"Mire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on then, ye dwellers by nature in darkness, and like to the leaves' generations, That are little of might, that are molded of mire, unenduring and shadowlike nations, Poor plumeless ephemerals, comfortless mortals, as visions of shadows fast fleeing, Lift up your mind unto us that are deathless, and dateless the date of our being; Us, children of heaven, us, ageless for aye, us, all of whose thoughts are eternal: That ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... his grey mare, Meg, A better never lifted leg, Tam skelpit on thro' dub and mire, Despising wind, and rain, and fire; Whiles haulding fast his gude blue bonnet; Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet; Whiles glowring round wi' prudent cares, Lest bogles catch him unawares; Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh, Whare ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... to be freed of the yoke, ran away, and as he is near the Barna, his countrymen, he will be hidden. He told his plan to our guide, and asked to accompany him back to Tanganyika, but he is eager to deliver him up for a reward: all are eager to press each other down in the mire into which they are ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... over it will be a rash man who will again attempt to further his selfish interests by dragging a great party name in the mire and seeking to gain the honor of office by trafficking with disorder. The conduct of public affairs is not a game. Responsible office does not go to the crafty. Governments are not founded upon an association for public plunder but on the cooeperation of men ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... guessed the rising morrow And scorned to tread the mire you must: Dust's your wages, son of sorrow, But men may come to worse ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... of a shepherd's house. "We had miserable up-putting," the diary continues, "and on both sides of the ferry much anxiety of mind. Our beds were clean straw, and but for the circumstance of the boat, I should have slept as soundly as ever I did after a walk through moss and mire of sixteen hours." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... place! Happy, if learning, not debauched by ambition, had been satisfied to continue the instructor, and not aspired to be the master! Along with its natural protectors and guardians, learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... labours of the seven months' winter, of the aguish wet autumn, of the uncertain spring, of the tropical summer, of ice, of frost, of musquitoes and black flies, of mud and mire, of swamp and rock, of all the innumerable drawbacks with which the spirit of the settler has to contend, or the very coarse and scanty fare to solace him after his toils of ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... his staff, and following after the funeral. The procession marched at a brisk pace, and on reaching the kirk-yard style, as each rider dismounted, "Daft Jock" descended from his wooden steed, besmeared with mire and perspiration, exclaiming, "Hech, sirs, had it no been for the fashion o' the thing, I micht as weel hae been ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... pure and lawful I am sure your angel guardian smiled upon you; and if it was not, I cannot say you have nothing to answer for, and yet I think God may have said: 'She is a quadroone; all the rights of her womanhood trampled in the mire, sin made easy to her—almost compulsory,—charge it to account of whom it ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... in what mire wickedness wallows, and how clearly honesty shineth? By which it is manifest that the good are never without rewards, nor the evil without punishments. For in all things that are done that for which anything is done may deservedly ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... struggles of the senile nation, born in intolerance, grown in ignorance and stupidity which, with a mad gesture, had cast him forth with a curse. He had doffed the empty prerogatives of blood and station and left them in the mire and blood. The soul of Russia was dead and he had thought that his own had died with hers, but from the dead thing a new soul might germinate as it had now germinated in him. He had been born again. Novaya Jezn! The New ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... sorrow, with hands outstretched did worship; and answering the prince, he spoke, "The orders that you give me will, I fear, add grief to grief, and sorrow thus increased will deepen, as the elephant who struggles into deeper mire. When the ties of love are rudely snapped, who, that has any heart, would not grieve! The golden ore may still by stamping be broken up, how much more the feelings choked with sorrow! the prince has grown up in a palace, with every care bestowed upon his tender person, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... door swung suddenly open to admit two men, or rather three, for between them they dragged one, a short, squat fellow in riding boots and horseman's coat, but all so torn and bedraggled, so foul of blood and mire, as to seem scarce human. His hat was gone and his long, rain-soaked hair clung in black tangles about his bruised face and as he stood, swaying in his bonds, I thought him the ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... of Clarendon's control; that the easy humour which prompted Charles to avoid a rupture was no trustworthy shield against the effects of his growing irritation. He saw that the Court was sinking deeper in the mire of licentiousness and corruption, and was daily rousing against it more emphatically the anger and contempt of the nation, and making his own task of consolidation more hopeless. The anxieties and hardships of long years of civil war, ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... Kate Roby," says Mr. Herndon, "for an incident which illustrates alike his proficiency in orthography and his natural inclination to help another out of the mire. The word 'defied' had been given out by Schoolmaster Crawford, but had been misspelled several times when it came Miss Roby's turn. 'Abe stood on the opposite side of the room,' related Miss Roby to me in 1865, ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... Jesus as they led him along; this they did to curry favour with the six Pharisees, who they well knew perfectly hated and detested our Lord. They led him along the roughest road they could select, over the sharpest stones, and through the thickest mire; they pulled the cords as tightly as possible; they struck him with knotted cords, as a butcher would strike the beast he is about to slaughter; and they accompanied this cruel treatment with such ignoble and indecent insults that I cannot recount them. The feet of ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... showing in your altered voice and manner!—in the things you laugh at, in the things you live for—in the twisted, misshapen ideals that your friends set up on a heap of nuggets for you to worship? Even if we've passed through the sea of mire, can't we at least clear the filth from our eyes and see straight and ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... is that the human species is for ever engaged in laborious idleness. We put our shoulder to the wheel, and raise the vehicle out of the mire in which it was swallowed, and we say, I have done something; but the same feat under the same circumstances has been performed a thousand times before. We make what strikes us as a profound observation; ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... fickle, nor deem it unnatural for love so to perish. After learning what she had learned from absolute incontrovertible evidence (it is useless to enter into the circumstances, for no one is benefited by wallowing in unnecessary mire), that she, or any virtuous maiden, should continue to love this man, would have been a ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Lady, Saint Mary, worketh miracles at Walsingham, never was poor woman so be-plagued as I, with an ill, ne'er-do-well, good-for-nought, thankless hussy, picked up out of the mire in the gutter! Where be thy wits, thou gadabout? Didst leave them at the Cross yester-morrow? Go thither and seek for them! for ne'er a barley crust shalt thou break this even in this house, or my ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... of a union of the Lutheran Church in America—a resolution which was rescinded in 1864. Thus universal contempt and proscription was the reward which Tennessee received for her endeavors to lead the Lutheran Church out of the mire of sectarian aberrations back to Luther and the Lutheran Symbols. Rev. Brohm, after his visit with the Tennessee Synod, wrote in the Lutheraner of June 5, 1855: "In order to heal, if in any way possible, the deplorable breach, the Tennessee Synod, in the course ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... that an Angel could be made to understand what are the pleasures of sin? I trow not. You might as well attempt to persuade him that there was pleasure in feasting on dust and ashes. There are brute animals who wallow in the mire and eat corruption. This seems strange to us: much stranger to an Angel is it how any one can take pleasure in any thing so filthy, so odious, so loathsome as sin. Many men, as I have been saying, wonder what possible pleasure there can be in ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... do under the circumstances—hung on in the great city as best they could, in the hope of a better fortune soon, living expectantly from day to day. Each month the city life seemed to demand more money, and each month Bragdon sank deeper into the mire of journalistic art. Worst of all they got into the habit of regarding their life as a temporary makeshift, which they expected to change when they could, tolerating it for the present as best ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... well you have thought of it yourself; because, if it had not been for some of our very goot and excellent friends, that would be putting their spoon into other folk's dish, I should have been asking you a civil question myself, how you came to dine with us, with all that mud and mire which Mr. Tyrrel's grasp has left upon the collar of your coat—you understand me.—But it is much better as it is, and I will go to the man with all the speed of light; and though, to be sure, it should have been sooner thought of, yet let me alone to make an excuse for that, just ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... else as he hated them. How often she had heard him swear, in solemn vibrating tones, that to the day of his death his most sacred ambition should be their punishment, their abasement in the dust and mire! ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... Hardcastle's drive in She Stoops to Conquer was suggested by the Rambler, No. 34. In it a young gentleman describes a lady's terror on a coach journey. 'Our whole conversation passed in dangers, and cares, and fears, and consolations, and stories of ladies dragged in the mire, forced to spend all the night on a heath, drowned in rivers, or burnt with lightning.... We had now a new scene of terror, every man we saw was a robber, and we were ordered sometimes to drive hard, lest a traveller whom we saw behind should overtake us; and sometimes ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... hard with Bulon after this, for he was in a sad plight. He had spent the greater part of his strength in the fight; the wallowing in the soft mire had exhausted him; he had a burning, raging pain in his shoulder caused by the bullet fired by his human enemy, while the pain in his poor, blinded eyes and his sensitive nose took nearly all his remaining strength. He felt he could not keep ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... life as he now had to lead under a woman who loved him not, and did not understand his unusual cast of character, his love of nature, his wanderings by the sea, his coming home with his pockets full of wet shells and his trousers damaged by the mire. She snubbed him; she whipped him. He bore her ill treatment with wonderful patience; but it impaired the social side of him forever. Nearly fifty years after he said to ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... fighter," and feel the glow, the stern joy of the fight. But she!—let her leave the human brute and his unsavoury struggle alone! It cannot be borne—it was never meant—that she should dip her delicate wings, of her own free will at least, in such a mire of blood and tears. It was the feeling that had possessed him when Mrs. Boyce told him of the visit to the prison, the ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... story next day with some inward dismay. Really the breadth and depth of intrigue in this city almost frightened her as she walked deeper into the mire. She had promised Zora that Bles should receive his reward on terms which would not wound his manhood. It seemed an easy, almost an obvious thing, to promise at the time. Yet here was this rather unusual young woman asking Mrs. Vanderpool to use her influence in making Alwyn ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... sanctuaries of God, and shed the blood of the saints round about the altar. They have laid waste the dwelling-place of our hope; they have trodden down the bodies of the saints in the temple of God like mire in the street. What can I say? I can only lament in my heart with you before the altar of Christ, and say: Spare, Lord, spare Thy people, and give not Thy heritage to the heathen, lest the pagans say, Where is the God of the Christians? What confidence is there for the churches ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... which he wrapped her before they left the station-shelter. Ralston's little two-seater car shed dazzling beams of light through the dripping dark. She floundered blindly into a pool of water before she reached it, and was doubly startled by Monck lifting her bodily, without apology, out of the mire, and placing her on the seat. The beat of the rain upon the hood made her wonder if they could make any headway under it. And then, while she was still wondering, the engine began to throb like a living thing, and she was aware of Monck squeezing past her to his ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... went on, the mud in the road grew deeper and deeper, and presently Old Trumpeter's legs sunk far down among roots and mire. Rollo began to feel more and more alarmed, and heartily wished that he had taken his ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... asleep, for he could not bear any one to touch it when he was awake. It was awful to hear the cracking of that whip as it was laid about Riley—one would have thought that an ox team had gotten into the mire, and was being whipped out, so loud and ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... more insidious, because connected with our moral and religious faculties. There are religious exaltations beyond the regular pulse and beatings of ordinary nature, that quite as surely gravitate downward into the mire of irritability. The ascent to the third heaven lets even the Apostle down to a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... do not speak to the Government. I speak to the House. I appeal to those who, on Monday last, voted with the Ministers against the test proposed by the honourable Baronet the Member for North Devon. I know what is due to party ties. But there is a mire so black and so deep that no leader has a right to drag his followers through it. It is only forty-eight hours since honourable gentlemen were brought down to the House to vote against requiring the professors in the Irish Colleges ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... walk, Mary and I, when every fowl Hides beak and eyes in breast, the owl Only awake to hoot."—But clover Is beaten down now, and birds hover, Peering for shelter round; no blade Of grass stands sharp and tall; men wade Thro' mire with frequent plashing sting Of rain upon their faces. Sing, Then, Mary, to me thro' the dark: But kiss me first: my hand shall mark Time, pressing ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... who, prompt and eager in imputing unworthy motives to gentlemen with characters above reproach, have yet been so silent with regard to the flagrant and frequent abuses of more than one of their countrymen by whom the honour and fair fame of their nation were for years draggled in the mire, and whose misdeeds were the theme of every tongue and thousands of newspaper-articles in the ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... bill of 1753. The thought that stirred him was indicated in a phrase or two to his wife at Hawarden: 'July 31.—Parliamentary affairs are very black; the poor church gets deeper and deeper into the mire. I am to speak to-night; it will do no good; and the fear grows upon me from year to year that when I finally leave parliament, I shall not leave the great question of state and church better, but perhaps even ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the desperate effort to escape their doom; of hundreds of houses crashing down the surging river, carrying men, women and children beyond the hope of rescue; of a night of horrors, multitudes dying amid the awful terrors of flood and fire, plunged under the wild torrent, buried in mire, or consumed in devouring flames; of helpless creatures rending the air with pitiful screams crying aloud in their agony, imploring help with outstretched hands, and finally sinking with ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... that he is subject to what are known to the records of insanity as hallucinations: that he hears voices whispering blasphemy in his ears, and sees devils coming to meet him, and thinks he is going to be torn in pieces, or trodden into the mire. Suppose that his mental conflicts, after plunging him into the depths of despondency, at last reduce him to a state of despair, so that he now contemplates taking his own life, and debates with himself whether it shall be by knife, halter, or poison, and after ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... I once took a young girl—lifted her up from the mire of the streets and carried her in my arms. Next my heart I carried her. So I would have borne her all through life—lest haply she should dash her foot against a stone. For her shoes were worn very ...
— When We Dead Awaken • Henrik Ibsen
... an organic aversion for all that is ugly, or coarse and discordant, that he made himself almost exclusively the poet of the gentler side of human nature. On the fringe of his pictures or in their background, just for the sake of contrast, he will show us the vices, the cruelties, even the mire of life. But he cannot stay in these gloomy regions, and he hastens back to the realms of the sun and flowers, or to the poetical moonlight of melancholy, which he loves best because in it he can find expression for his own ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... covered infidelity and vice; Protestant straightness often lauds spirituality and faith, and neglects homely truth, candor, and generosity; and ultra-liberal Rationalistic refinement sometimes soars to heaven in its dreams, and wallows in the mire of earth ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... without looking whither they were going, and in the midst of the plain they fell into a very miry slough, which was called the Slough of Despond. Here they wallowed for a time, and Christian, because of the burden that was on his back, began to sink in the mire. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... blessed martyrs, lie exposed, trampled on, polluted, dishonored, and rotting in the weather. Our most holy lord the pope means to build the church to cover them with glory that shall have no equal on the earth. Shall those holy ashes be left to be trodden in the mire?" ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... true and living God, received Christ into their hearts, and found the power of salvation in the gospel. They found power in the blood of Christ to cleanse them from their impurities, and not only so, but also to raise them so far from the mire of sin and wickedness abounding around them as to keep them faithful in Christ Jesus while still dwelling ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... and called the peasants from their well-earned rest to toil onwards in their march. The wind howled fiercely over the moorland; a close, thick, wetting rain descended. Chilled to the bone, worn out with long fatigue, sinking to the knees in mire, onward they marched to destruction. One by one the weary peasants fell off from their ranks to sleep, and die in the rain-soaked moor, or to seek some house by the wayside wherein to hide till ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... how can you say so, when she took you, poor little beggar as you was, all from the mire and dirt to be her ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... the heat of day is best, Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire, With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin, And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, And feels about his spine small eft-things course, Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh: And while above his head a pompion-plant, Coating ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... though he had wearied of the engagement. It seemed to her that he had built between them a barrier which she determined he should be the first to cross. So she studiously avoided him, and thus unconsciously plunged him deeper and deeper into the mire, where he was already foundering. Her apparent indifference only increased the ardor of his affection, and though he struggled against it as against a deadly sin, he could not overcome it, and at last urged on by Nina, ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... end by one's own wrongdoing. Still, most modern readers will think that Goethe, in elaborating the Brocken scene as an interesting study of the uncanny and the vile, let his hero sink needlessly far into the mire. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... tranquil nights that give in dreams The moonlight of the morning's joy!— All this my heart could dwell on here, But for those gross mementoes near; Those sullying truths that cross the track Of each sweet thought and drive them back Full into all the mire and strife And vanities of that man's life, Who more than all that e'er have glowed With fancy's flame (and it was his, In fullest warmth and radiance) showed What an impostor Genius is; How with that strong, mimetic art Which forms its life and soul, it ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Bank-Account to wreak Their manly Strength on Ledgers, till too weak To swing a club?—So Caddies calmly tread In Mire the Ball Heav'n ...
— The Golfer's Rubaiyat • H. W. Boynton
... Tut, duns the Mouse, the Constables owne word, If thou art dun, weele draw thee from the mire. Or saue your reuerence loue, wherein thou stickest Vp to the eares, come we burne ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... upon the money-zealot's progress; the dizzy height, the dazzling array, the craze for more and more and more; then the temptation and fall, millions gone, honor gone, reason gone—the innocent and the gentle, with the guilty, dragged through the mire of the prison, and the court—and we draw back aghast. Yet, if we speak of these things ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... salute. He scarcely knew he did it and for a second she seemed not to understand. But the next second she burst out crying and hurriedly took out her handkerchief and hid her face as she passed. One of the boys lying on the blood-wet mire in Flanders, was Donal's bitter thought, but he had had his kind hours to recall at the last moment—and even now ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... because I am perverse and vicious, therefore raise up Thy power, and come to me, Thy miserable creature, Thy lost child, and with Thy great might succour me. Lift me up, because I have fallen very low; deliver me, for I have plunged out of Thy sound and safe highway into deep mire where no ground is. Help myself I cannot, and if Thou help me not, I ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... times he cried out: "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance" (Psalm xlii. 5). And Jeremiah, remembering the wormwood and the gall, and the deep mire of the dungeon into which they had plunged him, and from which he had scarcely been delivered, said: "It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord" (Lam. ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... thought the cowboy, "I noticed it particular, when I was flounderin' up to my neck in the mire of deception. The old reprobate ain't ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... was his chief charm. Everybody who knew him felt that he was a man, a large-hearted, generous friend, always ready to help everybody and everything out of their troubles, whether it was a pig stuck in the mire, a poor widow in trouble, or a farmer who needed advice. He had a helpful mind, open, frank, transparent. He never covered up anything, never had secrets. The door of his heart was always open so that anyone could read his ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... would be for one of the least of these. There flashed into her mind an old Indian proverb she had read. "I met a hundred men on the road to Delhi, and they were all my brothers." Yes! None were too deep sunk in the mire to be brothers and sisters to ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... Mediator, he is not equal to his Father, but less than his Father, and subject and subordinate to his Father—a distinction used by our divines against the Anti-Trinitarians and Socinians. Now by his not admitting of this distinction, he doth by consequence mire himself in Socinianism; for Christ, as Mediator, is the Father's servant, Isa. xlii. 1; and the Father is greater than he, John xiv. 28; and as the head of the man is Christ, so the head of Christ is God, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... the ecstasy of one who has abandoned herself, freely and with a glad heart, to all the vices. She dug her hands into the mire, she scattered it about her, she scooped and delved and excavated. It was her intention to build something in the nature of a high, high hill. She patted the surface of the sand, and behold! it was instantly a beautiful shape, ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... the hill emitted smoke or steam all the day, and the volcano was unusually furious, insomuch that the air was loaded with its ashes. The rain which fell at this time was a compound of water, sand, and earth; so that it properly might be called showers of mire. Whichever way the wind was, we were plagued with the ashes; unless it blew very strong indeed from the opposite direction. Notwithstanding the natives seemed well enough satisfied with the few expeditions we had made in the neighbourhood, they were unwilling we should ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... said MacLean, "This quarrel's mine by virtue of my making it so. Mistress Truelove, you shall have no further annoyance. Now, you Lowland cowards that cannot see a flower bloom but you wish to trample it in the mire, come taste the ground yourself, and be taught that the flower is ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... rags, or sacking. Along the paths where they daily pass to and from their provision grounds, not an overhanging bough or straggling briar ever seems to be cut, so that you have to brush through a rank vegetation, creep under fallen trees and spiny creepers, and wade through pools of mud and mire, which cannot dry up because the sun is not allowed to penetrate. Their food is almost wholly roots and vegetables, with fish or game only as an occasional luxury, and they are consequently very subject to various ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... three months before the traveller reached there, for the apartments preparing for him were far from ready, and he had to wait throughout the winter in the vicinity, in a castle of the Count of Oropesa, and in the midst of an almost continual downpour of rain, which turned the roads to mire, the country almost to a swamp, and the mountains to vapor-heaps. The threshold of his new home was far ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... rules, and the majority only thinks of its own interests and those of its servile supporters. But even in this community of ours there is a minority that bears the burden of its affairs and represents its honour; and we will never consent to be dragged down into the mire of this "equality" into which you want to plunge each and every ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... much indented by inlets of the sea that there is no part of it removed from the water more than six miles. No part that I have seen is plain; you are always climbing or descending, and every step is upon rock or mire. A walk upon ploughed ground in England is a dance upon carpets compared to the toilsome drudgery of wandering in Skye. There is neither town nor village in the island, nor have I seen any house but Macleod's, that is ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... perishing; to delight in the rest of faith while forgetful to fight the good fight of faith; to dwell upon the cleansing and the purity effected by faith, but to have little thought for the poor souls struggling in the mire of sin. If we can put off our coat when He would have us keep it on; if we can wash our feet while He is wandering alone upon the mountains, is there not sad want of ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor
... for what reason now, and to what end, since his virginal-pure, dew-pearled, Convent lily lay trodden in the mire? And yet, to ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... between its several brigades. Arminius, with a chosen band of personal retainers round him, cheered on his countrymen by voice and example. He and his men aimed their weapons particularly at the horses of the Roman cavalry. The wounded animals, slipping about in the mire and their own blood, threw their riders and plunged among the ranks of the legions, disordering all round them. Varus now ordered the troops to be countermarched, in the hope of reaching the nearest Roman garrison ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... administrator of the estate of Professor Kelton—you remember him—Madison College—I filed a petition to be let into the case. It's been sleeping along for a couple of years—stockholders too poor to put up a fight. I've undertaken to probe clear into the mire. I've got lots of time and there's ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... massing of rosy cloud along the edge of the down, and windy lights over the valley. Rachel, busy with the covering of the potato "clamps," laid down the bundle of bracken she had been handing to Peter Betts, and came quickly to meet her visitor. Her working dress was splashed with mire from neck to foot, and coils of brown hair had escaped from her waterproof cap, and hung about her brilliant cheeks. She looked happy, ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... will be glad to hear it. We'll ride together. Look out for your horse! He may go knee deep into mire at any time. Harry, the Wilderness looks even more somber to me than it did a year ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... stables, and store-houses, and cattle-sheds and stalls. In the midst of it was a quantity of manure, all wet and sloppy, and upon the very top of this heap stood that charming boy, Master Tom, with his shoes and stockings all covered with mire. ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... des Gallars, ubi supra, 84: "Quum hanc formam legisset Cardinalis, mire approbavit, ac laetatus est quasi ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... the nest, did she?—she never preened her wings, and thought all the world lay before her, and she could fly as straight as any lark of them all, and catch as many flies as any swallow? Ay, nor she never tumbled off into the mire, and found she could not fly a bit, and all the insects went darting past her as safe as if she were a dead leaf? Eh, my lassies, this would be a poor world, if it were all. I have seen something of it, though ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... It came to that pass, now. They "heard about the place before iver they kim intil it." The Argenter name was up. There was no getting out of the bog-mire. Sylvie ran the gauntlet of the village refuse, and had to go to Boston to the intelligence offices. By this time she hadn't a kitchen or a bedroom fit to show a decent servant into. They came, and looked, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... I burn the records of the day, At sunrise every soul is born again. Laugh like a boy at splendors that are sped; To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb; My judgments seal the dead past with its dead, But never bind a moment yet to come. Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep, I lend my arm to all who ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... why you left her so," he said, "and why you did not face it. You feared her name might be dragged in the mire! Because he threatened to bring her into that miserable business, you never raised a hand. I always knew you were a gentleman, but I did not know you were Don ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... eminent citizens, would dare to say, before God, that he was better than a prostitute? You are all nothing but living filth, and it is by a miracle of divine goodness that you do not suddenly turn into streams of mire." ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... waters were constituted by the blood that was shed in that battle, and cars constituted its eddies, and elephants and steeds formed its banks. And costs of mail constituted its lilies, and the flesh of creatures the mire on its bed. And the fat, marrow, and bones (of fallen animals and men) formed the sands on its beach, and (fallen) head-gears its froth. And the battle itself that was fought there constituted the canopy above its surface. And lances constituted the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... (it said) the Government of the People's Commissars sinks deeper and deeper into the mire of superficial haste. Having easily conquered the power... the Bolsheviki can not make use ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... pride, his brain gathers ideas. His task finished, he returns to ineffable ecstasies, to contemplation, to joys; he beholds his feet set in afflictions, in obstacles, on the pavement, in the nettles, sometimes in the mire; his head in the light. He is firm, serene, gentle, peaceful, attentive, serious, content with little, kindly; and he thanks God for having bestowed on him those two forms of riches which many a rich man ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... first to Toulouse, remarks John Yeardley, we saved about thirty miles of travelling; but it was ill-spared, for one part of the road was so bad that it required a forespan of two oxen to drag the carriage through the deep mire and over the dangerous ditches. After a little dinner at a poor place in the mountains, we procured a mule as a reinforcement; for we stuck so fast in the mud that I never expected we should be able to extricate ourselves. ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... accumulate sugar, put it in the fuel tank of a gasoline engine. As it burns together with the gasoline, it will turn into a sticky mess which will completely mire the engine and necessitate extensive cleaning and repair. Honey and molasses are as good as sugar. Try to use about 75-100 grams for each ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... re-acted in these vast western solitudes, and the fate of the unfortunate traders would be unknown until some day, perchance, a living skeleton, a famished being covered with blood, dust, and mire, would arrive at one of the military posts on the borders, and relate an awful and bloody tragedy, from which he alone ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... been betwixt them no approach to union. When what sir Wilton called love had evaporated, he returned to his mire, with a resentful feeling that the handsome woman—his superior in everything that belongs to humanity—had bewitched him to his undoing. The truth was, she had ceased to charm him. The fault was not in her; it lay in the dulled ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... the embankments, Mother Gunga would carry his honour to the sea with the other raffle. Worst of all, there was nothing to do except to sit still; and Findlayson sat still under his macintosh till his helmet became pulp on his head, and his boots were over-ankle in mire. He took no count of time, for the river was marking the hours, inch by inch and foot by foot, along the embankment, and he listened, numb and hungry, to the straining of the stone-boats, the hollow thunder under the piers, and the hundred ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... Montville, gunner and genius, had faced this fact until he was in a measure used to it. There was to be no escape for him. He, who had dared to scale the heights of Olympus and had diced with the gods, was to be hurled into the mire to rise therefrom no more for ever. He had climbed so high; almost his feet had reached the summit. He had completed his invention, and it had surpassed even his most sanguine hopes of success. At four-and-twenty he had been acclaimed by ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... Levin said to himself, as he went back to the carriage that had sunk in the mire. "What did you drive in for?" he said to him dryly, and calling the coachman, he began ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... the industrious insects live In hollow rocks, or make a tree their hive. Point all their chinky lodgings round with mud, And leaves must thinly on your work be strow'd; But let no baleful yew-tree flourish near, Nor rotten marshes send out steams of mire; Nor burning crabs grow red, and crackle in the fire: Nor neighbouring caves return the dying sound, Nor echoing rocks the doubled voice rebound. 60 Things thus prepared—— When the under-world is seized with cold and night, And summer here ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... of calumny and lies: Men gloat on evil—even woman's hand Will dabble in the mire, nor heed the cries Of the poor victim whom she seeks to brand In thy sweet name, Religion, through the land! Like the keen tempest she doth strip her prey, Tossing him bare and wrecked upon the strand, While vaunting her misdeeds before the day, Bearing a monument ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... continued, "could we ever have succeeded with children like ours? Eugene abandons us just at the critical moment; Aristide has dragged us through the mire, and even that big simpleton Pascal is compromising us by his philanthropic practising among the insurgents. And to think that we brought ourselves to poverty simply to give them ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... it be so to the world, because you bear my name, and I will not have it dragged through the mire—to all others it is an accident—but never to me, for I saw you let her go! There is the stain of murder upon your hands. I will never call you wife, nor look upon your face again; get yourself away out of ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... what flat wastes of cosmic slime, And stung by what quick fire, Sunward the restless races climb!— Men risen out of mire! ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... brightly, giving to the dead whitened trees on the little island a peculiar ghostly appearance. The canoes soon grounded in the marsh grass, and, fastening them to paddles, stuck down in the mud, our hunters shouldered their fowling-pieces and trudged ahead through the mire. They had prepared themselves well for the trip and each wore a pair of rubber boots reaching to the hip drawn on over ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... drink with a young gentleman of such wealth, and (as a necessary consequence) such distinction? Besides, I suddenly felt quite a curiosity to drink some liquor, just to see how it tasted. After all, it was only very low people who got drunk and wallowed in the mire. Gentlemen (I thought) never get drunk, and they always seem so happy and joyous after they have been drinking! How they shake hands, and swear eternal friendship, and seem generously willing to lend or give away all they have in the ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... kindled, he knew, to give him welcome, and to speed him home. He beckoned with his hand, and waved his hat, and cheered out, loud, as if the light were they, and they could see and hear him, as he dashed towards them through the mud and mire, triumphantly. ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... say, this man's appeal. We drag so deep in our commercial mire, We move so far from greatness, that I feel Exception to be character'd in fire. Who looks for Godlike greatness here shall see The British Goddess, ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... dear young sir," said Fairthorn, "be his most bitter open enemy, and fall down in the mire, the first hand to help you would be Guy Darrell's; but be his professed friend, and betray him to the worth of a straw, and never try to see his face again if you are wise,—the most forgiving and the least ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wedding-day drew near. After the marriage, the Pig and his bride set out for his home in one of the royal carriages. On the way they passed a great bog, and the Pig ordered the carriage to stop, and got out and rolled about in the mire till he was covered with mud from head to foot; then he got back into the carriage and told his wife to kiss him. What was the poor girl to do? She bethought herself of her father's words, and, pulling out her pocket handkerchief, she ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... throned Zeus nods nor may be woken But by the song of spirits seven Quiring in the midnight heaven Of a new world no more forlorn, Sith unto it a Babe is born, That in a propped, thatched stable lies, While with darkling, reverent eyes Dusky Emperors, coifed in gold, Kneel mid the rushy mire, and hold Caskets of rubies, urns of myrrh, Whose fumes enwrap the thurifer And coil toward the high dim rafters Where, with lutes and warbling laughters, Clustered cherubs of rainbow feather, Fanning the fragrant air together, Flit in jubilant ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... wave of olive drab, impeccable row after impeccable row of scissors-like legs advancing. Recruits, raw if you will, but already caparisoned, sniffing and scenting, as it were, for the great primordial mire of war. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... kinds of securities, holds all Paris in its hand, watches over the fantasies of children, spies out the caprices and the vices of mature age, sucks money out of disease. Even so, if they drink no brandy, like the artisan, nor wallow in the mire of debauch, all equally abuse their strength, immeasurably strain their bodies and their minds alike, are burned away with desires, devastated with the swiftness of the pace. In their case the physical distortion is accomplished ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... think, 'Lige," said I, "that you are a little hard on an unfortunate class of humanity, who, in nine cases out of ten, are the victims of others' wrong-doing, and stay in the mire because no hand is extended to help them out? Think of the woman of Samaria. It's sinners, not saints, that ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... who was killed at the battle of Mill Springs in Kentucky. The Rebel officers undertook to carry off the immense supplies of food which had been accumulated; but in the panic, barrels of meat and flour, sacks of coffee, hogsheads of sugar were rolled into the streets and trampled into the mire. Millions of dollars' worth were lost to the Confederacy. The farmers in the country feared that they would lose their slaves, and from all the section round they hurried the poor creatures towards the South, hoping to find a place where they ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... Assumption to the young peasant girl. The beautiful Adeline was translated at once from the mire of her village to the paradise of the Imperial Court; for the contractor, one of the most conscientious and hard-working of the Commissariat staff, was made a Baron, obtained a place near the Emperor, and was attached to the Imperial Guard. ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... from the dust-covered and dingy canvas with beauty, sportiveness, and pensive grace. Poor charming woman! Had she not met that wandering boy on the highway; had she not opened to him her house and heart, his sensitive and suffering genius might have been extinguished in the mire. The meeting seemed like the effect of chance, but it was predestination meeting the great man under the form of his first love. That woman saved him; she cultivated him; she excited him in solitude, in liberty, ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... master's orders; but Gilbert, who liked not the noise, refused to proceed in the ordinary way. Then the squire, turning his tail to the drummer, he advanced in a retrograde motion, and with one kick of his heels, not only broke the drum into a thousand pieces, but laid the drummer in the mire, with such a blow upon his hip-bone, that he halted all the days of his life. The recruits, perceiving the discomfiture of their leader, armed themselves with stones; the serjeant raised his halbert in a posture of defence, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... tread and boast, Yourself enamored of the dirtiest most. One day to be a miser you aspire, The next to wallow drunken in the mire; The third, lo! you're a meritorious liar![C] Pray, in the catalogue of all your graces, Have theft and cowardice ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... stopped in hesitation, fearing to soil her slippers. This was the young courtier's chance. Raleigh had been in the background, but seeing the Queen hesitate he sprang forward, and sweeping his new plush cloak from his shoulders, spread it in the mire, so that she might cross. The Queen's face lighted up with pleasure at the graceful act, and she thanked the youthful gallant. Later she saw that he was given many court suits for the cloak ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... memory of Alix, who was chicken-farming at that age, and generally unpleasantly redolent of incubators, chopped feed, and mire. He seemed to remember Alix shouting that if Peter Joyce was going to LIVE in their house, she would move somewhere ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... with fire, Camped on the consecrated sod, And trampled in the dust and mire The Holy Eucharist ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various |
