"Muddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been at his house a good many nights writing up these private books; but that was because Clark had been in a sort of muddle last winter,—his wife was sick, or one of his dozen children had met with an accident,—or something,—Livingstone ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... of muddle to have got oneself into.' he thought to himself as he walked along the asphalte pavement in front of the sea-wall: 'a most confoundedly awkward fix to have got oneself into with a pretty girl of ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... upon it, Farquhar, the blunder lies with Benson himself. He is just the man to muddle away his money in indiscriminate charity, and then to wonder what has become ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... mean the new folk at the Friary," she continued, carelessly. "Oh, they are only moving in to-day, and they will be in a muddle for a week, I should think. I don't think we can intrude for ten ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... the leaders of certain papers, leaders 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 of families; they have also become ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... work, 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 ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... It is not that the jostling and confused relatives are as a rule grammatically wrong, like the common blunder of putting an "and which" where there is no previous "which" expressed or implied. They, simply, put as they are, bewilder and muddle the reader because the writer has not taken the trouble to break up his sentence into two or three. This is, of course, a very gross abuse, and except when the talents above noticed either fuse his style into something better, or by the interest they excite divert the attention of ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... "Haven't I told you, and haven't you seen for yourself, that I never lose an opportunity? More than that. It has been my rule in life either to make friends with the Mammon of Unrighteousness—he's a muddle-headed ass is Mammon, and you can steer clear of his unrighteousness if you're sharp enough—or else to cast my bread upon the waters in the certainty of finding it again after many days. In the case in question I took the latter course. I cast my bread a year ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... and left my shoes behind me, that's all"; and she ran indoors, jumping from mat to mat, and without even so much as bidding Tom goodbye, who rode home, not thinking much about his business, but lost in a muddle of most contradictory presentations, a constant glimmer of Catharine's ankles, wonderment at her accident—was it all true?—the strange look when she disclaimed the honour of his rescue and expounded her philosophy, and the ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... get 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 loyal to ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... fact I went to see my beloved on that evening filled with a new faith in the outcome of our life together. I am afraid I muddle this matter in trying to tell it. A moment ago I said the other woman, the tobacconist's wife, went with me. I do not mean she went in fact. What I am trying to say is that something of her faith ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... a wire. That isn't the joke, though. You see he got into a hopeless muddle about which side of the veil he had come out on; and he went off with the other ones, and they wouldn't have him, and he got lost in the veil, running up and down it, calling to us; and just for the lark we didn't answer.' He chuckles, 'I expect he has become ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... had something to do with the poor fellow's death, which has cut me up as much 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, ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... 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
... fact which stands out incontrovertibly from the whole weary muddle. It is quite clear that the inability to act in common arises from the fact that in the international sphere the European is still dominated by illusions which he has dropped when he deals with home politics. The political faith of the Turk, which he would never think of applying at home as between ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... caution of the 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 ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... day after. You are—magnanimously, you like to think,—according her this parting falsehood, half in contemptuous kindness and half in relief, because at last you are now getting rid of a complacent and muddle-headed fool of whom, also, you are most ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... think water. The Elizabethans—Sidney and Shakspeare, Burleigh and Queen Bess, worked on beef and ale,—and you would not class them among the muddle-headed of the earth: Believe me, to write well, you must live well. If you take it out of your brain, you must put it in again. It's a question of fact. Try it for yourself." And off Tom went; while Lucia rushed back ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... Here was a pretty muddle! Barney Custer swore at himself inwardly for a boorish fool. What in the world had ever prompted him to speak those ridiculous words! And now how was he to unsay them without mortifying this beautiful girl who ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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 rule ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... the Aldwych Theatre in London. The Deveral household consists of old Mrs. Deveral, her middle-aged children—Agnes who is efficient, Emily who is muddle-headed, and Henry who is fussy—and Judy Deveral, her granddaughter. Rodney Walter, Henry's agent, is making love to Judy, and she prefers him to the young and unsophisticated Bobbie Forrester, who also loves ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... the time our sphere began revolving Until the present writing there had been A glimmer of a promise of resolving The muddle ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... little band who had worked so hard for their object had been badly used. Mrs. Lynde told them to keep on and show the Pyes that there really were people in the world who could do things without making a muddle of them. Mr. Major Spencer sent them word that he would clean out all the stumps along the road front of his farm and seed it down with grass at his own expense; and Mrs. Hiram Sloane called at the school one day and beckoned Anne mysteriously out into the porch to tell her that if the ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... derivation, "a drawer of water." But a ship also "draws water." Therefore, logically, a Hydrographer is a ship. But a ship is never put into a witness-box, where it would be quite at sea, but in the dock, where it could be quite at home. "Truly," writes our Puzzled Correspondent, "there is a muddle somewhere." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... are called to do a man's work, do not exact a woman's privileges—the privileges of inaccuracy, of weakness, of the muddle-head. Submit yourselves to the rules of business, as men do, by which alone you can make God's business succeed. For he has never said that he will give his blessing to sketchy, unfinished work. And I would especially guard young ladies from fancying themselves like Lady ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... simpler than 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 heartbreak ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... wholly disappeared when immersed in the Earth's shadow. Crabtree is stated by Flamsteed[140] to have observed this eclipse, but he does not plainly state that he lost sight of the Moon. Crabtree or his editor dates this eclipse for April 4; Ferguson for April 15. There appears to be some muddle as between "old style" and "new style." Ferguson professing to be N.S. is evidently wrong. Hevelius gives the double date, ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... scientist and educator. He spent his vast fortune for food, as the stories go, and when he had only a quarter million dollars left (a paltry sum today but a considerable one in those days when gold was scarce and monetary standards in a worse muddle than today) Apicius took his own life, fearing that he might have to ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... bring-to first and at once. It is evident, however, that even the Sailing Instructions, cast-iron as they were, contemplated a fleet in order, not one in process of forming order; and that to bring-to helter-skelter, regardless of order, was to obey the letter rather than the spirit. Muddle-headed as Mathews seems to have been, what he was trying to do was clear enough; and the duty of a subordinate was to carry out his evident aim. An order does not necessarily supersede its predecessor, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... to stay here and wait. I don't see that anything's gained by my going: it's damned hard on me, having to go to a man whose language I don't know, and he don't know mine, on a business we're all of us in a muddle about. I'll do it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... some purpose, then. Dun't tell the mester: it'll muddle his brains t'-night. Wait till mornin'. Squire More'll be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... now had two years of it, and have not been absent for a day. I hope I may go on till I drop. My father died in a fit; his father died in a fit; and I myself often feel giddy, and things go round for a few seconds. I should not care to have a fit here, because there would be a fuss and a muddle, but I should like, just when everything was QUITE straight, to be able to get home safely and then go off. To lie in bed for weeks and worry about my work is what I ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... distance and pushed a 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 ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the realisation of a chapter of a Waverley novel. A month or two later he became aware, with more amusement than alarm, of measures for his deportation set on foot but not carried through by the Treaty officials. For a man of his temper, the political muddle and mismanagement of which the Samoan Islands were the scene—and not only these, however much he might lament them for the sake of the inhabitants, but even the risks he ran of serious personal consequences from his own action,—added to life at least as much ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hour after sunset is one o'clock, and is noted by one stroke; and so on until six hours after, when it begins striking one again. As the quarter hours are also rung by the clocks, if you happen to be near one you will have a fine chance to get in a muddle trying to separate quarters from hours, and Roman time from your own. Another noise comes from the game of morra. Caper was looking out of his window one morning, pipe in mouth, when he saw two ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... poor little glass with which she had communed before. She retouched here again the poise of her hat, and this brought to her father's lips another remark in which impatience, however, had already been replaced by a funny flare of appreciation. "Oh, you're all right! Don't muddle yourself ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... the red thatch wrinkled in thought. "He said he seen him come in here or next door, an' he came up the steps. But nobody could have got in without some of youse seein' him. That's a lead pipe." The officer pushed any doubt that remained from his mind. "Only a muddle-headed Swede." ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... singular muddle, he pointed out, seemed to be whether or not the poor fellow had known that the boat was upset. Well, who could say what he knew, an intoxicated man in a blind passion? Not Carlisle, certainly, plunged suddenly into the sea and intensely occupied with saving her life. How, for instance, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... hulloa till you're out of the wood!" he said; "they may catch up on you yet. Seventy-five isn't such a big score after all. If you don't look out you'll muddle your chance away, and then ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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
... mistress recumbent in an easychair before an open window, and not to profane with chatter that sweet and solemn time. This girl is grieved at my habit of living almost in the garden, and all her ideas as to the sort of life a respectable German lady should lead have got into a sad muddle since she came to me. The people round about are persuaded that I am, to put it as kindly as possible, exceedingly eccentric, for the news has travelled that I spend the day out of doors with a book, and that no mortal eye has ever yet seen me sew or cook. But why cook when you can get some ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... occurred to me, something about the discrepancy between the spiritual quality of the sunset and the after-supper satisfaction of the onlookers. I essayed to express it, but was so embarrassed that I made a muddle of my English. Miss Tevkin took no notice ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... The girls are so tiresome and have made such a muddle about the Krampuses for the staff. The money didn't come out right and Keller said that Markus had taken some but Markus said not taken only kept. Of course Markus complained to Frau Doktor and her father went to the head and ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... go three times to the smallest shopkeeper, for once he goes to Beaurepaire. Their tenants send them a little meal and eggs, and now and then a hen; and their great garden is chock full of fruit and vegetables, and Jacintha makes me dig in it gratis; and so they muddle on. But, bless your heart, coffee! they can't afford it; so they roast a lot of horse-beans that cost nothing, and grind them, and serve up the liquor in a silver coffee-pot, on a ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... go into rights, Mr. Clark," the judge retorted, "the whole thing is a hopeless muddle. None of us in a very real sense has any rights—extremely few rights, at ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... of all this recent insubordination and violence is—curious. Exasperating too.... I don't quite grasp it.... It's the same thing whether you look at the suffrage business or the labour people or at this Irish muddle. People may be too safe. You see we live at the end of a series of secure generations in which none of the great things of life have changed materially. We've grown up with no sense of danger—that is to say, with no sense of responsibility. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... use of thinking? My head's all in a muddle. It's bad, no matter how you look at it. I sold my very youth to one I cannot love, just for a piece of bread, and from one day to another he becomes more repulsive ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... If there be not descent, there is affinity by marriage, familiarity, knowledge of words and ways, sweethearting and trafficking, so that they know the children of the Rom as the house-world does not know them, and they in some sort belong together. It is a muddle, perhaps, and a puzzle; I doubt if anybody quite understands it. No novelist, no writer whatever, has as yet clearly explained the curious fact that our entire nomadic population, excepting tramps, is not, as we thought in our childhood, composed of English people like ourselves. ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... that has a muddle-headed literature, a nation that to say nothing of not being able to express what it has, has not even made a beginning at expressing what it wants; a nation that has not a great, eager, glowing literature, a sublime clear-headedness ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... that we have this sense of self-importance only to get rid of it," I said. "It all seems to me a dreadful muddle—to shut up these lovely little things inside millions of stones, and then to give us the wish to break a couple, only that we may reflect that they were not meant for us ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... helpless, incompetent father and patiently sobbing mother the Green Valley world buzzed and the prettiest kind of a May day smiled. All their life was a muddle with this dreary ending but the world outside was as young, as bright, as promising as ever. Something of this must have come to these two for Mrs. Sears' sobs quieted and out in the front room Sears sank into a chair ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... lesson and (provided emotions and will are 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 action ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... science, what is left for man to do? With wireless telegraphy, the airplane and the automobile annihilating time and space, what else? Turning from the material to the ethical it seems of the very nature of the human species to meddle and muddle. On every hand we see the organization of societies for making men and women over again according to certain fantastic images existing in the minds of the promoters. "Mon Dieu!" exclaimed the visiting Frenchman. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... humanist, the enthusiastic herald of a national German uplift, the ardent hater of papacy and supporter of Luther, was certainly a hot-head and perhaps somewhat of a muddle-head. He had applauded Erasmus when the latter still seemed to be the coming man and had afterwards besought him to take Luther's side. Erasmus had soon discovered that this noisy partisan might compromise ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... your musty pulpit—thump, And muddle flat clodhoppers; And let some long-eared booby "hump" The plate ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... you might think my father was severe, but he really didn't beli—he didn't suppose—that is, the young people we've known—" He stopped, looking awfully red and embarrassed, then ended up with, "I'm afraid I'm making an awful muddle of it, but I'm really very sorry; I hope you and your brother ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... Irish in the way Lady Conroy managed to make a kind of muddle and untidiness all round her, when she had been in a room a minute or two. When she had entered the room, it was a fine-looking apartment, rather sparsely furnished, with very little in it, all severest First Empire style. There were a few old portraits on striped pale ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... 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 ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... things your worship has said to me are good, holy, and profitable; but what use will they be to me if I don't remember one of them? To be sure that about not letting my nails grow, and marrying again if I have the chance, will not slip out of my head; but all that other hash, muddle, and jumble—I don't and can't recollect any more of it than of last year's clouds; so it must be given me in writing; for though I can't either read or write, I'll give it to my confessor, to drive it into me and remind me of it ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... it is," said Speed, "there is no use in our interfering with Stratton. He is on the wrong track, but, nevertheless, all the influence we can use on him in his present frame of mind will merely do what it did before—it will muddle the man up. Now, I propose that we leave him severely alone. Let him find out his mistake. He will find it out in some way or other, and then he will be in a condition of mind to turn to ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... killed. He was horror-struck when he found that Christ would be killed; threw his money away instantly, and hanged himself. How many of our present money-seekers, think you, would have the grace to hang themselves, whoever was killed? But Judas was a common, selfish, muddle-headed, pilfering fellow; his hand always in the bag of the poor, not caring for them. He didn't understand Christ;—yet believed in Him, much more than most of us do; had seen Him do miracles, thought He was ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... roared. "A fine German you are, you milk sop! A beautiful muddle you've made of this. Von Minden's letters here for months and what use have they come to? There'd have been an Iron Cross in this for you, had ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... this he failed. The jury, muddle-headed, obstinate country folk, had made up their minds that Lord Loudwater was the kind of man to be murdered, and that, therefore, he had been murdered. They brought in the verdict that Lord Loudwater had been murdered by some person ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... See our ambassadors are always drunk. For when we visit Sparta sober, then We're on the alert for trickery all the while So that we miss half of the things they say, And misinterpret things that were never said, And then report the muddle back to Athens. But now we're charmed with each other. They might cap With the Telamon-catch instead of the Cleitagora, And we'd applaud and praise them just the same; We're not too ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... when we 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 ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... an 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
... on a triumphant round of visits, did she show the vindicating sentence. Any soft young fool, she asserted, with the directness and not unattractive truculence of her generation, can get a commission and muddle through, but it took a man to ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... still looking around 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 South Africa for herself, and that she has stirred up all this Cretan ...
— 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
... and passed in the next years a series of acts consolidating and mitigating the law, and repealing many old statutes. A measure of equal importance was his establishment in 1829 of the metropolitan police force, which at last put an end to the old chaotic muddle described by Colquhoun of parish officers and constables. Other significant legal changes marked the opening of a new era. Eldon was the very incarnation of the spirit of obstruction; and the Court ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... 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 you want to be put ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... to you by the busy millers on the platform, closes the eustachian tubes and keeps the neophyte perpetually swallowing, till his throat is grown so dry that he can swallow no longer. And for all these reasons—although I had a fine, dizzy, muddle-headed joy in my surroundings, and longed, and tried, and always failed, to lay hands on the fish that darted here and there about me, swift as humming-birds—yet I fancy I was rather relieved than otherwise when Bain brought me back to the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an unpardonable sin. The suicide's punishment should be loss of immortality. Well, I found work to do, of all sorts, in America, and elsewhere. And a year ago—she died. I should have come straight home, only I was booked for that muddle on the frontier they called 'a war.' I got fever after Targai; was invalided home; and here I am recruiting and finishing my book. Now you can understand why loveliness in a woman, fills me with a sort of panic, even while a part of me still leaps up instinctively ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... what should he see but a Lamb just beginning to drink a little lower down. "There's my supper," thought he, "if only I can find some excuse to seize it." Then he called out to the Lamb, "How dare you muddle the water from which I ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... 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 of others. She is ill; her nerves are all on edge; and she is, as it were, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... household efficiently, there must be Method. Without this, work cannot be got through satisfactorily either in offices, workshops, or households. By arranging work properly, by doing everything at the right time, with a view to the economy of labour, a large amount of business can be accomplished. Muddle flies before method; and hugger-mugger disappears. There is also a method in spending—in laying out money,—which is as valuable to the housewife, as method is in accomplishing her work. Money slips through the fingers of some people like ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... the door, it is not enough even to 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 of industry fritters away his life and his talents as a "pretty ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... stores on board till the last moment. If I were an owner I should tell all shippers that no goods would be received within five or six hours of the ship's time for sailing; that would give us a fair chance, instead of starting all in a muddle, just at the time, too, when more than any other one wants to have the decks free for making short tacks down these narrow reaches. I believe half the wrecks on the sands at the mouth of the river are due to the confusion in which the ships start. How can a crew be lively in getting ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... 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 ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... down—for all women were traitors, praters, liars, worms and vermin. (He made a great play of words between wermen, meaning worms, and wermin and wummin.) He had been ruined by this woman who had tickled him under the chin—that being an ingratiating act, fit to bewitch and muddle a man, like as if she had promised him marriage. And then she had married a horse-smith! So he was ready and willing, and prayed every night that God would send him the chance, to ruin and hold down every woman who walked the earth or ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... I'll muddle up the pair of them, bedevil them completely, and Amphitryon's whole household, too, and keep it up till my father has his fill of her whom he loves: then all shall know the truth, but not before. And finally Jupiter will renew the former ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... man, with something in his features that denotes superiority" ("Though poor in thanks," Redfield, yet I thank thee.) "His speech upon taking the chair, was another event. It was the third good speech of the day and calculated to leave the believers of internal inferiority in something of a muddle. ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... I muddle up the first years of it. I know that in nineteen-eleven he brought out his fifth novel and his third play and that the run and the returns of both were astounding, even for him. I know that in nineteen-twelve he brought out ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... know the lady well. She has a good heart, but was ever muddle-headed. She thanked that wag with a smile, and I heard her later in the evening boring most evidently that literary lion with elongated praise of the "Cloister and the Hearth" and "Adam Bede." They were among the few books she had ever read, and talking about them came easily to her. ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... comes to pass peculiar; an' I allers allows if it ain't for the onforeseen way wherein things stacks up, an' the muddle we-alls gets into tryin' to find a trail, the Plaza Paloduro would have been a scene of bleatin' peace that day, instead of a stric'ly corpse-an'-cartridge occasion. The death rate rises to that degree in fact that the next roundup ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... 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 fight for consolidation that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was at the bottom of them. The one thing I don't quite understand is how he came to know she was in Ballymoy. I'll find that out later on. In the meanwhile I think I'd better go into Ballymoy after all. It's a nuisance, for I was extremely comfortable on the yacht, but I can't leave things in the muddle they're in now, and there's nobody else about the place I could trust ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... in price will diminish the demand; and a reduced demand will send the price down again. It is not certain, therefore, after all, that the tax will really raise the price." A glance at the diagram will keep us out of such a bog of sophistry and muddle. For if we suppose the amount of the tax per unit of the commodity to be represented by Ss, the curve ss' (drawn, as it is, roughly parallel to SS') will represent the new conditions of supply after the tax has been imposed. ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... 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
... supplied, an eager light in 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 that advantage ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... individualism through gregariousness. They opened the new era of amalgamation by co-ordinating, on a vast scale, individual achievements, resources and labour, and directing them to a common end. The allied peoples were meanwhile content to muddle through in the old way. This difference explains much that seems puzzling in the outcome ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... gone to form new individuals (changes which would not have occurred if those germ-cells had perished!), but rather a correlation between the age of the parents and the quality of their offspring. How cleverly the biometricians have involved one muddle within another will be evident not only from considering the evident absurdity of supposing—as their argument, analyzed, necessarily supposes—that a man's body can be affected by the diverse fates of germ-cells that have left it, but also when we observe that one of ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... 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 nothing, ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... at which I arrive be such as you approve or as you disapprove, will nevertheless help to clear the course. In this and in all complicated matters we must remember a saying of Bacon, which may be freely translated thus: "Consistent error is very often vastly more useful than muddle-headed truth." At any rate, if there be any error in the conclusions I shall put before you, I will do my best to make the error ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... physical instincts sent him to healthy physical remedies for relief. "My mind's in a muddle," said Geoffrey. ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... the wind of dawn had lessened, and I feared that the storm would be delayed. I wanted it at once to help us through the next hours of tension. Was it in six hours that the French were coming? No, it must be four. It couldn't be more than four, unless somebody had made an infernal muddle. I wondered why everything was so quiet. It would be breakfast time on both sides, but there seemed no stir of man's presence in that ugly strip half a mile off. Only far back in the German hinterland I seemed to hear the ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... but I wanted the confirmation of your own lips, my dear child. The knowledge emboldens me to offer you an asylum under my own roof for the next few months—or longer. Ulick, as you say, is but a boy, half hot, half muddle-head. He, perhaps, could be kept ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... again. I don't think when God made us, and sent us into the world to live our own lives, that He meant us to feel like that. One can't mix up other people's lives with one's own; it would make an awful muddle." ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Johnstone. Damn him, for a sneaking civilian! I never trusted him!" And the old General rolled away for his family tiffin. "I'll see you when you have translated the private orders. Thank God, the Viceroy keeps me out of this dirty muddle! You see, I have no power over Johnstone—he is a blasted civilian." Two hours later, the grateful old General found Hardwicke pacing up and down impatiently. "I ought only to tell Murray," he ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... works; and if his writings have been by comparison watery, unlike water, they have never risen by inherent quality to their original level. Of his latest book, called Sylvie and Bruno, I can make neither head nor tale. It seems a muddle of all sorts, including a little bit of Bible thrown in. It will be bought, because LEWIS CARROLL'S name is to it, and it will be enjoyed for the sake of Mr. FURNISS'S excellent illustrations, but for no other reason, that I can see. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... of course, many 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 ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... could raise or depress itself in the water at pleasure by a pneumatic operation upon the entral air tube pervading its shell. Its tentacula, sent abroad over the summit of the shell, searched the sea for prey. The creature had an ink-bag, with which it could muddle the water around it, to protect itself from more powerful animals, and, strange to say, this has been found so well preserved that an artist has used it in one instance as a paint, wherewith to delineate the ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... of the European muddle it was discussed if at all, not so much as a condition demanding uncensored condemnation, as one to continue to be patient with, trusting to time and an awakened sense of fair play upon the part of the nation at large to note the custom complained of, and banish the irritation ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... It isn't only a lack of imagination. In some people it is transcendent, in others it is only a sort of stupidity. If proper precautions were taken the need for courage would be much reduced—the "tight place" is so often the result of sheer muddle. ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... given you to say, you will be able to say it, and say it better than ever—but no doubt you feel very much lost without it. How do you fill the time?" "I hardly know," I said, "not very profitably—I read, I teach my daughter, I muddle along." "Well," he said, smiling, "the hours in which we muddle along are not our worst hours. You believe in God?" The suddenness of this question surprised me. "Yes," I said, "I believe in God. I cannot disbelieve. Something has placed me where I am, something urges me along; there is a ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 the proprietor of land can always borrow money at four per cent, and other ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... "You fool, 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
... a delightful companion, and perhaps at his gayest on these occasions. "A man's holiday," he would say, "is his garden," and he set out to enjoy himself and to make everyone about him enjoy themselves too. I told him the old schoolboy muddle about Sir Walter Raleigh introducing tobacco and saying: "We shall this day light up such a fire in England as I trust shall never be put out." He had not heard it before and, though amused, appeared preoccupied, and perhaps a little jealous, during the rest of the evening. Next morning, while he ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... against your belly?" "I shan't say," 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 ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... may reach you. I fear we must go and that it leaves the Expedition in a bad muddle. But we have been to the Pole and we shall die like gentlemen. I regret only for ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... points of this kind Nelson was a clear and accurate thinker, and in the admiral he had to do with a muddle-headed, irresolute superior. Hughes had already been badly worried and prodded, on matters concerning his own neglected duties, by his unquiet young subordinate, who was never satisfied to leave bad enough alone, but kept raising knotty points to harass an ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... business, as had Froissart and Boswell, he excels in proportion to his unconsciousness of the fact; his colors run truer. For lesser gobblers, who have not genius, the best way to lose consciousness is just to IT themselves go; if they endeavor to paint artistically the muddle will be worse. To such the proverb of the cobbler and his last is of perennial warning. As a barber once sagely remarked to me, "You can't trim a beard well, unless you're born to it." It is possible in some degree to imitate Froissart and Boswell ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... pressed his antagonist backward, seeking to muddle his defence and to clear an opening for his own deadly stroke; but the other man also was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... dynasty, being evidently identical with Teixeira's Ruknuddin Mahmud above-named, 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
... with the Church's business, it contrives to make a muddle. This familiar truth has been exemplified afresh by the decree which dedicated last Sunday[*] to devotions connected with the War. The Feast of the Epiphany has had, at least since the fourth century, ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... when the reading was interrupted with a crimson paper-knife, and often Jimbo would move it several pages farther on without any of them discovering the gap. Jane Anne, however, who made no pretence of listening to 'Daddy's muddle- stories,' was beginning to realise what went on in Mother's mind underground. She hardly seized the pathos, but she saw and understood enough to help. And she was in many ways a little second edition—a ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... soon be here. I have not met with the cousins yet, but I've been told as they're very fine ladies—They stood in place of parents to my Robert, you know. 'Tis unfortunate we should be in such a sad muddle the ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... be busy all the morning over my accounts; they've got into the most disgraceful muddle, and I want to put them straight. I shall be in the drawing room, for I keep all my household books in the davenport there. I mean to give you a holiday, Judy, but perhaps you won't mind reading some of your history to yourself, and doing a few ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... dear me, this is a beastly muddle! Look here, George, promise me you won't do anything stupid for a day or so.... I have been so pestered by people ... I don't know which way to turn. Why not stay ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... about that," answered Mat; "I don't suppose I should understand you if you could find 'em. If you want the picter put up again, I'll do it. And if you want the carpenter's muddle head punched, who put it up before, I shouldn't much mind doing that either," added Mat, looking at the hole from which the clamp had been torn with an expression ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... all the other way—with the many, the poor devils who run about the streets and don't go to church. Don't stare, Tom; mind, I'm telling you all that's in my heart—as far as I know it—but it's all a muddle. You must be gentle with me if you want to land me. Now I've seen a deal of this sort of religion; I was bred up in it, and I can't stand it. If nineteen-twentieths of the world are to be left to uncovenanted mercies, and that sort of thing, which means in plain English ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... Doge Domenico Michiel (1118-1130), the church was known as Santa Maria, or San Donato; and to-day it is called S. Donato. And when the time comes for the old sacristan to die, I hope (no matter what kind of a muddle his life has been) that S. Donato will be at hand, near the gate, to pull him through, for sheer faithfulness ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... about the progress of his work, he was communicative to his few intimates, though never reading aloud extracts or allowing them to be seen. In 1872 he would speak pathetically of his "Crimean muddle," perplexed, as he well might be, by the intricacies of Inkerman. Asked if he will not introduce a Te Deum on the fall of Louis Napoleon, he answered that to write without the stimulus of combat would be a task beyond his energy; "when I took the trouble to compose ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... will also be awake and active at five. He will look out on the world with anthropomorphic (or rather with paedomorphic) eyes. He will be living on a great flat earth—unless some officious person has tried to muddle his wits by telling him the earth is round; amidst trees, animals, men, houses, engines, utensils, that are all capable of being good or naughty, all fond of nice things and hostile to nasty ones, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... 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
... 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 business ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... "Learning, and behaving, and going, and doing, and seeing, and hearing, and having. 'It's all a muddle,' as the poor man says ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... know that the antiquaries of a century or more ago rendered this simple sentence as: "This is a draught exhibiting the time of day, while the sun is passing to and from the winter-solstice." They also made a great muddle of the words: "& HE HIT LET MACAN NEWAN," their rendering being "CHEHITLE AND MAN NEWAN," the translation being supposed to read: "Chehitle and others renewed it, etc." With Mr Brooke's paper is given a large steel engraving of the stone, but it is curiously inaccurate in many details. ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... at last. "I can't make them up. They are in a hopeless muddle. I know, though, that I can't raise a thousand cents, much less a thousand dollars, and the builder threatens to make me bankrupt, if I ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... head about mamma. Uncle Dawne, however, and Dr. Galbraith both maintain that mamma is admirable, because she doesn't trouble her head about churches and creeds any longer. She used to do so once, but now she thinks only of what is morally right or wrong, and leaves the ecclesiastical muddle for the divines to get out of as best they can. Mamma used to dread bringing us to Morne when we were younger; we were always so outrageous here; and we told her it was Aunt Fulda who made us so, because ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... that he thought would never answer, inasmuch as he did not really know who was the enemy from which he would be delivered. It was hard to decide against Ethelyn and still harder to decide against "Dick," and so with his brains all in a muddle Andy concluded to take the prayer "for all sorts and conditions of men," speaking very low and earnestly when he asked that all "who were distressed in mind, body, or estate, might be comforted and ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... Muddle pushed the King's nose back and began spreading his cheek into place. Instead of hands and feet, the Middlings had gnarled and twisted roots which curled up in a perfectly terrifying manner. Their teeth were gold, and their eyes shone ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... reverently—"why, I'd go through fire and water but I'd keep myself decent; ain't you a silly old fool, now? We've made our piles, you can go back and take her a fortune, give her jewels and pretty dresses, and all the fal-de-lals that women love. You'll never do it if you muddle yourself up with that stuff. Pull yourself together, old 'un. Chuck the drink till we've seen this thing through ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Cresswell or an Alwyn? It was no sin that Alwyn had done; it was simply ignorant presumption, and she must correct him firmly, but gently, like a child. What a crazy muddle the world was! She thought of Harry Cresswell and the tale he told her in the swamp. She thought of the flitting ghosts that awful night in Washington. She thought of Miss Wynn who had jilted Alwyn and given her herself ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the life of the nation with the least possible amount of trouble and sacrifice. All down the scale the point was to get the maximum of pleasure with the minimum of effort. That was their morality, immoral enough, but it was the only guide in the political muddle, in which the leaders set the example of anarchy, and the disordered pack of politicians were chasing ten hares at once, and letting them all escape one after the other, and an aggressive Foreign Office was yoked with a pacific War Office, and Ministers of War were cutting down ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... of Fifth Avenue. As Ralph pushed the bolts behind him, and passed into the hall, with its dark mahogany doors and the quiet "Dutch interior" effect of its black and white marble paving, he said to himself that what Popple called society was really just like the houses it lived in: a muddle of misapplied ornament over a thin steel shell of utility. The steel shell was built up in Wall Street, the social trimmings were hastily added in Fifth Avenue; and the union between them was as monstrous and factitious, as unlike the gradual homogeneous growth which ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... Phyllis—its seriousness was apparent beneath the light of the carriage lamp. "No, don't make the attempt to explain anything to me. Don't try to reconcile your frankness now with your pretense then, because you'll certainly make a muddle of it, and because no such attempt is necessary to be made to me. I know something of the girl and her moods—not a great deal, perhaps, but enough to prevent my doing you an injustice. You are perfectly consistent, ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... 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 except myself. And then this ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... Italian frame-makers, and of barbers, and of brokers, and of dealers in dogs and singing-birds. From these, in a narrow and a dirty street devoted to such callings, Mr Wegg selects one dark shop-window with a tallow candle dimly burning in it, surrounded by a muddle of objects vaguely resembling pieces of leather and dry stick, but among which nothing is resolvable into anything distinct, save the candle itself in its old tin candlestick, and two preserved frogs fighting a small-sword ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... trusted, nor the verdicts of his own intelligence respected. Go to any of the great summer schools and you will meet, among the attending teachers, hundreds of faithful, conscientious men and women who could tell you if they would (and some of them will) of the muddle in which their minds are left after some of the lectures to which they have listened. Why should they fail to be depressed? The whole weight of academic authority seems to be against them. The entire machinery of educational administration ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... who will muddle things, says no, it's like music. The course of the Oder is to be like music. It's obliged to remind her of a symphonic poem. The part by the landing-stage is in B minor, if I remember rightly, but lower down things get extremely mixed. There is a slodgy theme in several ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... muddle all my papers. [Taking bills out of his hands, and closing down the writing-desk.] I want to have a little talk with Renie—you'd better join ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... Bald-headed: 'to go it bald-beaded;' in great haste, as where one rushes out without his hat. Bogue: 'I don't git much done 'thout I bogue right in along 'th my men.' Carry: a portage. Cat-nap: a short doze. Cat-stick: a small stick. Chowder-head: a muddle-brain. Cling-john: a soft cake of rye. Cocoanut; the head. Cohees: applied to the people of certain settlements in Western Pennsylvania, from their use of the archaic form Quo' he. Dunnow'z I know: the nearest your true Yankee ever comes to acknowledging ignorance. Essence-pedler: ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... horses! Off to Canterbury! Tramp, tramp o'er pebble, and splash, splash through puddle; Hurrah! how swiftly speeds the post so merry! Not like slow Germany, wherein they muddle Along the road, as if they went to bury Their fare; and also pause besides, to fuddle With 'schnapps'—sad dogs! whom 'Hundsfot,' or 'Verflucter,' Affect no more ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... while the bundle was being made up. As for the handkerchief, they must think what they like; but it will puzzle Hanky to know why Panky should have been so anxious for a receipt, if he meant stealing the nuggets. Let them muddle ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... as old as the world, treasured up out of 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 ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... worse and worse you mislay your exercise-book, you drop your arithmetic in the mud, your pencil breaks, and when you open your knife to sharpen the pencil you split your nail. On such a day you jam your thumb in doors, and muddle the messages you are sent on by grown-ups. You upset your tea, and your bread-and-butter won't hold together for a moment. And when at last you get to bed usually in disgrace it is no comfort at all to you to know that not a single bit of ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... on 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 they were ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... hand). Oh, these women, what won't they be up to? Muddle one up completely. Bother them! I'll really go and fetch ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... got up a plot," continued the manager; "they will even hiss the piece, but I have made arrangements to defeat their kind intentions. I have squared the men in their pay; they will make a muddle of it. A couple of city men yonder have taken a hundred tickets apiece to secure a triumph for Florine and Coralie, and given them to acquaintances able and ready to act as chuckers out. The fellows, having been paid twice, will go quietly, and a scene of that sort always ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... now turn to Afghanistan. Generally speaking, the story of our dealings with that country has been a record of stupid, arrogant muddle. From the days of the first Afghan war, when an ill-fated army was despatched on its crazy mission to place a puppet king, Shah Shuja, on the throne of Afghanistan, our statesmen have, with some notable exceptions, mishandled the Afghan problem. And yet it is simple enough ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... next to impossible to straighten out the muddle, and she came at length reluctantly to the conclusion that it was beyond her powers. Wondering what the Reverend Stephen would have said to such a crime, she abstracted a few shillings from her own purse and fraudulently made up the deficit that ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... monopolistic competition would give place to the orderliness of associated effort, and under Socialism society would for the first time in history behave like an organism."[257] Private capitalism and consequent competition are responsible not only for waste and muddle, but also for the adulteration of food and other necessaries of life. "Every man who knows anything of trade knows how general is the knavish practice of adulteration. Now all adulteration is directly due to competition. Did not Mr. John Bright once say that adulteration ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... me busy with the Stellar Accounts," says he, "which appear to be in a fearful muddle. But what more can I do for you, Jurgen?—for you, my friend, who spoke a kind word for things as they are, and furnished me with one or two really very acceptable explanations as to why ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... My girls shall learn all I can teach them about it, even if they give up the Latin, Algebra, and half-a-dozen ologies it is considered necessary for girls to muddle their poor brains over now-a-days. Amy means to make Bess an accomplished woman, but the dear's mite of a forefinger has little pricks on it already, and her mother has several specimens of needlework which she values more than the clay bird without a bill, that filled ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... not resist after reading Love the Harper (SMITH, ELDER) was that the Boy appears in this volume as a very indifferent performer upon his instrument. For the muddle into which he plunged the amatory affairs of the inhabitants of Downside was terrible. Downside was a quiet delightful village, as lovingly described by Miss ELEANOR G. HAYDEN, but the number of misplaced attachments ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... 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
... me had been to muddle my brain so that I had accepted those Bank of England notes as bribe to assist the mystery-man of Europe in his ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... shameful passions and suggest their shameful culminations; Scott sometimes dealt with ideas positively horrible—as in that grand Glenallan tragedy which is as appalling as the OEdipus or The Cenci. None of these great men would have tolerated for a moment being talked to (as the muddle-headed amateur censors talk to artists to-day) about "wholesome" topics and suggestions "that cannot elevate." They had to describe the great battle of good and evil and they described both; but they accepted a working Victorian compromise about what should happen behind ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... Marchmont agreed. "Only, you see, we like the muddle to be made by the other side. But, in this case, the muddle is on our side. The change, as you say, seems to leave our friend Stephen's interests unaffected. That is, of course, what poor Jeffrey Blackmore thought. But he was mistaken. The effect of the change ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... another. The fire was out, the kitchen was littered with dishes and pots and pans, and Fanny the cook, with a dirty apron on and no cap, was fast asleep in her chair by the window, just as though she had not a care or a duty in the world. The squalor and muddle of the whole place could not fail to strike any one, even casual Kitty; and to her it brought a deeper feeling, one of trouble and remorse, for, in response to her own pleading, her father had made her his housekeeper—and ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... does not 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
... that when sixty planes went over the German lines the other night they played havoc with certain cantonments. If so why will not ten or twenty times as many planes accomplish ten or twenty times as much? It is simply a problem in mathematics. But will Englishmen see that? Not much. 'Muddle through' is their national motto and they are proud of it. Thank God the Germans are just as stupid. If it was the United States they wouldn't play the fool in regard to ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... city, since the well-remembered winter of the King's execution, and the long frost, when he, Reuben, was last in London. His evidence was confused and confusing; and he drew upon himself much good-natured ridicule from the junior who opened the case. Out of various muddle-headed answers and contradictory statements the facts of Lord Fareham's unexpected appearance at the Manor Moat, his account of his lady's illness, and his hurried departure, carrying the young madam with him on horseback, were elicited, and the story of the ruse ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon |
