"Muck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Nema looked up for a moment, and there was fear and worry in her eyes before she looked back to her weaving of endless knots. Sather Karf sighed in weariness. "If I knew what was happening to the sky, would I be dredging the muck of Duality for the ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... receptiveness, an openness of eye, a simple readiness to take in these gentle impressions is, I believe with all my heart, of the essence of true wisdom. We have all of us our work to do in the world; but we have our lesson to learn as well. The man with the muck-rake in the old parable, who raked together the straws and the dust of the street, was faithful enough if he was set to do that lowly work; but had he only cared to look up, had he only had a moment's leisure, he would have seen that the celestial crown hung close above ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... he rose early, to muck out the rock and clear the tunnel for a new round of holes; and each time as he came out with a wheel-barrow full of waste he cocked his eye to the west. Bible-Back Murray would be coming over soon, if he was still at his camp around the ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... colours of the rainbow. It is in shape like a large parrot, with a white bill, and black legs and feet. The carrion crow is as big as a small turkey, which it perfectly resembles in shape and colour; but its flesh smells and tastes so strong of muck that it is not eatable. The pelican is almost as big as a swan, being mostly white with brown tips to the wings, having a long bill with a large cross joining the lower part of the bill, and hanging down the throat like a bag or satchel of great size, into which it receives oysters, cockles, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... is the virtue of a classic, or of the deliberate and stately billows going with the wind when the world has sweep and is fair, or of a child with a flower, or of the little smile on the face of the dead boy in the muck when the guns were filling us with fear and horror of mankind? I don't know; but something in us appears to save us from ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... protests Rupert. "You see, I lived in a little town in southern Illinois. Father ran a general store. I had to help in it—sold shingle nails, molasses, mower teeth, overalls. How I hated that! But there was the creek and the muck pond. I had an old boat. I played smuggler and pirate. I used to love to read pirate books. I wanted to go ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... or two before he replied. "If I choose to run a-muck, there is no reason why you should follow me. I am old and you are young. I want nothing from politics as a profession, and you do. Moreover, you have a congenial subject where you are, and need not disturb yourself. For myself, I tell you, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... seen she had it figgered out I was in a quest fur some high-mucky-muck fur a dad, I didn't tell her no different. I didn't take much stock in them earls and nights myself. So fur as I could see they was all furriners of one kind or another. But that thing of being into a quest ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... Paths dirt; Top-coat, Flannel shirt; Lilacs drenched, Laburnums pallid; Spirits quenched, Souls squalid; Tennis "off," Icy breeze; Croak, cough, Wheeze, sneeze; Cramped cricket, Arctic squall; Drenched wicket, Soaked ball; Park a puddle. Row a slough; Muck, muddle, Slush, snow; Hay-fever (No hay!) Spoilt beaver, Shoes asplay; Lilies flopping, Washed-out roses; Eaves dropping, Red noses; Pools, splashes, Spouts, spirts; Swollen sashes. Gutters, squirts; Limp curls, Splashed hose; Pretty girls, Damp shows; Piled grates, Cold shivers; Aching pates, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... is unlike anything that can be seen elsewhere. One hears about the bowels of the earth; this surely is the end of one of them. They talk of the mouth of hell; this is the mouth with a severe fit of vomiting. The filthy muck is spewed from an unseen gullet at one side into a huge upright mouth with sounds of oozing, retching and belching. Then as quickly reswallowed with noises expressive of loathing on its own part, while noxious steam spreads ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... deck or platform. It took them a little while to become accustomed to the darkness, but soon they were able to make out that they had run on the muddy bank of the ocean beach. The tide was low and the Porpoise had rammed her nose well into the soft muck, which accounted for the lack ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... buff to a nondescript shade which blended with what had once been light corduroy trousers; his heavy shoes, treated only the evening before to a coat of preservative grease, were now covered with muck; and, pulled over his eyes, a shapeless canvas hat completed the list of the ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... states; and more numerous than the lakes which still remain are those already thus filled with carbonaceous matter derived from the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere. Such fossil lakes are marked by swamps or level meadows underlain with muck. ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... pay for it; but by-and-by things began to grow vicey-varsy. If the work was done for Tom, 't was undone for the other lads; if his buckets were filled, theirs were upset; if his tools were sharpened, theirs were blunted and spoiled; if his horses were clean as daisies, theirs were splashed with muck, and so on; day in and day out, 't was the same. And the lads saw Yallery Brown flitting about o' nights, and they saw the things working without hands o' days, and they saw that Tom's work was done for him, and theirs undone for them; and naturally they begun ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... a Member of Parliament! Running a-muck of all abuses. His unqualified assent Somehow nobody now refuses. Whigs and Tories Dim their glories, Giving an ear to all his stories Carrying every Bill he may wish: Here's a pretty kettle of fish! Kettle of fish! Kettle of fish! Here's a ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... thought is a thread to be woven into a golden net. He lifts his life to strike as miners lift their picks. He swings his body as harvesters their scythes. He will make himself an augur for boring, a chisel for drilling, a muck-rake for scratching, if only he may get gain. He will sweat and swelter and burn in the tropics until malaria has made his face as yellow as gold, if thereby he can fill his purse, and for a like end he will shiver and ache in the arctics. He will deny ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the people were, they were still fearful savages. Messengers arrived from the neighbouring town to announce the death of their chief, Matiamvo. That individual had been addicted to running a-muck through his capital and beheading any one he met, till he had a large heap of human heads in front of his hut. Men were also slaughtered occasionally, whenever the chief wanted part of a body to ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... minute from low objects. 'What do I care about being confessed before the angels, or about the Holy Spirit to teach me? What I want is my share of the paternal acres. A rabbi who will help me to these is the rabbi for me.' John Bunyan's 'man with the muck-rake' had his eyes so glued to the ground and the muck that he did not see the crown hanging above him. How many of us find the sermon time a good opportunity for thinking ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... youth, "for I am not very clean in the head." "Dost thou think then that I will have thee in the kitchen, if such be the case?" said she; "go to the master of the horse: thou art fittest to carry muck from the stables." When the master of the horse told him to take off his wig, he got the same answer, so he refused to have him. "Thou canst go to the gardener," said he, "thou art only fit to go and dig the ground." The gardener allowed ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... haven't your rope along. Here's just the ticket—some old fence rails lying in a heap. Cheer up, comrade, we'll have you out of that in a jiffy now," sang out Frank, seizing one of the long, cast-off rails, and dropping it on the surface of the muck. ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... shall arrive, and still To suit the note the glades have struck, Moat sweetly shall Neaera swill Her poll with barber's muck. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... pairs of eyes swung toward the door and silence fell upon the place. Stepping heedlessly into the ankle-deep muck, Solange walked forward. Her flat-brimmed hat was pulled low over her face and the silk bandanna hid her hair. Behind her Sucatash walked uncertainly, glaring from side to side ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... mun put u'p wi'! What insults an' snubs they've to tak! What bowin an' scrapin's expected, If a chap's a black coit on his back. As if clooas made a chap ony better, Or riches improved a man's heart, As if muck in a carriage smell'd sweeter Nor th' same muck wod smell in ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... the first one, now close on three cent'ries ago, Wot a lush of mixed mineral muck these 'ere 'Arrygate Springs 'ave let flow! Well, ere's bully for Brimstone, my bloater, and 'ooray for 'Arrygate air! Wich 'as done me most good I don't know, and I'm scorched if I very ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... stone hinges Hung to its flanking tower. The path they followed Threaded an old paved road whose flags were edged With dry grass and dry weeds, even cactuses Had pushed the stones up or found root in muck heaps: The path struck up the slope of the fallen door, Basalt like midnight, o'er which dusty feet Had greyed a passage, for it rested on Some dbris fallen from the left-hand tower, And from its upper edge rude blocks like steps Led down into the straight main street, that ran Past eyeless ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... his, I'll lend him a safety-pin from my shirtwaist," drawled Rupert, lounging up, hooking his own mask. "I ain't muck-raking, but he broke his rear axle at Indianapolis, last month, ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... is the Heath Society's youngest child. The heath is full of peat-bogs that only need the sand, so plentiful on the uplands, to make their soil as good as the best, the muck of the bog being all plant food, and they have a surplus of water to give in exchange. With hope the keynote of it all, the State has taken up the herculean task of keeping down the moving sands of the North Sea coast. All along it is a range of dunes that in the fierce storms ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... interfered, and prevented the men from giving the old chief as much liquor as they were ready to bestow on him, lest he might get drunk, and take it into his head to run a-muck or jump overboard. He had taken enough, however, to send him fast asleep in the bottom of the boat, where he lay, as Jerry observed, "like a porpus in a ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... in this order: (1) a top layer of soil from 1 foot to 2 feet thick; (2) a layer of burnt clay from 3 to 12 inches thick (though usually varying from 4 to 8 inches) and broken into lumps, never in a uniform, unbroken layer; immediately below this (3) a thin layer of hardened muck or dark clay, though this does not always seem to be distinct. At this depth in the mounds of the eastern part of Arkansas are usually ...
— The Problem of Ohio Mounds • Cyrus Thomas
... or sorrow, courteous towards each other, kind to their women and children. Not elated by good or depressed by bad fortune, but capable of excesses when roused. Under the influence of religious excitement, losses at gambling, jealousy or other domestic troubles they are liable to amok or run-a-muck, an expression which appears to have passed into the English language." With strangers, the Brunai Malay is doubtless taciturn, but I have heard Brunai ladies among themselves, while enjoying their betel-nut, rival any old English gossips ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... (half-castes). The house, which was in the middle of the plot, was a bulging hovel of green brick, no more stately or respectable than any of the huts round about. As our horses picked their way through the muck underfoot, and we rode down to it, the off-colors swarmed out of their burrows and grinned and ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... muttered. "You have done your work, and I fling you away, as I fling away all my tools at my pleasure. There, in the green muck and slimy filth, you will tell ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... and stir his readers to action by either one of two methods: by exposing existing evils, or by showing what has been done to improve bad conditions. The exposure of evils in politics, business, and society constituted the "muck-raking" to which several of the popular monthly magazines owe their rise. This crusading, "searchlight" type of journalism has been largely superseded by the constructive, "sunlight" type. To explain how reforms have been accomplished, or are being ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... and left their curse in the den, If not their corpses. . . . There we herded from the blast Of whizz-bangs, but one found our door at last. Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles. And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping And splashing in the flood, deluging muck— The sentry's body; then his rifle, handles Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck. We dredged him up, for killed, until he whined "O sir, my eyes—I'm blind—I'm blind, I'm blind!" Coaxing, I held a flame ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... upon a questionable financial enterprise. One of the yellow journals of the day—for we had them even then, although they were not put forth from printing presses, but displayed on board fences in scare-head letters six or eight feet high—one of the yellow journals of the day, I say, issued a muck-raking Extra, exposing what it termed The International Marine and Zoo Flotation Company, and most unfortunately there was just enough truth in the story in so far as its details went, to lend color to its sensational accusations. It could not be denied, ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... daughter, matters went on despite the strike. Mr. Law is, of course, as a good Scotch bailiff should be, greatly distressed at the state of his cow-houses, feeding-stalls, and stockyard, now ankle-deep in "muck"; but the fine shorthorned bull seems none the worse, and the pigs have taken kindly to the new and disorderly condition of affairs. But things are not brought to a deadlock yet. Of the animals "Boycotted" in Dublin the sheep have since been ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... acid, which may, in a slight degree, affect the growth of plants, but their practical importance is of too doubtful a character to justify us in considering them. The application of manures, containing organic matter, such as peat, muck, animal manure, etc., supplies the soil with carbon on the same principle, and the decomposing matters also generate[Q] carbonic acid gas while being decomposed. The agricultural value of carbon in the soil depends (as we have stated), not on the ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... us, indeed! That's a notion! Look at my hands. D'ye see how dirty they are? And they smell of muck, and of pitch—but yours, see, are white. And ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... the poor animals were so tame that they ate out of Pablo's hand and submitted to be stroked and caressed; and before they were a fortnight in the stable. Alice and Edith could go up to them without danger. They were soon broken in; for the yard being full of muck, Pablo took them into it and mounted them. They plunged and kicked at first, and tried all they could to get rid of him, but they sank so deep into the muck that they were soon tired out; and after a month they were all three ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... preparing to evacuate anyway, as the persistence of our attack and effectiveness of our rifle fire had nearly broken their morale. Americans with white, strained faces, in contrast with their muck-daubed uniforms, shook hands prayerfully as they discussed how a determined defense could have murdered them all in making that frontal attack across a swamp in face ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... a brush drain endures much longer than in sandy land, which is dry a part of the year, because the brush decays in dry land, but will prove nearly imperishable in land constantly wet. In a peat or muck swamp, we should expect that such drains, if carefully constructed, might last twenty years, but that in a sandy loam they would be quite unreliable ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... in an instant, for they had wanted only a leader. Above the roar of the flames Bert could hear the thud as the horses landed in the soft muck of the cow-yard, ten feet below. Then came a shout as the men rushed forward to ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... Edith, on him breathed Far purelier in his rushings to and fro, After his books, to flush his blood with air, Then to his books again. My lady's cousin, Half-sickening of his pension'd afternoon, Drove in upon the student once or twice, Ran a Malayan muck against the times, Had golden hopes for France and all mankind, Answer'd all queries touching those at home With a heaved shoulder and a saucy smile, And fain had haled him out into the world, And air'd him there: his nearer friend ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... procuring manures of all kinds from every available source. Remember that anything which will rot will add to the value of your manure pile. Muck, lime, old plastering, sods, weeds (earth and all), street, stable and yard sweepings—all these and numerous others will increase your garden ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... they would, perchance, be carried off by slaves, like precious stones, to adorn the heads of emperors; but being liquid, and ample, and secured to us and our successors forever, we disregard them, and run after the diamond of Kohinoor. They are too pure to have a market value; they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters, are they! We never learned meanness of them. How much fairer than the pool before the farmers door, in which ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... such living shows What wide illumination brightness sheds From one big heart,—to conquer man's old foes: The coward, and the tyrant, and the force Of all those weedy monsters raising heads When Song is muck from springs ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... and carrying huge yards of steel, rising higher and higher, until steel masts and yards gave way to slender spars of wood, while ropes and stays turned into a delicate tracery of spider-thread against the sky. That such a wretched muck of men should be able to work this magnificent ship through all storm and darkness and peril of the sea was beyond all seeming. I remembered the two mates, the super-efficiency, mental and physical, of Mr. Mellaire and Mr. Pike—could they make ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... It's not a thing you can do twice. No, I accept my destiny. It's all over. And now, Bertie, like a good chap, shove off. I want to compose my speech. I can't compose my speech with you mucking around. If you are going to continue to muck around, at least give me a couple of stories. The little hell hounds are sure to expect a story ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... wandering through strange places. For weeks at a time they would hold on steadily, day after day; and for weeks upon end they would camp, here and there, the dogs loafing and the men burning holes through frozen muck and gravel and washing countless pans of dirt by the heat of the fire. Sometimes they went hungry, sometimes they feasted riotously, all according to the abundance of game and the fortune of hunting. Summer arrived, and dogs and men packed on their backs, rafted ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... again until they had cantered up through the awakening bazaar, where unclean-looking merchants and their underlings rinsed out their teeth noisily above the gutters, and the pariah dogs had started nosing in among the muck for things unthinkable to eat. The sun had shortened up the shadows and begun to beat down through the gaps; the advance-guard of the shrivelling hot wind had raised foul dust eddies, and the city was ahum when she ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... thing, if I ever fell in love with a man he'd have to be a man and not a crawler," said Dawn. "Some girls think if they get a bit of a swell he's something; but I wouldn't care if a man were the Prince of Wales and Lord Muck in one, if he couldn't do things without muddling, I'd throw water ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... They could not leave. They "knew" the gold was there, and they persisted. Somehow, the romance of the land and the quest entered into their blood, the spell of it gripped hold of them and would not let them go. Man after man of them, after the most terrible privation and suffering, shook the muck of the country from his moccasins and departed for good. But the following spring always found him drifting down the Yukon on the tail of the ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... Club, mate, for me; that means money, and rules, sportsman form, and sech muck. I likes to pick out my own pals, go permiskus, and trust to pot-luck. A rush twelve-a-breast is a gammock, twelve squeakers a going like one; But "rules o' the road" dump you down, chill yer sperrits, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... be a Hand. It's the way they do with draper's apprentices. If every swindler was locked up—well, you'd have nowhere to buy tape and cotton. It's all very well to bring up Burns and those chaps, but I'm not that make. Yet I'm not such muck that I might not have been better—with teaching. I wonder what the chaps who sneer and laugh at such as me would be if they'd been fooled about as I've been. At twenty-three—it's a ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... meant for that sort of thing. They're supposed to be for kids who steal buns at the shop or muck about generally. Not for a chap who curses a fellow who runs him out. I tell you what, there's just a chance Firby-Smith won't press the thing. He hadn't had time to get over it when he saw me. By now he'll have simmered down a bit. Look here, you're a pal ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... of his teaching, he is not always gentle, but he is always sincere. He speaks soft words to persuade; but if that is not enough, he does not scruple to knock the muck-rake out of sordid hands with a fine, sudden stroke, if so he may make men look up from the rubbish under their feet to the flowers that bloom around them and the stars that glow above and the God ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... statue, moulded in blanc-mange; whilst the ancient t'other-sider oscillated his frame—saw, and the pious Pawsome lightened his toil with selections from Sankey, and the perspiring Priestley hurried up his bullocks from the ration-paddock, and Sling Muck, the gardener, used his hoe among the callots and cabbagee, with the automatic stroke of a man brought up to one holiday per annum, and no Sunday. Meanwhile, the unreturning sands of Life dribbled through ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... a Catholic-moiderin' bastard! Come down and I'll moider yuh! Pullin' dat whistle on me, huh? I'll show yuh! I'll crash yer skull in! I'll drive yer teet' down yer troat! I'll slam yer nose trou de back of yer head! I'll cut yer guts out for a nickel, yuh lousey boob, yuh dirty, crummy, muck-eatin' son of a— ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... and their name was legion, were hurled in his path. His family scandals were dug up by the double handful and splashed in his face. Against his opponent the same methods were used. It was like a race through a marsh; and when Kittredge reached his goal in the Senate he was so muck-bemired, his heart had been so lacerated, the nakedness of his past so exposed, that his laurel seemed more like a wreath of poison ivy. And once mounted on his high post, he was an even better target than when he was on ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... Hercules had ever done duty in cleansing the stables. But there was a dry loft overhead with some straw, where we might get some sleep, in spite of the rain and the midges; a double layer of boards, standing at a very acute angle, would keep off the former, while the mingled refuse hay and muck beneath would nurse a smoke that would prove a thorough protection against the latter. And then, when Jim, the two-handed, mounting the trunk of a prostrate maple near by, had severed it thrice with easy and familiar stroke, and, rolling the logs in front of the shanty, had kindled ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... stopped once, a mile or two after starting, when he came to a stream. Into this he had waded, and had washed the muck stains from his clothes, ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... hell put thim out! May the ragin' dry thirst in my own ould bones go to you that you shall niver pass bottle full nor glass empty. God preserve the light av your onderstandin' to you, my jewel av a bhoy, that ye may niver forget what you mint to be an' do, whin you're wallowin' in the muck! May ye see the betther and follow the worse as long as there's breath in your body; an' may ye die quick in a strange land, watchin' your death before ut takes you, an' onable to ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... trees fell beneath the ax, the trunks were cut to rail lengths, and the oxen dragged logs through muck and mire and brush and bramble to the line of fence, and there the maul swung steadily in great strokes upon the iron and wooden wedges, the smell of timber newly split was in the air, and the heavy rails were lifted, and ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... proceeded against, and treated with the utmost rigour of the law? WINSER, the cabman, who gave his false evidence so gaily in the Thirkettle Case, has been had up, and sentenced. Having dealt with WINSER, it is only a short step from WINSER to SLOUGH—but perhaps such a slough of muck, that it wants the pluck of a Hercules in the Augaean stable to commence operations, and a deus ex-machina—that is, the Public Prosecutor from the Treasury—to see that the proceedings are not abortive. Oh, where, and Oh, where is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... woman, and he could not succeed in blinding himself to that fact. Even the garish, cheap environments, the glitter and tinsel, the noise and brutality, had utterly failed to tarnish Beth Norvell. She stood forth different, distinct, a perfectly developed flower, rarely beautiful, although blooming in muck that was overgrown with noxious weeds. Winston remained clearly conscious that some peculiar essence of her native character had mysteriously perfumed the whole place—it glorified her slight bit of stage work, and had already indelibly ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... they want money for?" he boomed. "They'll only spend it on all kinds of muck they don't want; what the missionaries leave them, that ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... do you or anybody else? You're stirring up muck, and you're getting the only thing you ever get by that kind of activity, a bad smell." He paused for his effect; then delivered himself of a characteristically vigorous and ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... almost within reach, seeming to listen to the beating of summer's heart so motionless it lay; unconscious, as though in verity he were again deep in some stifling trench, with German shells whining over him, and the smell of muck and blood making foetid the air. He was in the mood which curses God and dies; for he was devout—a Catholic, and still went to Mass. And God had betrayed the earth, and Jean Liotard. All the enormities he had seen in his two years at the front—the ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... but he had to run her down when he caught sight of her, for she fled like a wild thing before him. Floundering in a cedar swamp, soaked to the knees, little blue be-furred suit heavy with black muck, he came up with her. She was kneeling, shaking with terror, face hidden by her loosened hair, when he bent over her and ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... will find that Miss Marsdeo's taste differs very widely from yours," said De Forrest; "that is, if you give us to understand that you would seek your themes in a barn-yard, and set your easel upon a muck-heap. Though your pictures might not rank high they ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... plays are done, To roar of shell and shock of gun; The scuttled shipping bobs and sways, In grime and muck of shallow bays. The tattered ensigns mould'ring lie, As diving otters bark and cry; While—in the lee of crumbling piers, The rotting hulk its decking rears. Gray, screaming kestrels wheel and sheer, Above the wasted steering ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... continue unacquainted with the main facts of life, and some are initiated at an even tenderer age. How is it possible for any maiden to remain unenlightened in this regard these days when sensational, muck-raking prints throw the searchlight of publicity into every boudoir and spicy details of society's philandering fill column after column in the breakfast table newspaper? No matter how little curiosity a healthy-minded girl may have, by reason of a natural coldness of temperament, to acquire ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... foregoing programme, to be reached in (say) three years—two if possible. He must learn to grow these things absolutely better than they are now grown anywhere on earth. He must get the best seed. He must get muck out of the swamp, manure from somewhere, etc. etc. He must have the supreme flavour in each thing. Let him take room enough for each—plenty of room. He doesn't want much room for any one thing, but ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... who was their grandfather. Now, Roger is like me, a Hamley of Hamley, and no one who sees him in the street will ever think that red-brown, big-boned, clumsy chap is of gentle blood. Yet all those Cumnor people, you make such ado of in Hollingford, are mere muck of yesterday. I was talking to madam the other day about Osborne's marrying a daughter of Lord Hollingford's—that's to say, if he had a daughter—he's only got boys, as it happens; but I'm not sure if I should consent to it. I really am not sure; for you see Osborne will have had ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Deaf and blind to every other consideration, to this end they had degraded their intellects by concentrating them upon the minutest details of expense and profit, and for their reward they raked in their harvest of muck and lucre along with the hatred and curses of those they injured in the process. They knew that the money they accumulated was foul with the sweat of their brother men, and wet with the tears of little children, but they were deaf and ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... come this way, Miss Gordon," said Mr. Huntley solicitously, as he guided her across the black muck of the crossing, to which the snow had already been converted. "I hope you do not come ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... of Clanranald, and Hector the Lamiter, bard of M'Lean, were pre-eminent in this department. The Massacre of Glencoe suggested numerous elegies. There is one remarkable for pathos by a clansman who had emigrated to the Isle of Muck, from which circumstance he is styled "Am ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... ruffian rout Of cheats and 'bashers' now surround the Ring, You'd better stop it as a shameful thing. In JACKSON'S time, and even in my day, It did want courage, and did mean fair play— Most times, at least. But don't mix up this muck With tales of rough-and-tumble British pluck. I'd like to shake ENTELLUS by the hand, And give that DARES—wot he'd understand Better, you bet, than being fair or "game," Or trying to keep up the Old Country's name! But anyhow, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... better than money. He who has made an idol of his wealth, who in gaining it has lost his soul, who has allowed money to come between him and God, has paid too great a price for it. He has well been depicted by John Bunyan as the man with the muck-rake gathering straws, whilst he does not see the golden crown that is held above him. Christ tells us God regards such ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... palaces—wherever it might be I was whirling with this old earth around, I've had your face to look at. And when I couldn't see for the darkness—rolled up in my rubber poncho, in no more romantic a place than the muck of a swamp, I've looked up through the swaying branches—or in the lee of a windy hill, it might be, with no more to hinder than the clear air, I've looked up and marked your face in the swirling clouds: your ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... fall, and the spring, when it was colder, he again followed Injun's lead, and wore moccasins. Buckskin moccasins, with little bead decorations. In the cold of winter, when the snow was deep, and when the big thaws came, Whitey wore heavy, moccasin-like muck-lucks, made of buckskin, which laced high, nearly to his knees, and over the tops of which hung the tops ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... truth of the charge brought against Jefferson and himself? Not that he might not devoutly hope for an antidote to the poisonous doctrines of monarchy and aristocracy, though in very truth the existence of any such poison was only one of the maggots which, bred in the muck of party strife, had found a lodgment in his brain; not that it was not a commendable public spirit to wish for a good newspaper to circulate where it was most needed; not that it was not a most excellent thing in him to hold out a helping hand to the ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... before I'm due to start for the show—and carry on like a madman. Scared stiff, I was. Tried to make me swear I'd marry him and start for Timbuctoo to-morrow, and when I wouldn't, wanted to shoot himself and me too—as though I'd made a muck of things. Well, I'd done my best, and when it came to that sort of sob-stuff I'd had enough. What's he take me for? Get me into trouble with my ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... Japan Iris is very simple and well worth while, for the species comes into bloom in late June and early July, when the German and other kinds are through. I should dig the wet soil from the spot of which you speak, for all muck is not good for this Iris, and after mixing it with some good loam and well-rotted cow manure replace it and plant the clumps of Iris two feet apart, for they will spread wonderfully. In late autumn they should have a top dressing of manure and a covering of corn stalks, but, mind, water must ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Fourth Ward school-house, where planks have been laid over the tops of desks, on which the remains are placed. A corpse is dug from the bank. It is covered with mud. It is taken to the anteroom of the school, where it is placed under a hydrant and the muck and slime washed off. With the slash of a knife the clothes are ripped open and an attendant searches the pockets for valuables or papers that would lead to identification. Four men lift the corpse on a ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... find the streets in its vicinity reeking with putrid matter, hurling pestilence into the dark dwellings of the unknown poor, and making thankful the coffin-maker, who in turn thanks a nonundertaking corporation for the rich harvest. The muck is everywhere deep enough for hogs and fat aldermen to wallow in, and would serve well the purposes of a supper-eating corporation, whose chief business it was to ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... as bright. He'll break you, an' bring you to your knees, an' that 'fore your gray hairs be turned, as mine, to white. Oh, Christ Jesus, look you at this blind sawl an' give en somethin' better to lay hold 'pon than his poor bally-muck o' religion what's nort but ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... resemblance can I lead him on? For about what has he busied himself which resembles beauty, that I may be able to change him and say, Beauty is not in this, but in that? Would you have me to tell him, that beauty consists not in being daubed with muck, but that it lies in the rational part? Has he any desire of beauty? has he any form of it in his mind? Go and talk to a hog, and tell him not to roll ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... turbid mass, turning it round and round. As he lifted it up, the drops which trickled from it hardened into earth of their own accord; and thus dry land was formed. As Izanagi was cleansing his spear the lumps of muck and mud which had adhered to it flew off into space, and were ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... man,—although society has so much accustomed the latter to mask his features, that they are rarely to be seen in their primitive state. Not satisfied with these triumphs, our monk descended even into the kingdoms of the dead—tore skulls from the graves, and the bones of animals from the muck-heaps; and showed his visitors why the dead were dead, and, from their bones, how it was impossible that they should be otherwise than dead. In a word, he proved, clearly and unanswerably, that death never ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... was worth twenty swords, and the Dutchmen went down like sheep. We fired to cover our countrymen, who, as soon as their work was done, jumped overboard and swam to us; but the brave Datoo, with many more died as brave Malays should do, running a-muck ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... she's been 'ere an' she's been there (Let 'er go—let 'er go), An' she's been almost everywhere; An' wherever you went you'd sure see 'er, With 'er rust-red hawse an' 'er battered old funnel, All muck an' dirt from 'er keel to 'er gun'le. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... released from prison, was followed everywhere by the jeers and branding of a society which gloated over his downfall and which forever reminded him of his infamy. But the men who waded on to wealth through the muck of base practices and by means of crimes a millionfold more insidious and dangerous than the offense of the convict, were not only honored as leading citizens, but they became the extolled and unquestioned dictators of that supreme trading society which made ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... it understood that the chateau was first occupied by General von Muck and his staff. The names crayoned on the doors of my bedrooms in big red letters bear testimony—as well as some soiled under-linen and a glassentuch marked v. K.—and numerous papers stamped with the Imperial ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... th' first sod ta commemorate an' start th' gurt event. An' a bonny rumpus thur wur, yo' mind, for yo' ma' think ha it wur conducted when thay wur threapin' wi' one another like a lot a oud wimen at a parish pump, wen it sud be. One sed it mud tak place at rush-buren, another sed next muck-spreadin' toime, a third sed it mud be dug et gert wind day it memmery o' oud Jack K—- Well, noan et proposishuns wud do fur the lot, and there wur such opposishun wal it omust hung on a thre'ad whether ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... humiliation. I spent the night in a stinking cell. I haven't eaten since breakfast yesterday. Did they think I was going to eat the muck they shoved in? And all because in a moment of anger—which I regret, I regret!—I happened to strike my daughter, who was interfering between me and my wife. The thing would be funny if it weren't so disgusting. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Now the game fairly begins: Whish! sound the brooms as they are whisked here, there, every where, in attempts to strike the hog; one man giving a strong blow, strikes another one who was stooping down to arrange his garters, where he dislikes to be struck, and instantly the one struck runs a muck, hitting wildly left and right. Two or three men charge on one another and brooms fly in splinters all round. One champion got a head-blow and had his wind knocked out by another blow simultaneously; round they go, and at it they go, beating the air and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... begs the Society to be cautious and offer no encouragement to any disposed "'to run the muck' (sic) (it is Sir George's expression) against the religious and political INSTITUTIONS of Spain"; but "the delicacy of the situation does not appear to have been thoroughly understood at the time even by the Committee at home." {224b} They saw the astonishing success ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... marry-me-quick, not in Master Noll's time. But he's gone now, and I'm not as nimble as I used to be. Jesus help me, how he had used to fight! He used to put my heart in my mouth, coming in here all blood and muck to wash himself afore he went home. But take your things off and make ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... of overtime, Gordon reported in with every bone sore from small missiles, and his suit filthy from assorted muck. He had a beautiful shiner where a stone had ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... And in the days of real chivalry they burned 'em at the stake or locked 'em up in convents or castles. But don't you worry, Jim, Charity has you for a champion and she's mighty lucky. Go on and fight the muckers and the muck-rakers, and don't let the reporters or the preachers scare you away from doing ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... "I shan't have the opportunity of hearing many more of your words of wisdom for a time, as you go back on Monday. And you'll be the panting prey of a gang of giggling girls at the garden party and dance to-morrow.... Why on earth must we muck up your last week-day with rotten 'functions'. You don't want to dance and you don't want to ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... I'm no magazine muck-rake, doctor," I said as I got out of the motor (he had taken me up through the Park to Morningside and back, while I was telling him), "and I'll probably be a little shy ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... your friend. I've always loved you, Eleanor," went on Carley, earnestly. "I'm as deep in this—this damned stagnant muck as you, or anyone. But I'm no longer blind. There's something terribly wrong with us women, and it's not ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... Time, about eleven, The air full chill, the ground a mess of muck, And long time gazed I on the wintry heaven And thought of many a deed of Saxon pluck; How DRAKE, for instance, good old DRAKE of Devon, Played bowls at Plymouth Hoe. Twelve-thirty struck. No one had vaulted ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... all alike—with the face and the voice of an angel, and the heart of the Man with the Muck-rake. God save me from ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... the garden, Maud; I am here at the gate alone; And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the muck ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... he said—"here we go through all this muck and moil to help fix things nicer for her at home, and what's it all amount to? Seems like she's just gone ahead the way she'd 'a' gone anyhow; and now, I suppose, getting ready to up and leave us! Ain't that a puzzle to ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... back, the divil 'ud snatch it up an' fling it aff the wall; till wid his knockin' over the wather-bucket, an' shcrapin' aff the morthar, an' upsettin' the hod o' bricks, an' makin' the monks forgit where they'd put things, it got so that they were in a muck o' shweat every hour o' the day; an' from that time it got to be said, when anything wint wrong widout a raizon, ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... had ascended half the length of the rapids we encountered the usual troubles that overtake the tracker—those of clearing our lines of trees and bushes, slipping into the muck of small inlets, stumbling over stones, cutting the lines upon sharp rocks, or having them caught by gnarled roots of driftwood. As we approached the last lap of white water the canoes passed through a rocky ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... perspiration of their faces. But sweat is a word of connotation too vigorous (though honest withal) for us to use the term in the drawing room. A questionable woman in The Vicar of Wakefield betrays her lack of breeding by the remark that she is in a muck of sweat. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the driver for pleasure to find in rainy weather almost bottomless muck and mud on portions of the main travelled highway between New York and Buffalo, but that, for the present, is normal. The manufacturer may regret the condition and wish for better, but he cannot be heard to complain, ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... strong jaw and plausible eyes and big gripping hand she very much doubted whether the conception had ever dawned on the big dome head that the other fellow had any rights. The man was not the baby-eating monster of the muck-rakers. Neither was he a gentleman—he had had a narrow escape from that—the next generation of him would probably be one. He gave the impression of a passion for only one thing—getting. If people or things or laws came in the way of that getting, so much the worse ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... his legs round the table.] — Cut the rope, Pegeen, and I'll quit the lot of you, and live from this out, like the madmen of Keel, eating muck and green weeds, on ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... to say that. The reason I'll do the thing she's going to ask of me—if it's what I think it is—is because this girl's a plucky little creature with a soul big enough to lift her out of the muck you probably helped her into. It's because she's got brains, talent, and a heart. It's because—well, it's because I feel like it, and she ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... lifted out by means of a suspended fork and carried to a Winslow squeezer, where the ball is reduced to a roll twelve inches in diameter. Thence it is taken to a furnace for a wash heat, and finally to the muck train. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... in deference to some later modification of His original plan. It was just about then that I found him. He was floundering in a perfect mire, composed of the dust of conflict mingled with penitential tears. Really, he was knee-deep in the muck; and I put in a good share of my vacation in trying to haul him ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... our pocket-knives out and were slashing away at the twisted maze of ropes and straps that bound the brute down between the shafts, when a particularly shrill chorus of shrieks checked us. We stood up and faced about, figuring that the poor devil on the muck heap had died and that his people were bemoaning his death. That was not it at all. The entire group, including the fat old woman, were screaming at us and shaking their clenched fists at us, warning us not to damage that harness with our ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... angrily. "Man," he said, "haven't you heard? That muck won't do now. I have to try to do Martlow justice." He went out to the platform, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... thing, flowing over with life, yet dropping her soul to a higher one, and led by love to anything; as the manner is of females, when they know what is the best for them. Then Winnie trod lightly upon the straw, because it had soft muck under it, and her delicate ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... remember having done anything extra wrong, but it is so frightfully easy to displease a cook. 'It's them children: there's that there new carpet in their room, covered thick with mud, both sides, beastly yellow mud, and sakes alive knows where they got it. And all that muck to clean up on a Sunday! It's not my place, and it's not my intentions, so I don't deceive you, ma'am, and but for them limbs, which they is if ever there was, it's not a bad place, though I says it, and I wouldn't ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... "Why, whatever is the world coming to next? We shall have them spirit-rapping and table-turning and such-like muck, I suppose." ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... twenty-fold Restore to all men, what with wrong I robb'd them: My barns and garners shall stand open still To all the poor that come, and my best grain Be made alms-bread, to feed half-famish'd mouths. Though hitherto amongst you I have lived, Like an unsavoury muck-hill to myself, Yet now my gather'd heaps being spread abroad, Shall turn to better and more fruitful uses. Bless then this man, curse him no more for the saving My life and soul together. O how deeply The bitter curses of the poor ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... muck of a world," he declared cheerfully, taking off his coarse harvest hat and running his hand through his clustering fair hair. In the mellow light the almost brutal strength of his jaw was softened, and his sunburned face paled to the beauty of some ancient ivory carving. Cynthia, gazing up at ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... "Heave that muck overboard," he ordered some of those who stood idling in the waist. "Then up anchor, and let us after ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... could not get everything whitewashed. The group of three commissioners sat for months and in that time they exposed to the burning sun of publicity the muck of thievery and dishonor on which Lake ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... world I'd be worth twice as much. Fabian was good as far as he went, but he was a coward. You"— a look of fury entered the dark eyes—"you were no coward, but you didn't care a damn. You wanted to paddle about with muck of imagination—" he pointed to the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... poised on the brink of death for a moment, two—three—and then the mare began to move slowly forward, neck curved, ears cocked to her master's urging, while the bay sloshed through the treacherous muck, found foothold, lost it, made a frantic leap, another, and landed trembling on the ledge. Sandy leaped from his saddle and caught Molly, sliding from her seat in sheer exhaustion and the revulsion of terror, clinging closely ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... week by week in the paper. The inaugural meeting took place in Essex Hall, Essex Street, Strand, on September 17, 1926. G.K. summed up their aim in the words: "Their simple idea was to restore possession." He added that Francis Bacon had long ago said: "Property is like muck, it is good only if it be spread." The following week the first committee meeting took place. Chesterton was elected President; Captain Went, Secretary, and Maurice Reckitt, Treasurer. It was planned to form a branch in Birmingham. Alternative names were discussed: ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward |
