"Mire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... night of frosty wreck, Enrobed in morning's mounted fire, When lowly, with a broken neck, The crocus lays her cheek to mire." ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... great misfortune," said he, "that we have here to do with that portion of my countrymen which is perhaps most deeply sunk in the mire of ancient custom. We have begun by unhesitatingly leading in the front ourselves whenever any disagreeable consequences are to be borne by reason of our infringement of the old customs. Take, for example, the problem of the peculiar position of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... in almost to his arm-pits. The horse braced its feet and pulled. Beulah, astride the saddle, urged it to the task again and again. At first by imperceptible gains, then inch by inch, the man was dragged from the mire that fought with a thousand clinging tentacles for ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... the public mind! He maligned you. The burdens that I have carried for all the years, the horrors that I've wrestled with, the secret shames that I've hidden, he's exposed them all in the open marketplace. And he dragged you into my mire! Diana, each man must be broken in a different way. Some are broken by money, some by physical fear, some ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... A.D. the triumph of the oriental element in Christendom had well-nigh banished learning and education from the domain of the Church, giving place to a gloomy, unquestioning faith which sank ever deeper and deeper in the mire of superstition. What enlightenment survived had found a home beyond the limits of the Roman Empire,—in Ireland, in the extreme West; in Syria, in the far East." (Davidson, Thomas, History ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... especially in men. A positive cessation of fondness or its replacement by a new passionate love makes a separation a blessing for both parties and for society. But humanity will be spared the useless wading through the mire of a divorce case." ["The Origin of the Family," by Fredrick Engels, page 99 of the 1907 translation into English ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... sheeted with ice, and only the wind gave token how the storm raged. It was indeed a wild night for a drive of fifty miles through a mountain wilderness, over roads sodden with the late rains, the deep mire corrugated into ruts by the wheels of travel and now ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.' 'Peace, peace, to him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith the Lord, and I will heal him: but the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, for the wicked.' 'Out of Zion shall go forth the Law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge between the nations and shall reprove many peoples; and they shall beat their swords ...
— Progress and History • Various
... the paternal stoniness on the other. One does not break one's teeth on it as over the torone, which is only to be cajoled into masticability by prolonged suction, and often not then; but the teeth sink into it as the wagoner's wheels into clayey mire, and every now and then receive a shock, as from sunken rocks, from the raisin-stones, indurated almonds, pistachio-nuts, and pine-seeds, which startle the ignorant and innocent eater with frightful doubts. I carried away one tooth this year over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... things, besides notches in the thick wooden partition for hands and feet when at night they crept to their burrow of hay under the low eaves. Everything with the exception of the old stone floor was scrupulously clean: without, the pigs dabbled in the mire between the rugged rocks, and nettles grew, but beyond, mountains, woods and illimitable space were spread in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... had filtered in, it was where weakness, self-indulgence, or untruthfulness, had left an opening. He saw how one wrong had been a sure and easy path to another, until in the end he had groveled face downward in the mire. ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... had given him a beating, and he foresaw his trade ruined, his name dragged through the mire and dishonored, his friends outraged and taking no more notice of him. In the end he excited my pity, and I sent for my colleague Rivet, a bantering, but very sensible little man, to give us ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... out of his nook to warm himself on a wet day, Toby trotted. Making, with his leaky shoes, a crooked line of slushy footprints in the mire; and blowing on his chilly hands and rubbing them against each other, poorly defended from the searching cold by threadbare mufflers of grey worsted, with a private apartment only for the thumb, and a common ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... rose, and in a cloud of gold, Unseen amid the vapour of the fire, Did Aphrodite veil her, fold on fold; And through the darkness, thronged with faces dire, And o'er men's bodies fallen in a mire Of new spilt blood and wine, the twain did go Where Lust and Hate were mingled in desire, And dreams and death were ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... attempted the journey in the dark, the track once missed there was death threatening him on every hand; while his cries for help would have been unheard as he struggled in the deep black mire, or swam for life in the clear water to find no hold at the side but the whispering reeds, from which, with splashings and whistling of wings, the wild-fowl would rise up, to speed ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... laws, throughout the Middle Ages, Oxford had the proud distinction of being the cleanest city in England. That is to say, it was not quite so appallingly smothered in mire and filth as others were. Down the midst of every narrow street ran a gutter, which after rain was apt to become a brook, and into which dirt of every sort was emptied by every householder. There were no causeways; ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... You crush your wife and servants at home; you crush the spirit and manhood of your clerks here by your cast-iron system and rules. If you had shown a little consideration for me you would have lost nothing, and I might have had a chance for a better life. But you tread me down into the mire of the streets; you make it impossible for me to appear among decent men again; you strike my mother and sisters as with a dagger. Curse you! if I go to jail, it will require you and all your clerks to take me there!" and he whirled on his heel, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... night tell 'way late, an' ef he'd been fox-huntin' it mus' ha' been de ole red whar lives down in de greenscum mashes he'd been chasin'. De way de sorrel wuz gormed up wid sweat an' mire sut'n'y did hu't me. He walked up to de stable wid he head down all de way, an' I'se seen 'im go eighty miles of a winter day, an' prance into de stable at night ez fresh ez ef he hed jes' cantered over to ole Cun'l Chahmb'lin's ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... a long distance by night, and setting out again the next morning to travel thirteen leagues:—"Throughout the day a drizzling rain was falling, which turned the dust of the roads into mud and mire. Towards evening we reached a moor—a wild place enough, strewn with enormous stones and rocks. The wind had ceased, but a strong wind rose and howled at our backs. The sun went down, and dark night presently came over us. We proceeded for nearly ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... that was on each side next the houses. This, for some time, gave an easy access to the market dry-shod; but, the rest of the street not being pav'd, whenever a carriage came out of the mud upon this pavement, it shook off and left its dirt upon it, and it was soon cover'd with mire, which was not remov'd, the city ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... the world may be upon a woman after she is down in the mire, there is no denying that it is reluctant to tumble her from her eminence and throw her there. A woman will find more champions than detractors in the face of the most serious charge; especially a young and pretty ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind. Because people always read what is new instead of the best of all ages, writers remain in the narrow circle of the ideas which happen to prevail in their time; and so the period sinks deeper and deeper into its own mire. ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the hands of the privileged few who use the power their money gives them to keep their less fortunate fellow men in servile subjection. I want to be rich, very rich, but I will use my wealth for good. With it I will help my fellow man rise from the mire. I will help him throw off the shackles with which conscienceless capitalism has fettered him. I want to be such a power ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... face very tenderly and a little remorsefully. Charles Gould was competent because he had no illusions. The Gould Concession had to fight for life with such weapons as could be found at once in the mire of a corruption that was so universal as almost to lose its significance. He was prepared to stoop for his weapons. For a moment he felt as if the silver mine, which had killed his father, had decoyed him further than he meant ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... of the building which had once been the church, having previously to pass through a farmyard, in which was abundance of dirt and mire. ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... almost impossible one to the very second-rate little American girl, to whom the atmosphere of the "Halls" was far more congenial than the humdrum, quiet life she led in the Camberwell New Road, and she slipped back little by little into the mire out of ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... basely sought her ruin by winning the affections of an innocent girl. Hundreds and thousands of these girls are in like manner led astray, and might be saved if mothers in Israel would take them by the hand of sympathy and lift them from the mire of this moral pollution. ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... He hath given some women strength to do it for Him. And who are you to judge her; she was innocent once—a pearl before swine and if they—spattered her wi' their mud, they never trampled her i' their mire! She hath been at no man's bidding, and fearing no man, hath ruled all men, outdoing 'em word and deed—aha, two rogues have I seen her slay in duello. Howbeit, she is as God made her, and 'tis God only shall judge His own handiwork; she is one wi' ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... heretofore explained, most of the troops had to march directly across the fields, and here it proved absolutely impossible to move the wagon-trains and artillery any distance. This was the main reason why the movement had to be abandoned. I saw many wagons down over their hubs, stalled in the mire. And the guns and caissons of a battery of artillery were stalled near our camp, and had to be abandoned for the time. The horses were saved from miring with great difficulty. A few days later the guns and caissons were hauled out ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... done before her, Angel dragged out the weary years, almost hopeless; and the one object of her toil and solicitude, was only a pitiful wreck of the former stalwart William Way. Only a miserable, wretched creature, that grovelled in the mire of its own degradation, and from whose bosom the last spark of manhood seemed to have forever fled. To look upon him, you would ask, 'Can ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... straight on our way, passing through every mire, running along the verge of every abyss; and we are the most ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... into the mire, and falsifies all his past, and ruins for ever, by the sin of his mature age, his peace of heart and the prosperity of his kingdom. Thenceforward trouble is never far away; and his later years are shaded with the saddening consciousness ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... mud and water; there poor Tommy tumbled about for some time, endeavouring to get out; but it was to no purpose, for his feet stuck in the mud, or slipped off from the bank; his fine waistcoat was dirtied all over, his white stockings covered with mire, his breeches filled with puddle water; and, to add to his distress, he first lost one shoe and then the other—his laced hat tumbled off from his head and was completely spoiled. In this distress he must probably have remained a considerable time, had not the ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... cried sternly, "you have dragged down into the mire one of the proudest names in Europe! Curse you for it! As for you, sir," he added, turning to me, "you are a ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... pursue the conversation, but did not know how to do it. So far from gaining any information, he felt that he was sinking deeper in the mire. "After all," he reflected, "there are worse things in life than being run away with by a pretty girl, even if one doesn't happen to know exactly where she is taking him, and even if she doesn't happen to know exactly whom she is taking." He ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... we ever have succeeded with children like ours? Eugene abandons us just at the critical moment; Aristide has dragged us through the mire, and even that big simpleton Pascal is compromising us by his philanthropic practising among the insurgents. And to think that we brought ourselves to poverty simply to ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... who loved him not, and did not understand his unusual cast of character, his love of nature, his wanderings by the sea, his coming home with his pockets full of wet shells and his trousers damaged by the mire. She snubbed him; she whipped him. He bore her ill treatment with wonderful patience; but it impaired the social side of him forever. Nearly fifty years after he said to one of his ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... loses itself in a swamp, and that in turn merges into the Upper Wild Rice Lake. We paddled and poled down to the end of the little river, and came to a dead stand in the matted roots of the swamp-grass: then waded waist-deep in the mire and slime, each dragging his canoe with the aid of an Indian, until we came out upon the open water. Thence a paddle of two miles along the coast brought us to another little stream flowing into the lake. As we came to its mouth Kawaybawgo was feasting upon a duck he had killed and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... St. Paul, with those of many blessed martyrs, lie exposed, trampled on, polluted, dishonored, and rotting in the weather. Our most holy lord the pope means to build the church to cover them with glory that shall have no equal on the earth. Shall those holy ashes be left to be trodden in the mire?" ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... interests, for the sordid ease of the hearth and the good word of the unworthy. He fills men with thoughts that shake down the unlovely temple of comfort. This was good, to force whoever was not already too far sunk into the mire, high up to the larger atmosphere, whence they could see how minute an atom is man, how infinite and blind and pitiless the might that encompasses his little life. Many feeble spirits ran back homewards ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... to a mission-worker will fill his heart with enthusiasm and energy, and give him a host of jewels washed from the mire and shining like meteors. The same experience coming to a mechanic will fire him with a love for Jesus and a solicitude for souls that will make him pray and fast and weep and work for his fellow-laborers, ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... from the dust-covered and dingy canvas with beauty, sportiveness, and pensive grace. Poor charming woman! Had she not met that wandering boy on the highway; had she not opened to him her house and heart, his sensitive and suffering genius might have been extinguished in the mire. The meeting seemed like the effect of chance, but it was predestination meeting the great man under the form of his first love. That woman saved him; she cultivated him; she excited him in solitude, in liberty, and in love, ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... was enough to banish all patience. Yesterday, on leaving Rosas, she believed herself to be withdrawn forever from the wretched Bohemian life she had so painfully endured. To-day, she felt herself sunk deeper in its mire. Too much mire and misery at last! However, if she ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... fifty miles; and rocks thickly scattered, enough to prove fatal to the strongest wheels that ever issued from "Hutton's." Miss O'Dowd knew this well; she had upon one occasion been upset in travelling it—and a slate-coloured silk dress bore the dye of every species of mud and mire to be found there, for many a year after, to remind her of her misfortune, and keep open the wound of her sorrow. When, therefore, the invitation to Callonby arrived, a grave council of war was summoned, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... fared ill with the licentiate, in this emergency, but fortunately a small party of troopers on the other side, who had watched the chase, now galloped briskly forward to the rescue, and, beating off his pursuers, they recovered Cepeda from the mire, and bore him to ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... of genius has wasted upon so poor a theme. Not even that libretto could degrade the pure, serious, and essentially innocent character of Mozart's conceptions; but, in turn, his refined musical conception has been unable to lift the subject from the mire of Da Ponte's delineation. We know that page after page has been written to unfold the mystic meanings and profound philosophy contained in the story, but our observation has been, that the effect of the whole upon pure minds is simply—disgust. The musical grandeur of the finale rarely saves ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... to delight in the rest of faith while forgetful to fight the good fight of faith; to dwell upon the cleansing and the purity effected by faith, but to have little thought for the poor souls struggling in the mire of sin. If we can put off our coat when He would have us keep it on; if we can wash our feet while He is wandering alone upon the mountains, is there not sad want of fellowship with ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor
... suddenly the vision of better things breaks through the cloud and storm. Then the vision strikes clarity into reason, memory and imagination. In these hours the soul scoffs at sordid things. As the flower climbs upward to escape from the slough, as the foot turns away from the mire, as the nostril avoids the filth, as the ear hates discord, so in these hours the soul scoffs at selfishness and sin. Oh, how beautiful seem purity and gentleness, and sympathy and truth! And these hours are big with ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... not as easy as they had thought. The peninsula was very low and the greater part of it had been overflowed recently. Their feet, no matter how lightly they stepped, sank in the mire, and when they pulled them out again the mud emitted a sticky sigh. An owl perched in a tree, high above the marsh, began to hoot dismally, and ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in one flat hand clutched vulture-wise A glittering image of itself in jet, And with the other groped about its eyes To drive away the dreams that pestered it; And never ceased its coils to toss and beat The mire encumbering ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane And Valmond, emperor of Allemaine, Despoiled of his magnificent attire, Bare-headed, breathless, and besprent with mire, With sense of wrong and outrage desperate, Strode on and thundered at the palace gate: Bushed through the court-yard, thrusting in his rage To right and left each seneschal and page, And hurried up the broad and sounding stair, His white face ghastly ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... our North American Colonies, or have got plunged over head and ears in debt as we are, alack! already; and now, with war raging and all the world in arms against us, getting deeper and deeper into the mire." Without holding my worthy principal in such deep admiration as our head clerk evidently did, I had a most sincere ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... towards the snug small home and the crisp fire: there is no doubt whatever. Mrs. Peerybingle knew it perfectly, as she sat musing before the hearth. It's a dark night, sang the kettle, and the rotten leaves are lying by the way; and, above, all is mist and darkness, and, below, all is mire and clay; and there's only one relief in all the sad and murky air; and I don't know that it is one, for it's nothing but a glare; of deep and angry crimson, where the sun and wind together; set a brand upon the clouds for being guilty of ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... shaking his head). A good affectionate girl. To think that so many like her perish! Get but once into trouble and she'll go from hand to hand until she sinks into the mire, and can never be found again! There was that dear little Nataly. She, too, was a good girl, reared and cared for by a mother. (Takes up paper.) Well, let's see what tricks Ferdinand ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... unrest of the thinly clouded soul to the terrible grief that breaks out in loud denunciations and open and disgusting conflict. And could you draw back the vail that hides the privacies of this life, and see the black waves of distrust and the deep waters of disquietude that cast up mire and dirt continually, which roll and heave in constant commotion out of the world's sight in the seclusion of the Marriage relation, you might doubt that the institution was ordained in mercy, and question its utility. Like every ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... bold Sprite That took his place and shape to-night? Some busy indepenent pug, 105 Retainer to his Synagogue? Alas! quoth he, I'm none of those, Your bosom friends, as you suppose; But RALPH himself, your trusty 'Squire, Wh' has dragg'd your Dunship out o' th' mire, 110 And from th' inchantments of a widow, Wh' had turn'd you int' a beast, have freed you; And, though a prisoner of war, Have brought you safe where you now are; Which you would gratefully repay 115 ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Line. Scatheful the sky With no stars shining; Monstrous the mud That lay deep on the Duck Boards. A weary while Wandered he on; No wit he wotted Of fate that followed Stalking his steps. So passed he the posts All silent and sunken In mire and murk, Till fearful he felt for The doubtful Duck Boards No longer beneath him. Then spake Sidni, Steward of Stores: "Now know I well I have come to the Country That men name No Man's;" And with woe his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... Why, sir, their chiefs, so menacing at first, Became quite friendly at the last. They fear A battle, and will treat on any terms. The Prophet's tide of strength will ebb away, And leave his stranded bark upon the mire. ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... water there was a deep bed of clay, in which the boys were forced to stand while they caught their fish. Here they dabbled in mud and mire like ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Nevertheless, they were endowed with a sort of reckless, dashing courage which now and then seemed to have in it an element of grandeur. But it is time that I told you about myself, and gave you some idea of the development of my character in the thick of this filthy mire into which it had pleased God to plunge me, on ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... would not budge into the bog till I inflicted some rather strong arguments upon him, and then he went in with great reluctance. Before we had proceeded a dozen yards he sank up to his belly in the mire, and left me perched up on two matted tufts about four feet apart. Any disinterested spectator would have supposed at once that I was attempting to favor my guide with a representation of the colossal statue at Rhodes, or the Natural ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... the responsibility of his position, Lieutenant Somers encouraged the weak as they struggled through the mire on their trying march, and with fit words stimulated the enthusiasm of all. After a march of about a mile, a heavy skirmish line was thrown out, which soon confronted ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... for Rome years of peace,—such peace as the wicked make for themselves—A troubled sea, casting up mire and dirt. Wicked women, wicked counts (mayors of the palace, one may call them) like Aetius and Boniface, the real rulers of a ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... just three score year, In wet and dry, in dust and mire, I've sweated, never getting near Fulfilment of my heart's desire. Ah, well I see that bliss below 'Tis Heaven's will to vouchsafe none, Harvest and vintage come and go, I've never got ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... her—the alternative is horrible. I can't escape one conviction, however. It is turning out just as I expected and told her it would. Arnault's aid to her father has been delusive, and Wildmere is deeper in the mire than ever. This is a fine ending of my social career! The girl of my choice puts me off until she can end this Wall Street business more satisfactorily. She must wait and hear her father's reasons for further diplomacy before she can answer me. If Henry knew all this—But ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... to undeceive him? Not I—I, who am so often lifted by some magic spell so far above the earth; I who am dedicate to God; I who am a mystery to myself. Have I not already seen the fairest of the angels dwelling in this mire? Is this child more or less crazed than I am? Has he taken a bolder step in the way of faith? He believes, and his belief no doubt will lead him into some path of light like that in which I walk. But though he is as beautiful as an angel, is he not too feeble to stand ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... for what reason now, and to what end, since his virginal-pure, dew-pearled, Convent lily lay trodden in the mire? And yet, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... grey mare, Meg, A better never lifted leg, Tam skelpit on thro' dub and mire, Despising wind, and rain, and fire; Whiles haulding fast his gude blue bonnet; Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet; Whiles glowring round wi' prudent cares, Lest bogles catch him unawares; Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... the demoralisation of womanhood!"—he said, passionately—"I cannot look on with an easy smile when I see the sex that SHOULD be the saving purity of the world, deliberately sinking itself by its own free will and choice into the mire of the vulgarest social vice, and parting with every redeeming grace, modesty and virtue that once made it sacred and beautiful! I am quite aware that there are many men who not only look on, but even encourage this world-wide debasement of women in order to bring them down ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... the wall they fought, While Death exulted o'er them; deadly Strife Shrieked out a long wild cry from host to host. With blood of slain men dust became red mire: Here, there, fast fell ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... powerless. The plain flaunted itself insolently in face of my distress, and the hills raised their heads with a scornful pride; they met the rain as equals, but me it crushed; I felt as though it would beat me down into the mire. I fell into a passion with the elements, and was seized with a desire to strike out. But the white sheet of water was senseless and impalpable, and I relieved myself by raging inwardly at the fools who complain of civilisation and of railway-trains; they have never walked for ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... were to be wished, that none would write Histories with so great a desire of setting foorth nouelties & strange things, that they feare not, in that regard to broch any fabulous & old-wiues toyes, & so to defile pure gold with filthy mire. But I pray you, how might those drowned men be swimming in the infernal lake, & yet for al that, parletng with their acquaintance & friends? What? Will you coniure, & raise vp vnto vs from death to life ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... the gates of pearl, Together heard them close; then to the left Descending, by a path evil and dark, Hard to be traversed, rugged, entered they The 'SINNERS' ROAD.' The tread of sinful feet Matted the thick thorns carpeting its slope; The smell of sin hung foul on them; the mire About their roots was trampled filth of flesh Horrid with rottenness, and splashed with gore Curdling in crimson puddles; where there buzzed And sucked and settled creatures of the swamp, Hideous in wing and sting, gnat-clouds and flies, With ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... is full of hate these days. War-mad Germany produced "The Hymn of Hate," the lowest song that ever was written in the history of the world. It seems impossible that a censorship so strict could ever let such a mass of mire out to the world. But when one reads this Markham poem, he somehow feels that life is so big, and yet so brief, that even in war we are all brother-men and, as the ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... my own pleasure. I seek to be and have all that I can be and have; I have a right to all that is within my power. Morality is a delusion, justice, like all Ideas, a phantom. Those who believe in ideals, and worship such generalities as self-consciousness, man, society, are still deep in the mire of prejudice and superstition, and have banished the old orthodox phantom of the Deity only to replace it by a new one. Nothing whatever is ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... yonder one ye sight Mincingly pacing mime-like, perfect pest, With jaws wide grinning like a Gallic pup. Stand all round her dunning with demands, 10 "Return (O rotten whore!) our noting books. Our noting books (O rotten whore!) return!" No doit thou car'st? O Mire! O Stuff o' stews! Or if aught fouler filthier dirt there be. Yet must we never think these words suffice. 15 But if naught else avail, at least a blush Forth of that bitch-like brazen brow we'll squeeze. Cry all together in a higher key "Restore (O rotten whore!) our noting books, Our noting ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... for him were far from ready, and he had to wait throughout the winter in the vicinity, in a castle of the Count of Oropesa, and in the midst of an almost continual downpour of rain, which turned the roads to mire, the country almost to a swamp, and the mountains to vapor-heaps. The threshold of his new home was far from an ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... do under the circumstances—hung on in the great city as best they could, in the hope of a better fortune soon, living expectantly from day to day. Each month the city life seemed to demand more money, and each month Bragdon sank deeper into the mire of journalistic art. Worst of all they got into the habit of regarding their life as a temporary makeshift, which they expected to change when they could, tolerating it for the present as best they could,—like most of the workers of the world. Bragdon, at least, knew what he hoped ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... indeed was the use of doing that which he did—picking up the little ones, succouring the parents, prolonging the sufferings of the aged? The very foundations of the social edifice were rotten; all would soon collapse amid mire and blood. A great act of justice alone could sweep the old world away in order that the new world might be built. And at that moment he realised so keenly how irreparable was the breach, how irremediable the evil, how deathly the cancer of misery, that he understood the actions of the violent, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... this season of the year, every thing is deluged; and the roads, full of deep mudholes and formidable stumps, are now at their worst. The heavy wagons move slowly and laboriously forward, sometimes getting so deep in the mire that it is almost impossible to extricate them, and at times impeded by fallen trees, which the driver has to cut away. They are poorly protected against the searching rains, and for the last two ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... wouldn't, even if she were there, which I know is not the case. I was there myself yesterday, and they had never heard anything about her. I wish to heaven you would leave us alone, and let us sink into the mire we are made for! We don't want such fine ladies as you coming patronising us, and trying to make pious examples of us. We are quite ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... clothes and a rather disreputable-looking hat. He sat with a ridiculously contented look on his face, smoking a small briar pipe, and he laughed outright as I circled his mud-hole and came to a stop opposite the car with its nose poked deep down in the mire, for all the ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... if it was not done, and all the usual jargon of the Reformers, which it was not worth while to dispute, and it ended by my promising to talk to Lord Harrowby about it. This I did last night, and he instantly flew into a rage. He said 'he would not be dragged through the mire by those scoundrels. It was an insolence that was not to be borne; let them make their Peers if they would, not Hell itself should make him vote for fifty-six; he would vote for sixty-six or any number but that, that he would not split ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... with which Henry Fox, from very different motives, had fought the marriage bill of 1753. The thought that stirred him was indicated in a phrase or two to his wife at Hawarden: 'July 31.—Parliamentary affairs are very black; the poor church gets deeper and deeper into the mire. I am to speak to-night; it will do no good; and the fear grows upon me from year to year that when I finally leave parliament, I shall not leave the great question of state and church better, but perhaps even worse, than I ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... "This quarrel's mine by virtue of my making it so. Mistress Truelove, you shall have no further annoyance. Now, you Lowland cowards that cannot see a flower bloom but you wish to trample it in the mire, come taste the ground yourself, and be taught that the flower ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... locating. I visited Toledo; it was then muddy, ragged, unhealthful, and unpromising. Chicago was then next looked over. It was likewise apparently without promise. The streets were almost impassable with mire. The sidewalks were seldom continuously level for a square. The first floors of some buildings were six to ten feet above those of others beside them. So walking on the sidewalks was an almost constant going up and down steps. There was then no promise of its almost ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... architecture matching plaintively with the field of beet-root that grew up to its very walls; around it the flat, rich fields, with their thin lines of poplars; the slow, canalized streams; the unlovely farms and cottages; the mire of the lanes; and, shrouding all, a hot autumn mist sweeping slowly through the damp meadows and blotting all cheerfulness from the sun. And in the midst of this pale landscape, so full of ragged edges to an English eye, the English couple, ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... common sense. We all admit development as a fact of history: but how came it about? Here, in language, and still more in logic, we are point-blank at issue. There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well a physical. A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly. 'Tis the crown and glory of organic science that it DOES through FINAL CAUSE, link material and moral; and yet DOES NOT allow us to mingle them in our first conception of laws, and our classification ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... should have been visited with deeper glimpses of the divine. The indignant passions of his unrequited lover are, indeed, passions of the most ignoble clay—not one touch of elevated feeling lifts him for a moment out of the mire. The whole train of circumstances which engender his emotions, prove the lover, in this case, to have been the silliest of mortal men, and his mistress, from the very beginning of his intercourse with her, to have been one of the most abandoned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... thou from me to fate, And to my father my foul deeds relate. Now die!' With that he dragg'd the trembling sire, Slidd'ring thro' clotter'd blood and holy mire, (The mingled paste his murder'd son had made,) Haul'd from beneath the violated shade, And on the sacred pile the royal victim laid. His right hand held his bloody falchion bare, His left he twisted in his hoary hair; Then, with a speeding thrust, his ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... and passed forth: Nevertheless one ran between my feet And made me totter, using speech and signs I smart with shame to think of: then my blood Kindled, and I was moved to smite the knave, And the knave howled; whereat the lewd whole herd Brake forth upon me and cast mire and stones So that I ran sore risk of bruise or gash If they had touched; likewise I heard men say, (Their foul speech missed not mine ear) they cried, "This devil's mass-priest hankers for new flesh Like a dry hound; let him seek such at home, ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... book. Stooping down and reading slowly, Noting every trace around, Of the travel gone before him, Every mark upon the ground, Down the winding, deep-cut roadway Furrowed out by grinding tire, Where the ruts lead to the water, In the half-dried plastic mire, He beholds the telltale marking Of an odd-shaped band of steel, Welded to secure the fellies Of old ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... monuments of former greatness. Imagine Edinburgh grown old and half-ruined, and you have a picture of the towns of Italy, which was a land of elegant stone-built cities at a time when the capitals of northern Europe were little better than collections of wooden sheds half-buried in mire. ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... treated in such a way,—if it consents not only to exercise every patience and forbearance, which must often be the case before intelligence can be produced, but if it consents to be dragged through the mire by being set to pronounce formal judgement upon national emergencies of the highest import, and to do that without the information necessary for a judgement; and when it is believed that information has been withheld, ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... uproar, the Rector entered the village, and was coming full upon Scourhill and his retinue when the ass made a sudden halt before the door of a tinker, its master, and threw its rider upon a large heap of mire. The youth instantly started up, and, without ever looking behind him to thank his attendants for the procession, he ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... plain, sapp'd with underground fire, Soak'd with snow, torn with shot, mash'd to one gory mire! There Fate's iron scale hangs in horrid suspense, While those two famished ogres—the Siege, the Defence, Face to face, through a vapor frore, dismal, and dun, Glare, scenting the breath of each other. ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... a-coming down. We made a shard[16] that let the rest of 'em through. It was the only wall that came in the way of the chase to-day. The second downfall was at the brook by Bourton-Windrush, I think they call it. Dobbin being a bit short of wind, and quilting sadly, stuck fast in the mire, and tumbled on to his nose in scrambling out. Marry, sir, but 'twas a famous chase; the like of it I never saw before. 'Twas grand at first to see the hart unharboured—a stag with all his ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... Kentucky. The Rebel officers undertook to carry off the immense supplies of food which had been accumulated; but in the panic, barrels of meat and flour, sacks of coffee, hogsheads of sugar were rolled into the streets and trampled into the mire. Millions of dollars' worth were lost to the Confederacy. The farmers in the country feared that they would lose their slaves, and from all the section round they hurried the poor creatures towards the South, hoping to find a place where they ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... them. You are posing for the world, and I am the only one who knows it. Have I not been with you everywhere, and have I, with my two eyes, which certainly are as good as yours—have I seen these things you describe?" It was pathetic, for the muse of the poet soon felt the mire in which it daily trod. The fire faded from the girl's eye, her radiance disappeared, her noble enthusiasms paled, her fantastic and brilliant imagination dulled, and soon she sat listlessly in our midst, a tired, ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... annually frequent that health-giving resort from almost every land. On the other hand, in the case of our own Bath, although well known to the ancient Romans—as also in the later case of Bolsover—tradition avers that an unhealthy pig, instinctively “wallowing in the mire” produced by the oozing spring, and emerging from the uncleanly bath cured of its ailment, was the humble instrument to demonstrate the health-restoring power of the water, to the subsequent advantage of suffering humanity. Other cases, more or ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... having given over beating the vizier Saouy, left him in the mire, and taking the fair Persian, marched home with her, attended by the people, with shouts and acclamations for the action he ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... collapsed, groaning, under his burden. Macgregor, racked as he was, shed tears for his friend's sake. Time had no significance except as a measure of suspense and torture. But Willie held on, directed by some instinct, it seemed, over that awful shell-fragment-studded mire, round the verges of shell-formed craters, past dead and wounded waiting for succour—on, on, till the very guns seemed to have grown weary, and the rain ceased, and the air grew chillier as with ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... in search of fortune—poverty had destroyed their faculty of surrendering to fate; they were weary of waiting and had resolved to take matters into their own hands. And now here they were, sunk in wretchedness. They could not stir from the spot; they only labored and sunk deeper into the mire. But they continued to strive, with the strength of their bodies, until that gave way, and it was all over ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the Little Wabash, we had to pass through three miles of swamp frequently above our ancles in the mire, for the horse could scarcely drag the empty waggon. We at length came out on "Hardgrove's prairie." The prospect which here presented itself was extremely gratifying to our eyes. Since I had left the little prairie in the Wyandot reserve, I had been buried in eternal forests; and, ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... had driven the rebels from their strong works without a struggle to retain them, he moved forward with the gallant army. "On to Richmond!" again sounded along the lines, and the soldiers toiled through mud and mire, hoping and expecting to strike the final blow that ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... standing in the road. Instinctively, Chad swung on in spite of the roar of laughter and astonishment that greeted him and, as Tom banged the gate, the ram swerved and Chad shot off sidewise as from a catapult and dropped, a most unheroic little knight, in the mire. That ended Chad's chivalry in the hills, for in the roars of laughter that greeted him, Chad recognized Caleb Hazel's as the loudest. If HE laughed, chivalry could never thrive there, and Chad gave it up; but the ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... that time like the other little children of the country,—that is, in drinking, eating, and sleeping; in eating, sleeping, and drinking; and in sleeping, drinking, and eating. Still he wallowed in the mire, blackened his face, trod down his shoes at heel; at the flies he did oftentimes yawn, and willingly run after the butterflies, the empire whereof belonged to his father. He sharpened his teeth with ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... out?" she murmured. "Shall I never get to the wall? I shall perish in this forest. I am sinking in this mire." ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... plagued, impatient things, All dream and unaccountable desire; Crawling, but pestered with the thought of wings; Spreading through every inch of earth's old mire, Mystical hanker after ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... beasts that walk the earth, and takes the poor cockney journeyman out a ten miles' walk almost before daylight, on the rare summer holiday mornings, to angle with rude tackle in reservoir or canal—should be dragged through such mire as this in many an English shire in our day. If English landlords want to go on shooting game much longer, they must give up selling it. For if selling game becomes the rule, and not the exception (as it seems likely to do before long), good-bye to sport in England. Every ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... edited. MORE was wholly unsuited for psychical research; free from guile himself, he was too inclined to judge others to be of this nature also. But his common sense and critical attitude towards enthusiasm saved him, no doubt, from many falls into the mire of fantasy. ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... deep wells of wonder sprang, Both children of the cosmic dream, Alike with yonder bird that sang, And little lives that flit and gleam; Sparks from the central rose of fire That at the heart of being burns, That draws the lily from the mire And trodden dust ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... them no approach to union. When what sir Wilton called love had evaporated, he returned to his mire, with a resentful feeling that the handsome woman—his superior in everything that belongs to humanity—had bewitched him to his undoing. The truth was, she had ceased to charm him. The fault was not in her; it lay in the dulled eye of the swiftly deteriorating ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... which dreams high above all storms, unsoiled by all burdens; but perhaps the strongest love is that which, whilst it adores, drags its feet through mire, and burns its brow in heat, for ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... that the fields are dank and ways are mire, With whom you might converse, and by the fire Help waste the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... twenty miles in slush and mire, and their hearts were heavier than their heels. No, they would go to bed while the others did the jumpin', and next day they ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... to advise, to plead, to pray; the right to make her desk a Delphi, if God so permitted; the right to be all that the phrase "noble, Christian woman" means. But not the right to vote; to harangue from the hustings; to trail her heaven-born purity through the dust and mire of political strife; to ascend the rosta of statesmen, whither she may send a worthy husband, son, or brother, but whither she can never ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... horse behind thee, and learn to run on foot," he counselled him. "Thou shalt go with me to the greenwood through mire and moss and fen. Thou shalt go with me to the forest, and dwell with me there, until I have got our pardon from ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... Man Who is So Angry He Wallows in the Mire; journey to Vait-hua on Tahuata island; fight with the devil-fish; story of a cannibal feast and the two ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... idea of doing something, as he fled, like a Parthian bowman. The stampede soon became general; numbers of persons threw themselves on the ground. I saw the mother of four children sprawling in the mire, and the bilious taxpayer fall over her, and then I followed the youthful strategist into an open door. Inside were about twenty people. The door was shut to, and for about twenty minutes we heard muskets going off. Then, ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... Hand-bound and sent him guarded to the camp, And the poor comrade shivering stood the watch Till dawn of day and I was made aware. Among the true were some vainglorious fools Called by the fife and drum from native mire To lord and strut in shoulder-straps and buttons. Scrubs, born to brush the boots of gentlemen, By sudden freak of fortune found themselves Masters of better men, and lorded it As only base and brutish natures can— Braves on ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... that it behoved me to move upward to my Creator by the keeping of his Commandments. Wherefore I left all and followed him, and I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord that he delivered me out of the mire, and from the making of bricks, and from the harsh and deadly ruler of the darkness of this world, and that he showed me the short and easy road whereby I shall be able, in this earthen body, eagerly to embrace the Angelic life. Seeking to attain to it the sooner, I chose ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... about sixty yards into the swamp, and the last thirty yards were at an angle from the first thirty. Then he came to a bit of hard ground, a tiny islet in the mire, upon which he could stand without sinking at all. He looked back from there, and he could not see his point of departure. Bushes, weeds, and saplings grew out of the swamp to a height of a dozen or fifteen feet, and he was inclosed completely. All the vegetation ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to say to Louisa, "what will become, of you when I am no longer here?... Fortunately," he would add, fondling Jean-Christophe, "I can go on until this fellow pulls you out of the mire." But he was out in his reckoning; he was at the end of his road. No one would have suspected it. He was surprisingly strong. He was past eighty; he had a full head of hair, a white mane, still gray in ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... and how worthily they turned it to a grace in the wearing of it. And now he saw clearly the vain, dependent, passionate temperament of his son, and knew how, by the lack of training, the plant had been ruined and draggled in the mire, which might have beautifully flowered and borne good fruit had it been staked and supported; the poor espalier thing that could not stand alone. Nemesis had visited his home. He felt the consequences of his ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... pigmy-child. She had heard him pour forth torrents of eloquence on the Sabbath, and felt the force of a nature exceptionally rich and strong in its conception of religious truths and human needs, only to find him on the morrow floundering hopelessly in the mire of rudimentary science, or getting, by repeated perusals, but an imperfect idea of some author's words, which it seemed to her he ought to have grasped ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... ambassador from our Master; and I will make it my business to procure a license when he is fit for the same, trusting he will be a shaft cleanly polished, and meet to be used in the body of the kirk; and that he shall not turn again, like the sow, to wallow in the mire of heretical extremes and defections, but shall have the wings of a dove, though he hath lain among ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... neither courage nor rapture. Damn it, couldn't he be freed from one without falling into the other? Lee told himself that it must be possible to leave permanently the fenced roads of Eastlake for the high hills; it wasn't necessary to go down into the bottoms, the mire. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... duffle Bath cloak, with which she was wont to attend the tent sermons of the Kilwinning and Dreghorn preachings in cold and inclement weather. Her black silk petticoat was pinned up, that it might not receive injury from the nimble paddling of her short steps in the mire; and she carried her best shoes and stockings in a handkerchief to be changed at the manse, and had fortified her feet for the road in coarse worsted hose, and thick plain-soled ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... in Gaelic to the post-boy on the opposite bank, and making the most frantic gestures you ever saw, in which he was joined by some other wild man on foot, who had come across by a short cut, knee-deep in mire and water. As we began to see what this meant, we (that is, Fletcher and I) scrambled on after them, while the boy, horses, and carriage were plunging in the water, which left only the horses' heads and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... and shuts out the airs of heaven. Yet I must learn these lessons here, if I am to learn them anywhere, and must be filled with joy if my feet are on the right road and my face set towards 'the gate which is called beautiful,' though I may fall many times in the mire and often ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... set themselves to joyous music in the ears of Anthony Dalaber as he hastened homeward through the miry and darkening streets towards his lodging in St. Alban Hall. He trod on air. He regarded neither the drizzling rain overhead nor the mire and dirt of ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... get no Tidings yet of our Brave Adventurers, notwithstanding we despacht men to the likeliest Stations to enquire after them. They were still Scuffleing in the Mire, and could not Possibly forward the Line this whole day more than one Mile and 64 Chains. Every Step of this Day's Work was thro' a cedar Bog, where the Trees were somewhat Smaller and grew more into a Thicket. ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... book in my pocket), and pass the time agreeably till the tide turned. I therefore prevailed with the captain to put me ashore. Being landed, I found the greatest part of my meadow was really a marsh, in crossing which, to come at my tree, I was up to my knees in mire; and I had not placed myself under its shade five minutes, before the mosquitoes in swarms found me out, attacked my legs, hands, and face, and made my reading and my rest impossible; so that I returned to the beach, and called for the boat to come and take me ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... it conveyed but the impression of light. The candor of boyhood, the simplicity of the villager were still there—refined by intelligence, but intelligence that seemed to have traversed through knowledge—not with the footstep, but the wing—unsullied by the mire—tending towards the star—seeking through the various grades of being but the lovelier forms of truth and goodness; at home as should be the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... adorned her, and with fine raiment, before I gave her to the Gothic people. That is to me the hardest of all my woes, that Svanhild's beauteous locks should in the mire be trodden under ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... with strange and sudden passion. "Women love—ah!—with what force and tenderness and utter abandonment of self! But their love is in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred utterly wasted; it is a largesse flung to the ungrateful, a jewel tossed in the mire! If there were not some compensation in the next life for the ruin wrought on loving women, the Eternal God himself would be a mockery ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... of Hawick, does not appear. There are two other passes from Jedburgh to Hermitage castle; the one by the Note of the Gate, the other over the mountain, called Winburgh. Either of these, but especially the latter, is several miles shorter than that by Hawick, and the Queen's Mire. But, by the circuitous way of Hawick, the queen could traverse the districts of more friendly clans, than by going directly into the disorderly province ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... No Goblin, Wood-god, Fairy, Elfe, or Fiend, Satyr or other power that haunts the Groves, Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion Draw me to wander after idle fires; Or voyces calling me in dead of night, To make me follow, and so tole me on Through mire and standing pools, to find my ruine: Else why should this rough thing, who never knew Manners, nor smooth humanity, whose heats Are rougher than himself, and more mishapen, Thus mildly kneel to me? sure there is a power ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... a mile Dick Sand and his companions must march over this spongy soil. It even became so bad that Mrs. Weldon was obliged to stop, for she sank deep in the mire. Hercules, Bat, and Austin, wishing to spare her the unpleasantness more than the fatigue of a passage across this marshy plain, made a litter of bamboos, on which she consented to sit. Her little Jack was placed in her arms, and they endeavored to cross that pestilential marsh ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... weather, overclouded all the clear and lucid spaces of his brain in a moment; and then, after the dissipations which he could not resist, he sank, utterly exhausted in body, heart, and mind, into a collapsed condition bordering upon imbecility. Such a character will drag a man down into the mire if he is left to himself, or bring him to the highest heights of political power if he has some stern friend to keep him in hand. Neither Chesnel, nor the lad's father, nor Aunt Armande had fathomed the depths of a nature so nearly akin on many sides ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... be near it now; It's scarce a mile to where the trail strikes off to skirt the slough, And then the dip to Indian Spring, the wooded rise, and—strange! Yet here should stand the blasted pine that marked our farther range; And here—what's this? A ragged swab of ruts and stumps and mire! Sure this is not the sacred grove that ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... was that the ascendancy of the Corsican brought in a reign of violence and blood. Napoleon became the trampler of vineyards. His armies made Europe into mire. England—agreeing at Amiens not to fight—fought. Pitt, now in the last year of his life, used all of his resources to bring about a league against France. He persuaded Alexander of Russia, Francis of Austria, and Gustavus of Sweden—all easy dupes of a greater than themselves—to make a new coalition. ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... I believe I should have been a wise man; but the first year, from unfortunately buying bad seed, the second from a late harvest, we lost half our crops. This overset all my wisdom, and I returned, "like the dog to his vomit, and the sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire." ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... main, to help him at a dead lift, but all the while forgot to goad on his oxen and lay his shoulder to the wheels, as it behoved him; as if a Lord have mercy upon us alone would have got his cart out of the mire. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... impossible to believe that any human being is incapable of understanding that, in allowing herself merely to smile at the expense of a fellow-creature who has loyally held out his hand to her, she is casting herself into a mire from which it will be impossible, with the best will in the world, ever to rescue her. I dwell so many miles above the puddles in which these filthy little vermin sprawl and crawl and bawl their cheap obscenities, that I cannot possibly ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Mueller. These three went to look at Nab Cottage, where poor Hartley Coleridge ended his brief and clouded days; and they had gone some way upon their homeward walk before they were rejoined by Maulevrier and Mary, the damsel's kilted skirt considerably the worse for mud and mire. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... table with a crash, and a young man had bounded upon one of the chairs. He had the face of one inspired—pale, eager, with wild hawk eyes, and tangled hair. His sword hung straight from his side, and his riding-boots were brown with mire. ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... their doom; of hundreds of houses crashing down the surging river, carrying men, women and children beyond the hope of rescue; of a night of horrors, multitudes dying amid the awful terrors of flood and fire, plunged under the wild torrent, buried in mire, or consumed in devouring flames; of helpless creatures rending the air with pitiful screams crying aloud in their agony, imploring help with outstretched hands, and finally sinking with ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... found in "courage-faith" and "courage-confidence," and that the way to acquire these qualities is to assume that you have them. There is no denying the undoubted fact that men and women have been rescued from the deepest mire of poverty and despair and lifted to planes of happy abundance by what is known as "faith." But what is "faith"? And "faith" in What? And ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... man. He was born at hazard, by misfortune, in a hovel, in a cellar, in a cave, no one knows where, no one knows of whom. He came out of the dust to fall into the mire. He had only so much father and mother as was necessary for his birth, after which all shrank from him. He has crawled on as best he could. He grew up bare-footed, bare-headed, in rags, with no ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo |
