"Muddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a moment, and with the faintest light of Clothes-Philosophy, on what may be called the Habilatory Class of our fellow-men. Here too overlooking, where so much were to be looked on, the million spinners, weavers, fullers, dyers, washers, and wringers, that puddle and muddle in their dark recesses, to make us Clothes, and die that we may live,—let us but turn the reader's attention upon two small divisions of mankind, who, like moths, may be regarded as Cloth-animals, creatures that live, move and have their being ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... stimulants of any kind, and should be very sorry to do so. I thought it was now generally admitted that the more work a man has to do, the less he can afford to muddle himself in any way. But as I have never tried the experiment in using either alcohol or tobacco, and cannot afford to do it, I have no comparative experience to offer. It might be beneficial; I do not believe it would, and prefer not to risk ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... He was heir to a discredited truth; he left behind him an accredited fallacy. Mr. Romanes, if he is not stopped in time, will get the theory connecting heredity and memory into just such another muddle as Mr. Darwin has got Evolution, for surely the writer who can talk about "heredity being able to work up the faculty of homing into the instinct of migration," {242a} or of "the principle of (natural) selection combining with that of lapsing intelligence to ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... Europeans looked upon the United States as a doomed country, thinking I, like some members of our wealthier classes, had come to escape disruption and dislocation at home. Only in England did I find the belief prevalent that the Americans would somehow muddle through because afterall theyre the same sort of chaps ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... given that straight wisp to Don Jones—but what else could she do to keep him from telling? Oh, life is a muddle! And here, in less than a week, Aunt Isabel would come by and whisk her off to the ends of the earth; and she might have to go without ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... pages 74 and 80. The first represents the Steen family. The jolly Jan himself is smoking at the table; the old brewer and the elder Mrs. Steen are in the foreground. I doubt if any picture exists in which the sense of innocent festivity is better expressed. It is all perhaps rather a muddle: Mrs. Steen has some hard work before her if the house is to be restored to a Dutch pitch of cleanliness and order; but how jolly every one is! Jan himself looks just ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... of mine called "The First Message," also in Gall's edition, was sent over by telegraph to America. What a miserable muddle, by the way, those meddlesome revisers have made of The Angel's Message;—preferring a dubious sigma to a comma, they have utterly spoilt that sublime trilogy by making "Peace upon earth, goodwill towards men," read "Peace upon earth among men in whom he is well pleased." How clumsy ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... "What a muddle and mockery the whole thing is!" he cried. "What a fumbling old fool old Mother Nature has been! She drives us into indignity and dishonour: and she doesn't even get the children which are her only excuse for her mischief. See what a fantastic thing I am ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... are called to do a man's work, do not exact a woman's privileges—the privileges of inaccuracy, of weakness, of the muddle-head. Submit yourselves to the rules of business, as men do, by which alone you can make God's business succeed. For he has never said that he will give his blessing to sketchy, unfinished work. And I would especially guard young ladies from fancying themselves ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... thinking? My head's all in a muddle. It's bad, no matter how you look at it. I sold my very youth to one I cannot love, just for a piece of bread, and from one day to another he becomes more repulsive ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... into what was before a weak administration. Cavour was a born man of business; he hated disorder in everything—except, indeed, dress, in which his carelessness was proverbial. He had not the common belief that, muddle them how you may, there will always be a providence which looks after the affairs of the State and prevents the collapse that would attend a private commercial enterprise conducted on the same system. He took in hand the financial renewal of Piedmont in the ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... to remember it. Heart o' Dreams Camp, Huddleston, Michigan; post-office, Calderville. When the victim of your ready gun rises from his couch and strikes out for the northwest you will not lose sight of him. If you do you'll muddle everything. Your hand baggage has been planted safely with the baggage master at the railway station at Tiffin, seven miles from where we stand, and here's the check for it. Once more you shall renew your acquaintance with scented soap. Observe my instructions strictly, Archie; meet all difficulties ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... feet to shoes on week-days. Ever and again there were traffic jams on River Street, a weaving turmoil of farmers' wagons, buggies, delivery carts, about a noisy, fuming centre of motor vehicles. High in the centre would be the motor truck of Trimble Cushman, loaded with cases and nursed through the muddle by a cool, clear-eyed youth, who sat with delicate, sure hands on a potent wheel. Never did he kill or maim either citizen or child, to the secret chagrin of Judge Penniman. Traffic jams to him were a part of the ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... sterile pitfall is now the temptation of the greatest minds. Your Shelley, your Coleridge, even your Byron,—what did they do? Menaced by this same vortex of negative effort, sentenced to intellectual annihilation if they attempted to straighten out the muddle of modernity, they fled, or drowned themselves in water ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... administration of the State; and there were times when it was driven to a resolve not to take any private affairs for weeks together in order that it might make some progress with public business. To add to this confusion and muddle there were the inevitable scandals which arose from it; charges of malversation and corruption were hurled at the members of the House; and some, like Haselrig, were accused with justice of using their power to further their own interests. The one remedy for all this was, as the army saw, ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... had a scheme of forming his household retainers and dependents into a singing-class in the warehouse, and a choir in the neighbouring church. Only one member, Joey Ladle, refused to join, for fear he should 'muddle the 'armony,' ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... depend on it, Captain Jones," said I, "it wasn't anything that would have disturbed much either of us two," I said; and then, as if a light had been flashed into the muddle of his brain, poor old Jones found a last word of amazing profundity. He blew his nose, nodding at me dolefully: "Ay, ay! neither you nor I, sir, had ever thought ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... upwards of half a mile, undergoing many perils from shunting engines, trains undecided whether to go on or to go back, and general confusion. It certainly did not look as if our train could be extricated for hours, but it proved there was method in this apparent muddle, and we suffered no delay worth speaking of. The station was densely packed with Staff officers and soldiers. Presently someone elbowed a way through the crowd to make way for the General, just arrived from Bloemfontein. A momentary interest was roused as an ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... a hard time of it; he had only poor food to eat, and it was not ready at the right time, and the house looked all in a muddle. It made him sad, and that made Elsa sad, for she wanted ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... I went to see my beloved on that evening filled with a new faith in the outcome of our life together. I am afraid I muddle this matter in trying to tell it. A moment ago I said the other woman, the tobacconist's wife, went with me. I do not mean she went in fact. What I am trying to say is that something of her faith in her own desires ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... of respect for ancient customs; and of more recent ideas about the blessed final annihilation, imported from India by saintly Chinese missionaries at the epoch of our Middle Ages. The bonzes themselves are puzzled; what a muddle, therefore, must not all this become, when jumbled together in the childish ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... democratic aims of the civilized world. England and France have groped their way through centuries towards a vague ideal. America proudly began her existence by a proclamation of the equal rights of man. She proudly proclaims them now; but the world is involved in such a complicated muddle, that the utterances of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln (to say nothing of their intellectual and political ancestor Jean Jacques Rousseau) require amplification. The political thought of the older nations of Europe is tired out. It is for the fresher genius of ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... counter-revolution. These movements are generally innocuous; they sometimes add to the gaiety of nations by the sheer imbecility of their inception and attempted execution, and they appear to be welcome rather than otherwise, as a means of distracting public attention from the universal muddle and general misguidance of European affairs, to those who consider themselves called upon and qualified ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... allies, it might perhaps have been a long time before this consciousness of mismanagement became a general conviction, but as it was, the disorder was readily and naturally attributed to the stupid Germans, and everyone was convinced that a dangerous muddle had been occasioned by ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... afforded another illustration of his "strange admixture of shrewdness and muddle-headedness." On an occasion when, it must be emphasized, he was entirely sober, he was discovered going out into the garden at twelve o'clock at night with a hand-candle in order to ascertain what was the correct time ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... dissatisfaction, brought on by something Robb or Key had said, troubled him, it was of short duration: something always broke into his mind and scattered the argument framing there. By the time he was free to resume the argument foreign thoughts had intervened, and his brain was in a muddle. Before the muddle could be dissipated by a cold point of common sense, something else had come along. And so things went. So ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... anarchism; want of method; untidiness &c. adj.; disunion; discord &c. 24. confusion; confusedness &c. adj.; mishmash, mix; disarray, jumble, huddle, litter, lumber; cahotage[obs3]; farrago; mess, mash, muddle, muss [U. S.], hash, hodgepodge; hotch-potch[obs3], hotch-pot[obs3]; imbroglio, chaos, omnium gatherum[Lat], medley; mere mixture &c. 41; fortuitous concourse of atoms, disjecta membra[Lat], rudis indigestaque moles [Lat][Ovid]. complexity &c. 59a. turmoil; ferment &c. (agitation) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... under the same eaves, in excessively populous colonies; and it is impossible to follow the labours of any single Mason, whose cells, distributed here and there, are soon covered up with the work of her neighbours. All is muddle and confusion in the individual output ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... he shall do nothing of the kind," returned Mr. Liddell, in a weak, hoarse, impatient voice. "I saw him once, and I know him; he is an ignorant, addle-pated jackanapes. He shall not muddle my affairs; send him away; I can wait for Newton. I don't suppose I ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... supremely good; but the supremely wicked, necessarily, have their portion in it. The merely carnal, sensual man can no more be a great sinner than he can be a great saint. Most of us are just indifferent, mixed-up creatures; we muddle through the world without realizing the meaning and the inner sense of things, and, consequently, our wickedness and our goodness are alike ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... the wrongs she had received at the hands of that gentleman; mentioned the vast sums of money out of which she and her soul's darling had been tricked by that poor muddle-headed creature, to say no worse of him; and described finally their present pressing need. The doctors, the burial, Rosey's delicate condition, the cost of sweetbreads, calf's-foot jelly, and cod-liver oil, were again passed in a rapid calculation before me; and she ended her speech by expressing ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... him high in our esteem, as it shows him up as a scientist and educator. He spent his vast fortune for food, as the stories go, and when he had only a quarter million dollars left (a paltry sum today but a considerable one in those days when gold was scarce and monetary standards in a worse muddle than today) Apicius took his own life, fearing that he might have to starve to death ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... devil do you mean?" snapped Flint, while Waldron smiled maliciously as he smoked. "Yes, or no? I don't pay you to muddle things. I pay you to know, and to tell me! Get that? ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... there was more than one kind of courage. He, himself, had called Bob Nancarrow a coward, because he refused to enlist. Now he realised that there was more courage in Bob Nancarrow's cowardice than in his own bravery. Oh, it was all an awful muddle! He ought to tell Nancy what Lieutenant Proctor had related to him just before he was taken away to the hospital; but he couldn't. If he did, he would forfeit his own chance, and he might—yes, he was ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... talking about, and I wish you wouldn't muddle us with new names. Fire just happens. Nobody does it—not as a deed, you know,' Cyril explained. 'If they did the Phoenix wouldn't help them, because its a crime to set fire to things. Arsenic, or something they call it, because it's as bad as poisoning ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... am afraid I shall have to talk business. I shall be too busy to come over to-morrow." He laughed. "You see I have left all my other clients' affairs, to come after my stray lamb: I expect I shall find them in a pretty muddle. Now, my dear, before I go I should like you to tell me exactly what you would like to do. As I have explained to you, you are now the mistress of a very large fortune with which you can do absolutely what you like. Would ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... out of mind in the house. "If that man is wanted for a division," Hotspur said, "ten to one he is to be found in a hell. He was educated in the Fleet, and he has not heard the end of Newgate yet, take my word for it. He'll muddle away the Begum's fortune at thimble-rig, be caught picking pockets, and finish on board the hulks." And if the high-born Hotspur, with such an opinion of Clavering, could yet from professional reasons be civil to him, why should not Major Pendennis also have reasons ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I have made another muddle of it, I admit! My lord Faruskiar, of whom I had made a hero—by telegraph—for the readers of the Twentieth. Century. Decidedly my good intentions ought certainly to qualify me as one of the best paviers of a road to a certain place ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... learnt what our journalists denounce as "the doctrine of the bully, of the materialist, of the man with gross ideals: a doctrine of diabolical evil." He frankly accepts that doctrine from us (as if our poor, honest muddle-heads had ever formulated anything so intellectual as a doctrine), and blames us for nothing but for allowing the United States to achieve their solidarity and become formidable to us when we might have divided them by backing up the South in the Civil War. He shows in the clearest way that if Germany ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... and were themselves besieged, surrounded, and well-nigh ready for a general wiping out. They killed a couple of "little fellows," or, rather, some of their hired Texas cowboys did it for them, but that was all they accomplished, except well-nigh to bankrupt Wyoming in the legal muddle, out of which, of course, nothing came. There were in this party of cattle men a member of the legislature, a member of the stock commission, some two dozen wealthy cattle men, two Harvard graduates, and a young Englishman in search of adventure. They made, on the whole, ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... whatever the right phrase is. My sympathies are all the other way—with the many, the poor devils who run about the streets and don't go to church. Don't stare, Tom; mind, I'm telling you all that's in my heart—as far as I know it—but it's all a muddle. You must be gentle with me if you want to land me. Now I've seen a deal of this sort of religion; I was bred up in it, and I can't stand it. If nineteen-twentieths of the world are to be left to uncovenanted mercies, and that sort of thing, which means in plain English to go to ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... nauseated him. He looked at the child opposite as he ate, and she looked as beautiful as an angel, and as good as one to him. He thought how the little thing had come back to him, her unfortunate father, who had made such a muddle of his life, who had been able to do so little for her; how she had given up the certainty of a happy and comfortable home for uncertainty, and possibly privation, and the purest gratitude and love that was so intense possessed him. Looking at Charlotte, he almost forgot the hatred of the ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... little master or as anything else took place when he reached home; Katie was busy at the washhouse, and he met no one amidst all the dreary litter of last night's festivities till he came on his mother in the back kitchen. The piled dresser showed a muddle of unwashed dishes, and the floor was gritty with mud. Annie looked, and was, dirty with exertion; and even the steam that wreathed upwards from the washbowl added a sense of uncleanness to the air. Ishmael was too young to be depressed by dirt, which he ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... these things if you really thought you were in a hopeless muddle. I have gone through it all this term, and I know. I have tried to laugh, and I have drunk until I didn't care what happened, but it is all no use. I have made a mess of everything, and there is no one to blame except myself. And then ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... sudden interest in what had never interested him before—the story of John’s life before they had been brought so close to each other. The heroic but dull-witted soldier acceded to his master’s request, and the incoherent, muddle-headed way in which he gave his autobiography was full of a dramatic and subtle humour—was almost worthy of him who in three or four words created the foolish fat scullion in ‘Tristram Shandy.’ This he refused to print, in deference, I suspect, to ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... "I tell you, Stella, I've got a big job on my hands. I've got a definite mark to shoot at, and I'm going to make a bull's-eye in spite of hell and high water. I have no time to play, and there's no place to play if I had. I don't intend to muddle along making a pittance like a hand logger. I want a stake; and then it'll be time to make a splurge in a country where a man can get ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... "And muddle it all up so they wouldn't understand it any better than you do your lawyer's letter," ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... small home-made deal table, of the rudest workmanship, two basswood-bottomed chairs, stained red, one of which was a rocking-chair, appropiated solely to the old woman's use, and a spinning wheel. Amidst this muddle of things—for small as was the quantum of furniture, it was all crowded into such a tiny space that you had to squeeze your way through it in the best manner you could—we found the old woman, with a red cotton handkerchief tied over her grey locks, hood-fashion, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... not. been paid to the lofty position of the character, as distinguished from the prowess, that this version gives to Cuchulain. The first verse, put in Cuchulain's mouth, strikes a new note, contrasting alike with the muddle-headed bargaining of Ferdia and Maev, and the somewhat fussy anxiety of Fergus. The contrast between the way in which Cuchulain receives Fergus's report of the valour of Ferdia, and that in which Ferdia receives the praises of Cuchulain from his charioteer, is ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... set off sharply, so that now and again she had to run a few paces to keep up with him. He took her round by the back of the theatre and into a muddle of streets that led thence. The quiet of the night closed about them; Truda was embarked upon ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... the nearest approach to rest known to an engineer on duty; the division car repairer and the roadmaster curled up in the caboose, for they had been routed out at an unseemly hour; the station agent amused himself reading the messages that rattled through to the South and back, telling of a muddle at headquarters. When a wrecking train is held for orders, it is safe to ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... none to say her nay. The Germans have behaved pretty badly here, but not in all ways so ill as you may have gathered: they were doubtless much provoked; and if the insane Knappe had not appeared upon the scene, might have got out of the muddle with dignity. I write along without rhyme or reason, as ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... estate of Abbotsford gradually grew, always at fancy prices, till the catastrophe itself finally prevented an expenditure of L40,000 in a lump on more land. The house grew likewise to its hundred and fifty feet of front, its slightly confused but not disagreeable external muddle of styles, and reproductions, and incorporated fragments, and its internal blend of museum and seignorial hall. It was practically completed and splendidly 'house-warmed' to celebrate the marriage ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... efficiency in studying it secondhand with the Americans, than I had ever guessed existed in all the time that I had been an inhabitant of the British Front. It is characteristic of us as a people that we like to pretend that we muddle our way into success. We advertise our mistakes and camouflage our virtues. We are almost ashamed of gaining credit for anything that we have done well. There is a fine dishonesty about this self-belittlement; but it is not always wise. During ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... the detective, rising and putting on his smart hat, "it's rather a muddle, I confess. I have no ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... you might in consequence suddenly disappear before you found out your mistake. One very stout lady I knew worked at herself for eighteen months and got stouter every day. This discouraged her so much that she gave up trying. No doubt she had made a muddle and had sent for the wrong bottle, but she would not listen to further advice. She said she was tired of ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... to acknowledge the right or the ability of the man who had been a slave to serve with the white man as a soldier. Necessity forced the acceptance of the Negro as a soldier. In spite of the long years of controversy with its arguments of racial inferiority,[47] out of the muddle of fact and fancy came the deliberate decision to employ Negro troops. This act, in itself, as a historical fact, refuted the former theories of southern statesmen. The Negro was thus a factor in both the Union and Confederate armies in the War of the Rebellion. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... Furnival's mind, keen and almost unerring at seizing legal points, went eagerly to work, considering what new evidence might now be forthcoming. He remembered at once the circumstances of those two chief witnesses, the clerk who had been so muddle-headed, and the servant-girl who had been so clear. They had certainly witnessed some deed, and they had done so on that special day. If there had been a fraud, if there had been a forgery, it had been so clever ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... that there is more of Christ in us now than there was in the days of old," he said, speaking dispassionately, and with the confident deliberation of one who takes time to think. "I believe those old tales were founded on muddle-headed confusion of mind in the days when dreams were as real to mankind as the events of life. There are obscure tribes still on earth who cannot distinguish between what they have done and what ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... hundred labels, and leave the old antiquarian fogey to send 'em off. It was inside that I met Ombos for the first time. I selected the souvenirs, and wrote labels; but old Ombos made a devil of a muddle over sending them off, and a very prim maiden aunt received a snuff box adorned with a young French lady in very scanty attire.... By the way, you don't know ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... done, or no longer required? These, and other such problems, rose up before him, crude and sharp, asking to be solved. Feeling himself quite unable to give any but one answer to them—viz. that he was getting out of his depth, and that the whole business was in a muddle—he had recourse to his old method when in difficulties, and putting on his cap, started off to Hardy's rooms to talk the matter over, and see whether he could not get some light on ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... issue in the singular muddle, he pointed out, seemed to be whether or not the poor fellow had known that the boat was upset. Well, who could say what he knew, an intoxicated man in a blind passion? Not Carlisle, certainly, plunged suddenly into the sea and intensely occupied with saving her life. How, for instance, could ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... time, the decision of the Supreme War Council was, in spite of President Wilson's opposition to the plan, to continue the expedition and strengthen it as fast as possible. To the American soldier at this distance it looks as though the French and British, perhaps in all good faith, planned to muddle along till the American authorities could be shown the fitness or the necessity of supporting the expedition with proper forces. But this was playing with a handful of Americans and other Allied troops a great game of hazard. Only those who went through ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... "What a muddle!" he said, glancing contemptuously at a record book. "In a fortnight I am transferring the office to the station, and I don't know what I am to ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... said, with elegantly severe authority, "I will not have this talking over the work. Miss Toppings, this whole skirt is an unmitigated muddle. Head-tucks half an inch too near the bottom! No room for your flounce. If you can't keep to your measures, you'd better not undertake piece-work. Take that last welt out, and put it in over the top. And make no more blunders, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... It was her first attempt at organization on a large scale, and she meant to achieve something remarkable. She meant to use the cumbrous machine to pick out this, that, and the other interesting person from the muddle of the world, and to set them for a week in a pattern which must catch the eyes of Cabinet Ministers, and the eyes once caught, the old arguments were to be delivered with unexampled originality. Such was the scheme as a whole; and in contemplation ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Mrs. Watson, and she looks both capable and practical. Notwithstanding the fact that she seems to have stepped right out of Dickens, and carries a huge Manx cat about with her, Percy said he thought they'd muddle along in some way. Thoughtful boy that he was, he brought me a portmanteau packed full of the newer novels and magazines, and a two-pound jar of smoking ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... a terrible muddle, Alida. If God is so ready to forgive, how do you account for all the evil and ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... colorless companion!... She almost disliked the man who had taken her away from him; yet six months ago Ellenora would have resented the notion that a mere man could have led her. Besides there was another woman in the muddle now!... In her disgust she longed for her own zone of silence. In her heart she called Ibsen and Nora Helmer delusive guides; her chief intellectual staff had failed her and she began to see Torvald Helmer's troubles in a different light. Perhaps when Nora reached the ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... confined himself to scathing criticism of the incompetence of females who could not teach their menials to "cook a dinner which was not a disgrace to any decent household." When not virulently aspersing the mutton, he was expressing his opinion of muddle-headed weakness which would permit household bills to mount in a manner which could only bring ruin and disaster upon a minister of the gospel who throughout a protracted career of usefulness had sapped his intellectual manhood in the useless effort to support ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the woods the blast of a horn and the baying of hounds agitates the fleeing quarry; when he vainly endeavours, with all his skill, to confuse and muddle the scent which betrays him to his pursuers; when, an aged beast with full-grown antlers, he puts in his place a younger stag and forces it to carry on the chase with its fresher bait of the scent of its younger body, and thus carry off the hounds and preserve his days—then ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... may happen?" he asked, thoughtfully. "There is hope yet. Why did not that muddle-headed banker tell us where this Clameran is to ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... William, dig away! Why you do spuddle A'most so weak's a child. How you do muddle! Gi'e me the speaede a-bit. A pig would rout It out a'most so nimbly ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... idea how much I would like to go into all this with you and straighten out the muddle in your head—but, really, I am a very busy man. Tell me, didn't young Dale Lynch persuade ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... near.] Now, Lucy, we must look sharp; Mister Robert and his cousins from Bristol town will soon be here. I have not met with the cousins yet, but I've been told as they're very fine ladies—They stood in place of parents to my Robert, you know. 'Tis unfortunate we should be in such a sad muddle ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... this is a beastly muddle! Look here, George, promise me you won't do anything stupid for a day or so.... I have been so pestered by people ... I don't know which way to turn. Why not stay and meet ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... to Ahmed that the British Raj had too many affairs just then to give proper attention to the muddle in Allaha. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... yards of the mission-house there was a jetty, and at the end of the jetty was Her Majesty's gunboat Badger, a small schooner-rigged wooden vessel commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Muddle, one of the most irascible men that ever breathed, and who had sat on more Consuls than any one ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... seal will pop his head up at a blowhole a few yards ahead of the team, and they are all on top of him before one can say "knife"! Then one has to rush in with the whip—and everyone of the team of eleven jumps over the harness of the dog next to him, and the harnesses become a muddle that takes much patience to unravel, not to mention care lest the whole team should get away with the sledge and its load, and leave one behind.... I never did get left the whole of this depot journey, but I was often very near it, and several ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... is," endorsed Ingred, "and a most uncomfortable one, I should say. I went to his house once for a music lesson, and it looked in a fearful muddle. Good old Bantam! We must give her congrats! She'll soon get things into order there! I believe she adores little Kenneth. I've often seen her taking him about the town. She shall have my blessing, by ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... course eventually he will require trained nursing, either here or somewhere else; there is only one end to such a case, but it needn't come yet, unless he has another hemorrhage. I understand you offered him your cottage while you were away, but there was some muddle, and he came before they were ready for him? It was like your kindness, my dear fellow, only never you send another consumptive to the northeast coast or anywhere near it! As to his seeing any ladies ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... done all in his power to conciliate the different parties, but has now concluded that Paris must be conquered by the troops of Versailles. Every day there comes more disturbing news. How will it all end? When shall we get out of this muddle? En attendant, we live in ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... disappeared when immersed in the Earth's shadow. Crabtree is stated by Flamsteed[140] to have observed this eclipse, but he does not plainly state that he lost sight of the Moon. Crabtree or his editor dates this eclipse for April 4; Ferguson for April 15. There appears to be some muddle as between "old style" and "new style." Ferguson professing to be N.S. is evidently wrong. Hevelius gives the double date, ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... cut her roses;—"I want to say something to you. This seems such a beautiful time to say deep, grave things in, doesn't it, this late afternoon hour? I've wanted to say it since the other night when, through poor Jack's folly of revenge and blindness, we were all put into such an ugly muddle, at such ugly cross-purposes." She paused here and Valerie, giving neither assent nor negation, said: ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... passed through my hand till I felt that it was broken—snapped off or cut. That was all I could do then, and I suppose I fainted. But I must have come to again and struggled up, moved by a blind sort of instinct to get back to Groenfontein. I say I suppose that, for all the rest is a muddle of dreams and confusion. The doctor says you and a party came and found me wandering about in the dark, and of course I must have been making some blind kind of effort to get back to camp. I say, old fellow, I ought to have been dead, ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... less intense, is far more accurately suggested by the symbols of touch and taste than by those of hearing and sight. True, analytic thought follows swiftly upon the contact, the apprehension, the union: and we, in our muddle-headed way, have persuaded ourselves that this is the essential part of knowledge—that it is, in fact, more important to cook the hare than to catch it. But when we get rid of this illusion and go back to the more primitive ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... by derivation, "a drawer of water." But a ship also "draws water." Therefore, logically, a Hydrographer is a ship. But a ship is never put into a witness-box, where it would be quite at sea, but in the dock, where it could be quite at home. "Truly," writes our Puzzled Correspondent, "there is a muddle somewhere." Q. E. D. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... part with O'Neal, in spite of the poor fellow's entreaties to be allowed to remain with him. Miss Macdonald had only passports for three and the danger was urgent. He was a faithful and affectionate friend, this O'Neal, if a little boastful and muddle-headed. He could shortly afterwards have escaped to France—as O'Sullivan did—in a French ship, if he had not insisted on going to Skye to try to fetch off the Prince. He missed the Prince, and fell into the ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... said to be a translation of a fragment of Euripides by Joshua Barnes. There is, I believe, no such fragment at all. In Barnes's Euripides, Cantab. 1694, fol. p. 515, is a fragment of Euripides with a note which may explain the muddle of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... produce many unhappy marriages, for the same reason that it produces so many unhappy men. But all the reforms were directed to rescuing the industrialism rather than the happiness. Poor couples were to be divorced because they were already divided. Through all this modern muddle there runs the curious principle of sacrificing the ancient uses of things because they do not fit in with the modern abuses. When the tares are found in the wheat, the greatest promptitude and practicality is always shown in burning the wheat and gathering ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... in French it meant that something grave was afoot. She was afraid that her unsteady English might muddle what she intended to say. Lady Everington knew that it must be another proposal; she had ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... Buddha. He occupies a position that appeals to my imagination. Great responsibilities, great opportunities, great consideration, great wealth, great power, a natural share in the public affairs of a great country. But he's all in a muddle about himself, his position, his power, and indeed about everything in the world. He's the victim of a critical age; he has ceased to believe in himself and he doesn't know what to believe in. When I attempt to tell him (because if I were he I know very well what I should believe ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... be a strange muddle," said the captain, who was not disposed to listen any longer to the sparring between the cousins. "At the suggestion of the lieutenant who came on board this forenoon, I have taken the earliest opportunity ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... discussion with Frank Jones. "Yes," said the Member of Parliament, "I mean to put my shoulder to the wheel, and do the very best that can be done. I cannot believe but what a man in earnest will find out the truth. Politics are not such a hopeless muddle but what some gleam of light may be made ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... fools: This is the advice I'd give the Athenians— See our ambassadors are always drunk. For when we visit Sparta sober, then We're on the alert for trickery all the while So that we miss half of the things they say, And misinterpret things that were never said, And then report the muddle back to Athens. But now we're charmed with each other. They might cap With the Telamon-catch instead of the Cleitagora, And we'd applaud and praise them just the same; We're not too scrupulous in ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... made a pretty muddle of it anyhow," said the Wallypug. "Do you know," he went on, "the Doctor-in-Law made us all pay sixpence each towards the catalogue, and then went around with us explaining the various groups. He had just finished telling ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... inflexible, ignorant of science, indifferent to progress, contemptuous of ideas. And then suddenly, almost overnight, this terrified people finds itself at war with a nation ruled and disciplined' by modern experts, scientists and technicians. The awful muddle that was in England during the first two years of the war has not yet been told in print; but thousands know it, and some day it will be written, and it will finish forever the prestige of the British ruling ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... besides, it's easy enough thinking afterwards, one might have been able to help, to do this and that. It's a mistake. People don't want help; and they don't give you a thank-you for offering it. All they ask is to be let alone, to muddle and bungle their lives as ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... beside me, Mariana, and let us talk things over like comrades while there is still time. Give me your hand. It would be a good thing for us to have an explanation, though they say that all explanations only lead to further muddle. But you are kind and intelligent and are sure to understand, even the things that I am unable to express. ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... us?" she supplied, an eager light in her eyes. "No, never, Dr. Thorpe. He has never spoken to me, never written a line to me. That's fine of him too. He loves me, I'm sure of it, and he wants me, but it is fine of him not to bother me, now isn't it? He knows he could drag me back into the muddle, he knows he could make a fool of me, and yet he will not take ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... out, An' hitches up the sorrels, An' rides ten miles tew meetin', he Ain't braced for pious quarrels: No, sir, he ain't! that waggon rolls From corduroy to puddle, An' that thar farmer gets his brains Inter an easy muddle. ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... other drugs necessary, all right and true, composed according to receipts made by physicians and apothecaries of her own creating, which they extracted out of Peter's, Martin's, and Jack's receipt books; and of this muddle and hodge-podge made up a dispensary of their own—strictly forbidding any other to be used, and particularly Peter's, from whom the greater part of this ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... herself alone with her lacerated feelings. After soothing them with a good cry, she set to work thinking seriously. There was no doubt she had muddled things badly, but there was no use leaving them in a muddle when a word or two fitly spoken ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... manner I connected the razors and the parson, too closely for any reasonable inference in regard to the latter. I knew the connection was ridiculous but it was persistent, and as I had lost all hope of placing the man sitting beside me, my mind was altogether in a horrid muddle. Once he asked me abruptly if Roger were ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... emerging, after a heroic struggle, from the clutches of a tyranny such as that wielded by the nobility of France in the pre-Revolution days. In sober fact, the secession of the American Colonies was brought about by a series of colossal blunders and impositions on the part of the most muddle-headed ministry that ever mismanaged the affairs of Great Britain—which is saying a good deal. It is probable that if the elder Pitt had lived a few years longer, the secession would never have occurred. It was only with the utmost reluctance that ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... Harrow, and an honor-man at Cambridge, but, having married young, he had to take up the calling of "grinder" and literary fag for a living. Mr. Pocket, when annoyed, used to run his two hands into his hair, and seemed as if he intended to lift himself by it. His house was a hopeless muddle, the best meals and chief expense being in the kitchen. Pip was placed under ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... got up a plot," continued the manager; "they will even hiss the piece, but I have made arrangements to defeat their kind intentions. I have squared the men in their pay; they will make a muddle of it. A couple of city men yonder have taken a hundred tickets apiece to secure a triumph for Florine and Coralie, and given them to acquaintances able and ready to act as chuckers out. The fellows, having been paid twice, will go quietly, and a scene of that sort always ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... time immemorial had relied, who knocked the prop of the army away from him. Though publicly, for the edification of Europe his deposers professed a Liberal policy, it was not on account of Armenian massacres that they turned him off his throne, but because of the muddle and corruption and debility of his rule. Herein we may easily trace the hand of Germany, no longer publicly beckoning as when Wilhelm II., just after the first Armenian massacres, made his request of the Sultan for the ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... muddle of things.' he said at last—'a hideous muddle. Nothing to fear, for everything has happened. Nothing to hope for, for nothing can happen any more. Fortune wasted, friends wasted, genius wasted, heart wasted, life wasted. Ah, well! I ought to ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... don't see, William. All about it is in a muddle, and I must say I never heard tell of such ways. It is like offering your own flesh and blood for sale. And to people who want nothing to do with us. I'm ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... essays on drainage which have been thus far published, there is a vagueness in the arguments on this branch of the subject, which betrays a want of definite conviction in the minds of the writers; and which tends quite as much to muddle as to enlighten the ideas of the reader. In so far as the directions are given, whether fortified by argument or not, they are clearly empirical, and are usually very much qualified by considerations which weigh with unequal force ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... the one fact which stands out incontrovertibly from the whole weary muddle. It is quite clear that the inability to act in common arises from the fact that in the international sphere the European is still dominated by illusions which he has dropped when he deals with home politics. The political faith of the Turk, which he would never ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... Christmas all the year round. You should see him gaze at Sherm. Marian says it makes her want to cry, and Mother says it is the most wonderful manifestation of Providence she has ever known. It seems to me Providence would show more sense not to muddle things up so in the first place. Sherm is as pleased as can be to find he really is somebody, and he's awfully fond of the Captain, but you see he'd got so used to loving the Darts as his own folks that he can't get unused to it all of a sudden. He choked all up when he tried to call Captain ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... and capable in state affairs, who, without sharing any of those conflicting opinions, were able to take a detached view of what was going on at the staff at headquarters and to consider means of escape from this muddle, indecision, intricacy, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... my friends that I should make a first-class job of it, that they all dropped in to discuss the plan with me, and to give me some advice, until—thanks to their thoughtful kindness—my head would have been in a muddle had the contemplated structure been a cheap barn ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... muddle all my papers. [Taking bills out of his hands, and closing down the writing-desk.] I want to have a little talk with Renie—you'd better join ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... he cried, at last. "I can't make them up. They are in a hopeless muddle. I know, though, that I can't raise a thousand cents, much less a thousand dollars, and the builder threatens to make me bankrupt, if ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... because the crowds that flocked to the galleries really cared for them, but because gifted writers had for centuries been setting up hypnotic suggestions that in this way was pleasure to be obtained. He had often seen men and women standing before a canvas of REMBRANDT, hating the grubby muddle of it in their hearts, but adoring it in their heads—all because some well-known critic had told them to. Their pleasure, however, was real, and therefore it should, in a world of sadness, be encouraged, and consequently ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... comes to him in the guise of a guardian angel to bring the message of salvation, she broke off to whisper despairingly in my ear, 'How can I say it when I look into those beady eyes? Good God, Wagner, what a muddle you have made!' I consoled her as well as I could, and secretly placed my dependence on Herr von Munchhausen, who promised faithfully to sit that evening in the front row of the stalls, so that Devrient's eyes must fall on him. And the magnificent performance of my great artiste, although she ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... prowess, or crime, are the facts proper to secular history." What is the harm of this? But this writer says, "Verily his [Dr. Newman's] idea of secular history is almost as degraded as his idea of ecclesiastical," p. 24, and he ends with this muddle of an Ipse dixit! ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... a sub-committee shelved, Godfrey Isaacs allowed to issue a misleading report without correction from the Post Office. It all may spell corruption: but it need not. No one familiar with the workings of a Government department is likely to be surprised at any amount of muddle and incompetence. Matters are forgotten and then in the effort to make up for lost time important steps are simply omitted. Officials are pig-headed and unreasonable. And as ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... They are upon us! What in the world is going to happen? We are in a muddle of the most preposterous theories! The whole heathen mythology is buzzing round in my head! (Hurries to the door to meet MR. and MRS. CHRISTENSEN, whom MARGIT is showing in.) I am so happy to see you!—so very happy! But ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... the Stellar Accounts," says he, "which appear to be in a fearful muddle. But what more can I do for you, Jurgen?—for you, my friend, who spoke a kind word for things as they are, and furnished me with one or two really very acceptable explanations as to why I had ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... these subjects amounted to more than a dim recollection. Of details he knew none. Worked into a thorough muddle with his worry, he was almost despairing again when suddenly he remembered that Jessie possessed a Bible. Perhaps it was still in the bedroom. He would go and see. It would surely help him. So he promptly went in search of it, and, in a few moments, was sitting down beside the table poring over ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... learnedly of Tuscan, Pompeiian, Elizabethan, Louis Quatorze, buhl, marqueterie, &.c., &c., till the head of the proprietor, to whom all these words were strangers, and all his talk Greek, was thrown into a hopeless muddle. ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... bored at a spot about ten feet behind the back of your head and answers most of your questions by blinkin' his eyes, it kind of gets on your nerves. Still, I couldn't let him get away. Why, Mr. Robert had been prospectin' for months to find the right man for that transportation muddle and when he finally got hold of this Nicky Wells he goes around grinnin' ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... Phyllis—its seriousness was apparent beneath the light of the carriage lamp. "No, don't make the attempt to explain anything to me. Don't try to reconcile your frankness now with your pretense then, because you'll certainly make a muddle of it, and because no such attempt is necessary to be made to me. I know something of the girl and her moods—not a great deal, perhaps, but enough to prevent my doing you an injustice. You are perfectly consistent, ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... water,' washed off the sawdust, and dried the ice in the sun. His was a case of Handy- Andyism, as that intellectual disease may be named, after Mr. Lover's hero; like that of the Obeah-woman, when she tried to bribe the white gentleman with half a dozen of bottled beer; a case of muddle-headed craft and elaborate silliness, which keeps no proportion between the means and the end; so common in insane persons; frequent, too, among the lower Irish, such as Handy Andy; and very frequent, I am afraid, among the Negroes. But—as might have been expected—the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... had Froissart and Boswell, he excels in proportion to his unconsciousness of the fact; his colors run truer. For lesser gobblers, who have not genius, the best way to lose consciousness is just to IT themselves go; if they endeavor to paint artistically the muddle will be worse. To such the proverb of the cobbler and his last is of perennial warning. As a barber once sagely remarked to me, "You can't trim a beard well, unless you're born to it." It is possible in some degree to imitate Froissart ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... while at Eton he had already become possessed by a dark suspicion concerning him. This is proved by the episode of Dr. Lind's visit during his fever. Then and ever afterwards he expected monstrous treatment at his hands, although the elder gentleman was nothing worse than a muddle-headed squire. It has more than once occurred to me that this fever may have been a turning point in his history, and that a delusion, engendered by delirium, may have fixed itself upon his mind, owing to some imperfection ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... for the overthrow of Addington and the formation of a Ministry of the talented men of all parties. Here, then, is the origin of the broad-bottomed or All the Talents Administrations which produced so singular a muddle after the death of Pitt. The Fox-Grenville bargain cannot be styled immoral like that of Fox and North in 1782; for it expressly excluded all compromise on matters of conviction. Nevertheless it was a tactical mistake, for which Pitt's exasperating ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... would have done. Bertha and Mabel wouldn't have told the truth, and things would only have been in a worse muddle. We'll catch those two sometime if we can only think of how to ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... the heroes of Canada, Australia and New Zealand? In Ireland, for the moment, things are in a muddle. "What is the trouble with the Emerald Isle?" was the question, to which the Irishman made instant reply: "Oh, in South Ireland we are all Roman Catholics, and in North Ireland we are all Protestants, and I wish to heaven we were all agnostics, ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... me, but really, Miss Pomeroy, she never put those things back as she found them, because I had that drawer looking very neat and now see the muddle it ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... brought up a new sub-section, which he admitted was so obscure that he only 'more or less' understood it himself, and which, indeed, is of 'plusquam-Thucydidean' dimness and involution.... There is no excuse, we must say, for the muddle into which the Government has got over the Bill.... The House of Commons has adjourned for a short holiday, but the Irish Land Purchase Bill is not yet through Committee.... There still remained all the new clauses, for which no time ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... It was the largest yet seen in the New World. There were 6,000 British regulars and 9,000 American militia, with plenty of guns and all the other arms and stores required. Its general, Abercromby, was its chief weakness. He was a muddle-headed man, whom Pitt had not yet been able to replace by a better. But Lord Howe, whom Wolfe and Pitt both thought 'a perfect model of military virtue,' was second-in-command and the real head. He was young, as full of calm wisdom as of fiery courage, and ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... the lady well. She has a good heart, but was ever muddle-headed. She thanked that wag with a smile, and I heard her later in the evening boring most evidently that literary lion with elongated praise of the "Cloister and the Hearth" and "Adam Bede." ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... But it was the curtains that made it so particularly wonderful. They were very old, but the colours were still quite bright, they had been washed so carefully. And the pattern was something I really could not describe if I tried—it was the most delicious muddle of flowers, and trailing leaves and birds, and here and there a sort of little basket-work pattern that looked like a summer-house or the entrance ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... rights—however unlikely he is to get it. Further, if in the future she has any children by her real husband (unless she has been married again to him, after divorce from her State-husband) these children will be illegitimate. This is the sort of muddle the Divorce Act has got us into. One course, and only one course, is open to the Church—to disentangle itself from all question of extending the powers of the Act on grounds of inequality, or any other real (and sometimes very real) or fancied hardship, and to consistently ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... or three speakers followed me and moved and seconded all sorts of things at random. We were all in a hopeless muddle, and all quite good-humoured about it; and we wound up by ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... horses! Off to Canterbury! Tramp, tramp o'er pebble, and splash, splash through puddle; Hurrah! how swiftly speeds the post so merry! Not like slow Germany, wherein they muddle Along the road,[552] as if they went to bury Their fare; and also pause besides, to fuddle With "schnapps"—sad dogs! whom "Hundsfot," or "Verflucter,"[553] Affect no ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... avoid me," he said. "I wanted to explain to him; I was afraid you might think my father was severe, but he really didn't beli—he didn't suppose—that is, the young people we've known—" He stopped, looking awfully red and embarrassed, then ended up with, "I'm afraid I'm making an awful muddle of it, but I'm really very sorry; I hope you and ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... good company, the balance continued to waver between the rational explanation founded on the tinder-box, and the theory of an impenetrable mystery that mocked investigation. The advocates of the tinder-box-and-pedlar view considered the other side a muddle-headed and credulous set, who, because they themselves were wall-eyed, supposed everybody else to have the same blank outlook; and the adherents of the inexplicable more than hinted that their antagonists were animals inclined to crow before they ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... own comfort, but unfortunately for the good of the house, Faith was not troubled by appearances. Her eyes did not notice details, the details which mean so much, for her home had always been in more or less of a muddle. There were so many of them, Audrey, Faith, Tom, Deborah and baby Joan. Five of them ransacking and romping all over the house, until granny had come and taken Audrey away to live ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Tressa, another year and we'd have missed this. It takes only about one season to muddle up their riding with the white man's booze—or the white man's treaty money. Why don't we leave well enough alone—that is, if ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan |
