"Muddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... uniform at the door. The hallway, even, was blocked with lookers-on. The windows to the south were occupied by curious citizens, gazing in from the wooden gallery. Those to the north, thrown wide open to let in the air, were clear, and looked out over a confused muddle of shingled roofs and stove-pipe chimneys. Hardly a whisper passed from lip to lip as the orderly bustled away. Members of the court fidgeted with their sash tassels, or made pretense of writing. ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... secret that the men behind Mar are starving, and that the whole east and the city of Savannah were within a day of being deserted. How long is this disorganisation to go on? How long is that bloated bondholder to go prancing round on horseback, wall-eyed and muddle-headed, while his men are starved and butchered, and the forces of this great country are at the mercy of clever rogues like Potty, or respectable ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... circumstances"? Was he calculating on the arrival of a Japanese patrol? Had he already tipped off to his consul in San Francisco the purpose of the expedition, sure of a reward equal to what his share would have been? If so, Rainey had made a muddle of his attempt to sound Tamada. He felt guilty, glad that Lund could not see his face, and he dropped ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... to be written to you from the room I have written to you before in: but my Letter must wait till I return to Woodbridge, where your Address is on record. I have thought several times of writing to you since this Year began; but I have been in a muddle—leaving my old Markethill Lodgings, and vacillating between my own rather lonely Chateau, and this Place, where some Nieces are. I had wished to tell you what I know of our dear Donne: who Mowbray says gets on still. I suppose he will never be so strong again. Laurence wrote me that he ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... as anybody; though if they had known I had just come from the 'scene of the crime,' and actually lived in the house, they would probably have—let me alone." He laughed sarcastically. "They are a queer lot of muddle-heads are the police. Their motto is, 'First catch your man, then cook the evidence.' If you're on the spot you're guilty because you're there, and if you're elsewhere you're guilty because you have gone away. Oh, I know them! If they could have seen their way to ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... it into his head that I went below because I thought he was making a muddle of the speed. As a matter of fact, he knows every blessed thing I do about our motors, and Williamson is ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... of any kind, and should be very sorry to do so. I thought it was now generally admitted that the more work a man has to do, the less he can afford to muddle himself in any way. But as I have never tried the experiment in using either alcohol or tobacco, and cannot afford to do it, I have no comparative experience to offer. It might be beneficial; I do not believe it would, and prefer not to risk the chance. Fiat ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... she were looking over their shoulders, that all the jurors were writing down 'stupid things!' on their slates, and she could even make out that one of them didn't know how to spell 'stupid,' and that he had to ask his neighbour to tell him. 'A nice muddle their slates'll be in before the ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... in his. "I am trusting you," she said, "with all my life. Don't make a muddle of it, dear, ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... of hope had begun to glow under Slavens' breath. Perhaps Walker and sheep were the solution of his life's muddle. He would find Walker before the young man took somebody else in with him, expose the true state of his finances, and see whether Walker would entertain a proposal to give him a band ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... sweethearts that are walking in the rose-gardens, and sour parents will be scowling from the windows. For my own part, I am always on the side of any lover, young or old, straight or crooked, gentle or simple, for to my mind, in this muddle of a world, the state of being in love is at least a definite state, and, whenever and however gratified, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... he had some fears. If he should miss, the lieutenant would fire back, and he was cool enough to fire with effect. Well, he wouldn't miss; what should he miss for? As for the greasers, they would run at the first shot. Nevertheless, he did occasionally muddle over the idea of going off to California with his gold, and without doing this particular job. What kept him to his agreement was the hope of stealing the spare mules, and the fear that the draft might not be paid if he ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... from me, Samantha, to muddle up your head and hurt your feelin's by tellin' you what it's fur." And he went out quick and shet the door. But I got a splendid dinner and afterwards he told me of his ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... to bring him a message back from Clovelly, that the war had begun, and that Isaac D. Worthington, commander of the railroad forces in the field, had captured his pawn, the hill-Rajah. By getting through to Harwich, the Truro had made a sad muddle in railroad affairs. It was now a connecting link; and its president, the first citizen of Brampton, a man of no small importance in the state. This fact was not lost upon Jethro, who perceived clearly enough ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... I was right; I suppose things did turn out all the better in the end for having been left to settle themselves—at any rate whether they did or did not, the whole thing was in too great a muddle for me to venture to tackle it so long as Ellen was upon the scene; now, however, that she was removed, all my interest in my godson revived, and I turned over many times in my mind, what I had ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... of the aunts' clutches yesterday morning on the plea of going home to tidy up. Though the wedding took place from their house, all the preparatory muddle happened here, and it will take days and days to go through Kathie's rooms alone, and decide what to keep, what to give away, ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... administration of the State; and there were times when it was driven to a resolve not to take any private affairs for weeks together in order that it might make some progress with public business. To add to this confusion and muddle there were the inevitable scandals which arose from it; charges of malversation and corruption were hurled at the members of the House; and some, like Haselrig, were accused with justice of using their power to further ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... alone in the world. I had been reading, reading, reading; my brain was one dark and misty muddle of Kant, Schopenhauer, von Hartmann, and a few others. I read them one after another, as quickly as possible; the mixture had the same effect upon my mind as the indiscriminate contents of taffy-shop would have upon Sigmund's stomach—it made it sick. In my crude, ungainly, ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... say "for Christ's sake,"' she continued, and, with his weak brain all in a muddle, Arthur began what he meant to be a brief thanksgiving, but which stretched itself into a lengthy prayer, fall of the past and of Gretchen, whom he seemed to be ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... are expensive luxuries, and by no means always efficient. A fat Government appointment is a nice thing—for the appointee, as Mr. Sanders is aware, but it is not profitable to the tax-payers of the country to multiply them too extensively. In my opinion the easiest way out of the muddle is to strike back and to hit ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... who is represented as reigning from 1246 to 1277. In Wassaf we find, as in Teixeira, Mahmud's son Masa'ud killing his brother Nazrat, and Bahauddin expelling Masa'ud. It is true that Hammer's surprising muddle makes Nazrat kill Masa'ud; however, as a few lines lower we find Masa'ud alive and Nazrat dead, we may safely venture on this correction. But we find also that Masa'ud appears as Ruknuddin Masa'ud, and that Bahauddin does not assume the princely authority himself, but proclaims ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... given to another human being as much as he had given her. Or perhaps it was no longer a question of giving. Everything came from her and belonged to her. She was the womb of his thoughts and feelings. She was his roots in life and his blossoming. She was the only fixed point in the chaotic muddle of things, giving a certain reality to the world simply ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... as she began to mount the stairs she would murmur to herself: "It might be better to tell Jenny to go to Bartletts. After all, it's quicker that way, and she'll be able to tell the boy to bring the things back. She needn't wait. All the same she's stupid, she'll make a muddle of it as likely as not. And Womball's boy is livelier than Bartletts'. That's something after all. But if she goes out at two-thirty she'll never be back by four—unless she went by Smith's lane of course—she ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... the traction muddle was sufficient to afford a background of plausibility for this highminded renunciation. There was something likable in Charles Holton. His volubility, which had prejudiced her against him in the beginning, seemed now to speak for a frankness that appealed to ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... end to the work on a big estate. The Major—my father—used to say that every man was his own best bailiff, though he made a fine muddle of it himself, poor darling! But my brother Jack agrees with him. He's educated Miles to look after the Irish property, and so does Geoffrey Hilliard. ... It's true he is away ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... to find a scapegoat to suffer for this miserable muddle sent him outside with a stride and malignant intentions at heart. Never again while he toured with his family would he drink iced stimulants, however damnably hot it ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... greatly regret," he went on deferentially, "that there are a number of exceptional circumstances which have resulted in the brief and simple—Philip. For one thing, a bump which muddles a man's common sense is very likely to muddle his memory. And so, for the life of me, I can't seem to conjure up a desirable form of address from you to me except Philip. And Philip," he added humbly, "isn't really such a bad sort ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... of the way, and there was nobody to help; and I knew mamma's own book was there—-the very part too—- because Aunt Jane had shown it to us, so I did not think there was any harm in letting her help me out of the muddle.' ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... set to work and finish the first story, for which I am to be paid, seems to me far away. I have not been to the province of Nizhni Novgorod yet, for reasons not under my control, and I don't know when I shall go. In fact it's a hopeless mess—a silly muddle and not life. And I desire nothing now so much as to ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... wheelbarrow revolving without grease, and causing an ear-piercing sound, is said to be giving forth a "scrupeting" noise. What can be more explicit, and at the same time so aggravating, as to be told that you are a "mix-muddle"? A person who mixes up his commissions may feel a little abashed. A person who muddles his affairs may not be altogether proud of his achievements. But to be a mix-muddle, to both mix and muddle, to morally fumble without tact, and display a totally imbecile wandering; I shall ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... me that I ought not to put on so much manure," replied his father. "The gentry, that is M. le Marquis, M. le Comte, and Monsieur What-do-you-call-'em, say that I am letting down the quality of the wine. What is the good of book-learning except to muddle your wits? Just you listen: these gentlemen get seven, or sometimes eight puncheons of wine to the acre, and they sell them for sixty francs apiece, that means four hundred francs per acre at most in a good year. Now, I make twenty puncheons, and get thirty francs ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... Now these muddle-heads have agreed to say that land is in all cases five times a surer security for money lent than movables are. Whereas the fact is that sometimes it is and sometimes it is not. Owing to the above delusion ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... children of the storm. The left flank swung forward and encircled the base of an imposing kopje. The men swarmed up with tiger-like activity, quickly, and in broken and irregular lines; but there was no confusion, no wretched tangle, no helpless muddle. They did not rush madly to the top and stand on the sky-line to be a mark for their foes. When they almost touched the summit they paused, formed their broken lines, and carefully and wisely topped the black brow; and as they did ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... enough. My sister must repay you; but you know the muddle in which her husband's affairs were left, and I'm sure you won't refuse to renew ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... philosophers and politicians, financiers and religious leaders, arise and survive by the operation of the laws of probabilities and chances, rather than by any intelligent selection and cultivation of material. The case, indeed, is simply a subdivision of the vast subject: haphazard muddle in the conduct of life. A cry has been raised for the superman, and a cry has been raised for a method of anthropometry. For the lack of these two, it has been said, all governments have been doomed to defeat. The study of the endocrines will by no means supply a panacea. But as it ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... as he went home, not caring to stay and talk to Helen when Lois had gone to church,—"well, it is all a muddle. I don't understand about there being no engagement, but I cannot help remembering that she cared, though I have no business to. And she cares yet. Oh, what a confounded ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... Rolfe," responded Inspector Chippenfield in a tolerant tone, "but you'll have to shed this habit of jumping impulsively to conclusions—and generally wrong conclusions—if you want to succeed in Scotland Yard. This letter of Hill's only strengthens my previous opinion that a damned muddle-headed jury let a cold-blooded murderer loose on the world when they acquitted Fred Birchill of the charge of shooting Sir Horace Fewbanks. Why, man alive, Holymead no more believes Hill is guilty than I do. He set himself to bamboozle the jury and he succeeded. ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... in quite a muddle (for them) about the carnival of authors, to be given in Boston. As soon as it was announced, their interests were excited, and they determined that all ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... the very muddle-headed reasoning which is producing such curious results as these, at a time when the world is preparing to enter on a period of closer co-operation and improved and extended relations between one country and another, is confined, in fact, to a few noisy people who possess in a high degree ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... us we weren't to ask anybody else to do shopping for us," said Wendy demurely. "When you've not been told not to do anything, you're not disobedient if you don't do it—oh! I'm getting rather in a muddle, but ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... instant; then set off sharply, so that now and again she had to run a few paces to keep up with him. He took her round by the back of the theatre and into a muddle of streets that led thence. The quiet of the night closed about them; Truda was embarked ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... Government, and the boldness of the private adventurer. There is nothing new in the story; the air was attacked and mastered in the English fashion. When we are confronted with great issues, it is our habit, or so we are fond of saying, to 'muddle through'. Foreign nations, and especially enemy nations, do not so describe our activities. But we are great self-critics, and not free from that kind of inverted self-esteem which makes a man speak of his own achievements with deceitful and extravagant modesty. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... her eyes. "No, never, Dr. Thorpe. He has never spoken to me, never written a line to me. That's fine of him too. He loves me, I'm sure of it, and he wants me, but it is fine of him not to bother me, now isn't it? He knows he could drag me back into the muddle, he knows he could make a fool of me, and yet he will not take ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... long way ahead. . . . Ryabovitch was with the first cannon of the fifth battery. He could see all the four batteries moving in front of him. For any one not a military man this long tedious procession of a moving brigade seems an intricate and unintelligible muddle; one cannot understand why there are so many people round one cannon, and why it is drawn by so many horses in such a strange network of harness, as though it really were so terrible and heavy. To Ryabovitch it was all perfectly comprehensible and therefore ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... romance. We know this lifelong romance will resume its sway; we shall lose our tempers, be obstinate, peevish and crank. We shall fidget and fume while waiting our turn in the barber's chair; we shall argue and muddle and mope. And yet, for a few hours, what a happy vision that was! And we turn, on Christmas Eve, to pages which those who speak our tongue immortally associate with the season—the pages of Charles Dickens. Love of humanity endures ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... Yard. They'd be all on the qui vive directly they found out who I was, and what I was after, and they'd try to help me. That's what they'd do; and Tom would tell me this, and Dick would explain that, and Harry would remember the other; and among them they'd contrive to muddle the clearest head that ever worked a difficult problem in criminal Euclid. My game is to keep myself dark, and get all the light I can from other people. I shan't ask any leading question, but I shall wait quietly till the murder of Joseph Wilmot crops up in the ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... but put in most of his time footing up on the margin of his manuscript the amount of his indebtedness, the expenses of his household, and the possibilities of his income. It was weary, hard, nerve-racking employment. About the muddle of June they closed Viviani. Susy Clemens went to Paris to cultivate her voice, a rare soprano, with a view to preparing for the operatic stage. Clemens took Mrs. Clemens, with little Jean, to Germany for the baths. Clara, who had graduated from Mrs. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Law. It is more than possible that I shall be the last prisoner for blasphemy in England. That alone is a circumstance of distinction, which gives my story a special character, quite apart from my individuality. As a muddle-headed acquaintance said, intending to be complimentary, Some men are born to greatness, others achieve it, and I ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... come to work to-morrow," he said. "Don't muddle your brains with beer or bad whiskey: that will not make the ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... me that we're not within shouting distance of the future. We talk as if we could see the end, and we're nowhere near it, we're in all the muddle of the middle—that's why we're hampered with Miss Quincey and other interesting ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... leader his alliance for the overthrow of Addington and the formation of a Ministry of the talented men of all parties. Here, then, is the origin of the broad-bottomed or All the Talents Administrations which produced so singular a muddle after the death of Pitt. The Fox-Grenville bargain cannot be styled immoral like that of Fox and North in 1782; for it expressly excluded all compromise on matters of conviction. Nevertheless it was a tactical ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... which never fail to regret the enormous amount of divorce there is. If it be true that there is a great deal of news of divorce in the Press, it is because the Press does not give news of an imaginary world that is a Utopia, but of the dear old muddle-headed world as it is. Does Chesterton fail to see that if the newspapers did not report the Divorce Courts, the numbers of cases would increase from thousands to millions. It is useless Chesterton sighing that lawyers have become breakers ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... and "she's"!' I said. But of course I understood him. 'I think you muddle yourself too. If there's a mystery, and you know you'd be very disappointed if there wasn't, you couldn't expect the little girl to come to tea just as if everything was quite like ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... candidates, and thought the public could not be got to read a book without at least one candidate in it. It was not prudent to give the reading world more than a book of travels or so, said Munch, of the house of Munch & Muddle, until the candidates for the White House were got nicely out of the way. Indeed, there were good reasons for being alarmed, seeing that the publishing world had given up literature, and, following the example set by the New ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... time, the decision of the Supreme War Council was, in spite of President Wilson's opposition to the plan, to continue the expedition and strengthen it as fast as possible. To the American soldier at this distance it looks as though the French and British, perhaps in all good faith, planned to muddle along till the American authorities could be shown the fitness or the necessity of supporting the expedition with proper forces. But this was playing with a handful of Americans and other Allied troops a great game of hazard. Only those who went through it can appreciate ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... muddle my brains any more with your idiotic reasonings! Take him along, and give ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... tea-cup, without any definite symbols, just a muddle of tea-leaves, is useless for the purpose of divination, beyond giving an indication of the state of the consultant's mind, so vague and undecided in its character that it obscures everything. Tell such a one the reason for the failure of divining, and recommend a more reliable ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... on the prudent dramatist strict economy in suicide. The third case, Zoe Blundell's leap to nothingness, in that harsh and ruthless masterpiece, Mid-Channel, is as inevitable as anything can well be in human destiny. Zoe has made a miserable and hopeless muddle of her life. In spite of her goodness of heart, she has no interests and no ideals, apart from the personal satisfactions which have now been poisoned at their source. She has intervened disastrously in the destinies ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... mozaiko. mosquito : moskito. moss : musko. moth : ("clothes"—), tineo. motive : motivo. motto : devizo, moto. mould : model'i, -ilo; tero, sximo. mound : altajxeto, remparo, digo. mourn : funebri. "-ing," funebra vesto. move : mov'i, -igxi. movement : movo, movado. mow : falcxi. mud : koto, sxlimo. muddle : fusxi; konfuzi. muff : mufo. mug : pokaleto. mulberry : moruso. mule : mulo. mummy : mumo. murmur : murmuri. muscle : muskolo. museum : muzeo. mushroom : fungo, agariko. muslin : muslino. mussel : mitulo. must : devi. mustard : mustardo, ("-plant"), sinapo. mutual : reciproka. myriad ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... Wakley), cast a look of strong encouragement in my direction. Then, we had the doctor who had made the examination, and the usual tests as to whether the child was born alive; but he was a timid, muddle-headed doctor, and got confused and contradictory, and wouldn't say this, and couldn't answer for that, and the immaculate broker was too much for him, and our side slid back again. However, I tried again, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... 'e's so set oop in 'issen 'ee doan't take orders from nobbut—leastways doctor. Moinds 'em now moor nor a floy. Says 'ee knaws there nowt wrong wi' 'is 'eart. Mout be roight—how'siver, sarten sewer, 'is 'EAD'S a' in a muddle! Toims 'ee goes off stamrin' and starin' at nowt, as if 'ee a'nt a n'aporth o' sense. How'siver I be doing my duty by 'em—and 'ere's 'is porritch when a' cooms—'gin a' be ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... other day of this monstrous load of perplexity; I think it did me good, and I let it stand. I was in a melancholy muddle, and I was trying to work myself free. You know I like discussion, in a quiet way, and there is no one with whom I can have it as quietly as with you, most sagacious of cousins! There is an excellent ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... have piled up a little ahead. Every man of red blood and backbone wants to do his best work, wants to do work that he loves, work into which he can throw himself with heart and soul and with all his mind and strength. Merely to muddle through with some half-detested work, not making an utter failure of it, is no satisfaction when the day's work is done. Not only the man himself, but all of us, lose when he who might have been a great manufacturer and organizer ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... my money. Paid off t'dy. 'E knew it. Sly." Jameson had become almost sober. Out of the muddle one thing loomed clearly: he could not be revenged upon his cabin-mate without getting himself into deep trouble. Money; he'd ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... not the road. Never again shall I return to that life. I have saved my wages this summer and am going back into the world to begin life all over again. This time, with God's help, I shall not make such a muddle of it ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... respect for ancient customs; and of more recent ideas about the blessed final annihilation, imported from India by saintly Chinese missionaries at the epoch of our Middle Ages. The bonzes themselves are puzzled; what a muddle, therefore, must not all this become, when jumbled together in the childish brain of ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... the clutches of a tyranny such as that wielded by the nobility of France in the pre-Revolution days. In sober fact, the secession of the American Colonies was brought about by a series of colossal blunders and impositions on the part of the most muddle-headed ministry that ever mismanaged the affairs of Great Britain—which is saying a good deal. It is probable that if the elder Pitt had lived a few years longer, the secession would never have occurred. It was only with the ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... and winked. "That's cool," said he. "Next thing, you'll ask me to help you out of the muddle. I know I'm emissary of Providence, but not that kind! You get out of it yourself, like AEsop and the other fellow. Must be dreadful muddle for young orphan o' forty; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... perfectly clear: my home is no place for him; he is only a shadow in my life and needs to take on substance. Well, I thought at last I had solved the problem—or at least that O'Meara had solved it for me; but here too I was disappointed. Really, you must help me out of this muddle. ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... also to be happy in her lecture tour on her return to England, trying to arouse the sluggish-minded to a sense of the gravity of the business. But in her Russian and Persian adventure it is clear that she was deeply disappointed at feeling herself unwanted and useless in a region of waste and muddle. It is probable that for all her courage and unselfish devotion she was too sensitive to the suffering she encountered ever to attain the routine indifference which makes work among such horrors possible. Her deep religious convictions aggravated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... praise sufficiently the heroes of Canada, Australia and New Zealand? In Ireland, for the moment, things are in a muddle. "What is the trouble with the Emerald Isle?" was the question, to which the Irishman made instant reply: "Oh, in South Ireland we are all Roman Catholics, and in North Ireland we are all Protestants, ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... these days. But if I had my life to live over again, I think I should go in for silence, and get as near to Nirvana as I could. This language is such a paltry tool! The handle of it cuts and the blade doesn't. You muddle yourself by not knowing what you mean by a word, and send out your unanswered riddles and rebuses to clear up other people's difficulties. It always seems to me that talk is a ripple and thought is a ground ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... is! That's just it. My exotic flower of optimism withers at your feet. It's all exactly the muddle you say it is. Pray Heaven for a clear way out! Meantime thank whatever gods ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... poor half-perished creatures again and again as I saw them scrambling along the lee rail, stopping and holding on as the mountainous seas swept over the hull, and then creeping a bit further aft in the pause. There was a horrible muddle of spars and torn canvas and rigging under her lee, but we could not guess what a fearful sight was there until our hawser having been made fast to the wreck, we had hauled the lifeboat close under her quarter. There looked to be a whole score ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... for some one on whom to cast the blame for the Cretan muddle. The present idea is that England is the guilty party. This last report may not have any more truth in it than that about Russia, but it is now, said that England is bent upon conquering the Transvaal, and securing ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... think of anything to say. And now he has gone away imagining that I want to marry Jimmie McBride—I don't in the least, I wouldn't think of marrying Jimmie; he isn't grown up enough. But Master Jervie and I got into a dreadful muddle of misunderstanding and we both hurt each other's feelings. The reason I sent him away was not because I didn't care for him, but because I cared for him so much. I was afraid he would regret it in the future—and I couldn't stand that! It didn't seem right for a person of my ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... footsteps without. He sprang up, crying, "I 've been waiting so long for you!" A servant opened the door to bring him a message. Oakley dismissed him angrily. What did he want to go down to the Continental for to drink and talk politics to a lot of muddle-pated fools when he had a brother in Paris who was an artist and a letter from him lay unread in his hand? His patience and his temper were going. Leslie was careless and unfeeling. She ought to come; ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... equally true that M. M. —— actually obtained his wife, and that Mynheer Van Holland paid for her. I dare say all this can be reconciled with the eternal fitness of things; but I protest I don't see how it is to be done. It is "all a muddle," in my mind. I cannot even affirm that the banditti were ever hanged; and I am quite sure that the unlucky Dutch merchant, whose goods were so comically mixed up with this whole history, never had any poetical or material justice for his loss of them. But it is as much the reader's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... an awful muddle. You know that business about the coal mine. Well, I've managed to right his affairs. I wasn't thinking of any profit to myself over the business, I just did it because it was the ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... 'It does not muddle me; it's against the Bible, and I'd rather go by that than by Eva,' said Vava; and that ended ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... that whatever could have possessed her to let me take those poor unfortunate children away from her, and muddle up everything without her, was a mystery to herself. She hoped that, at least, I had done nothing irrevocable in the case ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... give it some measure of the justice democracy threatened to deal to itself. Without demanding absolutism I do desire a predominant democratic character in our national enterprises, rather than a confused muddle or struggle of interests where nothing really emerges except the egoism of those ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... sir," said the boy; "but they'll only make a muddle of it, sir. Fancy fat Sam and ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... dissatisfaction, brought on by something Robb or Key had said, troubled him, it was of short duration: something always broke into his mind and scattered the argument framing there. By the time he was free to resume the argument foreign thoughts had intervened, and his brain was in a muddle. Before the muddle could be dissipated by a cold point of common sense, something else had come along. And so things went. So ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... I understand," said Eveley rather confusedly, for the Mexican business was a terrible muddle to her. "I understand that your men must fight to save their country from the rebels and anarchists who would ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... a terrible muddle, for there had not even been a copy taken of the plaint. The judge, that is to say, his secretary and the assistant debated for a long time upon such an unheard-of affair. Finally it was decided to write a report of the matter to the governor, as the investigation ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... took the bowl. "No, I must attend to Eppie myself. Aunt Margaret does not want you to be with her. Never mind me, Mary dear, I've made a big muddle of things, as usual, but it can't be helped now. I shall go and see Mother MacAllister as soon as Eppie ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... transmuted his disadvantages into gold. To him the lessons of such a childhood and boyhood as he had had, were energy, self-reliance, a determination to overcome all obstacles, to fight the battles of life, in all honour and rectitude, so as to win. From the muddle of his father's affairs he had taken away a lesson of method, order, and punctuality in business and other arrangements. "What is worth doing at all is worth doing well," was not only one of his favourite maxims—it was the ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... the Rule of Three Are the laws of earth and sky; Yet fools will muddle all true thought, And pride will have its cry; The banners with their deadly words Go reeling on unfurled, And sin and sadness march along To the ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... deficiencies in Dame Quickly's mental make-up; but the one for us to notice here is her utter lack of the narrative sense. She would never be able to tell a story: because, in the first place, she could not select from a muddle of events those which bore an intelligible relation to one another, and in the second place, she could not arrange them logically instead of chronologically. She has no sense of series. And although Dame Quickly's mind is an exaggeration of the type it ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... evening. But it was so. Darius Clayhanger had been nervous as to the manner in which the boy would acquit himself in the bit of business which had been confided to him. It was the boy's first bit of business. Straightforward as it was, the boy might muddle it, might omit a portion of it, might say the wrong thing, might forget. Darius hoped for the best, but he was afraid. He saw in his son an amiable irresponsible fool. He compared Edwin at sixteen with himself at the same age. Edwin had never had a care, never ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... signal system of flashing red lights. Bart was stretched taut all the time, listening for the small codelike buzzers and ticks that warned him of filled tanks, leads in need of servicing, answers ready. Ringg's metal-fatigues testing kit was a bewildering muddle of boxes, meters, rods and earphones, each buzzing ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... a fine muddle. I'm as sweet as honey on the lasses, but when a fellow's sinned with ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... and was very properly caught at his own game. Oh, he had shown a game, sportsman-like front, and had striven to pass it all off as a matter that worried him not in the least, but Craney, clear-headed, believed otherwise, and Case, muddle-headed as he was by noon, knew better, and had his reasons for knowing—reasons as potent as were those that moved him wholly to ignore Willett's ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... to muddle your mind with the ravings of a lunatic, you are not what I took you for. Why, it's regular spiritualism! Kingdoms of the air indeed! And his ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... their work, which, no other hands were ready to take, jarred against his abstract theory, and irritated him, as an obstinate fact always does run into the hand of a man who is determined to clutch the very heart of a matter. Truth will not underlie all facts, in this muddle of a world, in spite of the positive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... gambling on names and numbers. Let Lord Hartington, Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr. Chaplin, Mr. Corlett, Mr. Rothschild, Lord Rosebery, and the rest, go and see the lovely horses shooting over the turf; by all means let them watch their own colts and fillies come flying home. But the poor creatures who muddle away brains, energy, and money on what they are pleased to term sport, do not know a horse from a mule; they gamble, as I have said, on names; the splendid racers give them no enjoyment such as ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... are least expecting it, or when we are getting our affairs into too much of a muddle. Providence intervenes, and with a decisive stroke straightens matters out for us. After all, it is ridiculous wasting so much time and energy in rough-hewing our ends, when the shaping lies with other hands than ours. On this day of days Providence ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... he replied tolerantly,—"some fame, some pleasure. Mr. Dowling, for instance, has no other ambition than to muddle round the golf links a few ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Tientsin. Suddenly all these points were declared to be in doubt. Round the question of the length of time the Indemnities might be postponed, and the actual amount of the increase in the Customs Tariff, there appeared to be an inexplicable muddle largely owing to the intervention of so many agents and to the fact that the exchange of views had been almost entirely verbal, unofficial, and secret. It would be wearisome to analyse a dispute which belongs to the peculiar atmosphere of ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... consequence suddenly disappear before you found out your mistake. One very stout lady I knew worked at herself for eighteen months and got stouter every day. This discouraged her so much that she gave up trying. No doubt she had made a muddle and had sent for the wrong bottle, but she would not listen to further advice. She said she was ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... miss, and I've sometimes thought as it might be no more than a dream. I had a many dreams while I were lying on that little bed in grandmother's room, wicked dreams, and this might be one of them; and yet it's real-like, and there isn't the muddle in it that there is in ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... the cellar, and some of our men who were there called "Here's a poor brute done in." Not a bit of it. I was not touched then either.... At last the bombardment stopped, and we all got out. I noticed about forty hens. Some were pulped. Others had had their heads and legs cut off. In the muddle three horses lay dead. Their saddles were in ribbons. Equipment, revolvers, swords, all that had been left above the cellar had vanished, but there were bits of them to be seen on the roof. My rifle, which had been torn from my hands, was in fragments, and I was stupefied ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... involve a great additional band of officials, if you take into account the time now spent vainly by special investigating committees, grand juries, district attorneys, reform organizations, and bewildered office holders, in trying to find their way through a dark muddle. ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... said she with a modest fit, no sham. "Was it?—was it just as my prick now is?" Her story was exciting me, I pulled her belly up to mine, and my prick, a right good stiff one was between us. "I suppose it were," said she, "I don't recollect, all seems in a muddle, he hurt me dreadful, I screamed, he put something over my mouth, and I don't know no more; but he was doing it right up, and I were hollowing,—and ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... afterwards, he was believed to have been murdered with the missionary, and a report to that effect was sent to England, which, in the general muddle that prevailed at the beginning of the war, had never been corrected. For be it remembered it was not until he was carried to Mombasa, nearly two months after he was hurt, that he reached any place where there was a telegraph. By this ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... muddle! Mrs. Minot wouldn't think much of me if she could see that," said Molly, recalling how that lady once said she could judge a good deal of a little girl's character and habits by a peep at her top drawer, and went on, with great success, to ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... ever to think that the man must be a little daft. He got down, and did as she had told him. It seemed as if he had not thought of it before. He was so dazed and muddle-headed, that he would have sat apathetically on his seat, waiting for the horse to go on, although he could certainly get no wetter than he ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... perhaps sufficient attention has not. been paid to the lofty position of the character, as distinguished from the prowess, that this version gives to Cuchulain. The first verse, put in Cuchulain's mouth, strikes a new note, contrasting alike with the muddle-headed bargaining of Ferdia and Maev, and the somewhat fussy anxiety of Fergus. The contrast between the way in which Cuchulain receives Fergus's report of the valour of Ferdia, and that in which Ferdia receives the praises of Cuchulain from his charioteer, ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... What an awful muddle you are all in in the bright little, tight little island. I hate the sight of the English papers. The only good thing that has met my eye lately is a proposal to raise a memorial to Gordon. I want to join in whatever is done, and unless it will be time enough when I return, I shall be glad if ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... gave up: "How do you make bricks without straw?" They made a patent brick, built the Howard Museum in Washington, (was it a museum or a college?) the thing tumbled down, and a Congressional committee sat among its ruins. Poor Gen. HOWARD is in a muddle, and wishes, from the bottom of his heart, that we had free trade ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... also normal) applies it more or less effectively as a guide to his own conduct. To the feeble-minded child, all but lacking in the power of abstraction and generalization, the situation conveys no such lesson. It is but a muddle of concrete events without general significance; or even if its meaning is vaguely apprehended, the powers of inhibition are insufficient to guarantee that right ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... said, with elegantly severe authority, "I will not have this talking over the work. Miss Toppings, this whole skirt is an unmitigated muddle. Head-tucks half an inch too near the bottom! No room for your flounce. If you can't keep to your measures, you'd better not undertake piece-work. Take that last welt out, and put it in over the top. And make no more blunders, if you please, unless ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... in his power to conciliate the different parties, but has now concluded that Paris must be conquered by the troops of Versailles. Every day there comes more disturbing news. How will it all end? When shall we get out of this muddle? En attendant, we live in ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... mean?" snapped Flint, while Waldron smiled maliciously as he smoked. "Yes, or no? I don't pay you to muddle things. I pay you to know, and to tell me! Get ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... turned over and others had gone, plainly. All Melier's clothes were gone. The lodger was not in, and under his bedroom window, where his box had stood, there was naught but an oblong patch of conspicuously clean wallpaper. In a muddle of doubt and perplexity, Bob found himself at the front door, staring up and down the street. Divers women-neighbours stood at their doors, and eyed him curiously; for Mrs. Webster, moralist, opposite, had not watched the day's proceedings (nor those of many other days) for ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... transmitter. "Mr. Quigley, I am very sorry to inconvenience you to-night. To put off the matter of which I have to speak until morning would perhaps place you in a rather hard light. The police always make such a muddle ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... my friend I should describe him as one of the most amiable and most muddle-headed of mankind. Under the influence of his mind things that are quite clear become confused and lose themselves in long vistas of statement and sub-statement and sub-sub-statement, and a plain tale is darkened until at the end ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... foreign policy, he says, that he has learnt what our journalists denounce as "the doctrine of the bully, of the materialist, of the man with gross ideals: a doctrine of diabolical evil." He frankly accepts that doctrine from us (as if our poor, honest muddle-heads had ever formulated anything so intellectual as a doctrine), and blames us for nothing but for allowing the United States to achieve their solidarity and become formidable to us when we might have divided ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... made her also beautiful. But beyond the tenderness there was also an energy that made every move seem like an attack. In spite of her reserve there was impatience, and Olva's first judgment of her was that the last thing in the world that she could endure was muddle; she shone with the clean-cut decision ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... Widowes—is our authority for the several mutinous outbreaks which occurred during the voyage; and Prickett wrote with a vagueness—using such phrases as "this day" and "this time," without adding a date—that helped him to muddle his narrative in the parts which we want to have, but which he did not ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... met with a refusal, and this anonymous note is her revenge. The man she married was a crack-brained weakling who got into the army the fag end of the war, fell in love with her pretty face, married her, then they quarrelled, and he drank himself into a muddle-head. She ran him into debt; then he gambled away government funds, bolted, was caught, and would have been tried and sent to jail, but some powerful relative saved him that, and simply had him dropped;—never heard of him again. She was about a month grass-widowed when Waring came on ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... digging and knowing all the time as them lads is breaking their necks over the cliff side. Never was in such a muddle as this before. Why didn't they say what ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... not be?" she rejoined, in a not very convincing tone. "Now I shall rely on you—and I am sure it will not be in vain—to respect my wishes. Things seem to be in a horrible muddle," she added with a rather dreary laugh, "but let's hope they will ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... the arbiter of style conversed learnedly of Tuscan, Pompeiian, Elizabethan, Louis Quatorze, buhl, marqueterie, &.c., &c., till the head of the proprietor, to whom all these words were strangers, and all his talk Greek, was thrown into a hopeless muddle. ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... averse to going to the police; he knew what the provincial police were. What was excellent evidence to him would seem no evidence at all to them; and they would move too late, or, if they moved in time, would muddle the whole business, and let the Biggleswades know they were suspected. Besides, it hurt his self-love to seek aid from anyone. No, the proper game was to rob the robbers, and he had seven ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... know what you're talking about, and I wish you wouldn't muddle us with new names. Fire just happens. Nobody does it—not as a deed, you know,' Cyril explained. 'If they did the Phoenix wouldn't help them, because its a crime to set fire to things. Arsenic, or something they call it, because it's as bad as poisoning ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... sort of muddle altogether, and Angel hardly knew whether she felt more like laughing or crying over it. She sat down in the window and drew Godfrey ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... "It is a muddle tempered by the ink-bottle, like every incipient government. We shall not see our way through it for another ten years —we who have to do the governing; but private enterprise has sharp eyes.—So I am sending you there to make a fortune; I give you the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... say these things if you really thought you were in a hopeless muddle. I have gone through it all this term, and I know. I have tried to laugh, and I have drunk until I didn't care what happened, but it is all no use. I have made a mess of everything, and there is no one to blame ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... you muddle-headed blunderer!" he exclaimed, with a string of oaths. "Take these cuffs off! You'll lose your job for this trick. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... theological muddle is largely caused by the inability of many people to free themselves from archaic notions which have really nothing to do with Christianity, although they have been imported into it. The principal of these, in relation to the question of sin, is the doctrine of the Fall. This ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell |
