"Muddled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there in search of pleasure." "But," objected Giton, "they are the very ones we are most anxious to avoid," whereupon he explained to the astonished Eumolpus the reasons for their enmity and for the danger which threatened us. So muddled did he become, at what had been told him, that he lost the power of thinking, and requested each of us to offer his own opinion. "Just imagine," said he, "that we are trapped in the Cyclops' cave: some way out must be found, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... if I were a nation—just because I am being a hundred million people instead of one, to let myself be frowned down as a human being, by figures, muddled by the Multiplication Table—by a really simple thing like there being so ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... time to lose. The least muddled of the party had cleared the room in a moment, and then addressed themselves to the more difficult task of trying to quiet Eric and Wildney, and conduct them steadily ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... in its train—minutes flew by apace, the wine grew low in the decanters, and it became apparent to me that if I would not lose the whole evening, and go home with my brains muddled beyond all possibility of reading, I must take my departure. Accordingly, pulling out my watch, I reminded Mr. Frampton of my previous stipulation to be allowed to run away as soon as dinner was concluded, adding that I had already stayed longer than ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... it all hisself: leastways, I found the things properly muddled. 'Twas to be seen a man ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... fulfilment of our ideal dream? By day you mingle with litterateurs, scientists, and philosophers,—report has it that you have even managed to stumble your way into my lady's boudoir;—but by night you wander like this,—insensate, furious, warped in soul, muddled in brain, and only the heart of you alive,—the poor unsatisfied heart—hungering and crying ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... their primary state. We must watch the evolution and revelation of the secret hid in natural life, as it moves through the ascending cycles of the biological kingdom. The idea of evolution, when it is not muddled, is synthetic—not analytic; it explains the simplest in the light of the complex, the beginning in the light of the end, and not vice versa. In a word, it follows the ways of nature, the footsteps of fact, instead of inventing a ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... found a seat for him, and Edmund, going down to the brook, filled a pocket flask with water and flung it in the fellow's face. This was repeated several times with the effect of finally straightening out his muddled senses sufficiently to warrant us in embarking for the return trip. All the way home Ingra was in a sulky mood, like any terrestrial drunkard after a debauch, but he kept his eyes on all Edmund's ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... alas, there was no gold with this dross, and in that matter of blood, as to which Sir Harry's ideas were so strong, and indeed so noble, he entertained but a muddled theory. Noblesse oblige. High position will demand, and will often exact, high work. But that rule holds as good with a Buonaparte as with a Bourbon, with a Cromwell as with a Stewart; and succeeds as often and fails as often with the low born as with ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... most notorious idler in the neighbourhood, hight "Barnulf with the nose." His eyes looked red and swollen, and his senses had become muddled and obtuse with long steeping. Silence was immediately enforced, while the assembly anxiously awaited the interrogation of this ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... thing you are going into, but you'll do it with both eyes wide open," he declared. "For the past few years Julius Savine has been a shadow, and an empty name, and his affairs are mixed considerably. Reckless contracts taken with a muddled brain and speculation to make up the losses, have, between them, resulted in chaos. I'm too sick to value what I own, and no accountant can. I ran things myself too long, and no one was fit to take hold when I slackened my grip. But there's still the ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... had been in his place," continued Fritz, "I should have said to myself that the mind often gives birth to strange fancies, particularly after a heavy supper, and that I had muddled my brain with rum; consequently, that all the things I imagined I had seen were only ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... others had done, on nearing the fort, and would have been in sooner, had not Big Waller been obliged to take charge of poor Bertram, who, owing to the suddenness and violence of all these recent events in savage life, had got into a muddled condition of mind that rendered him peculiarly helpless. But they knew nothing of March Marston—they had expected to find him ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... Ashpound—a poor, impulsive, weak-willed, fast-living young neighbouring squire. Unluckily for himself, he had been early left his own master, and had ridden post-haste to the dogs ever since. Suddenly he had taken it into his muddled head to pull up in his career, and, if need be, to chain and padlock, hedge and barricade himself with a wife and family, before Ashpound should be swallowed up by hungry creditors, and he had hurried himself ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... man—thou fratricide in mind—and to thy best belief in act, how drags on now the burden of thy life? For a day or two, spirits and segars muddled his brain, and so kept thoughts away: but within a while they came on him too piercingly, and Julian writhed beneath those scorpion stings of hot and keen remorse: and when the coast-guards dragged the Mullet, how that caitiff trembled! and when nothing could be found, how he wondered fearingly! ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... look at the decanter," said the man, who went up with Winston, carrying a lamp. "He's been wanting brandy all the time, but it doesn't seem to have muddled him." ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... got me so muddled I don't know what I'm doing. Do you want me to believe that you're people out of a book? Why those old Canterbury Tales' characters never did live, Chaucer just made them up. If you aren't somebody dressed up to tease me, I've ...
— The Belles of Canterbury - A Chaucer Tale Out of School • Anna Bird Stewart
... shape of a boomerang from a Westerner who called the Government party "an exploded blister." On a previous occasion talking to the boot manufacturers in convention at Quebec he took a leap into the Agrarian trench with this pack of muddled metaphors. "I see the Agrarians a full-fledged army on the march to ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... as innocent as a babe. I'd swear it by the Styx," responded that young man, scratching his muddled head. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... wonder had ruled among the occupants of Roy's auto. Everything seemed very much muddled, but one fact stood out clearly, and that was that an attempt had been made to cast suspicion, if not the actual guilt of the ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... In his business he had sums of money for investments and for settlements of cases passing through his hands; and from time to time he had, when hard pushed, used his clients' money to pay his own debts. Beginning with small sums, he had muddled along, meaning to make all straight out of the first big case he had; and each time he had a big case the money seemed to be all spent before he earned it. He was not exactly bankrupt, for he was owed a great deal ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... man can succeed in business unless he has a brain to enable him to lay his plans, and reason to guide him in their execution, so, no matter how bountifully a man may be blessed with intelligence, if the brain is muddled, and his judgment warped by intoxicating drinks, it is impossible for him to carry on business successfully. How many good opportunities have passed, never to return, while a man was sipping a "social glass," with his friend! ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... conversation they could not understand, and they were so unused to think much about any thing, or to hear much beyond their own pretty light talk and sweet songs, that their poor little brains had got quite muddled. ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... this unsafe topic, are Lord Alvanley's description of a man who "muddled away his fortune in paying his tradesmen's bills;" Lord Orford's definition of timber, "an excrescence on the face of the earth, placed there by Providence for the payment of debts;" and Pelham's argument, that it is respectable to be arrested, ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... would remain in Apia for a week, returning home either boisterously drunk or sullen and scowling-faced. In the latter case, he would come into the office where Denison worked (he had left the schooner of which he was supercargo, and was now "overseering" Solo-Solo) and try to grasp the muddled condition of his financial affairs. Then, with much variegated language, he would stride away, cursing the servants and the place and everything in general, mount his horse, and ride off again to the society of the loafers, gamblers, and flaunting unfortunates who haunted ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... all has been considered, and demands and merits observation. If this be called obscurity, let it be remembered that it is such an obscurity as is a compliment to the reader; not that vicious obscurity, which proceeds from a muddled head. ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... behind his back. Perhaps he was not yet quite settled in his mind about the parallel between thieves and soldiers; perhaps Villon had interested him by some cross-thread of sympathy; perhaps his wits were simply muddled by so much unfamiliar reasoning; but whatever the cause, he somehow yearned to convert the young man to a better way of thinking, and could not make up his mind to drive him forth again ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... Jones the memory of that day has never been wholly clear. Sodden with weariness, dazzled and muddled by the savage sun-glare, he followed, with eyes fixed, the rhythmically, monotonously moving feet of his leader, through an interminable desert of soft, clogging sand; a desert which dropped away into parched arroyos, and ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... hugging a post. Rarely had I enjoyed such a sight since my arrival in the Old World. In Germany I had seen a few cases of stupefaction arising from overdoses of beer; in France the red nose of the bon vivant is not uncommon; in England some muddled heads are to be found; and in Scotland there are temperance societies enough to give rise to the suspicion that there is a cause for them; but, generally speaking, the sight of an intoxicated man is somewhat ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... for that purpose. On the night of the cat's return, the three bugs had become disgracefully intoxicated, and were reeling around the desk beating time with their legs to a rollicking catch sung by the Snake Editor. Before the muddled insects could crawl into a crack, the Mutilator was upon them, and had bolted every one. Then with a look of reproach at the Snake Editor, he drew three perpendicular red lines across that gentleman's features with his claws and departed in high ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... criticised vehemently for teaching the one or two poor useless subjects he can in a sort of way teach, and practically nothing is done to help or equip him to teach anything else. By reason of this uproar, the world is full now of anxious muddled parents, their poor brains buzzing with echoes of Froebel, Tolstoy, Herbert Spencer, Ruskin, Herbart, Colonel Parker, Mr. Harris, Matthew Arnold, and the Morning Post, trying to find something better. They know ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... of the bottles, first separate (to say I had done it), and then mixed 'em all together (to say I had done it), and then tried two of 'em as half-and-half, and then t'other two. Altogether, I passed a pleasin evenin, but with a tendency to feel muddled, until I considered it good manners to get up and say, "Mr. Chops, the best of friends must part, I thank you for the wariety of foreign drains you have stood so 'ansome, I looks towards you in red wine, ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... modern literature, towards the close of the nineteenth century, was becoming more and more the illegitimate offspring of immaturity in thought and feeling. We were the slaves of our newspapers; each morning a library was thrown on our doorstep. But what a jumbled, inconsequent, muddled-up library! It was the best that could be made in such a hurry, and it satisfied most of us, though I believe there were conservative people who opened it only to read the marriage and the death notices. The ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... right, I needn't tell the present hearers. Hi! To be sure, how the neighbourhood poured into court that afternoon while the cause was on! How my noble and learned brother, and all the rest of 'em, grubbed and muddled away as usual and tried to look as if they hadn't heard a word of the last fact in the case or as if they had—Oh, dear me!—nothing at all to do with it if they had heard of it by ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... by a short-cut and got muddled and he fell down, and I couldn't pass by without speaking, could I . . . he might have ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... good look at his fireman. The latter was muddled, it was plain to see that, but he went about his duties with a mechanical routine born from long experience. Only once did he lurch towards Ralph and speak to him, or rather hiss ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... "Ah, you silly, muddled-brained, flat-headed idiot!" yelled Dyke, as he raced along over the plain, his steed sending the red sand flying at every spurn of its hoofs as it stretched itself out. "I'll be there first, and cut him off. You can't do it—you can't ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... court of a ruin, and from the far side of the court black and white imps discharged against me ineffectual arrows. The picture appears arbitrary, but I can trace every detail to its source, as Mr. Brock analysed the dream of Alan Armadale. The summer-house and court were muddled together out of Billings' "Antiquities of Scotland"; the imps conveyed from Bagster's "Pilgrim's Progress"; the bearded and robed figure from any one of a thousand Bible pictures; and the shoe-horn was plagiarised from an old illustrated Bible, where it figured in the hand of Samuel ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... scheme failed to connect. No matter how much whisky was poured down his neck, O'Brien could not be brought to realize that it was his bounden and friendly duty to sell his claim. He hesitated, it is true, and trembled now and again on the verge of giving in. Inside his muddled head, however, he was chuckling to himself. He was up to Curly Jim's game, and liked the hands that were being dealt him. The whisky was good. It came out of one special barrel, and was about a dozen times better than that in ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... back to knowledge of that present, he would rouse and chide, and they, all those lesser ones, would fly swiftly and guiltily to their various works; and yet, so I have thought since, each with a muddled and bewildered and thoughtful air upon him; and hungry they were for more, and ever wondering ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... lips, and he was always asking himself why common language, so easy for every other purpose, becomes obscure and unintelligible in a contract or will, which made him fancy that the men of law had muddled everything in order to render themselves necessary." He had lost the only man he had ever really loved, Stephen de la Boetie, an amiable and noble philosopher, counsellor in the Parliament of Bordeaux. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... block-headish act and had finally climaxed it all by a departure which left the tongue of Nora to speak unmolested into the ear of Marjory. Nora's victory had been a serious blow to his fortunes, but it had not been so serious as his own subsequent folly. He had generously muddled his own affairs until he could read nothing out of ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... at the speaker fixedly, as if still waiting for her to begin; stupidly, for her poor muddled brain refused to comprehend. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... sentiment which had been stirred in her by Carnaby's startling act of cutting the plum tree down. Ah! let fools believe if they could that she was angry with the boy! She had never felt anger less or pride more. While others talked and argued, shilly-shallied, made love, muddled and made mistakes, her grandson, the man of the race that always ruled, had cut the knot for himself, without hesitation and without compunction, without consulting anyone or asking anyone's leave. That was the ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a poisonously blind country. The woods blocked all sense of direction above and around. The ground was at any angle you please, and all sounds were split up and muddled by the tree-trunks, which acted as silencers. High above us the respectable, all-concealing forest had turned into sparse, ghastly blue sticks of timber—an assembly of leper-trees round a bald mountain top. "That's ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... rings and long gilded fingernails, upon his shoulders so that ripples of delight, at all the voluptuous images of his desire, went through his whole body, making it quiver like a flame with yearning for unimaginable things. It all muddled into fantastic gibberish—into sounds of horns and trombones and double basses blown off key while a piccolo shrilled the first bars ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... feels his freehold's worth, and looks elate, A little prop and pillar of the state. Here he delights the weekly news to con, And mingle comments as he blunders on; To swallow all their varying authors teach, To spell a title, and confound a speech: Till with a muddled mind he quits the news, And claims his nation's licence to abuse; Then joins the cry, "That all the courtly race Are venal candidates for power and place;" Yet feels some joy, amid the general vice, That his own vote will bring its wonted price. These are the ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... Mississippi River water in the big bend below Natchez," said I, fascinated, gazing at the be-muddled drip. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... that talk over their victuals are like to say anything very great, especially if they get their heads muddled with strong drink before ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... also given her a cordial letter of recommendation to Herr Bock, Counsellor of Archives, who was just then engaged in writing a voluminous work on the history of Nuremberg. It would be her task to arrange Herr Bock's muddled manuscript. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... coating of tears sprang to Mrs. Kaufman's eyes and muddled the gaze she turned toward Mr. Vetsburg. "Is it natural, Mr. Vetsburg, a mother should want her only child should have always the best and do always the things she never herself could afford to ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... won't do anything, you know, it will take us every farthing just to live. Look here, Dr Edward: I have two hundred a-year;—Susan had the same, you know, but Fred got all the money when they were married, and muddled it away. Now, how much can one do in Carlingford with three children upon ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... in error or in wisdom, he died, and gallantly. He and his men helped clear the frontier for those who were to follow, and the task took its toll. Thus, slowly but steadily, even though handicapped by a vacillating governmental policy regarding the Indians, we muddled through these great Indian wars of the frontier, our soldiers doing their work splendidly and uncomplainingly, such work as no other body of civilized troops has ever been asked to do or could have done if asked. At the close of the Civil War we ourselves were a nation of fighting ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... of the liquor, which was doubtless adulterated, mounted to my head. As I had gulped it down at a breath, drunkenness seized me promptly; I felt that I was becoming muddled, then I experienced a lucid moment, then confusion followed. Then consciousness left me, I leaned my elbows on the table and said ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... delicacy that looked almost like respect. He had seen ladies handle books, he said, laughing, to Wingfold, in a fashion that would have made him afraid to trust them with a child. It was a year after Juliet left the house before he got them by degrees muddled into order again; for it was only as he used them that he would alter their places, putting each, when he had done with it for the moment, as near where it had been before as he could; thus, in time, out of a neat chaos, restoring a useful ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... with the same unruffled cheerfulness, "he wouldn't have come. We've muddled it. We'd much better have been straightforward. Secondly, he thinks me an old fool—as you do, only more so. No; we must set to work some other way now.... Tell me about Miss Deronnais: I showed ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... racing was over, this low mob naturally sought excitement of their own making, and increasing in disorder and intemperance as the day wore on, had become beyond control just about the time when Mr Belsham, junior, took it into his muddled head to make a start in the direction of home. The shout which kept him where he was, was occasioned by that spectacle dear to the eyes of all blackguards, a fight. Round the two blood and dust-stained combatants, the mob surged and yelled. ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... it's twelve o'clock. You can't sleep here, you know. Say! ain't you got no sentiment? Lift up your muddled head; Have a drink to the glad New Year, a drop before you go — You darned old dirty hobo... My God! ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... the harm of all this? but my Critic muddled it together in a most extraordinary manner, and I am far from sure that he knew himself the definite categorical charge which he intended it to convey against me. One of his remarks is, "What has become of the holy oil for the last 240 ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... contrived to hold his bins replenished, and that from the farther end: he might have been expecting to live to a hundred and twenty for of visitors he had none, except an occasional time-belated companion of his youth, whom the faint, muddled memories of old sins would bring to his door, when they would spend a day or two together, soaking, and telling bad stories, at times hardly restrained until Joan left the room—that is, if her brother was not present, before whom her father ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... wouldn't. But how was I going to dope out to her clear and straight what's so muddled up in my own head? You know, all about how Annie got her cough, and my feelin's towards the firms that's sweatin' the Tiscotts, from the baby up, and a lot of other things ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... flopped about his bare legs as he awkwardly clambered into the rear seat beside the sex-muddled creature in a boy's suit and a girl's hat. Miss Juliana and the godly Merle in the front seat had very definitely drawn aloof from the outcasts. They chatted on matters at large in the most polite and social manner. They quite appeared to have forgotten ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... places, dens of vice and crime. What vice was, I did not know, but crime meant murdering somebody or doing something else dreadful. I thought about what I heard the fine ladies say until my poor little head became quite muddled. Left to myself, I could not see anything so terrible about these places, but if these finely dressed ladies said they were terrible, why they must be so. They knew better than I did. But I wondered dreamily if all terrible places were as ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... the line the situation was, to say the least of it, a little muddled. The cavalry did not seem to be altogether at home in their new role. Their trenches seemed too small and detached. The front was covered with copses, which were continually changing hands. The whole line seemed to be dangerously weak, ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... to Lee Randon, in this connection, was amazingly muddled; and he wondered what would happen if the restraint, since it was no better than sham, should be swept away, and men acknowledged what they so largely were? A fresh standard, a new set of values, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... gentlemen who would have asked nothing better than to so serve. To fill the coveted place, Mrs. McFee would have risked her chance of salvation, and did, one night, when a certain trio passed in under her guns and muddled things considerably before their identity was discovered. Thereafter only the fit were chosen, and very ungracefully ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... you can't bring yourself down to the world of compromises, which is the world of action. You have lost the practical touch. You muddled your fight with Stocks because you couldn't get out of touch with your own little world in practice, however you might manage it in theory. You can't be single-hearted. Twenty impulses are always pulling different ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... de vie, or "water of life," as he called it, at only fifteen cents a glass. The best of our company tried to dissuade him, but to no avail. The poor mortal closed his "bargain" with the dramseller, and what did he get? A hardened conscience, a ruined home, a diseased body, a muddled brain, a heartbroken wife, wretched children, disappointed friends, triumphant enemies, days of remorse, nights of anguish, an unwept deathbed, an unhonored grave. And only to think that he is only one of many thousands! "What fools ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Virginia clergyman throws light on the old English law requiring that marriages should be celebrated before noon. A colored couple appeared before him, asking to be married, the man in a considerably muddled state. The minister said to the woman, "I ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... consideration due Mademoiselle Gobillot's honor imposed numberless circumlocutions and concealments which ended by making his story rather unintelligible to his auditors, and in the midst of it his head became so muddled that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... friend, there'll be a police search at my place to-morrow.' And he kept it. 'You have given it to the Church,' he declared. I said to him: 'You're a scoundrel,' I said. 'No,' said he, 'I'm not a scoundrel, but I'm broad-minded.' But that wasn't he, that was some one else. I've muddled him with some one else ... without noticing it. Come, another glass and that's enough. Take away the bottle, Ivan. I've been telling lies. Why didn't you stop me, Ivan, and tell ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... face from the brambles, and that worried him, for his whole head seemed one aching bruise and he dreaded anything touching it. But all the time he did not open his mouth, for silence was the one duty that his muddled wits enforced. He felt that he was not the master of his mind, and he dreaded what he might disclose if he began ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... observing this strange medley, when the Canon made his appearance; and a most prepossessing figure he has, according to Flemish ideas. In my humble opinion his Reverence looked a little muddled or so; and, to be sure, the description I afterwards heard of his style of living, favours not a little my surmises. This worthy dignitary, what with his private fortune and the good things of the church, enjoys a revenue of about five thousand pounds sterling, which he contrives to get rid ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... matter much what Jewdwine says. These fellows come up from Oxford with wet towels round their heads to keep the metaphysics in. Jewdwine's muddled himself with the Absolute Beauty till he doesn't know a beautiful thing if you stick ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Only a splendidly cultivated self-control prevented the blonde matron from retaliating upon the unfortunate who had muddled things. Even so, her eyes spoke whole ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... relieve them, but only two of them answered to the call. They who had come down began to drink freely, to warm themselves after their ducking, and by half-past four, except the two men on deck, every Frenchman was either fast asleep or muddled. ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... out-of-elbows reporter on a sensational yellow journal! Do you dream for one instant that his word would stand against mine in a court of law? See here, Matheson, you'd better go back and read over your brief with the man who's instructing you. He's muddled up the facts." ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... courage and sentiment. He used to be fond of repeating that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of our public schools, until it was painfully obvious that Colenso and Spion Kop were lost in the same place. We have muddled through so often that we have come half to believe in a providence which watches over unintelligent virtue. "Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever," we have said to Britannia. So we have acquiesced in being the worst educated ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... journey in less than five minutes. As a matter of fact, six minutes had elapsed before he reached the top of Salisbury Lane, because he had been delayed nearly a minute by some questions addressed to him by a muddled and whisky-laden guest who had got lost in the corridors. As everybody knows, there is a sharp short bend in Salisbury Lane near the top. Racksole ran round this at good racing speed, but he was unfortunate ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... repeatedly since. I have just made a delightful dinner by myself in the Cafe Felix, where I am an old established beggar, and am just smoking a cigar over my coffee. I came last night from Autun, and I am muddled about my plans. The world is such ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... queer friends she had, what a muddled life compared to ours. What a vague confused development, jumping from one idea to another, never seeing any job through, forever starting all over again with the same feverish absorption in the next new radical ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... out in unstinted measures and some of the women so forgot themselves as to attempt to rival the men in drinking. The barrier being thrown down Charles drank freely, till his tones began to thicken, and his eye to grow muddled, and he sat down near Jeanette and tried to converse; but he was too much under the influence of liquor to hold a sensible and ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... talk magazine stuff to me, Undine Spragg. I guess we want each other the same way. Only our ideas are different. You've got all muddled, living out here among a lot of loafers who call it a career to run round after every petticoat. I've got my job out at home, and I belong where my ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... thinking that Henrietta had stupidly muddled her affairs, and wasted the good chance which had been contrived for her. This was the view she presented to her husband, so that though they tried not to show it in their manner, they both felt a ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... He stared at Frank in silence. Perhaps his muddled mind reflected that the accused lad had a good reputation generally. Anyhow, the open, resolute way in which Frank spoke daunted him. But he shook his head in an owl-like manner ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... of the 29th Division has been brought round from Helles to put shape and form into the 53rd Division. Peyton's men are to be attached to the Irish Division. There is a new spirit of energy and hope in the higher ranks but the men have meanwhile been aimlessly marched and counter-marched, muddled, and knocked about so that their spirit has suffered ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... academy at Brighton; and the Toodles family, so humble in station and intellect and so large of heart; and the contrast between Carker the manager and his brother, who for some early dishonest act, long since repented of, remains always Carker the junior; and about Captain Cuttle, and that poor, muddled nautical philosopher, Captain Bunsby, and the Game Chicken, and Mrs. Pipchin, and Miss Tox; and Cousin Feenix with wilful legs so little under control, and yet to the core of him a gentleman; and the apoplectic Major Bagstock, the ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... flowed through Bert's brain a squittering succession of thinly violent ideas about German competition, about the Yellow Danger, about the Black Peril, about the White Man's Burthen—that is to say, Bert's preposterous right to muddle further the naturally very muddled politics of the entirely similar little cads to himself (except for a smear of brown) who smoked cigarettes and rode bicycles in Buluwayo, Kingston (Jamaica), or Bombay. These were Bert's "Subject Races," ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... hand-while another driver, with an air of less dignity, cries out, with a stentorian voice, the names of the heads of families, and the number of children belonging thereto. Thus, one by one, the name being announced in muddled accents, they step forward, and receive their corn, or rice, as may be. In pans and pails they receive it, pass it to the younger members of the family; with running and scampering, they carry the coarse allotment to their cabin with ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... To be Muddled.—That is, confused, perplexed, tired. Doubtless from the idea of thickness, want of clearness; so, muddy is used ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... of the fore-mentioned squire had muddled and sotted away much of his share in the Leslie property; and, by low habits and mean society, lowered in repute his ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... so muddled their brains with the alcohol of new ideas that their moral legs have become shaky, and the humane would rather help them to bed than give them a licking. My Tom Bowles is a muscular Christian, who became no less muscular, but much more Christian, after ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... turning a wheel has a wonderful tendency to benumb the mind. It is a sort of attenuated variety of Ixion's punishment, and contributes a dismal chapter to the history of gaols. The brain gets muddled, the head grows heavy, and the body's centre of gravity seems to settle by degrees in a leaden lump somewhere between the eyebrows and the crown. Bathsheba felt the unpleasant symptoms after two or ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... were encumbered and the traffic of war was surging forward ceaselessly in a muddled, confused, aimless sort of way, as it seemed to me, before I knew the system and saw the working of the brain behind it all. A long train of carts without horses stood, shafts down, on the muddy side of the road. Little blue and red flags fluttered above them. A group ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... If you go about with that dismal face and strong disapproval, it will really seem as if it was the having your dominion muddled with that you dislike. Besides, it is putting yourself forward to censure what is not absolutely wrong in itself, and that cannot ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... between you. I don't wonder that you got muddled when you were forced to stay in such an outlandish place as this so long. I think I would have ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... Calabrians. Noi siamo calabresi! they proudly say, meaning that they are above suspicion of unfair dealing. As a matter of fact, they are a muddled brood, and considerably given to cheating when there is any prospect of success. You must watch the peasants coming home at night from their field-work if you wish to see the true Calabrian type—whiskered, short and wiry, and of dark complexion. There is that indescribable ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... happened to one of the soldiers playing cards.... He called hearts diamonds, got muddled in his score, and dropped his cards, then with a frightened, foolish smile looked round at ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Doris and the boy, of himself, of Charlie Mills, of Myra, of Archie Lawanne. He saw ghosts in that dusky chamber, ghosts of other days, and trooping on the heels of these came apparitions of a muddled future,—until he fell asleep again, to be awakened at last by a ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... In his muddled fury the man began once again trying to hold her on the animal. It was backing slowly towards a stone seat in the balustrade, and man and woman ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... the dealers took advantage of it to foist off old stock and odd parts, and then his engineers became fractious and disgruntled because he expected quick results. It was all very different from what he had expected when he had taken over the Paymaster lease, and yet it had to be endured and muddled through somehow until the mine was safely his own. Then out would come the engines, and all second-hand machinery and makeshift parts, and with a superintendent who knew his job he would lean back in comfort and learn ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... hazy and muddled without the compensating boon of unconsciousness. But you are an author and a journalist, Mr. Freydon—my brother often speaks of you, you know—and so you must have had lots of experience of this sort of thing; enough to have made you as hardened as royalty, I should think. I always ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... had muddled his brains, or for some other reason best known to himself, Conrad straightway cast all his stepfather's cautions to the winds, and told neighbour Prieme the whole story of the safe-conduct and ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... out: to drive the bourgeoisie out of power and promote the aims of the revolution, or to adopt the policy of "bridling" the people by resorting to repressive measures. Kerensky and Tseretelli clung to a middle course and only muddled matters the more. When the Cadets, the wiser and more far-sighted leaders of the coalition government, understood that the unsuccessful military advance of June 18th might deal a blow not only to the revolution, but also to the government temporarily, they threw ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... I thought over it the more muddled I grew. There was something maddening in the memory that I was unable to act as my instincts prompted me to act, that I couldn't, like the outraged wife of screen and story, walk promptly out of the door ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... essayed an archness of glance, to cover his confusion, which his weak face and whisky-muddled intellect but ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... do wish I could see papa. It would make me quite sure he's alive, you know, for it all seems so muddled in my head since the day I was so naughty. And if he'd forgive me, and if he'd get better, I think, perhaps, I'd ask God to make me better too, so that I might make papa's tea and read aloud to him ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... particulars, she said:—"It was very bad of you to come. I telegraphed to you not to come, last week.... Wasn't it last week?... Well then—yesterday.... They ought never to have let you in.... There!—I get muddled when I talk...." She did, but it did not ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... say so! What! no capacity for business, no knowledge of law, no sympathy with art, no pretension to philosophy; only a simple knowledge of the secret that has puzzled all the philosophers, baffled all the lawyers, muddled all the men of business, and ruined most of the artists: the secret of right and wrong. Why, man, you're a genius, master of masters, a ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... the Squire at last, "there you are, you see. It appears to me that I am absolutely ruined, and upon my word I believe that it is a great deal owing to your stupidity. You have muddled and muddled and muddled till at last you have muddled us ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... international relations diplomacy has been a boyishly lawless affair of family intrigues, commercial and territorial brigandage, torpors of pseudo-goodnature produced by laziness and spasms of ferocious activity produced by terror. But in these islands we muddled through. Nature gave us a longer credit than she gave to France or Germany or Russia. To British centenarians who died in their beds in 1914, any dread of having to hide underground in London from the shells of an enemy seemed more ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... growled Jack French, his face distorted with a scowl. "Look here, boy," he continued, whirling fiercely upon the lad, "you are sent to me by the best woman on earth to make a man of you, and I'll have no swearing on my ranch," delivering himself of which sentiment punctuated by a feu de joie of muddled oaths, he lurched away into the back shop and fell into a drunken sleep, leaving the boy astonished ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... 'Smith? Muddled his accounts! Nothing more likely; charges like this are not got up without some grounds of some sort; but as to intentional fraud, that's utter nonsense. Well, I'm off to the station, and I hope in half an hour's time Master ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... arose in whirling columns and enveloped all who were abroad; for a gale was howling across the tableland, which the Moors of old had named 'Majerit'—a draught of wind. The conductor, who, like a good and jovial conductor, had never refused an offer of refreshment on the road, was now muddled with drink and the heat of the sun. He was, in fact, engaged in a warm controversy with a passenger. So the Padre found his own humble portmanteau, a thing of cardboard and canvas, and trudged up the Calle de Toledo, bearing the bag in one hand and his cloak in the other—a ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... a reply which no resident of St. Fair would have dared to make, Mr. Crows bent a muddled glance on his fare, and by a concentrated effort recalled the face of the man who had given him ten shillings on the previous night. He decided to pocket the present indignity in the hope of ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... awakened by the pitching and tossing of the vessel, the rattle and clatter of the tackle overhead, and the noise of footsteps passing and repassing hither and thither across the deck. Perhaps he lay for a while turning the matter over and over in his muddled head, but he presently rang the bell, and Avary and ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... who answered to the name of MacLauren stood up. The lecture under discussion was concerned with a matter called perpetuation of type. Under fire of questions it developed that the pupil in hand was sadly muddled over it. ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... animal that all the spectators were deceived. It executed, says Brewster, all the natural movements and gestures, it ate and drank with avidity, performed all the quick motions of the head and throat which are peculiar to the duck, and like it muddled the water which it drank with its bill. It produced also the sound of quacking in the most natural manner. In the anatomical structure the artist exhibited the highest skill. Every bone in the real duck had its representative In ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... time dat cidah 's kin' o' muddled up my haid, Ef it had n't been fu' Sukey hyeah, I reckon I 'd been daid; Dat ol' mare o' mine. But she got me in de middle o' de road an' tuk me home, An' she would n't let me wandah, ner she would n't let me roam, Dat's de kin' o' hoss to tie to w'en ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... due simply to the prevalence of tradition and system, and to the complexity of civilisation. He was so fierce an individualist himself that he credited everyone else with purpose and prejudice. He did not realise the vast preponderance of helpless good-nature and muddled kindliness. The mistake of much of Carlyle's work is that it is too poignantly dramatic, and bristles with intention and significance; and he did not allow sufficiently for the crowd of vague supers who throng the background ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... went away. And he hurried home and washed the dinner things, and cleared up the untidy kitchen like one in a dream. Sometimes it seemed to Dick that all his work went for nothing at all, for Mrs. Fowley always muddled things as ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... as daring, as reckless, as inconstant, as improvident of the morrow, as a savage or a child, he would not have accomplished the exploration of half a continent. Men who weigh consequences are not of the stuff to win empires. Had Radisson haggled as to the means, he would have missed or muddled the end. He went ahead; and when the way did not open, he went round, or crawled over, or carved his ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... cook rich pastries and fancy desserts, and fell back on simple salads and fruit instead. I dipped into the household magazines, followed on into technical articles on efficiency, substituted labor-savers wherever I could, and started my first muddled ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer |
