose, to shut yourself up in any Recollet house. There will be lovers suing for your pretty hand and your ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... deal of pleasure's in it, that you never can refuse! You are mounted on strong shoulders, that'll never, never fail, Though you pray'd with tongue of sinner, just to plant you where they choose. Though the brier patch is nigh you, looking up with thorny faces, They never wait to see how you like the situation, But down you go a rolling, through the penetrating places, Nor scramble out until you give the cry of approbation. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... fellow, and the soldier deserved his 'Solace.' Many of them among us are poor indeed. 'Boys!' exclaimed a wounded volunteer to two comrades, as they paused the other day before a tobacconist's and examined with the eyes of connoisseurs the brier or bruyere-wood pipes in his window, 'Boys! I'd give fifty dollars, if I had it, for four shillins to buy one of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... few minutes, the fire's serpent-like course had taken a new twist. It had flung volleys of sparks across the upper reach of granite rock-wall, and had ignited dry wood and brier on the right hand side of the track. This, far up the mountain, almost at the very foot ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... Voyage contains passages hardly to be matched for beauty. Let him who would be convinced read the description of the forest Mormal, that forest whose breath was perfumed with nothing less delicate than sweet brier. 'I wish our way had always lain among woods,' says Stevenson. 'Trees are the most ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... wait for blood; They hunt every man his brother with a net. Both hands are put forth for evil, To do it diligently. The prince asketh and the judge is ready for reward, And the great man, he uttereth the evil of his soul; Thus they weave it together. The best of them is as a brier; The most upright is worse than a thorn hedge. A man's enemies are the ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... into my head that I would kiss one handsome young girl before I died, and now was my chance. She never would know it, and I should carry the remembrance of it with me into the grave, and a rose perhaps grow out of my dust, as a brier did out of Lord Lovers, in memory of that immortal moment! Would it wake her from her trance? and would she see me in the flush of my stolen triumph, and hate and despise me ever after? Or should I carry off my trophy undetected, and always from that time say to ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... dripping shoulders. The paddling would serve instead of a coat for him, he said; it would keep him warm to his bones. As I slipped the garment over my back, something hard fell from one of the pockets into the bottom of the canoe. It was a brier-wood pipe. ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... slave hunters, who were so rapidly approaching me with loaded muskets and bowie knives, with a determination to kill or capture me and my family. I started to run with my little daughter in my arms, but stumbled and fell down and scratched the arm of little Frances with a brier, so that it bled very much; but the dear child never cried, for she seemed to know the danger to ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... were full of excitement to Lena. She frequently assured herself that she was rapturously happy, but, while intellectually she accepted the fact, no genial warmth pervaded her consciousness. The entrance to her new life was too brier-sprinkled for bliss. Daily to face her mother's mingling of complaisance, self-pity and fault-finding; to meet Dick's friends, whom Lena, in her suspicions, regarded as thinly-disguised enemies; to scrimp together some little show of bridal finery for her quiet wedding; ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... battered nearly out of all shape. He had no coat, no waistcoat, no braces, and nothing round his neck. Round his waist there was a strap or belt, from the front of which hung a small pouch, and, behind, a knife in a case. And stuck into a loop in the belt, made for the purpose, there was a small brier-wood pipe. As he dashed his hat off, wiped his brow, and threw himself into a rocking-chair, he certainly was rough to look at, but by all who understood Australian life he would have been taken to be a gentleman. He was a young ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... were stationed the youngest, the most vigorous, the most fun-loving of the women, and the larger boys, with only a negligible sprinkling of really little children. Every woman and child in the two rows was armed with a savage-looking whip of willow, hickory, or even green brier, and the still more savage intention of using these whips to the utmost extent of their speed ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... have partially described. It was white as snow, and had about it all those traits of neatness and good taste which are, we regret! to say, so rare among, and so badly understood by, our humbler countrymen. The front walls were covered by honeysuckles, rose trees, and wild brier, and the flower plot in front was so well stocked, that its summer bloom would have done credit to the skill of an ordinary florist. The inside of this cottage was equally neat, clean, and cheerful. The ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... and immaculate taste Has a paradise form'd from a wilderness waste; With his walks rectilineous, all shelter'd with trees, That shut out the sunshine and baffle the breeze, And a field, where the daughters of Erin{12}may roam In a fence of sweet-brier, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... was the brier-patch, with its secret chamber. By dint of long hours of toil and a purloined kitchen-knife they had tunneled into a clearing in the center of the thicket. Of all their retreats, this one alone had foiled their watchful overseers. ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... fire, close over it, as he had done in the backwoods many a night, smoking the old brier pipe that had cheered him in his hours of solitary watching, and thinking with a grim bitterness that it would have been better for him if he had been knocked on the head the night of the raid at Salisbury Plain. ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... condescending nod, and putting away the cigar, took out a brier pipe and began to fill it from his tobacco-pouch. "The Captain is a man of few words and extremely modest about himself," Clay continued, lightly; "so I must tell you who he is myself. He is a promoter of revolutions. That is his business,—a professional promoter of revolutions, and ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... venom'd balls; Fright the green Locust from his foamy bed, Unweave the Caterpillar's gluey thread; 495 Chase the fierce Earwig, scare the bloated Toad, Arrest the snail upon his slimy road; Arm with sharp thorns the Sweet-brier's tender wood, And dash the Cynips from her damask bud; Steep in ambrosial dews the Woodbine's bells, 500 And drive the Night-moth from her honey'd cells. So where the Humming-bird in Chili's bowers On murmuring ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... her head. She was like the wild sweet-brier roses which crowded alluvial strips of the island, fragrant and pink and bristling. "Yes, monsieur, that black feather—regard it. Me, I am sick of that black feather. You say I have concealments. I have. All winter ...
— The Black Feather - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... with enormous strides, Rebellious mutterings and oaths besides, O'er clover-field and fallow, bank and brier, Pursu'd the nearest cut, and fann'd the fire That burnt within him.—Soon the Hall he spied, And the grey willows by the water side; Nature cried "halt!" nor could he well refuse; Stop, Gilbert, breathe awhile, and ask the news. "News?" cried a stooping grandame of the vale, Aye, rare ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... contempt. Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine: Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine, Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state, Makes me with thy strength to communicate: 175 If aught possess thee from me, it is dross, Usurping ivy, brier, or idle moss; Who, all for want of pruning, with intrusion Infect thy sap, ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... into wrath, what patience bears The noisy fool who perseveres? The morning wakes, the huntsman sounds, At once rush forth the joyful hounds. They seek the wood with eager pace, Through bush, through brier, explore the chase. Now scattered wide, they try the plain, And snuff the dewy turf in vain. 10 What care, what industry, what pains! What universal silence reigns. Ringwood, a dog of little fame, Young, pert, and ignorant ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... for our increasing wants; and the difficulty of securing anything from the houses without danger of detection was almost insurmountable. But we felt encouraged as we thought of what we were striving for, and sped on our way. But the way was hard, for sometimes we got completely stuck in brier patches, and had to turn and go back, in order to find a way out. Old logs and driftwood, that had been piled up year after year, were other obstacles in our way; and one can imagine how hard it ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... buttery, and therein A little bin, Which keeps my little loaf of bread Unchipt, unflead; Some little sticks of thorn or brier Make ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... the bend of the Valley River over a stretch of sandy land pre-empted by the cinque-foil and the running brier, the country of the woodcock and the eccentric kildee. We could hear the low, sullen roar of the river sweeping north around this big bend, long before we came to it. Under the stars there is no greater voice of power. We rode side by side in the deepening twilight, ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... students of heredity, especially, understand all of their subject except their subject. They were, I suppose, bred and born in that brier-patch, and have really explored it without coming to the end of it. That is, they have studied everything but the question of what they are studying. Now I do not propose to rely merely on myself to tell them what they are studying. I propose, as will ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... the Herdsmen and the Swains. Till he resign'd his Flock, opprest with cares, Weaken'd by num'rous Woes, and grey with Years. Yet still, like AEtna's Mount, he kept his Fire, And look'd like beauteous Roses on a Brier. He smil'd, like Phoebus in a Stormy Morn, And sung, ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... if he had found anything eatable. No, that he hadn't, he replied, and then she tried to help him. She couldn't find any nuts either, but she discovered a couple of dried blossoms that hung on a brier-bush. These the boy ate with a good relish. But he wondered what mother would say, if she knew that he had lived on raw fish ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... facts are not necessary in stories, and they are dangerous. Ian Maclaren says that the only part of his stories that has been severely criticised is a drowning episode, which was a fact, and the only one he ever used. Yet to those who have read "The Bonnie Brier Bush," the old doctor is as well known as any person who lives across the street; he is real to us, though he never lived. "Old Scrooge" and "Brom Bones" are better known than John Adams is. A good character or a good story ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... crimson sunset. The mullioned windows and twinkling lattices are all ablaze with the red glory; the fading light flickers upon the leaves of the limes in the long avenue, and changes the still fish-pond into a sheet of burnished copper; even into those dim recesses of brier and brushwood, amidst which the old well is hidden, the crimson brightness penetrates in fitful flashes till the dank weeds and the rusty iron wheel and broken woodwork seem as if they ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... sat a big man with grizzled whiskers, smoking a brier-wood pipe, his beamlike legs crossed and his arms folded as he ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... Repentance. With the speed of fire Orlando followed where the enchantress fled, Rending and scattering tree and bush and brier, And leaving wide the vestige of his tread. Nearer he drew, with feet that could not tire, And strong in hope to seise her as she sped. How vain the hope! Her form he seemed to clasp, But soon as seized, she vanished from ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... don' git along, not the way we-all say it. Mr. Peth an' de cap'n? Huh! Them two git along smooth as a houn' dawg in a brier patch." ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... the Navy man; "good, honest, stick tobacco, smoked out of a well-seasoned brier, is good enough for me—unless one can get hold of a real, genuine Havana, you know; but they are scarcely to be had in ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... the hounds at score through tangled cover, their merry peal ringing from brake and brier, clashing against the rocks, moaning musically away through ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... and then moved the chairs out of their way, stepping softly that the old man might not hear him. Margret, in the room, watched them as they went, seeing how gentle the rough, burly man was with her father, and how, every time they passed the sweet-brier, he bent the branches aside, that they might not touch his face. Slow, childish tears came into her eyes as she saw it; for the school-master was blind. This had been their regular walk every evening, since it grew too cold for them to go down under the lindens. ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... and went downstairs to the kitchen. There was hot water in the kettle. He fetched it back, bathed her feet, drew out from the cut and scratch the flakes of granite-grit and brier-points ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... There's a little window at one end, but it don't give much air, and this August sun is apt to get a little warm on the clapboards. And I don't suppose it smells very well in there; but the coon can't help that; it's the way nature scented him; she hadn't any sweet brier handy at the time. And be careful not to step on him. He's not very good-tempered, but I reckon he won't bite you if you don't ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... by all odds, the finest one. Its perfect economy in the use of story materials has always been admired. Perrault's version drags in an unnecessary ogre and spoils a good story by not knowing when to stop. The Grimm title is "Dornroeschen," and the more literal translation, "Brier Rose," is the one generally used as the English title, rather than the one given by Taylor, whose translation follows. Tennyson has a very beautiful poetic rendering of this ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... years,—not much taller, and more agile than robust,—was lopping vigorously with his great pruning-knife, Amabel nursing a bundle of drooping rose branches, Charlotte, her bonnet in a garland of wild sweet-brier, holding the matting and continually getting entangled in the ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... edge of the pale brown ring, plucked a honeysuckle bough and brought it back to the silver column of the beech; and lastly, glancing up from the rosy sprig within her hand, she saw a man coming toward her, down the path that she had thought hidden, holding his arm before him for shield against brier and branch, and looking curiously about him as for a thing which he ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... so suddenly that she almost lost her balance, she gave him a cut with the switch that sent him flying back over the road he had come, at the top of his speed. Now every bush and every tree and every brier-tangled fence corner seemed to hold some nameless terror for her, and even her lips were cold ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... put him into the right way, and when he got to the Castle it was full of folk and horses; so full it made one giddy to look at them. But Halvor was so ragged and torn from having followed the West Wind through bush and brier and bog, that he kept on one side, and wouldn't show himself till the last day when the bridal ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... to find the precise spot of the day's occurrence, but he noticed that whenever he went in a wrong direction a crowd of fire-flies would start up and show him the right way, and thus he was enabled to find the sweet-brier bush. As he reached it he heard the same patter, patter, patter on the leaves of the bush, and looking up he saw what caused the sound. Troops of tiny creatures were fluttering from leaf to leaf. Each had little silvery wings like butterflies, and each carried ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... addresses, and had spoken more than once of going to find the cows at nightfall in the autumn evenings, and being glad to warm his bare feet in the places where the sleepy beasts had lain, before he followed their slow steps homeward through bush and brier. The Honorable Mr. Laneway had a touch of true sentiment which added much to his really stirring and effective campaign speeches. He had often been called the "king of the platform" in his adopted State. He had long ago grown used to saying "Go" to one man, and "Come" to another, like the ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... brought. The rest the wood doth seeke, eke euery bush and tree For berries and such baggage like, which should seeme meate to bee. Our fingers serue in steed, both of pickaxe and spade, To dig and pull vp euery weed, that grew within the shade. Eke diged for rootes the ground, and searcht on euery brier For berries, which if we had found, then streight way to the fire: Where we rost some of those, the rest seeth in a pot, And of this banket nought we lose, nor fragment resteth not. The night as beasts we lie the bare ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... trail, but he stopped at every wild brier to study the pink satin of the petals. She was not of his world, and better than any other he knew it; but she might be his Angel, and he was dreaming of naught but blind, silent worship. He finished the happiest day of his life, and that night he returned to the ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... front, with only a narrow strip of garden between, for there was not much heed paid to flowers, and few kitchen vegetables were grown in those days, only a few potherbs round the door, and a sweet-brier bush by ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been gone some considerable time?" she demanded, and then in a milder tone: "The time has re'lly flown; I do enjoy havin' company. I set here alone a sight o' long days. Sheep is dreadful fools; I expect they heard a strange step, and set right off through bush an' brier, spite of all she could do. But William might have the sense to return, 'stead o' searchin' about. I want to inquire of him about his mother. What was you goin' to say? I guess you 'll have time to ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett |
