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Maze   /meɪz/   Listen
Maze

noun
1.
Complex system of paths or tunnels in which it is easy to get lost.  Synonym: labyrinth.
2.
Something jumbled or confused.  Synonyms: snarl, tangle.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Maze" Quotes from Famous Books



... garments habitable. He called his cutter into consultation and they went over me carefully, meantime uttering those commiserating clucking sounds one tailor always utters when examining another tailor's handiwork. After this my tailor took a lump of chalk and charted out a kind of Queen Rosamond's maze of crossmarks on my breeches and said I might leave them, and that if surgery could save them he would operate. At any rate he guaranteed to cut them away sufficiently to admit of my breast bone coming out into the ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... Scared and attentive, she listened in a maze for the sound of the front door. She heard it open. But was it possible that she heard also the creak of the gate? She sprang to the bow window with surprising activity, and pulled aside a blind, one inch.... There was Rachel tripping ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... driven, The boat fled visibly—three nights and days, Borne like a cloud through morn, and noon, and even, We sailed along the winding watery ways 4745 Of the vast stream, a long and labyrinthine maze. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... the sloping plain on which the city stands, and bears its commerce to the sea. Near by grows a magnificent forest, one of the largest in France, covering no less than ninety-four thousand acres. Within the city appears the lofty spires of a magnificent cathedral, while numerous towers rise from a maze of buildings, giving the place, from a distance, a highly attractive aspect. It is still surrounded by its mediaeval walls, outside of which extend prosperous suburbs, while far and wide ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... between the shattered gates and wound our way in the moonlight through the maze of gnarled fruit-trees, decaying farm implements and piles of lumber, towards the small door that formed the only opening in the first story of this deserted fortress, the cold silence was shattered by the harsh baying of ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram

... saw a little further progress made, an additional spar raised into position and secured, a little more added to the complicated maze of rigging; and meanwhile George, accompanied by Robert Dyer, who had been hunted up the moment that his services could be made useful, went hither and thither all over Plymouth and its neighbourhood, ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... fortress, and others to Le Torri, the summer residence of Count Pepoli. On the north, east and south sides of the summit the mountain is precipitous, but towards the west it slopes from the towers through a public garden called the Balio, and then through a maze of narrow, winding streets, down to the Trapani gate. The normal population of the town is about 4000, but in the summer and autumn this is largely increased, inasmuch as the great heat of Trapani and the low country drives as many as can afford it to live on the summit where it is seldom ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones

... other plants, are inherited in accordance with certain laws discovered by Mendel. The early workers in grape-breeding did not know of these laws and could not take aim in the work they were doing. Consequently, hybridization was a maze in which these breeders often lost themselves. Mendel's discoveries, however, assure a regularity of averages and give a definiteness and constancy of action which enable the grape-breeder to attain with fair certainty what he wants if he keeps patiently at his task. The grape-breeder ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... the Divine Is by a silent soul perceived at rest: Yet life and youth for gladsome motion pine— They must expression find, must thus be blest. Led by soft beauty's chain, they follow me To lose themselves within the sinuous maze. On Zephyr's wings I raise the body free; In dancing steps I teach symmetric grace. Grace is the gift I bear within my hand; All things that move I ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... what it was when I came to it; I only found out afterwards that it must have been Hampton Court. One of the men in the office told me he had taken an A. B. C. girl there, and they had great fun. They got into the maze and couldn't get out again, and then they went on the river and were nearly drowned. He told me there were some spicy pictures in the galleries; his girl shrieked with laughter, so ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... grew cooler in the forest through which he lurched, but he was hardly aware of it. Claire, too, was rapidly losing control over herself. She had ceased to talk, save to utter dull, monosyllabic commands to him. The pain from her ankle and her own thirst were blending into a dizzying maze of torture. ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... dining-room. It was lighted by three glass doors which stood wide open on to a verandah or rather loggia running its brick arches along the garden side of the house. It was really a magnificent garden: smooth green lawns and a gorgeous maze of flower-beds in the foreground, displayed around a basin of dark water framed in a marble rim, and in the distance the massed foliage of varied trees concealing the roofs of other houses. The town might ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... short cut across the switch yards one morning, when a stirring episode occurred that he was not soon to forget, nor others. It took an expert to thread the maze of cars in motion, trains stalled on sidings, and trains arriving ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... and the usual assortment of dancing-men of all ages and sizes was brought forward for our inspection; while the Colonel, being introduced to a beaming English girl of some seventeen summers, whirled her at once into the merry maze of dancers, who were spinning easily round to the lively melody of one of Strauss's most fascinating waltzes. Presently I also found myself circling the room with an amiable young German, who ambled round with a certain amount of cleverness, considering that ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... spying on a spy smacked of complications too deep for Mike, with all his knuckle-cracking. He was lost in a maze of conflicting conjectures whenever he tried to figure the thing out. And who was the other spy that stayed up on Taylor Rock? There was smoke up there where should be no smoke. Mike had seen it. There were little flashes of light up there on sunny days—Mike had seen them also. And ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower

... she had chosen led outward and away from the maze of steel lines, and, finding no harm come of it and the child so happy, Glory gave up trying to catch and simply followed her. Just then, too, there came into view the sight of green tree-tops and a glimpse of the river, and these encouraged ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond

... a job to get the ship round; and when we did, there was the Vryheid, with her one mast left, waiting for us as saucy as ever. After that, all passed for me in even a greater maze than before; for a bullet from the enemy's rigging found me out with a dull thud in the shoulder, and sent me reeling on to the deck. I was able after the first shock to stumble up and get my hands upon the helm; but I stood there sick and silly, ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... a very cosy, blue-silk-lined room opening out of the banqueting-hall. Only Lucy, Philip and Mr. Noah were present. Bread and milk is very good even when you have to eat it with the leaden spoons out of the dolls'-house basket. When it was much later Mr. Noah suddenly said 'good-night,' and in a maze of sleepy repletion (look that up in the dicker, will you?) the children went to bed. Philip's bed was of gold with yellow satin curtains, and Lucy's was made of silver, with curtains of silk that were white. ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit

... read a great deal in the hammock, but often the book slipped unnoticed to the moss, and she lay looking upward at the little discs of blue sky visible through the checkering maze of green leaves. One afternoon, deserted by the latest piece of fictional literature, marked in plain figures on the paper cover that protected the cloth binding, one dollar and a half, but sold at the department stores for one dollar and eight cents, Dorothy ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... men had, by this time, passed within the big sliding doors of the freshly-painted shed, and now stood in a maze of machinery and strange looking bits of apparatus. From skylights in the roof—there were no side windows to gratify the inquisitive—the sunlight streamed down on three or four partially completed aircraft. ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham

... with the girl he sought lying within fifty feet of him, Bulan started off through the jungle with two of Ninaka's Dyaks as guides—guides who had been well instructed by their panglima as to their duties. Twisting and turning through the dense maze of underbrush and close-growing, lofty trees the little party of eight plunged farther and farther ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... is," he thought, "how lonely and dismal! Warfare is what I need. Dear Lord, let me soon be killing men briskly, and warming myself in the burning streets of Ferrara. That is what I was begotten for. I have been lost in a maze." ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... of defence should above all be put in active operation in the apartment of your wife; never let her curtain her bed in such a way that one can walk round it amid a maze of hangings; be inexorable in the matter of connecting passages, and let her chamber be at the bottom of your reception-rooms, so as to show at a glance those ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... said, "I am so happy in London here with you, and I feel all the time so strong and well. I can read and understand the books which were a maze of print to me before. I can see the things in the pictures, and feel the thrill of the music, which seemed to come to me, somehow, before, all dislocated and ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... her ear and neck. Into her eyes of dull blue—like the blue of old china—the morning's sun sent an occasional unwonted sparkle. Over the asphalt and over the green grass-plots of the square the shadows of the venerable elms wove a shifting maze of tracery. Traffic avoided the place. It was invariably quiet in the square, and one—as now—could always hear the subdued ripple and murmur of the fountain ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... from falsehood. The girl simply did not seem to know the difference between the two. What was more, we found that the mother presented the same characteristics. She also, by her most curious and complicated fabrications, led even her most rational sympathizers into a bewildering maze. A woman of magnificent presence, tremendous will, and good intelligence, she nevertheless was soon found to be absolutely unreliable in her statements. This woman's numerous inventions, so far as we have been able to ascertain, have been ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... in whose transparent wave My youthful limbs I wont to lave; No torrents stain thy limpid source, No rocks impede thy dimpling course Devolving from thy parent lake A charming maze thy waters make By bowers of birch and groves of pine And ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... of hanging moss, a great, magic flame of rose and red and white burned steadily. You looked to see it vanish; you could not imagine such a thing would stay. All idea of individual petals or species was swept away in this glowing maze of splendor, this transparent labyrinth of rose and red and white, through which you looked beyond, into the gray gloom of the hanging moss and the depths of the ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... lost our bearings in the maze of currents in which we soon found ourselves, and the dim shore melted away in the thickening fog. To add to our difficulties, Captain Booden put his head most frequently into the cuddy; and when it emerged, he smelt dreadfully of ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... The picturesque but highly competent and efficient electronics chief hadn't exaggerated. The fabulous world of rocketry narrowed to a maze of wiring, circuit after circuit, checking, testing, and calling for test signals from the blockhouse. Rick checked and rechecked, following closely on Gee-Gee's heels. He missed nothing, took nothing for granted. Once he snapped, "Wait a minute! You didn't check that circuit properly. ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... the Cretan labyrinth of old, With wand'ring ways, and many a winding fold, Involv'd the weary feet without redress, In a round error, which deny'd recess: Not far from thence he grav'd the wond'rous maze; A thousand doors, a ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... voyages in the neighboring waters. There's only one settlement within fifty miles of us, and you'd never find it, it's so small and the wilderness is such a maze." ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... a canter, and wondered more and more as we rode at the solitude, where so few hours before there had been such a deafening roar. We plunged straight into the maze of narrow streets, and then suddenly, before we were aware of it, our mounts were swerving and snorting in mad terror! For corpses dotted the ground in ugly blotches, the corpses of men who had met death in a dozen different ways. Lying in exhausted attitudes, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... orient wave, The flocking shadows pale Troop to the infernal jail, Each fetter'd ghost slips to his several grave; And the yellow-skirted fays Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze. ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... in anything," replied Scarlett, as he walked on till he reached the fork, and continued his way along the living branch of the old tree, with Fred still following, till they stood in the midst of a maze of jagged and gnarled branches rising high above their heads, ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... palace; the groups were removed to adorn other sites. While the vast pleasure-house was in course of construction, each year marked the creation of new fountains and woods. In 1664, the Parterre du Nord was laid out below the windows of the north wing; in 1667 and 1668 the Theatre d'Eau, the Maze, the Star, the Grand Canal, the Avenue of Waters, the Cascade of Diana and the Pyramid on the North Parterre, and the Green Carpet (Tapis-Vert) spread out in view of the windows of the rear facade of the palace. In 1670 and ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne

... of will-power, he forced his elevated foot toward the companionway floor. The magnetic field permeating the dead ship was still potent, forming, in a sense, a maze of invisible wires, holding him in his ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis

... the road of Law, where Pilate stays To hear, at last, the answer to his cry; And mighty sages, groping through their maze Of eager questions, hear a ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes

... backward. They were in such a maze of lanes that the old man was master, and Redworth vowed to be rid of him at the first cottage. This, however, they were long in reaching, and the old man was promptly through the garden-gate, hailing the people and securing 'information, before Redworth ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the first dawn of its conscious being. Upon Him, its Creator and Source, it never lost hold, and never ceased to cry out for Him with longing and aspiration, even during that bitter and protracted period of his youth when his mind, entangled in the maze of philosophic subjectivism, seemed in danger of rejecting theism altogether. But the underpinning of his faith, so far as that professed to be Christian and to come by hearing—to have an intellectual basis, that is—began to slip away almost as soon ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... that the office, accessible from the open street, was only connected with the hidden premises behind—premises, as was afterwards discovered, held under a separate tenancy—by an easily-shifted ladder. It was in these hidden premises, approached by the maze of courts and the stable-yard, that the main evidences of Mayes's way of life were observable. The passage where my wrist had been locked to the wall, and the room or cellar in which Plummer had been confined, were the only parts of the lower premises fitted for ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison

... stepped into the lightly loaded scow which lay at the head of the island. The men consisted of the steersman, Francois; a bowman, Pierre; and four oarsmen. They all were stripped to trousers and shirts. At a word from Francois the boat pushed out, the men poling it through the maze of rocks at the head of the island to a certain point at the head of the right-hand channel where the current steadied down over a wide and rather open piece ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough

... of irrigation wandered like azure veins through a maze of blossoming pink and gold in the sun-bright meadows, and as far as the most sweeping glance could reach, the horizon seemed pinned down to ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... Army, advanced from Luxemburg into the southern Ardennes and captured Neuf-chateau. His further objective was to break through the French line somewhere near the historic ground of Sedan. But at this point some change in the German plan seems to have taken place. From the maze still enveloping the opening events of the war, one can only conjecture a reason which would move such an irrevocable body as the German General Staff to alter a long-fixed plan. Probably, then, the unanticipated strength of Belgian resistance foreshadowed the summoning of reenforcements to Von Kluck's ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... in a maze. He had thought to straighten matters out, and he had only got them into a far worse tangle. That Miss Arminster had no conscientious scruples about adding another husband to her quota was bad enough, but that his innocent, unsuspecting father should be ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells

... was built by Mr. J. Meyrick, who died there in 1801. Ho was the father of Sir Samuel Meyrick the well-known antiquary. Ho purchased the house, in 1794, of R. Heavyside, Esq., and pulled down the old mansion that stood close to the site of the ancient maze, which became converted into a lawn at the rear of the modern house. The place was originally [Picture: Old Gate of Peterborough House] termed Brightwells, or Rightwells, and here, in 1569, died John ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... quick pressure of his hand still burning her palm, she swept along in a maze of disordered thought. And being by circumstances, though not by inclination, an orderly young woman, she attempted a mental reorganization. This she completed as she wheeled her mare into the main forest road; and, ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... but the uncoloured drawing is itself full of charm. The grace of line, which was to distinguish all the works of his mature years, is already manifest in this effort of his boyhood. It seems to foretell the sweep of the Virgin's drapery in the Sistine Madonna, and the delightful maze of curves flowing together and away again and returning upon themselves which outline the face, the arms, hands, and draperies of St. Catherine in the National Gallery. You will find it well worth a little trouble to look long and closely at one of Raphael's ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway

... he hailed a passing taxi and was soon speeding through Piccadilly westward. He turned by Hyde Park Corner, skirted the grounds of Buckingham Palace and plunged into the maze of Pimlico. He pulled up before a dreary-looking house in a blank and dreary street, and telling the cabman to wait, mounted the steps and ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... very large palaces for all that), with marble terraces looking down into close by-ways—the magnificent and innumerable Churches; and the rapid passage from a street of stately edifices, into a maze of the vilest squalor, steaming with unwholesome stenches, and swarming with half-naked children and whole worlds of dirty people—make up, altogether, such a scene of wonder: so lively, and yet so dead: so noisy, and yet so quiet: so obtrusive, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... after them, but they had already disappeared into that maze of crooked, squalid streets around the Pitti. Fortunately, there was not more than a sovereign in it. I was filled with regret, however, on account of my friend's letter. He had trusted me with some ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux

... song. Yet Hope, who still in present sorrow Whispers the promise of to-morrow, Tells us of future days to come, When you shall glad our rustic home; When this wild whirlwind shall be still, And summer sleep on glen and hill, And Tweed, unvexed by storm, shall guide In silvery maze his stately tide, Doubling in mirror every rank Of oak and alder on his bank; And our kind guests such welcome prove As most we wish to those ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... comes with lanthorn light Shall guide thy groping pace aright With faltering feet and slow; No! let him rear the torch on high And every maze shall meet thine eye, And every snare and every foe; Then with steady step and strong, Traveller, shalt thou ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... (Works, ix. 174) he describes the state of mind which he has recorded in his Meditations:—'There were others whose crime it was rather to neglect Reason than to disobey her; and who retreated from the heat and tumult of the way, not to the bowers of Intemperance, but to the maze of Indolence. They had this peculiarity in their condition, that they were always in sight of the road of Reason, always wishing for her presence, and always ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... The ideas in the last page have several times vaguely crossed my mind. Owing to several correspondents I have been led lately to think, or rather to try to think, over some of the chief points discussed by you. But the result has been with me a maze—something like thinking on the origin of evil, to which you allude. The mind refuses to look at this universe, being what it is, without having been designed; yet where one would most expect design,—viz., in the structure of a sentient being,—the more I think on the subject, the less ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... final one and it took him from a large compartment to a small one, from a high-arching surface of metal to a maze of intricate control mechanisms in a space so narrow that he had to ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long

... issuing cheerful, to thy sport repair; Chief should the western breezes curling play, And light o'er ether bear the shadowy clouds. High to their fount, this day, amid the hills, And woodlands warbling round, trace up the brooks; The next, pursue their rocky-channel'd maze, Down to the river, in whose ample wave Their little naiads love to sport at large. Just in the dubious point, where with the pool Is mix'd the trembling stream, or where it boils Around the stone, or from the hollow'd bank Reverted plays in undulating flow, There ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... on through the night, but I could not make any great progress. I was now involved in a maze of Essex bye-roads, totally unknown to me, and every few minutes I was compelled to dismount, and search for the tracks. I never lost them, however, until I came once more to a high-road. The curve of the ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster

... was made of the great obligations under which the naturalist lies to the geologist and palaeontologist. Assuredly the time will come when these obligations will be repaid tenfold, and when the maze of the world's past history, through which the pure geologist and the pure palaeontologist find no guidance, will be securely threaded by the ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... In the maze and chaos of the conflict of these vast and draughty Titans, it is for me to thread my precarious way. The bit of life that is I will exult over them. The bit of life that is I, in so far as it succeeds in baffling them or ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... glance about him as he recovered his balance assured him that pursuit would be futile. The man had darted off down a narrow turning which had led into a maze of streets. Already his rapid footsteps had ceased to echo on the pavement; he was lost by this time in the busy restless throng of Saturday night foot-passengers. The Doctor, abandoning any idea of chasing and securing him, lost not a moment in doing what he could. The short street ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford

... various pamphlets and Press articles furnish sufficient light for exploring the maze and producing ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas

... desperate efforts the tears would come. It was such a picture of inward struggle, linked with the keenest mental anguish, as she had never looked upon before. She gazed intently at him, till her own head was whirling in a maze of confused sensations, the most definite of which was the fear that Mansana was on the point of fainting. She rose hastily from her seat; but luckily a loud burst of applause recalled her to her senses, and drew off general attention from her. She had time to regain her composure, and to ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson

... hooray!" he shouted, leading off the crowd in the direction of the river. The crowd followed. The Bloater led them into a maze of intricate back streets; shot far ahead of them, and then, doubling, like a hare, into a retired corner, stood chuckling there while ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne

... despairing look through the thicket of human beings that made a living forest all about, in a last endeavor to discover Alan Porter. Not three paces away a uniquely familiar figure was threading in and out the changing maze-it was Mike Gaynor. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... slat slate glaze rob robe trip tripe nose cut cute slid slide doze not note grip gripe fuse dot dote slop slope maze tub tube shin shine hose con cone slim slime froze cub cube glad glade these nod node snip snipe gaze met mete shot shote rise plat plate spin spine size flam flame plan plane wise shad shade strip stripe haze mop mope grim grime rose whit white twin twine daze sham shame prim prime those scrap ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett

... mournful tribute was to be paid for the third time, the king's son Theseus accompanied it to Crete. On his arrival there, Ariadne, the daughter of Minos interested herself in him. The Minotaur dwelt in the labyrinth, a maze from which no one could extricate himself who had once got in. Theseus desired to deliver his native city from the shameful tribute. For this purpose he had to enter the labyrinth into which the monster's booty was usually thrown, and to kill ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner

... not stir. She was panting for breath, her heart was beating fast, there was a buzzing in her ears, and she felt indeed exhausted by that ascent in the dense gloom. It seemed to her as if she had been climbing for hours, in such a maze, amidst such a turning and twisting of stairs that she would never be able to find her way down again. Inside the studio there was a shuffling of heavy feet, a rustling of hands groping in the dark, a clatter of things being tumbled about, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... silence that fell upon them the minds of both were working in parallel grooves, groping for a way of light to lighten the darkness of an unsolved mystery. When they reached the albacore banks and sighted the vanguard of the fishing fleet, both came back sharply, back from the maze of doubt and intangible suspicions which clouded their brains as the fog had clouded the island that ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... cautiously through the maze of rocks the girl finally reached a slanting shelf beneath which she crept on hands and knees. At its farthest edge was a square door of solid oak, rather crudely constructed but thick and ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)

... absolute condemnation of the sinner, in language which anticipates that of "Fifine at the Fair." "Every life has its own law. The 'losel,' the moral outcast, keeps his own conceit of truth though through a maze of lies. Good labours to exist through evil, by means of the very ignorance which sets each man to tackle it for himself, believing that he alone can."[16] Mr. Browning rejects at least the show of knowledge which gives you a name for what you die of; and ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... to myself,—'at last, and here is the footstep to the woolsack.' For more than an hour I sat motionless, my eyes fixed upon the outspread paper, lost in a very maze of revery. The ambition which disappointments had crushed, and delay had chilled, came suddenly back, and all my day-dreams of legal success, my cherished aspirations after silk gowns and patents of precedence, rushed once ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... would have if the man that she was looking for had not fired a shot on the edge of that vast maze of stream, morass and ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers

... too, was a desolate brown slope until the effects of irrigation were felt on its rich volcanic ash soil. After that only ten years were necessary to convert it into a garden of dazzling splendor. Instead of the forlorn looking sagebrush, a maze of orchards, extending up the valley and ascending the hills, presents in springtime a solid mass of blossoms, varying from purest white to daintiest shades of pink. Serpentining along the hill sides, ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles

... intellectual darkness for a clew to his maze of doubt, his gaze, directed mechanically downward in the way of one who ponders momentous matters, fell upon something which, there, in the light of day and in the presence of living companions, affected him with terror. In the ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... bow and arrows, he ran under the tree and peered up into a maze of silver grey and young green. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... continue their flight on the eastern slope out of the view of their pursuers. They hoped then to find some practicable ridge that would allow of a passage to the neighboring peaks that were thrown together in an orographic maze, to which poor Paganel's genius would ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... dull and stupid, in a maze of whirling thought. My great lady had suddenly grown human, but human of a kind that I had had no conception of. Only this morning I had been opening the stores of very chill wisdom to my pupil, Henry Fenwick of Allerton. Yet here, long ere night was at its zenith, ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... fireflies in the gay spring twilight kept darting and criss-crossing and frolicking up the walk. One by one, each swiftly or lazily disappeared from the maze, and at last only two, Kenyon and Lila, went weaving up the lawn toward the steps of ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, the dukedom of York becoming void until a king or an heir apparent should again have a second son.[58] The first sign of his increased importance was his implication in the maze of matrimonial intrigues which formed so large a part of sixteenth-century diplomacy. The last thing kings (p. 026) considered was the domestic felicity of their children; their marriages were pieces in the diplomatic game ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... followed her form for an instant, while his meditations momentarily wrapped themselves up more and more in inextricable mysteries, from which his utmost ingenuity of thought failed entirely to disentangle him. In a maze of conjecture he passed from the room into the passage adjoining, and, taking advantage of its long range promenaded with steps, and in a spirit, equally moody and uncertain. In a little time he was joined by Forrester, who seemed solicitous to divert his ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... confluent branches bend, And milky eddies with the purple blend; The Chyle's white trunk, diverging from its source, 550 Seeks through the vital mass its shining course; O'er each red cell, and tissued membrane spreads In living net-work all its branching threads; Maze within maze its tortuous path pursues, Winds into glands, inextricable clues; 555 Steals through the stomach's velvet sides, and sips The silver surges with a thousand lips; Fills each fine pore, pervades each slender hair, And drinks salubrious ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... became lost in the maze of his own beautiful sentiments. Adoration for Rickman (himself the soul of honour) struggled blindly with his passion for Flossie Walker. But the thought, which his brain had formed, which his tongue refused to utter, was that the hopelessness of his passion made it no disloyalty to his ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... way out of this maze of mechanical uncertainties? There is. Is voice culture a sort of catch-as-catch-can with the probabilities a hundred to one against success? It is not. Is singing a lost art? It is not. Let us get away from fad, fancy and formula and see the thing as it is. ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger

... handle his subject from a sufficiently independent standpoint. He was not the artist creating a work that was quite outside himself; he was rather the silk-worm spinning his entangling threads round about himself. The book can scarcely be read without shuddering; the dark maze of humane motion and human weakness—a mingling of poetry, sentimentality, rollicking humour, wild remorse, stern gloom, blind delusion, dark insanity, over all which is thrown a veil steeped in the fantastic and the horrible—all this detracts from the artistic ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... big outfitter's place in the City. I dodged round to a second entrance and, sure enough, he came out there. I couldn't get word to Taylor, so I picked him up, and a pretty dance he led me through a maze of alleys up the side of Petticoat Lane and round about by the Whitechapel Road. You will know the sort of neighbourhood it is there. Well, I suppose I must have got a bit careless, for in taking a narrow twist in one of ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... thing worried Strong, and that was if Coxine should repair his ship and make the security of the asteroid belt before they could reach him, it would be almost impossible to track him through that tortuous maze of space junk. ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell

... shadow within the entrance had silently advanced until it stood beside them, paused so with folded arms. Simultaneously the wife and the invader saw, realised. Instantly, instinctively, like similar repellent poles, they sprang apart. Enveloped in a maze of surging divergent passions, the two guilty humans stood silent so, staring at the intruder in ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... tear-swelling eyes Ingenioso's thwarting destinies. And thou, still happy Academico, That still may'st rest upon the muses' bed, Enjoying there a quiet slumbering, When thou repair'st[138] unto thy Granta's stream, Wonder at thine own bliss, pity our case, That still doth tread ill-fortune's endless maze; Wish them, that are preferment's almoners, To cherish gentle wits in their green bud; For had not Cambridge been to me unkind, I had not turn'd ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... difficult to find the way out, and sometimes in. Of these structures the most remarkable were those of Egypt and of Crete. The Egyptian to the E. of Lake Moeris, consisted of an endless number of dark chambers, connected by a maze of passages into which it was difficult to find entrance; and the Cretan, built by Daedalus, at the instance of Minos, to imprison the Minotaur, out of which one who entered could not find his way out again unless by means of a skein of thread. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... three companies. First, the company commanded by Capt. Angel and Lieut. Keech, in which was my Company C. (Capt. Broady was at this time away on sick leave.) Second company was commanded by Capt. Walter H. Maze and the third by Capt. Geo. D. H. Watts. There were about 35 men to the company. In other words, there were but one hundred and five muskets for all of these officers to direct. I have often remarked on what I deemed to be a very idiotic policy ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller

... thy speechless innocence, and lend A charm might win the world to be thy friend. But thou art oft abandoned in thy smiles, And early vice thy easy heart beguiles. Oh for some voice, that of the secret maze Where the grim passions lurk, the winding ways That lead to sin, and ruth, and deep lament, Might haply warn thee, whilst yet innocent 30 And beauteous as the spring-time o'er the hills Advancing, when each ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... of law-precedents, the useful from the useless: instructed me in the methods of indexing and common-placing; and gave me all those advantages, which solitary students so often want, and the want of which so often makes the study of the law appear an endless maze without a plan. When I found myself surrounded with books, and reading assiduously day and night, I could scarcely believe in my own identity; I could scarcely imagine that I was the same person, who, but a few months before this time, lolled upon a sofa ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... sure you are. Wake!" said Meta, looking up, smiling in his face. "You have read yourself into a maze, that's all—what Mary calls, muzzling your head; you don't really think all this, and when you get into the country, away from books, you will forget it. One look at our dear old purple Welsh hills will ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... the future chief of the rebellion, came on the one hand at the urgent call of his fellow-conspirators; Edwin M. Stanton, afterwards Buchanan's Attorney-General and Lincoln's Secretary of War,[4] was on the other hand called in by Mr. Buchanan himself, to help him through, the intricate maze of his perplexed opinions and inclinations. How many others may have come voluntarily or by summons it is impossible to guess. Many brains and hands, however, must have joined in the work, since the document is such a heterogeneous medley of conflicting theories, irreconcilable ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... what we conceive, but far more in what we comprehend not; for we behold Him but asquint upon reflex or shadow; our understanding is dimmer than Moses' eye; we are ignorant of the back parts or lower side of His divinity; therefore to pry into the maze of His counsels, is not only folly in man, but presumption even in angels; like us, they are His servants, not His senators; He holds no counsel, but that mystical one of the Trinity, wherein though ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte

... once more! how rude soe'er the hand That ventures o'er thy magic maze to stray; O, wake once more! though scarce my skill command Some feeble echoing of thine earlier lay: Though harsh and faint, and soon to die away, And all unworthy of thy nobler strain, Yet if one heart throb higher at its sway, The wizard note has not been touched in vain. Then silent ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... which could never be home again. Why not give the horse his head, and let him pick out a safe path? Was there danger that he might carry her back to the cabin again, after all? Horses did that sometimes. But at least he could guide through this maze of perplexity till some surer place was reached. She gave him a sign, and he moved on, nimbly picking ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... crafty, timorous, quick of apprehension, ingenious enough in their own works, as may testify their weirs in which they take their fish, which are certain enclosures made of reeds and framed in the fashion of a labyrinth or maze set a fathom deep in the water with divers chambers or beds out of which the entangled fish cannot return or get out, being once in. Well may a great one by chance break the reeds and so escape, otherwise he remains a prey to the fishermen the next low water which they fish with a net ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton

... dwellings, while the gaps are filled in roughly as time goes on and space grows more precious every year. This haphazard arrangement has no doubt resulted in a certain picturesqueness of disposition and perspective, and even in a tortuous maze of buildings very difficult for any foreign enemy to assault; but it is obvious that the city's internal plan has owed nothing either to military or aesthetic considerations at the outset. For these streets that were not paved at all until the fifteenth century, are ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... turning pale, the color deepened on her cheeks, as the periagua came dancing along, under the lee of the cruiser; and if her respiration became quicker than usual, it was scarcely produced by the agitation of alarm. The near sight of the tall masts, and of the maze of cordage that hung nearly above their heads, however, prevented the change from being noted. A hundred curious eyes were already peeping at them, through the ports, or over the bulwarks of the ship, when suddenly, an officer, who wore the undress of a naval captain of ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... but the Shadow, and on that my eyes were intently fixed, till again eyes grew out of the Shadow,—malignant, serpent eyes. And the bubbles of light again rose and fell, and in their disordered, irregular, turbulent maze, mingled with the wan moonlight. And now from these globules themselves, as from the shell of an egg, monstrous things burst out; the air grew filled with them: larvae so bloodless and so hideous that I can in no way describe them except to remind the reader of the swarming ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... been longing for this day so as to have a regular examination. It must be a wonderful place, Joe. Quite a maze." ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... the camp and crossed the swing bridge into the maze of docks. Threading their way along as men who knew it thoroughly they came at length to the main roadway, with its small, rather smelly shops, its narrow side-streets almost like Edinburgh closes, ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... met with several people, who paid no attention to them whatever, much to Hester's relief, for she had made sure of being detected. At last they reached the city gate, which was still open, as the sun had not yet set. Passing through unchallenged, Dinah at once dived into a maze of narrow streets, and, for the first time ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne

... deep wonder of stars Dust-silver the heavens from west to east, From south to north, and in a maze of bars Invisible I wander far from the feast As ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... accompany him, and who never told on him nor treated him mean nor went back on him in any way! Mark! He had been the means of putting Mark in that helpless position, while circumstances which he was now quite sure the devil had been specially preparing, wove a tangled maze about the young man's feet from which there seemed no way ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... young business man found himself in a maze of perplexity, as he stood for a long time in silence, studying the fair picture of femininity there offered to his gaze. In his breast, various emotions warred lustily. He was a-thrill with elation over the possibility of outwitting the foes who had used every wile and subterfuge of trickiness ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... thoroughly. She explained that the little hotel became unendurable later with the canaille des artistes, and so she had rented an old manoir in the neighborhood, which was being put to rights for her. The next afternoon the three walked to see the manoir through a maze of little lanes. It was a lovely old gray building with crumbling walls and had evidently once been the seat of a considerable family. But only a half dozen rooms were now habitable, and in the cracks of the great walls that surrounded the garden thick roots ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... regimental work, and now he applied himself assiduously to the study of the business of the headquarters of a general in command in the field, for the army was practically in the field. At first it all seemed to him to be a maze quite without a plan, and he hoped that in time he would begin to see the outline of a system. But the more he observed the less system he saw. Everything that could be postponed was postponed. Responsibility ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby

... But then, the wave, so cold and fierce, the gloom, The whirlpools, rocks, that guard that deep retreat! Yet there are fountains, which no sunny ray E'er danced upon, and drops come there at last, Which, for whole ages, filtering all the way, Through all the veins of earth, in winding maze have past. These take from mortal beauty every stain, And smooth the unseemly lines of age and pain, With every wondrous efficacy rife; Nay, once a spirit whispered of a draught, Of which a drop, by any mortal quaffed, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... cubs to the further destruction of their cage, the prospective salesmen wended their way through a maze of sidewalls, poles, unplaced wagons, cages. On past the refreshment booth that was setting up in the central area; past a score of elephants, swaying in contentment over the morning hay; past camels, llamas, zebras, ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... lead the way out, choosing a winding path through the maze of tables. Not until they were traversing the great gold and crimson lounge, with its ornate furnishings, did Tabs catch up with him to ask his question. "How did you know about my engagement and whether ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... ever forget the pride and ecstasy of finding that I had my steed under perfect control, that we threaded the maze of carriages with absolute security? I turned him into the Park, and clucked my tongue: he broke into a canter, and how shall I describe my delight at the discovery that it was not uncomfortable? I said 'Woa,' and he stopped, so gradually that my equilibrium was not ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey

... from the ship in a maze. He felt as if his life had been cut sharply asunder; at any rate, its continuity was broken, and what other changes this change might bring it was impossible to foresee. In any extremity, however, there is generally some duty to do; and the doing ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... gyrating and circling in the air, doubling in and out in rings of the rainbow's hues, melting away into the distance, then drifting forward until mingled with his own, up and down in the same bewildering maze of color and design that visits the patient when lost in the delirium of fever. And all the time it was as if the rattlesnake was conscious of the dreadful power he held over his victim. Its arrowy head and long neck were started silently toward him, as if threatening instant ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis

... of this portion of our subject would lead us into a somewhat interminable maze, including the policy of our ancient Acts of Parliament, and the nature of estuaries,—those mysteriously commingled "watteris quhar the sea ebbis and flowis,"—"ubi salmunculi vel smolti, seu fria alterius generis piscium maris vel aquae dulcis, (nunquam) descendunt et ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... finally found his way through the maze of underground passageways to the door marked wardroom 9 and had pushed it open gingerly, halfway hoping that he wouldn't be seen coming in late but not really believing it ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... looked down into the water—black and swift and smooth between floating cakes of ice. Now and then a star glimmered on a slipping ripple; on the iron bridge farther up the river a row of lights were strung like a necklace across the empty darkness.... Somewhere, in the maze of streets at one end of the bridge, was Eleanor, lying in bed with a desperate headache. Somewhere, in the maze of streets at the other end of the bridge, was Lily, taking "his" little Jacky to the hospital. Somewhere, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... whose lace hat was crazily on the back of her head, relaxed enough so that through the enormous maze of the traffic of trucks and the heavier drags of the lower city, she and her daughter could wind ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... sky in dying glory Surges like a sea ablaze,— It is all so still before me, Still as in a sylvan maze. Summer evening's mellow power Settles round us like a dove, Hovers like a swan above Ocean wave and forest flower. In the orange thicket slumber Gods and goddesses of yore, Stone reminders in great number Of a world that is no more. Virtue, ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... other side of the Sevre, a forest covers the hill with its fresh, green maze of trees; it is La Garenne, a park that is beautiful in itself, in spite of the artificial embellishments that have been introduced. M. Semot, (the father of the present owner), was a painter of the Empire and a laureate, and he tried to reproduce to the best of his ability that ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert

... had trodden the maze this far, she realized the unenviable position of the conservative faction in the Senate. North's position was particularly unpleasant. He had stood to the country as the embodiment of its conservative ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... was all in a maze. He could not imagine what he had done to cause the woman he loved to become so excited as to desire ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton

... given the benefit of it to the extent of some French or German word the meaning of which, Igali has discovered, I understand. During the afternoon we wander through the intricacies of a yew-shrub maze, where a good-sized area of impenetrably thick vegetation has been trained and trimmed into a bewildering net-work of arched walks that almost exclude the light, and Igali pauses to favor me with the information that ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... maze of walls that it was difficult to tell where the road ran for more than a score or so of yards ahead. But at last I traced its sweep close by where a great single-slab altar stood on its massive pillar, with a sacred stone-circle jutting out of the bushes around it. On the ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... Trevelyan as they returned home. Trevelyan should either take his wife back again at once, or else he, Stanbury, would have no more to do with him. He said nothing till they had threaded together the maze of streets which led them from the neighbourhood of the Church of St. Diddulph's into the straight way of the Commercial Road. Then he began. "Trevelyan," said he, "you are wrong in all ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... lads, sing. Our voices we'll raise; Be merry still; If dead to-morrow, We brave all sorrow. Life's a weary maze— When we end our days, 'Tis ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... dreams to which I gave tangible form. This garden is an image of the life to which I intended to rise; in reality, fell. We collected within the limits of this bit of earth everything which can delight the senses; not a single one is omitted in this narrow space, whose crowded maze of pleasures fairly impede freedom of movement. Yet in your home, and guided by your wise father, I had learned to be content with so little, and commenced the struggle to attain peace. That painless peace—our chief good—whence ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... few minutes are rather a maze in my memory. But two pictures were photographed with great distinctness. The one is of the moment when we went over the edge. For a second Peter reared up, pawing the air with his forefeet; Dan tried to back away from the empty ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove

... entered slowly, the service began. It was all a murmured maze to him. Aunt Lucia sobbed quietly beside him, but as he glanced at her he caught a light on her wet, uplifted face that thrilled him strangely. Her deep responses spoke a faith and surety that swallowed for the moment all her little ...
— In The Valley Of The Shadow • Josephine Daskam

... position of the numerous quarries. They are very extensive, going far into the rock, which is also pierced by many great hollows, like entrances to an unknown under-world. All over Istria these memorials of sunken river channels occur—a maze of holes and paths, in which the water is still sinking deeper through the porous stone as through a sieve. Curious funnel-shaped depressions often occur amid uniform slopes, several hundred feet across and sometimes ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... an honest institution. Whereas in the Grand Orient the initiate is led through a maze of ceremonies towards a goal unknown to him which he may discover too late to be other than he supposed, the British initiate, although admitted by gradual stages to the mysteries of the Craft, knows nevertheless from the beginning the general ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... effect; though on the opposite side of the river Arlanzon a favorable view is obtained of its graceful, open-worked spires, so light and symmetrical, "spires whose silent fingers point to heaven," and its lofty, corrugated roof. The columns and high arches of the interior are a maze of architectural beauty, in pure Gothic. In all these Spanish cathedrals the choir completely blocks up the centre of the interior, so that no comprehensive general view can be had; an incongruous architectural arrangement which is found nowhere else, and which as ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou



Words linked to "Maze" :   Labyrinth of Minos, system, perplexity, labyrinth, mazy



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