"Mire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was his chief charm. Everybody who knew him felt that he was a man, a large-hearted, generous friend, always ready to help everybody and everything out of their troubles, whether it was a pig stuck in the mire, a poor widow in trouble, or a farmer who needed advice. He had a helpful mind, open, frank, transparent. He never covered up anything, never had secrets. The door of his heart was always open so that anyone ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... hands and eyes, but this your nee'le to keep? What devil had you else to do? ye keep, ich wot, no sheep. Cham[50] fain abroad to dig and delve, in water, mire and clay, Sossing and possing in the dirt still from day to day. A hundred things that be abroad cham set to see them well: And four of you sit idle at home and cannot ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... portion of it demeans itself in its servility to the court; the other portion is amalgamated with that quill-driving rabble who are converting the blood of the king's subjects into ink; another perishes stifled beneath vile robes, the ignoble atoms of cabinet-dust which an office drags up out of the mire;" and all, parvenus of the old or of the new stock, form a band called the court, 'The court!" exclaims D'Argenson. "The entire evil is found in this word, The court has become the senate of the nation; the least of the valets at Versailles ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... we had been compelled to go afoot over that drenched soil," said he, "we should still be dragging along in a pestilential mire. Since our departure from Zanzibar, half our beasts of burden would have died with fatigue. We should be looking like ghosts ourselves, and despair would be seizing on our hearts. We should be in continual squabbles with our guides ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... of a vulgar crime, or the fine astuteness of elegant wickedness. Another is resigned, a perfect mimer, but stupid. All have slight yearnings after order and work, but they are pushed back into their mire by society, which makes no inquiry as to what there may be of great men, poets, intrepid souls, and splendid organizations among these vagrants, these gypsies of Paris; a people eminently good and eminently evil—like all the masses who suffer—accustomed to endure unspeakable woes, and whom ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... quickly sensed the situation. He was a kindly man, who had pulled many an ass out of the mire of confusion. So with a glance at Mr. Tutt he came ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... deny that the devil might afflict mankind, but they declared themselves unqualified to prove it. There began in them, in short, the dawn of human sympathies, and the growth of spiritual humility. Cotton Mather, with all that he represented, sinks into the mire; but the true Puritan arises, and goes forward with lightened heart to the mighty ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... When once a man has given his name to a woman, he told me, he cannot take it back; it belongs to her for the rest of her days, and she has a right to dispose of it. She may sully it, cover it with mire, drag it from wine shop to wine shop, and her husband can do nothing. That being the case, my course was soon taken. That same day, I sold the fatal meadow, and sent the proceeds of it to Claudine, wishing to keep nothing of the price of shame. I then had a document drawn up, authorising ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... the new-comer seats himself in solemn silence, and for five minutes the conversation is only kept up by monosyllables, in spite of the incredible efforts of all parties to appear unconcerned. The young man in his confusion plunges deeper into the mire;—he twists and writhes in secret agony—remarks on the sultriness of the weather, though the thermometer is below the freezing point; and commits a thousand gaucheries—too happy if he can escape from a situation than which nothing can possibly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... and scanned the red moccasins. They showed not a grain of dust, not a speck of mire, not a stain of grass, or weed, or water, although he had walked in them—or, if you please, they had walked with him—through many a mile of grassy wood and reedy swamp, where path was none, that had ever been trodden by foot of man. As clean and bright and red were they as ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... years after his entrance into Parliament, as the following curious political memorandum will prove:—"I like it no better for being from France—whence all ills come—altar of liberty, begrimed at once with blood and mire." ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... should lose his whole substance, he must never give way to annoyance. Money must be so subservient to gentility as never to be worth a thought. Of course, the SUPREMELY aristocratic thing is to be entirely oblivious of the mire of rabble, with its setting; but sometimes a reverse course may be aristocratic to remark, to scan, and even to gape at, the mob (for preference, through a lorgnette), even as though one were taking the crowd and its squalor for a sort of raree show which ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of those blind ones who in all ages have opposed the light of progress. Few there are to insist openly that woman remain a passive instrument of reproduction. The subject of birth control is being lifted out of the mire into which it was cast by puritanism and given its proper place among the sciences and the ideals of this generation. With this effort has come an illumination of all other social problems. Society is beginning to give ear to the promise of modern womanhood: "When you have ceased ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... were keen, who lived upon joy, from the very constitution of their nature, how were such natures—and he knew that he was of the number—to avoid sinking into the mire of the Slough of Despond, how were they to rejoice in the valley of humiliation? What was to be their well in the vale of misery? How were the pools to be filled ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... but lately engaged, to their sorrow, against him, made up to the conqueror; admiration for him permeated even the French army. "At Paris," wrote D'Alembert to Voltaire, "everybody's head is turned about the King of Prussia; five months ago he was trailed in the mire." ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... say such things to her, but they were the principles on which all his sentiments were founded: and as she knew him mire and more intimately, compared and discussed their tastes and likings, and the grounds on which they were formed, there were tokens, which could not help now and then showing themselves, of those opinions of which Marian had ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... your oaths, the foul words, and all the corruption of your hearts. Did you not see his crooked claws when he set the bowl before you, that you might wallow in the debasing drink? Did you not hear him laugh, when you sat befouling yourselves in the mire of your sin, ripening for ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... golden locks caked over with the dust of injustice and oppression—till those looking at him have sometimes cried in terror, "He is the Evil and not the Good of life!" and have sought, if it were not possible, to exterminate him—shall yet, at last, bathed from the mire and dust of ages in the streams of friendship and freedom, leap upwards, with white wings spread, resplendent in the sunshine of a distant future—the essentially Good and Beautiful of ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... chiefly in the mountains, as do likewise the wild-goats. These swine are very fat, but so excessively wild that they are never to be got at by a man, unless when asleep, or rolling themselves in the mire. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... Sundays when we did not go to church because the weather was bad, or there was no preaching within twenty miles of us, or my mother was not well, or the roads were impassable with mire or frost, Mary 'Liza and I learned two questions in the Shorter Catechism, and she learned the references as well. We also committed a hymn to memory, and five verses of a psalm. Beyond this, no religious exercise was binding upon us, and there was a great deal of the day to be got rid of. Mary ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... his evil day, A Pad came pacing down the way; The Cur, with never-ceasing tongue, Upon the passing traveller sprung. The Horse, from scorn provoked to ire, Flung backward; rolling in the mire, The Puppy howled, and bleeding lay; The Pad in peace pursued ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... that haunts us Deceives our rash desire; It whispers of the glorious gods, And leaves us in the mire. We cannot learn the cipher That's writ upon our cell; Stars taunt us by a mystery Which we ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Dennie writing in his introduction, "Literary industry, usefully employed, has a sort of draught upon the bank of opulence, and has the right of entry into the mansion of every Maecenas.... Authors far elevated above the mire of low avarice have thought it debasement to ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... there was a little sprinkling of snow on the ground, as befitted the season, it had thawed in the streets of Westham, and as a matter of course the doctor, who always appeared to choose the very muddiest of places to tramp in, had managed to collect as much of the mire as he could on his ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... liked to 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 ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... enchanted us. The embroiling, first, of our Spirits, and then, of our affairs." "I am sure, we shall be worse than brutes, if we fly upon one another, at a time when the floods of Belial are upon us." "The Devil has made us like a troubled sea, and the mire and mud begins now also to heave up apace. Even good and wise men suffer themselves to fall into their paroxysms, and the shake which the Devil is now giving us, fetches up the dirt which before lay still at the bottom of our sinful hearts. If we allow the mad dogs of Hell ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... carriages, and farmers riding on horse-back, suggested the propriety of his bestriding his staff, and following after the funeral. The procession marched at a brisk pace, and on reaching the kirk-yard style, as each rider dismounted, "Daft Jock" descended from his wooden steed, besmeared with mire and perspiration, exclaiming, "Hech, sirs, had it no been for the fashion o' the thing, I micht as weel hae been on my ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... 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
... for lying there; First what he is inquire: An Orient pearl is often found In depth of dirty mire. ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... soul! Was the marquis telling the truth? Had he lied? Was not this the culmination of the series of tortures the marquis had inflicted upon him all these years: to let him fly once more, only to drag him down into swallowing mire from which he might never rise? And yet . . . if it were true!—and the pall of shame and ignominy were lifted! The ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... light on the way, to the degree in which one little adjustment helps men to harmonize with nature and her eternal forces, and in the measure in which one solid step adds to the causeway which man is building out of the mire of ignorance to the heights of wisdom—in so much is the science of character analysis an aid to man and his striving ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... ardently devoted and valiantly true to Emmy as ever. I felt a desire to shield her with my life against the baseness of this world and let my body serve her as a bridge across the earthly pool of mire. And higher than ever, I held her image above every profaning thought. I considered it a sacrilege to think of her as one of the thousand females about me and to confound my love with the wooing and wedding of ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... in life is to gratify their physical desires. Some of them are delicate, and some of them are coarse. That is a matter of temperament. But all of them are hungry. That is a matter of principle. Whether they grub in the mire for their food like swine, or browse daintily upon the tree-tops like the giraffe, the question of life for those who follow this way is the same. "How much can we hold? How can we obtain the most pleasure for these five senses of ours before they wear out?" And ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... the feudal world. The master of the tower received his vassals with some such words as these: "Thou shalt go when thou willest, and if need be with my help; at least, if thou shouldst sink in the mire, I myself will dismount to succour thee." These are the very words of ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... effected momentous results! He saw how, whenever failure and dishonor 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
... God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing; I am come into deep waters, where the floods ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... lead under a woman who loved him not, and did not understand his unusual cast of character, his love of nature, his wanderings by the sea, his coming home with his pockets full of wet shells and his trousers damaged by the mire. She snubbed him; she whipped him. He bore her ill treatment with wonderful patience; but it impaired the social side of him forever. Nearly fifty years after he said to one ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... once driving a heavy load along a very muddy way. At last he came to a part of the road where the wheels sank half-way into the mire, and the more the horses pulled, the deeper sank the wheels. So the Waggoner threw down his whip, and knelt down and prayed to Hercules the Strong. "O Hercules, help me in this my hour of distress," quoth he. But Hercules ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... a citizen lives: Catullus adjures thee Headlong into the mire below topsy-turvy to drown him. Only, where the superfluent lake, the spongy putrescence, 10 Sinks most murkily flushed, descends ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... Celano says, the bright morning star. His simple preaching took hold on consciences, snatched his hearers from the mire and blood in which they were painfully trudging, and in spite of themselves carried them to the very heavens, to those serene regions where all is silent save the voice of the heavenly Father. "The whole country trembled, the barren land was already covered with a rich harvest, the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... ran over David Lawrence. That part of courage allied to hope seemed crushed out of him as if by torture. Could he drag his daughter's name through the mire? for it would be that in any attempt to bring Eastman ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... Mouse, the Constables owne word, If thou art dun, weele draw thee from the mire. Or saue your reuerence loue, wherein thou stickest Vp to the eares, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... literature too much. Bad 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
... of London; and precisely because she was this we must set her down as intrinsically a good woman—one of the truest, frankest, and most right-minded of whom the history of such women has anything to tell. All that external circumstances could do to push her down into the mire was done; yet she was not pushed down, but emerged as one of those rare souls who have in their natures an uncontaminated spring of goodness and honesty. Unlike Barbara Villiers or Lucy Walters or Louise de Keroualle, she was neither a harpy nor ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... sunny afternoon one and twenty knights were riding along the highway in the northern part of Spain. As they were passing a deep mire they heard cries for help, and turning, saw a poor leper who was sinking in the mud. One of the knights, a handsome young man, was touched by the cries. He dismounted, rescued the poor fellow, took him upon his own horse, and thus ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... one very bad fault. He was afflicted with what the Western people called the 'swaleys,' and could not go downhill. I frequently had to dismount and back him down, as the only way of getting along. The road often lay through forests and clearings, in mire, and among the roots of the beeches, with which my poor beast was constantly struggling. I would sometimes emerge from a dark wood, five miles through, perhaps, and find myself near a clearing where the farmer's house I was seeking ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... hours of ease, had deserted Hugh. When the last hour of the last day was over, and the dawn which he had bound himself in honor not to see found him sitting alone in his room, where he had sat all night, horror fell upon him at what he had done. Now that its mire was upon him he saw by how foul, by how dastardly ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... times promised, but in vain, and thy sins have increased a hundredfold; because, like all profligates, thou hast shunned the holy estate of matrimony, and preferred to wallow in the mire of unchastity, with any one who fell in the way of thy adulterous ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... was not precisely like that of Cooper's Castaway, but rather like that of a fugitive from his ship on some tropical coast who, on swimming to the shore, finds himself in a mangrove swamp, waist-deep in mire, tangled in rope-like roots, straining ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... 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, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... his arms. I never saw a man stand at the shore where she had been morally wrecked, waiting for the waves to bring back even her corpse to his arms but I have seen woman do it. I have seen woman with her white arms lift man from the mire of degradation, and hold him to her bosom as though he ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... religions, therefore truly of none. Thus by naturalising himself some would think him a very dangerous fellow to the State; but he is not greatly to be feared, for this dejection of his is only like a rogue that goes on his knees and elbows in the mire to further his cogging. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... tranquil nights that give in dreams The moonlight of the morning's joy!— All this my heart could dwell on here, But for those gross mementoes near; Those sullying truths that cross the track Of each sweet thought and drive them back Full into all the mire and strife And vanities of that man's life, Who more than all that e'er have glowed With fancy's flame (and it was his, In fullest warmth and radiance) showed What an impostor Genius is; How with that strong, mimetic art Which ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... old man and his son were dragged into the mire, and were even committed to prison, though they were soon released," added Mr. Woolridge. "I think he was a great man, and I was ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... charge of the gun ordered his troopers and drivers to ride across the fallen banner; and the hoofs and muddy wheels rent it to pieces and befouled it in the mire. ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... see them gritting their teeth at me? Can't you hear them howling day and night? Can you possibly say that they are kind or compassionate? Or are they willing to be good and great when one comes? Do you have confidence in a single one of them? Have they not even dragged your good name into the mire? Are any of the things that are sacred to you and to me sacred to them? Can they be moved the one-thousandth part of an inch by your distress or my distress or the distress of any human being? Is not the slime of slander thick upon their tongues? Is not your smile a thorn in their flesh? ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... for a season thrown on her back, she shall not be overcome, but will so strive and warsle aneath the foul grips of that rampant Arminian, the English high-priest Laud, that he shall himself be cast into the mire, or choket wi' the stoure of his own bakiefu's of abominations, wherewith he would overwhelm and bury the Evangil. Yea, even though the shield of his mighty men is made red, and his valiant men are in scarlet, he ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... rocks and through mire, Trembling with weakness, yet straining each nerve, Fated at last in despair to expire, Uncomprehending, yet ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... 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, Snuff ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... fat salamanders, long-lost and forgotten tadpoles as large as rats, gigantic toads, enormous flat beetles, all kinds of hairy, scaly, spiny, blear-eyed, bulbous, shapeless monsters without name, mud-colored offspring of the mire that had been sleeping there for hundreds of years, woke up, and crawled in and out, and wallowed and interwriggled, and devoured each other, like the great saurians and batrachians in my Manuel de Geologie ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... expected at night, and the pasty's made hot, They broach the brown ale, and they fill the black pot, And the goodwife would wish the goodman in the mire, Ere he lack'd a soft ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... everything that is pure and good in the government of our country is being dragged through the mire of party politics. If a measure is brought forward, I am afraid the question is not, Will this be for the best interest of society or the country? but, Will it help or hurt the party? If a public position of great responsibility becomes vacant, they do not appoint the man who is best qualified to ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... from Mourne and Bann, Blood he'll draw o'er shafts of spears; He will cast to mire and sand These three ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... had a little pony, his name was Dapple Grey; I lent him to a lady, to ride a mile away. She whipped him and she lashed him, She rode him through the mire; I would not lend my pony now ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... 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
... shall forget. We shall be cheerful and happy. You remember: 'Where beauty shines amidst mire and baseness there is only torment'.... You need not mind, ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... there, for the apartments preparing for him were far from ready, and he had to wait throughout the winter in the vicinity, in a castle of the Count of Oropesa, and in the midst of an almost continual downpour of rain, which turned the roads to mire, the country almost to a swamp, and the mountains to vapor-heaps. The threshold of his new home was far from ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... and the Visigoth come here, The trampler under foot, and he whose eyes, Unblest, behold not where the glory lies; The wallower in mire, whose sidelong leer ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... the fields are [Page 10] the tillers of the soil wading barefoot and bareheaded in mud and water, holding plough or harrow drawn by an amphibious creature called a carabao or water-buffalo, burying by hand in the mire the roots of young rice plants, or applying as a fertiliser the ordure and garbage of the city. Such unpoetic toils never could have inspired the georgic muse of Vergil ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... taking place." He adds: "There is no such thing on record. It is shifting the ground from one field of observation to another to make this statement, and when the assertions go so far as to exclude from the domain of science those who will not be dragged into this mire of mere assertion, then ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... spoken since his fall, so furious was he at having been outwitted by a boy, and having not only allowed him to escape, but being himself rolled in the mire—raised his voice in a tremendous shout. All listened intently, but no answering ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... No man becomes a devil all at once, and no man becomes an angel all at once. Trust yourself to Christ, and He will lift you to Himself; turn your back upon Him, as some of you are doing, and you will settle down, down, down in the muck and the mire of your own sensuality and selfishness, until at last the foul ooze spreads over your head, and you are lost in the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... idols to serve the true and living God, received Christ into their hearts, and found the power of salvation in the gospel. They found power in the blood of Christ to cleanse them from their impurities, and not only so, but also to raise them so far from the mire of sin and wickedness abounding around them as to keep them faithful in Christ Jesus while still ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... am," Maxendorf declared, "because the world is governed by laws, and in the main they are laws of justice and right. The people of my country fifty years ago were as deep in the mire as the people of your country to-day. Their liberation has already dawned. That is why I stand where I do. Your people, alas! are still dwellers in the caves. The moment for you has not yet arrived. When I heard that Maraton had come to England, ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... nearest and dearest friends of heresy, if they do not as they do, will be their chief executioners, and help first to bring a faggot to burn them. What mulct, what penance soever is enjoined, they dare not but do it, tumble with St. Francis in the mire amongst hogs, if they be appointed, go woolward, whip themselves, build hospitals, abbeys, &c., go to the East or West Indies, kill a king, or run upon a sword point: they perform all, without any muttering ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... reasons for the prohibition may be considered as two,—the impossibility of setting forth the glory of the Infinite Spirit in any form, and the certainty that the attempt will sink the worshipper deeper in the mire of sense. An image degrades God and damages men. By it religion reverses its nature, and becomes another clog to keep the soul among the things seen, and an ally of all fleshly inclinations. We know how idolatry seemed to cast a spell over the Israelites from Egypt to Babylon, and how their ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... to the trough and drank of its sweet current,—only for fun's sake, for she was not thirsty. Finally, she set out to follow the stream up to its head. But poor Ellen had not gone more than half way towards the fence, when she all at once plunged into the mire. The green grass growing there had looked fair enough, but there was running water and black mud under the green grass, she found to her sorrow. Her shoes, her stockings, were full. What was to be done now? The journey ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... displayed all the naive minuteness of the primitive painters; in fact, his mind, barely raised from the clods, delighted in petty details. The stove, with its perspective all awry, was tame and precise, and in colour as dingy as mire. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... 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 go, without ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... 'Go 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 ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... eye softened into an expression of the deepest sorrow, not unmingled with contempt, on beholding the degradation of this splendidly endowed young man. He reminded him of a fallen angel, with his glorious plumage all soiled and polluted with the mire and corruption of earth. He never had had faith in his integrity; be believed him to be the tempter of Louis, the deceiver of Mittie, reckless and unprincipled where pleasure was concerned, but he did not believe him capable of such a daring transgression. ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... flatly disobeyed. "Tell Ottavio Gonzaga," said Perotti, "that I never yet turned my back on the enemy, nor shall I now begin. Moreover, were I ever so much inclined to do so, retreat is impossible." The retiring army was then proceeding along the borders of a deep ravine, filled with mire and water, and as broad and more dangerous than a river. In the midst of the skirmishing, Alexander of Parma rode up to reconnoitre. He saw at once that the columns of the enemy were marching unsteadily to avoid being precipitated into this creek. He observed the waving of their spears, the general ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... you come, dear Dean, Your humble friend to entertain, Through dirt and mire along the street, You find no scraper for your feet; At which you stamp and storm and swell, Which serves to clean your feet as well. By steps ascending to the hall, All torn to rags by boys and ball, With scatter'd fragments on the floor; A sad, uneasy ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... law of man or God. To-day their self-satisfaction has made them indifferent to anything that elevates. I had led them into a morass, and deeper in the mire have they rushed!" ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... deeply as she saw this jewel of womanhood in the mire of prostitution, and determined ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... least made sure that he leaves nothing to Stan. And now I shall strip his mine from him and leave him to rot in the penitentiary. For I always hated him, quite aside from any thought of my uncle's estate. I hate him for what he is. I always wanted to trample his girl-face in the mire." ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... commandment of his father; and spent 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 and rolled up and down himself in the mire and dirt—he blurred and sullied his nose with filth—he blotted and smutched his face with any kind of scurvy stuff—he trod down his shoes in the heel—at the flies he did oftentimes yawn, and ran very heartily after the butterflies, the empire whereof belonged to his father. He pissed ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... nor deem it unnatural for love so to perish. After learning what she had learned from absolute incontrovertible evidence (it is useless to enter into the circumstances, for no one is benefited by wallowing in unnecessary mire), that she, or any virtuous maiden, should continue to love this man, would have been a thing still more ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... river on a big snow-bridge below the point where our old enemy came thundering down the mountain-side, we tramped gaily through mud and mire and over slippery rocks until we were gladdened by the sight of our camp, dripping away peacefully in the midst of ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... some letters from the distant post-office decided me in favour of the more peaceful disposition of my time. So I glanced at the papers, and assured myself that the English were going deeper and deeper into the mire of difficulties and reckless expenditure that characterised their campaign in Afghanistan in the autumn of 1879; and when I had assured myself, furthermore, by the perusal of a request for the remittance of twenty pounds, that my nephew, the ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... only read what is the newest instead of what is the best of all ages, that writers remain in the narrow circle of prevailing ideas, and that the age sinks deeper and deeper in its own mire. ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... devoutly thankful that a summons to the tea-table rescued her from her mire of embarrassment. The meal was spoiled for her, however; the mortifying recollection of her mysterious blunder conspired with her curiosity to banish appetite. As soon as possible after tea she decoyed Mrs. Frederick ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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
... the soil cursed the traveller who brought them potatoes in place of bread, the daily food of the poor man.... They snatched the precious gift from the hands outstretched to them, flung it in the mire, trod it under foot. ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... summoned all their principal men to meet her on the top of a swampy hill, and throwing her ring into the bog told them that where it lay was where the parishes met; the place is known to this day as "Ring-in-the-Mire." ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... Majesty's authority is respected, for 'as fast as we press men one day, they come away another, and say they will not serve. I cannot write to our generals at this time, for the Pursuevant found me at a country village, a mile from Gravesend, hunting after runaway mariners, and dragging in the mire from alehouse to alehouse, and could get no paper.' On the 6th he was at Queenborough, on the 13th at Dover, whence he reports disaster by a storm on Goodwin Sands, and finally on the 21st he arrived at Plymouth. His last letters are full ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... beauty and wildness of that mountain route, of the surprises on the way, of views, of the violent deluges of rain which turned rivulets into torrents, and of the hardships and difficulties of the day; the scanty fare of sun-dried rice dough and sour yellow rasps, and the depth of the mire through which we waded! We crossed the Shione and Sakatsu passes, and in twelve hours accomplished fifteen miles! Everywhere we were told that we should never get through the country by ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... resolved upon, by the general ruler and governor of all; or all by necessary consequence. So that the dreadful hiatus of a gaping lion, and all poison, and all hurtful things, are but (as the thorn and the mire) the necessary consequences of goodly fair things. Think not of these therefore, as things contrary to those which thou dost much honour, and respect; but consider in thy mind the true fountain ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... richly attired merchants, proved to be a set of miserable tatterdemalions with ragged turbans. Behind the porters who crowded to the landing-place, were butchers embowelling sheep in the open street; while the pavement was covered with bloody mire and smoking entrails, around which several score of hideous dogs, of a fallow colour, were growling and fighting. A fetid stench arose from the damp gutters, where neither air nor light have ever penetrated, where corruptions of all sorts amass, and where one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... deer, Inez Windham fled from McTurpin and the stranger, her little, high-heeled slippers sinking unheeded into the horse-trodden mire of Portsmouth Square, her silk skirt spattered and soiled; her hair, freed from the protecting mantilla, blowing in the searching trade wind. Thus, as Commander Hull sat upon the custom house veranda, ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... 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 ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... Father, but, as Mediator, he is not equal to his Father, but less than his Father, and subject and subordinate to his Father—a distinction used by our divines against the Anti-Trinitarians and Socinians. Now by his not admitting of this distinction, he doth by consequence mire himself in Socinianism; for Christ, as Mediator, is the Father's servant, Isa. xlii. 1; and the Father is greater than he, John xiv. 28; and as the head of the man is Christ, so the head of Christ is God, 1 Cor. xi. 3. If, therefore, it cannot be said ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... and I've met him maybe a dozen times in the past three years. He is known as 'Black Bart'; is a gambler by profession, a desperado by reputation, and a cur by nature. Just now I suspect him of being even deeper in the mire than this." ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... the drought had made matters nearly as bad for him in New South Wales. The burning of his wool last year, and the failure of the agents in whose hands he had placed it, this had pushed him farther into the mire, and now the recent "going bung" of a building society—his sole remaining prop—had run him ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... filled the day, the changing ethics of war, its brutalities, its hideous necessities, one point stood out clear and distinct. That the real issue is not the result, but the cause of this war. That the world must dig deep into the mire of European diplomacy to find that cause, and having found it must destroy it. That as long as that cause persists, be it social or political, predatory or ambitious, there will be more wars. Again it will be possible for ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 1316-1327, was a friend of Roger Mortimer, and consequently was opposed to Edward II. Throughout the struggle of those many miserable years the affairs of the diocese were dragged in the mire of civil war. It was the Bishop of Hereford who, at Neath Abbey, took the King, carried him to Kenilworth, and deprived him of the Great Seal. The Queen was staying at Hereford, and thither many of the King's adherents were taken ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... wrestle down, Thou Fury of this home, how oft and oft Thou dost descry what far aloof is laid, Yea, from afar dost bend th' unerring bow And rendest from my wretchedness its friends; As now Orestes—who, a brief while since, Safe from the mire of death stood warily,— Was the home's hope to cure th' exulting wrong; Now thou ordainest, ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... secret of achievement is to be 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 Why? ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... we were eight days closely confined in this one lodge, and then came the night when we were lifted from out the mire of despair into which we had fallen, so suddenly as to make us literally ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... battle—it is so awful hard. Better almost to die an' be done with it, he sometimes thinks. Then comes a day when his temptation is ten times more than he is able to bear. He throws up the sponge; he has done his best an' failed, so away he goes like the sow that was washed to his wallowing in the mire. But he has not done his best. He has not gone to his Maker; an' surely the maker of a machine is the best judge o' how to mend it. Now, when a believer in Jesus comes to the same point o' temptation he falls on his knees an' cries for help; an' he gets ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... taking your metaphor, you know that in hunting there are few so desperately keen as to follow without reserve. Some do not choose to leap ditches and hedges and risk their necks, or gallop over steeps, or even to dirty themselves in bogs and mire.' BOSWELL. 'I am glad there are some good, quiet, moderate political hunters.' E. 'I believe, in any body of men in England, I should have been in the Minority; I have always been in the Minority.' ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... it from her into the mire of the city: and the wheels and the feet rapidly buried it in ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... Bard composed this furious ode, As tired he dragg'd his way thro' Plimtree road![27:2] Crusted with filth and stuck in mire Dull sounds the Bard's bemudded lyre; Nathless Revenge and Ire the Poet goad 5 To pour his imprecations ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... rebels had displeased even moderate men. The friends of Rome exulted; all were against him, and he bore the heavy anger of his times. But his greatest affliction was to behold the work of heaven thus dragged in the mire and classed with the most fanatical projects. Here he felt was his Gethsemane: he saw the bitter cup that was presented to him; and, foreboding that he would be forsaken by all, he exclaimed: "Soon, perhaps, I shall ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... lead them at all, he must first regain their shaken confidence, and to do that he must go, at their head, through this mire of war to vindication. Only a fighting South could hope to be heard in behalf of peace. His eventual regeneration belonged to some to-morrow. To-day held the need of such work as that of ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... behind her. They could not possibly help following her, though, all the time, they fancied themselves doing it of their own accord. The cow was by no means very nice in choosing her path; so that sometimes they had to scramble over rocks, or wade through mud and mire, and were all in a terribly bedraggled condition, and tired to death, and very hungry, into the bargain. What ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... various occasions. The whole work combines literary beauty, depth of thought and human feeling in a rare degree. Not only is it irradiated with the calm light of peace, faith and happiness but it glows with sympathy, with the desire to do good and help those who are struggling in the mire of passion and delusion. For this reason it has found more favour with European readers than the detached and philosophic texts which simply preach self-conquest and aloofness. Inferior in beauty but probably older is the Sutta-nipata, a ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... ridiculous, which is the simplest, the first act of—I will not say every good man—but of every man who is not wicked: to cut his own wood with which his food is cooked, and with which he warms himself; to himself clean those boots with which he has heedlessly stepped in the mire; to himself fetch that water with which he preserves his cleanliness, and to carry out that dirty water in which he has ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... building is in the mire. The beams have fallen on all the great problems and our great works, and the dust ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... dungeon in the prison, the only access to which was from above. Prisoners were let down into it with ropes, and left there to die of hunger. The bottom of it was wet and miry, and the prophet, when let down into its gloomy depths, sank into the deep mire. Here he would soon have died of hunger and misery; but the king, feeling some misgivings in regard to what he had done, lest it might really be a true prophet of God that he had thus delivered into the hands of his enemies, inquired what the people had done with their prisoner; ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Ebbe reached home that night with the mire thick on his boots. Having fed him, I went to the stables, and finding no Holgar made sure that he had killed the poor beast in wrath for his discomforture at the tilt. The true reason he gave me many days after. I misjudged him, judging ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... observance of their rule, still fail upon the least trial or contradiction which thwarts their favorite inclination, and are stopped in their spiritual progress as it were by every grain of sand in their way: their whole life they crawl like base insects in the mire of their imperfections, whereas if they studied once in good earnest to curb sensuality and to renounce their own lights, their own will, and the inordinate love of themselves, difficulties would disappear before them, and ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... will leave no stone unturned to reduce us to subjection; and if I mistake not, 'breaking away' will prove to be no joke. If any of the students feel like giving up, now is the best time to take the back track, for the farther we go the deeper in the mire we shall be. If there are any who are sick of their bargain, they had better ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... sunrise every soul is born again. Laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped, To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb; My judgments seal the dead past with its dead But never bind a moment yet to come. Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep; I lend my arm to all who say "I can!" No shamefaced outcast ever sank so deep But yet might rise and be again a man. Dost thou behold thy lost youth all aghast? Dost reel from righteous ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... 1861, but millions now of Confederate promises to pay, which the hurrying multitude and that coffled gang were treading under foot,—literally trampling the bonds of the Confederate States of America in the mire, as they marched to the station; for the streets were as thickly strown with four per cents, six per cents, eight per cents as the forest with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... gentleman's shoulder. He took him in the instant in which, with one foot off the ground and the other on the step of the carriage, the foreigner was easily thrown' off his balance; he dragged him violently backward, span him round and dropped him floundering in the mire of ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... the Gospel was attended with little benefit. "All were seeking their own, not the things of Jesus Christ."[52] Others returned "like dogs to their vomit, and like swine to their wallowing in the mire."[53] Many perverted the liberty of the spirit into the licentiousness of the flesh. Many insinuated themselves as brethren, who afterwards brought the pious into dangers. Various contentions were excited among the brethren themselves. What was to be done by the apostles in such ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... him, little chance of those lads making back this way in a hurry, since they got the scare of their lives tonight. "Let's look around some more and possibly a suggestion will pop up to give us the glad hand and see us out of the mire." ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... to understand," he said, "that the colors of my country have been wantonly trailed in the mire of ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... him, She lash'd him, She rode him Through the mire; I would not lend My pony now For all ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... of the 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 a ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Lear wandered on the storm-lashed heath. His room, upstairs, had been lately done up (I could hear the crackle of the new chintz) and the difference only made his smirches and bruises, his splendid tainted genius, the more tragic. If he wasn't barefoot in the mire he was sure to be unconventionally shod. These were the things Adelaide and I, who were old enough friends to stare at each other in silence, talked about when we didn't speak. When we spoke it was only about the brilliant girl George Gravener was to marry and whom he had brought out the other ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... and feel about for a foothold in another direction. At the same time she drew out her body to its full length, and lay flat, so that she might gain as much support as possible by distributing her weight. Because of this sagacity, and because the mire at this point had more substance than in most of the other "honey-pots," she made a good fight, and almost, but not quite, held her own. By the time the tide had once more overtaken her she had sunk but a little way, and was still far from giving ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... not too much in recompense for the deep ignominy in which I have dwelt. Where one life heaped mire, another life will place a halo. Speak, speak on ... speak on ... (He continues to dream. The two ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... aloof from my sore, and my kinsmen stood afar off. I was ready to halt, and my sorrow was continually before me; yet even in my darkest, deepest afflictions, when deep called to deep, and thy waves and billows were passing over me; when my soul seemed sinking in the mire where there was no standing, I groped in the dark; my heart panted, my strength failed, and the light of mine eyes seemed gone out. I was weak with my groaning; in the night I made my bed to swim with my tears; yet even then, by that same covenant ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... fiction there is probably no more graphic and poignant study of the way in which man loses his grip on life, lets his pride, his courage, his self-respect slip from him, and, finally, even ceases to struggle in the mire that has engulfed him. * * * There is more tonic value in Sister Carrie than in a whole ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... along in the mire, I felt that I was sinking, and caught hold of a t-tree and pulled myself out, but left my shoes behind. Then I kept close to the edge of the swamp, and went along carefully, t-till I ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... 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 ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... la brune Italie, Et la Grce, ma mre, o le miel est si doux, Argos, et Ptlon, ville des hcatombes, Et Messa, la divine, agrable aux colombes; Et le front chevelu du Plion changeant; Et le bleu Titarse, et le golfe d'argent Qui montre dans ses eaux, o le cygne se mire, La blanche Oloossone la blanche Camyre. Dis-moi, quel songe d'or nos chants vont-ils bercer? D'o vont venir les pleurs que nous allons verser? Ce matin, quand le jour a frapp ta paupire, Quel ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... boy," said MacLean, "This quarrel's mine by virtue of my making it so. Mistress Truelove, you shall have no further annoyance. Now, you Lowland cowards that cannot see a flower bloom but you wish to trample it in the mire, come taste the ground yourself, and be taught that the flower is out ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... came to a marshy place, and stopped in hesitation, fearing to soil her slippers. This was the young courtier's chance. Raleigh had been in the background, but seeing the Queen hesitate he sprang forward, and sweeping his new plush cloak from his shoulders, spread it in the mire, so that she might cross. The Queen's face lighted up with pleasure at the graceful act, and she thanked the youthful gallant. Later she saw that he was given many court suits for the cloak he had ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... 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, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... But, soiled with detestation, to have thrown Fiercely aside the garment of this light; Proved at the last impatient, death desiring Like a mere doffing of foul drenched clothes; Release from the wicked hindering mire of sorrow; A comfortable darkness hiding me Out of the glowing world myself have made An insult, domineering me with splendour;— O such a death had turned, past all forgiving, My insult to Manasses, and searcht him out, Even where he is quiet, with the blaze, Ranging ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... pulled it up with an oath. Now he was vividly conscious, every nerve strung taut, every sense alert, as a man will sometimes oddly waken from heavy slumber. They went down the slope at a lurching gallop, along the road churned into mire by the passing of many carts, and splashed into the muddy waters of the ford. And on the further bank the good gray stumbled again, tried gallantly to regain its stride, and came crashing to the ground with a coughing groan and a long sickening stagger. But Nicanor had saved himself ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... get in here the year round," said father, trying his best to guide the horse through the mire. So deep was the mud that it seemed as if it literally sucked at the legs of the horse and the wheels of the buggy, and I began to wonder if we should really be swallowed, and to fear that we had met with a difficulty that even my father could not overcome. I can hardly make plain ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... matter,... why the delicate dish that tempts An o'ergorged epicure to the last morsel That stuffs him to the throat-gates, is no more. If matter be not, but as sages say, Spirit is all, and all things visible Are one, the infinitely modified, Think, Jacob, what that pig is, and the mire Wherein he stands knee-deep! And there! the breeze Pleads with me, and has won thee to a smile That speaks conviction. O'er yon blossom'd field Of beans it came, and ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... earnest proclamation, to abstain from all tumult. For some time the procession, displaying all the hated pomp of papal worship, paraded the streets undisturbed. But at length the populace became ungovernable, attacked the monks, demolished their pageants and pelted them with mire back into the convent. ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... staggered at this bold declaration from Mr. Stevens; but he soon assumed his former assured manner, and replied, "I'd like to know how I'm in your power: as far as this riot business is concerned, you're as deep in the mud as I'm in the mire; as for the other, be St. Patrick, I'm clane out o' that!—they don't try a man twice for the same thing." "Don't halloo so loud, my fine fellow," sneeringly rejoined Mr. Stevens, "you are not entirely out of the wood yet; you are by no means as safe as you imagine—you ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... himself on the street; Mrs. Ludworth had publicly defied gossip and smiled with favor on young Driscoll; the new director of the Metropolitan Museum had announced himself an enemy to tradition and a friend of progress; and Desiree Le Mire had consented to a two ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... not to be just yet. Autumn withered and sank into winter. The rain came down on the stubble, and the red cattle waded through red mire to and from their pasture; the skies grew pale above, and the earth grew bare beneath; the winds grew sharp and seemed unfriendly; the brooks ran foaming to the rivers, and the rivers ran roaring to the ocean. Then the earth dried a little, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... and art, writing addresses to flowers, and peddling—in the portraiture of the moods and methods of love, living lives of frivolity, taking pleasure in mere riches and the lusts of the eye, while thousands of wretched mortals were grovelling in the mire.... Then where was our refuge? ... The Church was the refuge of God's people ... from Christ ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... was 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 Shif'less ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... bronco is unfathomable. This one now pitched weakly once or twice, then gave up in unconditional surrender. Bob's surprise was complete. He had expected, after being shaken violently, to be flung into the mire again. The reaction was instantaneous and exhilarating. He forgot that he was covered with mud and bruises, that every inch of him cried aloud with aches. He had won, had mastered a wild outlaw horse as he had seen ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... services must be missed at the Hof, bravely defied wet and mud and tramped resolutely home. In the afternoon, utterly tired out, we too determined to shift our quarters to Edelsheim, and, engaging a large jolting vehicle, were borne through mire, rain and mist from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various |
