"Mare's nest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the best of terms with one another, to keep the peace for a reasonable period. The sole evidence against this view of the case, he argued, was police evidence; and the police were naturally reluctant to admit that they had found a mare's nest. In proof that the fight had been premeditated, and was a prize-fight, they alleged that it had taken place within an enclosure formed with ropes and stakes. But where were those ropes and stakes? They ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... least, or without any, provocation—a rather idiotic state—which he is quite conscious of but cannot stop. Presently some one will ask, "Have you found a wicker's nest?" which is a biting sarcasm, though the precise meaning seems uncertain, unless it bears some relation to mare's nest. Mares wicker, so do goats; giggling is wickering. The first work a boy does is to go out with a clapper, or his own strong voice, to scare birds from the corn all day; this we call bird-keeping, but the lads themselves, with an appreciation of the other side of the case, call ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... Those who play with edge tools must expect to be cut. Three removes are as bad as a fire. Through thick and thin. Time and tide wait for no man. To beat about the bush. To break the ice. To buy a pig in a poke. To find a mare's nest. ...
— Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading - Selected from English and American Literature • Horace Elisha Scudder, editor
... rechristened itself Britannia, dropped the War Baby agitation, and, after an interlude of self-control, broke out into denunciations, first of this public servant and then of that, as traitors and German spies. Finally, it discovered a mare's nest in the case of Sir Edward Grey that led to its suppression, and the last I have from this misleading and unrepresentative feminist faction is the periodic appearance of a little ill-printed sheet of abuse about ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... talk," said Hastings. "You can't scare me again, Dick, as you did with that Populist mare's nest ten years ago." ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... me about this mare's nest of Bentinck. The facts are these: the Montreal Board of Trade drew up a memorial for the House of Commons against the Navigation Laws, containing inter alia a very distinct threat of separation in the event of their non-repeal. My secretary (not ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Norgate begged. "You have always the Review to fall back upon. The mobilisation, to be effective, should be unexpected. Mobilise to-morrow. I am telling you the truth, sir, and you'll know it before many days are passed. Even if I have got hold of a mare's nest, you know there's trouble brewing. England will be in none the worse position to intervene for peace, if her fleet ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he, "to hear that baby calling us Bob-o-lith-o-nithts? They begin education early down South. Before the summer is out she'll be talking about the cuth o' Ham, and telling the story of Onethimuth. But they've found a mare's nest now, Mrs. Blumenthal. The Deacon will be writing to his Carolina friends how the Massachusetts ladies ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... it's all a mare's nest. Find Stokimatis, Lemoine, and bring her back with you. Well see what she can tell us. And get the locket and the ring, with the ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... hard at me, got up, and kissing my forehead, said—'Don't be frightened, Maud; I venture to say it is a mare's nest; at all events, my child, we will take care that no danger reaches ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... at me curiously "what sort of a mare's nest you have got hold of. Rather out of your line, this sort of ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... agree that it is viperous in the extreme. Serpents are generated in various ways; the horse-runner, for instance, being derived from the fibres of horses' manes and tails, which probably receive the breath of life in a mare's nest. That such is the origin of the horse-runner the reader can verify for himself, by putting a few horse hairs in a basin of water and watching them till they begin to squirm. Possibly the shorter fibres ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various |
