"Rut" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... West 71st Street, New York,} "Tuesday, February 3, 1891. } "Dear Brother:—I am drifting along in the old rut—in good strength, attending about four dinners out per week at public or private houses, and generally wind up for gossip at the Union League club. Last night, discussing the effect of Mr. Windom's death and funeral, several prominent gentlemen remarked that Windom's fine speech just preceding ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... sudden the chaise made a lunge and stopped in a deep rut. Some one plodded laboriously to the door and thrust ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... of those who have passed away in the latter part of the period under study the power of initiative has gone. New proposals are hushed. Variation is discouraged; the rut of custom and convention is preferred. And a subtle stifling air of the impossibility of all active purposes pervades social and religious and ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... thaw, and the Dal River rose to an alarming height. And what quantities of water that spring brought! It came in showers from the skies; it came rushing down in streams from the mountainsides, and it welled out of the earth; water ran in every wheel rut and in every furrow. All this water found its way to the river, which kept rising higher and higher, and rolled onward with greater and greater force. It did not present its usual shiny and placid appearance, but had turned a dirty brown from all the muddy water ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... folks allers hed it all cut out fer me to be an old maid. When a woman onct gets that name fixt on her, it's all off with her chances. No man ever comes nigh her, and she can't git out of her single rut. I never could get to go nowhars, and I wa'n't that bold kind that makes up to a man fust, ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... Washington was too busy with its domestic programme to consider such a proposal seriously. "Your two letters," wrote Colonel House in reply, "have come to me and lifted me out of the rut of things and given me a glimpse of a fair land. What you are thinking of and what you want this Administration to do is beyond the power of accomplishment for the moment. My desk is covered with matters ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... habitation but here and there a cowherd's hut under the trees or a chapel standing apart on some grassy eminence. When night fell the waters grew louder, a stinging wind swept the woods, and the carriage, staggering from rut to rut, seemed every moment about to land them in some invisible ravine. Fear and cold at last benumbed the little boy, and when he woke he was being lifted from his seat and torches were flashing on a high escutcheoned ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... called Science[7] when he is up against the eternal truths that belong to every simple untutored man. Shun the monster as you would a priest, to whom he has a great likeness, and unite with me in a long strong pull to get "M.D." out of the rut in which the monster holds him, so that we may have him with us on the road, for he carries much treasure and we cannot do ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... was out of the rut of his despondency; already the rust was knocked off his back, and the eagerness to crowd up to the starting-line was on him as fresh again as on the day when he had walked away from all competitors in the examination for a license before ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... suppose you will all be satisfied now that you are back in your old rut wretchedly doing your duty ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... up like a crab, sideways. Presently we reached a ledge, narrow enough at first, but which widened as we followed it, and moreover sloped inwards like the petal of a flower, so that as we followed it we gradually got into a kind of rut or fold of rock, that grew deeper and deeper, till at last it resembled a Devonshire lane in stone, and hid us perfectly from the gaze of anybody on the slope below, if there had been anybody to gaze. This lane (which appeared to be a natural ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... Round the table stood unpainted chairs which, through use, had attained a high degree of polish. The fourth and last wall contained three windows, from the first of which the view was as follows, Immediately beneath it there ran a high road on which every irregularity, every pebble, every rut was known and dear to me. Beside the road stretched a row of lime-trees, through which glimpses could be caught of a wattled fence, with a meadow with farm buildings on one side of it and a wood on the other—the whole bounded by the keeper's hut at the ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... stood out like brass, and whose eyes burned like fire. He sprang upon the boy king and stabbed him in the back. The affrighted horse dashed away, dragging the bleeding body by the stirrup,—on, on, on, over rut ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... cross-road; the way became frightfully bad; the cart lurched from one rut to the other; he said ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the hopelessness of their position; probably with the intensity of youth she exaggerated it, which was scarcely necessary, as a small rut is apt to widen into a bottomless pit if it crosses the path of those who are living up to the utmost verge of a narrow income. As she reviewed the endless instances of her mother's self-abnegation which memory supplied—her cheerful industry, her brave struggle to live like a gentlewoman ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... seeing eye, he liked to have her slap his dishes down before him with a genial crash. A gentleman has his little foibles, and being waited on at meal-time was one of his. Occasionally, to prove to himself that he wasn't one of those fogies who get in a rut, he ordered wheat cakes with maple syrup for breakfast. They always disagreed ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... little cynically. Would she have refused Rodney's offer of help, she wondered, if she had known an hour ago, that the two hundred dollars she'd relied on so confidently to pull her out of this rut and give her a fresh start whenever she was ready to attempt it, were gone into the pockets of ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... by remaining in a rut. Experience is not only the best teacher, but the very finest developer of thought, and of a vivid and facile imagination. Thus constant practice causes the building of plots to become a sort of ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... powder, and, setting this on fire, endeavored to push it against the house with long poles. They had ingeniously constructed upon the cart a barricade of planks, which protected those who pushed it against the fire of the house. When they had got within pistol shot, one wheel became clogged in a rut, and the other wheel going, whirled the cart around, so as to expose the whole party to a fatal fire. Six men almost instantly fell dead, and before the rest could escape, fifteen of them were wounded. Disheartened by this ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Browning, and locked myself in like a thief in fear. The text was senseless, I have beaten my head with my fist like a wild man, to try and knock some comprehension into it. For my life had worked itself out along one set groove, deep and narrow. I was in the rut. I had done those things which came to my hand and done them well; but the time was past; I could not turn my hand anew. I, who am strong and dominant, who have played large with destiny, who could buy body and soul a thousand painters and versifiers, was baffled by a few paltry cents' ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... is low, the clouds are mean, A travelling flake of snow Across a barn or through a rut Debates ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... usefulness. It is based on correct principles: organization, co-operation, education. It is neither a political party nor a business agency. It is progressively conservative—or conservatively progressive. It is neither ultra-radical nor forever in the rut. Its chief work is on cultural lines. It includes the entire family. It is now growing, and there is every reason for thinking that this growth is ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... continued, in a measure, even after the establishment of Christianity, and we find phallic rites masquerading in the garb of Christian observances as late as the sixteenth century in parts of Russia and Hungary. Westermarck, in his chapter on the human rut season in primitive times, says: "Writers of the sixteenth century speak of the existence of certain festivals in Russia, at which great license prevailed. According to Pamphil, these annual gatherings took place, as a rule, at the end of June, the day before the festival of ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... enough; but our people there are too slack and stale to take advantage of it. It is a peaceful frontier, you know, and men get into a rut as easily there as elsewhere. The country's too fat and wealthy, and people begin to forget the skeleton up among the rocks in ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... army in Gaul saluted their general, Avi'tus, emperor, and the Roman senate and people at first acquiesced in the choice. Rut Avi'tus was soon found unfit to hold the reins of power at a time of so much danger and difficulty; the senate, influenced by Ri'cimer, the commander of the barbarian auxiliaries, voted his deposition. He died shortly after, whether by disease or violence ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... him scornfully: "Hello, Rut!" He drew himself up proudly. "Behold in me a new dignity—I am now ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... branches of hooked thorns that over-hung the broken path. I rode in advance, my face and arms bleeding with countless scratches, while at each rip of a thorn I gave a warning shout—"Thorn!" for those behind, and a cry of "Hole!" for any deep rut that lay in the path. It was fortunately moonlight; but the jungle was so thick that the narrow track was barely perceptible; thus both camels and donkeys ran against the trunks of trees, smashing the luggage and breaking all that could be broken. Nevertheless the case was urgent; march ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... voice, and Miss Anthony remarked that "this was through mortification because even the men there had no more rights than women." When another delegate could not be heard she said: "Women have always been taught that it is immodest to speak in a loud voice, and it is hard for them to get out of the old rut." ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... September," Stevenson writes, "when school-time was drawing near, and the nights were already black, we would begin to sally from our respective villas, each equipped with a tin bull's-eye lantern. The thing was so well known that it had worn a rut in the commerce of Great Britain; and the grocers, about the due time, began to garnish their windows with our particular brand of luminary. We wore them buckled to the waist upon a cricket belt, and ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... where the scrap of ground to hold the dead is sold at its weight in silver, where grief is worked for what it is worth, where the prayers of the Church are costly, and the vestry claim payment for extra voices in the Dies irae,—all attempt to get out of the rut prescribed by the authorities for sorrow ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... the truth, I had been more or less conscious for some time of my degeneration in this respect, but it is no easy matter to escape from a rut when one is middle-aged. Josephine's stricture concerning the lack of joyousness in my apparel, however, brought me up standing, as the phrase is, and served not merely to spur me to action, but ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... in a rut At Ctesiphon; Turks made things hum. We found that we had got to Kut, Whilst Russians found ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... much swelled, his appearance is not improved. I foolishly tried to eat a little snow yesterday morning, and the consequence is that my lips are sore and bloody. On Monday afternoon the dogs and sledge went head over heels into a deep rut in the ice, and it cost us two hours to get them out again. Luckily no damage was done, although the captain was on the sledge ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... the lead continually as we advanced, we at length struck ground in forty-three fathoms. Proceeding nearer the land, our sounding lessened to twenty-two fathoms, when we anchored on good ground; and though we distinctly heard the rut of the shore at no great distance, we could not perceive the land till next day, when the weather was somewhat clearer. We then sent our skiff in shore, to see if any place could be discovered of more security for our ship to ride in; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... we change 'em? But somehow we can't fetch it. According to the Professor, we have got into the habit of thinking in terms of rock, soil, and water, and we can't get over it. There are some few of us who stand for better things; but the majority keep thinking in the old rut, and we can't sway them. The Professor says that all we need is to get together and agree and then concentrate. But agreement doesn't seem to be necessary. You know that there was a time when everybody, ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... clout, She is quite shut out! She might call and shout, But no one about Would ever call back, "Who's there?" There is never a hut, Not a door to shut, Not a footpath or rut, Long road or short cut, ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... furnishes us with a consecutive series of records of the fauna of the older half of the Tertiary epoch, for which we have no parallel in Europe. The researches of Leidy and others have shewn that forms allied to the Hipparion and the Anchitherium are to be found among these remains. Rut it is only recently that the admirably conceived and most thoroughly and patiently worked-out investigations of Professor Marsh have given us a just idea of the vast fossil wealth and of the scientific importance of these deposits. I have had ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, Lie in three words,—health, peace, and competence. Rut health consists with temperance alone. And peace, O Virtue! peace is all thine own. Essay on Man, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... his foot every time the cutter took a fresh whirl, and called his favourite Odin to witness his dilemma; but Odin paid as much deference to his prayers as Hercules did, of yore, to the waggoner who got the wheel of his cart in the rut. The cutter wearied not in her waltz; but, whether she felt the want of a partner, or the power of the wind, I know not; for when the pilot had lighted his pipe, and given his soul to its soporific ward, she darted unexpectedly out of the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... trained, the combined effect was a little too much for his nerves. He gave a sidelong leap and started to run. His master checked him sharply, and veering from the road, he ran the wheels into a deep rut, and over went ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... all in all," he remarked, reflectively, "we're one of the luckiest lot of scouts that ever wandered down the pike. Most fellows experience a regular rut, and never run up against anything out of the way. But I have to shake myself very time I look back over our calendar, for fear ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... said. "You will not fall into the rut? Let me keep the ideal you have given me. For the sake of heaven, do not cloud for me the one bright image I hold! Let me know always that you are growing, and that the pure, noble intelligence which distinguishes you advances, and will not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... me) Loneliness—these are the three things by which I flee from haunting terrors towards numbness and indifference. Each one, of course, has his own weapons—these are mine. Years ago, when I was young and timid, I dreaded to leave the little rut down which I wandered. Now experience has given me the knowledge that Life is very little after all, and that it is for the most part worthless where there is no happiness, no forgetfulness of pain, no inner peace. The opinion of other people, beyond the few who love me, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... from thinking of things that make me dizzy and blind, and fill my eyes with tears so that I cannot see the paper. I mean such things as are being done where our heroes are dying as Shaw died. It is not wise that all our literature should run in a rut cut through our hearts and red with our blood. I feel the need of a little gentle household merriment and talk of common things, to indulge which I ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... travelled over—four horses essayed to drag a stage-waggon over, or rather, I should say, through, a track of mud and ruts impossible to picture. The stage fare amounted to $6, or 4s. for 34 miles. An extra dollar reserved the box-seat and gave me the double advantage of knowing what was coming in the rut line and taking another lesson in the idiom of the American stage-driver. This idiom consists of the smallest possible amount of dictionary words, a few Scriptural names rather irreverently used, a very large intermixture of "git-ups" and ejaculatory "his," ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... inclined to be down-hearted upon anniversaries. You need not tell me what I know so well of myself. Another year has gone, another year has dawned, and you are in the same old rut of ordering and cooking meals and clearing up after they have been eaten, sweeping, dusting, making and mending clothes, washing, dressing and training children, and the thousand and one nameless tasks that fritter away strength, leaving nothing to ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... along well-oiled grooves, and the diplomatist who steps out of the rut for an instant happens upon strange and unexpected obstacles. Knowing this, the ambassador still hesitated. ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... November is the month of gloom, despair, and many suicides. In the wild world, November is the Mad Moon. Many and diverse the madnesses of the time, but none more insane than the rut of the white-tailed deer. Like some disease it appears, first in the swollen necks of the antler-bearers, and then in the feverish habits of all. Long and obstinate combats between the bucks now, characterize the time; neglecting even to eat, they spend their ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... brother had been left in camp as guards. They were sitting idly warming themselves in the first sunbeams, when their attention was sharply drawn to four buffaloes that were coming to the pool to drink. The beasts came down a game trail, a deep rut in the bluff, fronting where they were sitting, and they did not dare to stir for fear of being discovered. The buffaloes walked into the pool, and after drinking their fill, stood for some time with the water running out of their mouths, idly lashing their sides with their ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... means. If this is too much of a task, just hunt for the obsolete features. Above all things, we must not try to follow another's work. We too often follow unwittingly and to our misfortune even when we try to keep out of the rut. ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... you ain't so deep in your rut you can't see the stars!" said Christopher. "But I guess you see them in a pretty black sky sometimes. In the beginning, why did I have to come into the world without ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... flood that I had let loose. Heaven only knows how hard I tried, for when I pleaded that a moderate track be taken, the mob insisted that I sought a place to dominate, and put me in the rut. ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... Mas—sir," opined Mr. Lasher at length; "if there's any one as has got into his right rut, so to speak, in this world, it's you. I always said you was ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... wish that he had studied harder at college and was now in a position to be doing something better than hack work for a soulless publishing company. Never before had he been so completely certain that he was sick to death of the rut into which he ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... lamps, still lighted, would give the impression of vigilance on our part. And every creature that met us would rely upon us for quartering. [Footnote: "Quartering":—This is the technical word, and, I presume, derived from the French cartayer, to evade a rut or any obstacle.] All this, and if the separate links of the anticipation had been a thousand times more, I saw, not discursively, or by effort, or by succession, but by one ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... hisses of the crowd, the talk of the respectable classes, and the murmurs of Italy. For my part, I was in hopes, as I often used actually to say to you, that the wheel of the state chariot had made its revolution with scarcely any noise and leaving scarcely any visible rut; and it would have been so, if people could only have waited till the storm had blown over. But after sighing in secret for a long time they all began, first to groan, and at last to talk and shout. Accordingly, that friend of ours, unaccustomed to being unpopular, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... O thou who art mighty in thine hour, thou great and mighty Prince, dweller in An-rut-f, [Footnote: The place where nothing grows—the underworld.] lord of eternity and creator of everlastingness, thou art the lord of Suten-henen (i.e., Heracleopolis ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... tried to find the original of that boyish picture, looking everywhere with no success. At twenty-nine, coming out of what seemed to be the glamor of the impossible, I married you to oblige my mother,—you asked for this,—and imagined that I had settled into a conventional rut. Do you want me to go ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... not to stick entirely to one teacher, for it is easy to get into a rut in this way, and someone else may have a quite different and more enlightening way of setting ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... exact opposite of those at the conservative Academy—as aberrant as the latter were commonplace. But to one who knew them as the work of a fashionable, highly-educated clique they seemed merely a reaction of the same spirit that produced the elder style. In striving to get out of the rut of commonplace which had so long held in its grip the wheels of English art, not originality, so much as deliberate, sought-out eccentricity, was the result. The scale of work, starting from the original bathos of domestic sentimentality, runs up to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... that determine whether it is good or bad. All that I shall say in its favor is, that it gives us an advantage with which any of the discomforts of life can not enter into comparison. It drags us out of the rut, it stirs us up, and it is love which satisfies one of our most pressing wants. I think I have already told you that our hearts are made for emotion; to excite it therefore, is to satisfy a demand of nature. What would vigorous youth be without love? A long illness: it would not be existence, ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... that lie like a barrier between the center of the continent and the Pacific Slope. "How much more of it do we have before us, Frank? I'm getting so filled with wonder and awe that my tongue is getting into a rut with saying ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... said a grocer. "Arbuckle has made an immense business in coffee, and made it by his brains. It's encouraging to see a concern get out of the rut and show folks that the end of ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... every man is always a bigger proposition than his past—whoever he may be. With your talents and genius you could yet make of yourself a successful and prosperous man, respected by the community—if you could get out of this miserable rut that has helped to drag ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... not very pretty," he smiled grimly, as he wiped the perspiration from his grimy face. "However, you got the car out of the rut, so perhaps we can proceed on ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... aspiring and lovable boy. He was repellant to Grant, who could not and perhaps did not desire to understand him.... To him the Southerners were always the red-faced, swashbuckling slave-drivers he had fancied and pictured them in the days of his abolition oratory. More and more he lived in a rut of his own fancies, wise in books and counsels, gentle in his relations with the few who enjoyed his confidence; to the ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... the quavering of an old hurdy-gurdy. Of late he has written a ballet for eight clowns. And he is reported to have said, "I should like to bring it about that music be performed in street-cars, while people get out and get in." For he finds his greatest enemy in the concert-room, that rut that limits the play of the imagination of audiences, that fortress in which all of the intentions of the men of the past have established themselves, and from which they dominate the musical present. The ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... in the old rut. Every one seems to be satisfied, eh—even the radicals in the prohibition movement? Isn't that so? Their men have introduced some new legislation, adding on more penalties that no officer will ever enforce—but the mere legislation satisfies ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... replied his chum, seriously. "For all we know they may have run across some sign of the rustlers, and thought it best to get out of the beaten rut here before they ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... maintaining a passenger service between Urga and Kalgan. As usual, the native chauffeur was dashing along at thirty-five miles an hour when he should not have driven faster than twenty at the most. One of the front wheels slid into a deep rut, the car turned completely over and the resulting casualties numbered one man dead and our Czech seriously injured. It was three days before another car carried him back to Urga, where the broken bones were badly set by a drunken Russian doctor. ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... incomparably greater advantages of soil and climate than Ulster, with better harbours and a better trading position. But instead of working they stand with folded hands complaining. Instead of putting their own shoulders to the wheel they wait for somebody to lift them out of the rut. Instead of modern methods of agriculture, fishing, or what not, they cling to the ancient ways, and resent advice. The women will not take service; the men will not dig, chop, hammer. They are essentially bone-idle—laziness ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... by the author of "Mademoiselle Mori": chapters 1 and 2; and "The Life and Love of the Insect", by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapters 1 to 4.—Translator's Note.) calling on his comrades to lend a helping hand in dragging his pellet out of a rut; the Sphex (A species of Hunting Wasp. Cf. "Insect Life": chapters 6 to 12.—Translator's Note.) cutting up her Fly so as to be able to carry him despite the obstacle of the wind; and all the other fallacies which are the stock-in-trade of those who wish to see in the animal world what is not ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... every village a fresh retinue of Mongols is provided. And because the villages are being constantly moved you can only travel in a straight line between them, and cannot follow any determined route. You drive along over desert and steppe, and usually see no vestige of an old wheel rut. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... as possible in the use of expression. Don't follow in the old rut but try and strike out for yourself. This does not mean that you should try to set the style, or do anything outlandish or out of the way, or be an innovator on the prevailing custom. In order to be original there is no necessity for you to introduce something novel or ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... slabs of cast iron are erected bearing his name and the section of the road he is to keep in order. Thus every man's reputation is at stake in the neighborhood, and if there is a muddy place or a rut, everybody knows who is to blame for it, and it can not be laid to the county commissioner, as is the case in America. On the outside of each road is a line of large blocks of stone set upright, which ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... fault, dear!" she gasped, as the forewheels of the buggy, dropping into a gopher rut, suddenly tilted up the back of the vehicle and shot its fair occupants into the yielding palisades of dusty grain. The shock detached the whiffletree from the splinter-bar, snapped the light pole, and, turning the now thoroughly frightened animals again ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... itself too much upon the reader's attention. His prose is at the best, as in the "Life of Stirling," when it is most transparent and freest from mannerisms. Carlyle's manner at its best is very pleasing; at its worst it becomes a wearisome mannerism. When a writer's style gets into a rut his reader is not happy. Ease, flexibility, transparency, though it be colored transparency, are ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... he is failing rapidly, largely from overwork. He worries about conditions here which really do not exist. I have been trying to take the load off his shoulders so that he could ease up a bit, but he has got into a rut from which he cannot ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... any means. Indeed, there have been many instances in real life where the villain and the hero have been on excellent terms, and to the great benefit of the hero too. But in this case Balderstone was to follow in the rut, and become the rival of Osborne for the hand of Marguerite Andrews—the heroine. Balderstone was to write a book, which for a time should so fascinate Miss Andrews that she would be blind to the desirability ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... kindly qualities looked at matters only as they applied to herself. When Marilla was eighteen she would come to the freedom of a bound-out girl, too old to begin another life, settled in a rut—if she lived. Was she not one of the little ones that might be rescued and live out a higher life? There were many who could not, but she felt she ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... to all, a man must stick to his own Church!" All these others, these St. Georges, and Westropps, and old Ardmore, and the rest of them, had only been waiting to jump on him as soon as he put a foot out of the rut they all walked in. They had waited for the chance to make him a pariah. Now they had it. All right! He could face that. They should soon see how little ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... they were given shelter at a farmer's house, and were on their journey again by the rising of the sun, but shortly afterward the cart ran into a rut and one of the wheels was broken. Margaret petulantly wondered if the Lord were trying to keep her from reaching ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... labor, that's a fact," admitted Aunt 'Mira. "He use ter do a-many things for me, years ago. Oh, yes! Your Uncle Jason warn't allus like he is now. But we got kinder in a rut I 'xpec'. An' I ain't young and good-lookin' like I use ter be, an' that makes a ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... manager is impractical, is paying too much out in salaries, hasn't any method in his establishment, and has a dozen leaks that he can't find, but which could easily be located by a professional leak finder. There are a lot of men in business who are honest and willing to work, but who are in a rut and can't see the new things coming, and who could be put on their feet by an injection of a little outside ginger and a readjustment of their business on more modern methods. They are the ones who need help and who will be good for their loans; and that's one thing we are going to try ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... a deep-rutted farm road, and tufts of heather and furze. Over them and through them went horse and man—horse rising seven and man twenty off, a well-matched pair in age for a wild ride—headlong towards the north, till a blind rut somewhat deeper than usual put an end to their career, and sent the good horse staggering forward some thirty feet on to his nose and knees, and Tom over his shoulder, on to his back ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... any of these things, but you could never enlighten her on the subject. The rudest savage can, in a measure, be enlightened, he can be taught the reason why of things, but an animal cannot. We can make its impulses follow a rut, so to speak, but we cannot make them free and self-directing. Animals are the victims of ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... been quite agitated by this frank and unexpected avowal, for she pressed the child to her with still greater fervor, kissing her time and again more affectionately, after which she immediately slipped into the religious rut again below ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... function is accomplished love disappears. It is only in the higher animals that we see a more or less durable sympathy develop between the two sexes. However, here also and even in man the sexual passion intoxicates for the moment all the senses. In his sexual rut even man is dominated as by a magic influence, and for the time he sees the world only under the aspect inspired by this influence. The object loved appears to him under celestial colors, which veil all the defects and miseries of reality. Each moment of his amorous feeling inspires sentiments ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... spears and the look of official guards, and a Terran with a death-grip upon the side railing. A brace of truculent beasts of frighteningly saurian mien shuffled ponderously along in the loose harness. From time to time, one or the other would stumble over a turn in his rut and emit a menacing rumble as if he suspected his team mate of causing ...
— A Transmutation of Muddles • Horace Brown Fyfe
... car had given a most unwieldy lurch, wedged a tire in a rut, bounced a couple of times, and stopped—providentially—on the edge of the deep gully that ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... this for ten years, I say. When I failed again I tried harder still. I still believed in myself—and others. Recognition, appreciation, might be delayed, but eventually it would come, it must; for this was my work,—to please others, to amuse them, to carry them temporarily out of the rut of their work-a-day lives and make them forget. I believed this, I say, believed and hoped and waited and worked on until the last few months. Then—I told you what happened. Then—" For the first ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... say so," continued the wise woman, "but you see, my girl, when you go back, you get right in the same rut again, and all those mill girls would just make life miserable for you. I am not encouraging you to stay away from home, but as Molly says, she is a leader in the scout girls you know—she always says when a thing goes wrong in one place it is best to try it ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... within their ranks any other work or trade. So in all those legion castes not only has a man his social sphere and status assigned to him, he is also tied to the trade of his ancestors; yea, more, he is expected to confine himself to ancestral tools and methods of work in that narrow rut of life. One day the writer was accosted by a weaver who was in a famishing condition. He made a pathetic plea for charity. Manchester cloths were flooding the market; they therefore could not sell the products of their labour at living rates. It was suggested that they take ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... warning. He was gentlemanly and respectable, and discharged his duties punctiliously in a manner reflecting credit on himself and his position, but, comparing the mind of a philanthropist to the Murrumbidgee in breadth, his, in comparison, might be likened to the flow of a bucket of water in a dray-rut. ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... earned more than the small advance the publisher had given me but which was on the whole respectably reviewed), going to more and more parties, making more and more friends. It was all very nice, but I couldn't see that it was leading me anywhere. I was thirty. I was in a rut. I felt I must get out of it. It did not take me long to make up my mind. I told the friend with whom I shared the flat that I wanted to be rid of it and go abroad. He could not keep it by himself, but we luckily found a middle-aged gentleman who wished to install his mistress in it, ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... herself for twenty-eight years," said John a little wistfully. "She says she doesn't intend to get in a rut, ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... not peculiar to the human female, being represented in the higher animals by what is familiarly termed the "rut." This is not usually a bloody discharge, however, as in the human female, though such a discharge has been observed ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... little in it to inspire him with high ideals or arouse his ambition to achieve greatness. He leads a hard life among rough men and receives only coarse fare and rougher treatment. His life is narrow and he works in a rut that prevents him from taking a broad view of life. All that he has is his monthly wages, and, possibly, a hope that at some future day he may have a herd ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... do one of two things," saith Father: "either to fall into a rut, or to leave the road altogether. Either his charity contracteth, and he can see none right that walk not in his rut; or else his charity breaketh all bounds, and he would have all to be right, ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... never the one to get into a rut and stay there. Long before the old-time grafting circuses grew scarce and scarcer, and before the street-fairing concessions progressed out of their primitive beginnings into orderly and recognized organizations, he had quitted both fields for higher and ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... Roger, "This is just what I needed. I was getting into a rut. The explosion has blown out a whole lot of books I had forgotten about and didn't even know I had. Look, here's an old copy of How to Be Happy Though Married, which I see the publisher lists as 'Fiction.' Here's Urn Burial, and The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac, and ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... said nothing. Her hand was on my arm, but I scarcely felt its weight, except when we came upon places where the road was rough; and I wished that the way were rougher, that I might feel her dependence upon me. Once she stepped into a deep rut, and I caught her about the waist, but when I had lifted her out, she gently released herself. She said that the road was rougher than she had ever before found it, and I was ready to swear that it was the most delightful highway that my feet had trod; indeed, I did swear ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... ever should enter the enclosure of a "bad" deer, or any buck deer in the rut, without a stout and tough club or pitchfork for defense. Of the two weapons, the former is ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... awakenings of energy, vigorous revolutionary outbursts, which stimulate the will, brace the muscles, and blow the obstacle to smithereens. Our revolution of 1789 was one of these outbursts of heroic energy, dragging mankind out of the rut wherein it had become wedged, and compelling a fresh start. But as soon as the effort has been made and the chariot set in motion, mankind has been only too ready to stick fast in the mire again. Long ago, the French revolution brought ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... Lawson." She affirmed that she saw him then. Mr. Burroughs, it will be borne in mind, was at this time a hundred miles away, at his home in Maine. Hutchinson asked her where she saw him. She said "There," pointing to a rut in the road made by a cart-wheel. He had an iron fork in his hand, and threw it where she said Burroughs was standing. Instantly she fell into a fit; and, when she came out of it, said, "'You have torn his coat, for I heard it tear.'—'Whereabouts?' ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the crest of the Downs at a lurching gallop; down the ragged rut-worn lane, the dusty convolvuluses glimmering up at him in the dusk; past the squat-spired Church in the high Churchyard among the sycamores; down the rough and twisted Highstreet of Newhaven in the chill of that August evening, as no man had ever ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... seen anything or been anywhere. Trouble with you is you've been in the rut too long. Thinking there's nothing left in the universe but the commonplace. Right, too, if you stick to the regular routes of travel. But the Nomad's different. I'm just a rover when I'm at her controls, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... Serge's mind, and he was afraid. At that moment, when his fate was being decided, he hesitated to go deeper into the rut where he had already been walking too long. He stood silent and undecided. Confused thoughts crowded his brain; his temples throbbed, and a buzzing noise sounded in his ears. But the thought of giving up ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... doing 'The White Elephant' in a Yiddish theater and wired Unger out in Chicago to come back and grab it for Broadway. Where's it got me? Nowhere. Because I whiled away the best fifteen years of my life in an up-State burg, and then, when I came down here too late in life, got in the rut of a salaried man. Well, where it 'ain't got me it's going to get my son. I'm missing a chance, to-day that, mark my word, would make me a rich man but for want ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... the Sims couple, lowering their heads, side by side, resolutely regained the smooth rut of their placid existence. Everything in this world is easier than is imagined. Much easier. In the case of the Sims' household, it was just a matter of adding each morning, to the daily shave of Charles-Norton, ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... disease, contracted heels, sidebones, chronic laminitis, etc., are predisposed to sprains of the fetlock. It generally happens from a misstep, stumbling, or slipping, which results in the joint being extended or flexed to excess. The same result may happen where the foot is caught in a rut, a hole in a bridge, or in a car track, and the animal falls or struggles violently. Direct blows and punctured wounds may also set up inflammation of ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... Roderic, unusual even in a youth who had never been refused demands the most unreasonable, and who had been inured to see all the powers of nature bend to his will. "Is this," cried he, "a return for services so unwearied and sincere as mine? Foolish and ungrateful youth! Rut I will point you to a remedy. Had you not been blinded with fury and impatience, you would have seen that your situation was not yet irremediable, by means the most obviously in your power. Did I not at your birth bestow upon you a ring, that communicates to the wearer the ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... newspapers. When this new sort of New Englander burns a witch the whole prairie catches fire. These people have not the decision and detachment of the doctrinal ages. They cannot do a monstrous action and still see it is monstrous. Wherever they make a stride they make a rut. They cannot stop their own thoughts, though their thoughts ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... how much reason there was to fear that treachery might be exercised towards Maitland, he would surely not have suffered him thus to risk his valuable life. Rut he was ignorant of all the peculiar circumstances that had occurred to show that he was a special mark for the vengeance of Coubitant: and the confidence he felt in his courage and ability led him—on this ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb |
