"Mire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gallantry only, but of the long-sustained patience also, the essential monotony of military life, even on a campaign. Peril, good-luck, promotion, the grotesque hardships which leave them smart as ever, (as if, so others observe, dust and mire wouldn't hold on them, so "spick and span" they were, more especially on days of any exceptional risk or effort) the great confidence reposed in them at last; all is noted, till, with a little quiet pride, he records ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... the flesh; even of that flesh, who, or which also committeth the greatest enormities; for the flesh is but one, though its workings are divers: sometimes in a way most notoriously sensual and devilish, causing the soul to wallow in the mire. ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... ground along an established line of route which no art had prepared for the passage of man or beast. Portions of the route would often be soft and muddy; the carts and litters would become immovable, their wheels sinking into the mire up to the axles; all the efforts of the teams would be unavailing; it must have been imperative to halt the main line, and employ the soldiers in the release of the vehicles, which had to be lifted and carried forward till the ground was sufficiently ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... engagement. It seemed to her that he had built between them a barrier which she determined he should be the first to cross. So she studiously avoided him, and thus unconsciously plunged him deeper and deeper into the mire, where he was already foundering. Her apparent indifference only increased the ardor of his affection, and though he struggled against it as against a deadly sin, he could not overcome it, and at last urged on by Nina, ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... transported with joy to see her. When they could not kiss her hands or her feet, they knelt in the mire and kissed the hoof-prints of her horse. They worshiped her; and that is what these priests were trying to prove. It was nothing to them that she was not to blame for what other people did. No, if she was worshiped, it was enough; she was guilty ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... to mire, they will bury our city in fire; Our women await their desire, our children the clang of the chain. Our grave-eyed judges and lords they will bind by the neck with cords, And harry with whips and swords till they perish of shame ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... rice-fields are flooded by the irrigation ditches that the river or the mountain streams have filled with water. A plow made of the notch of a tree is used to break the soil. A carabao is used for this work, as it is impossible to mire him even in the deepest mud. The boys and girls, together with the men and women, wearing enormous sun-hats—in the crown of which there is a place for cigarettes and matches—and with bared legs, work in the steaming fields throughout the planting season. As the rice grows taller, the ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... streaming glass, which made every gas-jet into a shooting pillar of flame, Norris discerned vaguely the vast bulk of Hyde Park Mansions. 'Good!' he muttered, and at that very moment he was shot through the window into the thin, light-reflecting mire of the street. Enormous and strange beasts menaced him with pitiless hoofs. Millions of people crowded about him. In response to a question that seemed to float slowly towards him, he tried to give his address. He realized, by a considerable feat ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... (ad quas confugiunt quidam tanquam ad sacrum su ignoranti asylum,) plerumque aliud nihil esse, quam sacr Scriptur abusiones manifestas. Sed non necesse erat, hoc saltem in loco, ut tali krsphyget uterentur. Nam, (4) qucunque in hoc foedere continentur, in Evangelium mire quadrant. (i.) Quod ad prcepta attinet, prscribuntur hic ea tantum, qu ad mores pertinent, et per se honesta sunt; illorum rituum, qui, si verba spectes, pueriles videri possent, quorumque totum foedus legale ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... charm. Everybody who knew him felt that he was a man, a large-hearted, generous friend, always ready to help everybody and everything out of their troubles, whether it was a pig stuck in the mire, a poor widow in trouble, or a farmer who needed advice. He had a helpful mind, open, frank, transparent. He never covered up anything, never had secrets. The door of his heart was always open so that anyone could ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... resting-place, but his enemies gave him no quiet, and pursued him even to these fastnesses, until finally, of his own accord, he delivered himself to them. They loaded his hands with chains, a dungeon was his abode, and his feet stuck fast in the mire. Murderers and thieves were his companions, yet even among them did he pursue his labors, until God, by means of a pious gentlewoman, who had seen and pitied ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... degradation to which the pure and beautiful function of sex had sunk, called for a revulsion; and it came in the idea of asceticism—an instance where the remedy was worse than the disease. The mental attitude that resulted in asceticism was not one in which the sex function was lifted from the mire of licentiousness in which it lay; rather it was abandoned altogether as something vile and unclean; and that too, unhappily, by those ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... in mire, wring not your hands and weep: I lend my arm to all who say. "I can." No shamefaced outcast ever sank so deep But yet might rise ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... when you have thoroughly cleansed it and wiped it of the blood and mire, then raise it to set free the ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... not as easy as they had thought. The peninsula was very low and the greater part of it had been overflowed recently. Their feet, no matter how lightly they stepped, sank in the mire, and when they pulled them out again the mud emitted a sticky sigh. An owl perched in a tree, high above the marsh, began to hoot dismally, and Shif'less Sol uttered ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... fowl Hides beak and eyes in breast, the owl Only awake to hoot."—But clover Is beaten down now, and birds hover, Peering for shelter round; no blade Of grass stands sharp and tall; men wade Thro' mire with frequent plashing sting Of rain upon their faces. Sing, Then, Mary, to me thro' the dark: But kiss me first: my hand shall mark Time, pressing ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... archdeacon was so well acquainted. Only last November he had recommended his son to buy a certain clod-crusher, and the clod-crusher had of course been bought. The bright blue paint upon it had as yet not given way to the stains of the ordinary farmyard muck and mire;—and here was the clod-crusher advertised for sale! The archdeacon did not want his son to leave Cosby Lodge. He knew well enough that his son need not leave Cosby Lodge. Why had the foolish fellow been in such a hurry with his hideous ill-conditioned advertisements? Gentle! How ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... as powerful as an arm, or a double battle-axe. The spiny lobster was leaping with agility over the peaks, by means of the hooks on its claws, its weapons of war and nutrition. Its nearest relative, the cricket of the sea, a dull and heavy animal, was sulking in the corners covered with mire and with sea weed, in an immovability that made it easily confounded with the stones. Around these giants, like a democracy accustomed to endure from time to time the attack of the strong, crayfish and shrimps were swimming in shoals. Their movements were ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... ruddy; kindled, he knew, to give him welcome, and to speed him home. He beckoned with his hand, and waved his hat, and cheered out, loud, as if the light were they, and they could see and hear him, as he dashed towards them through the mud and mire, triumphantly. ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... Tenderness and harshness, refinement and vulgarity, sentiment and sensuality; now soaring up into ether, and then dragging along in mud. Mire and sublimity; all that is strangely blended in this admixture of inspired dust. It may seem strange, but to me it appears that a true voluptuary should never abandon his thought to the coarseness of reality. It is only by exalting whatever terrestrial, material, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... like Thee is my desire; Thy Voice finds echo in my soul. Suffering I crave! Thy words of fire Lift me above earth's mire, And ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... had ruined him as regarded his Queensland property, and the drought had made matters nearly as bad for him in New South Wales. The burning of his wool last year, and the failure of the agents in whose hands he had placed it, this had pushed him farther into the mire, and now the recent "going bung" of a building society—his sole remaining ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... lives, and how worthily they turned it to a grace in the wearing of it. And now he saw clearly the vain, dependent, passionate temperament of his son, and knew how, by the lack of training, the plant had been ruined and draggled in the mire, which might have beautifully flowered and borne good fruit had it been staked and supported; the poor espalier thing that could not stand alone. Nemesis had visited his home. He felt the consequences of his ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... side are rivers and banks of mud, so that it is well to be careful and watch the way. Once as we went along we heard behind us a splashing thud, and, turning, beheld a portly Belgian floundering on his back in the mire, whence he presently emerged, coated with mud, looking rather like a hippopotamus. No rule of silence could avail to stifle the peals of laughter that rang through the grotto, and we had the less scruple in enjoying the fun because ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... benefactors of the Jewish nation, who while he acknowledges these facts, changes the blame of them to the Christians." Very true, and truly I do not know, what right one man has to trample another into the mire, and then abuse him for being dirty. Mr. Everett remarks upon the same subject, p. 210, "Bowed down with universal scorn, they have been called secret and sullen; cut off from pity and charity, they have been thought selfish and unfeeling, and are summoned ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.' God said of the King of Assyria (Isa. x. 6), 'Against the people will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.' And Jeremiah said (Jer. x. 23), 'O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' And God said (Ezek. iii. 20), 'When a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... said MacLean, "This quarrel's mine by virtue of my making it so. Mistress Truelove, you shall have no further annoyance. Now, you Lowland cowards that cannot see a flower bloom but you wish to trample it in the mire, come taste the ground yourself, and be taught that the flower is out ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... sympathetic ear that he poured his complaint. It is thus he writes, some time after settling at Ellisland, to Mrs. Dunlop, showing how fresh was still the wound within. "When I skulk into a corner lest the rattling equipage of some gaping blockhead should mangle me in the mire, I am tempted to exclaim, 'What merits has he had, or what demerit have I had, in some previous state of existence, that he is ushered into this state of being with the sceptre of rule, and the keys of ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... in the field, and then let the fortresses drop one by one into his hands. The change of things has helped this bold system. Formerly there was but one road through a province—it led through the principal fortress—all the rest was mire and desolation. Thus the fortress must be taken before a gun or a waggon could move. Now, there are a dozen roads through every province—the fortress may be passed out of gun-shot in all quarters—and the "grand army" of a hundred and fifty thousand ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... duffle Bath cloak, with which she was wont to attend the tent sermons of the Kilwinning and Dreghorn preachings in cold and inclement weather. Her black silk petticoat was pinned up, that it might not receive injury from the nimble paddling of her short steps in the mire; and she carried her best shoes and stockings in a handkerchief to be changed at the manse, and had fortified her feet for the road in coarse worsted hose, ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... through the gates of pearl, Together heard them close; then to the left Descending, by a path evil and dark, Hard to be traversed, rugged, entered they The 'SINNERS' ROAD.' The tread of sinful feet Matted the thick thorns carpeting its slope; The smell of sin hung foul on them; the mire About their roots was trampled filth of flesh Horrid with rottenness, and splashed with gore Curdling in crimson puddles; where there buzzed And sucked and settled creatures of the swamp, Hideous in wing and sting, gnat-clouds and flies, With moths, toads, newts, ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... to-day, and for ever . . . Again, oh, what did I see in that blessed sixth of John: Him that cometh to Me I will in nowise cast out. I should in those days often flounce toward that promise as horses do toward sound ground that yet stick in the mire. Oh! many a pull hath my heart had with Satan for this blessed sixth of John . . . And, again, as I was thus in a muse, that Scripture also came with great power upon my spirit: Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us. Now was I got on high: ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... long and five feet wide; a cannon was placed on each of these, and it was then dragged over the marsh by a team of two hundred men, harnessed with rope-traces and breast-straps, and wading to the knees. Horses or oxen would have foundered in the mire. The way had often to be changed, as the mossy surface was soon churned into a hopeless slough along the line of march. The work could be done only at night or in thick fog, the men being completely exposed to the cannon of the town. ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... onwards, now stopping and now advancing, until I could see two dark figures upon the other side of the moat. I let them scramble down the sloping bank, splash through the mire, and climb half-way up to the gate, ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... negation with neither courage nor rapture. Damn it, couldn't he be freed from one without falling into the other? Lee told himself that it must be possible to leave permanently the fenced roads of Eastlake for the high hills; it wasn't necessary to go down into the bottoms, the mire. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... mournful isolation to please a speculative architect; bits of wayside hedge still shivered in fog and wind, amid hoardings variegated with placards and scaffoldings black against the sky. The very earth had lost its wholesome odour; trampled into mire, fouled with builders' refuse and the noisome drift from adjacent streets, it sent forth, under the sooty rain, a smell of corruption, of all the town's uncleanliness. On this rising locality had been bestowed the title of "Park." Mrs. Morgan was decided in her choice of a dwelling here ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... late worshippers were trampling his memory in the mire, the Baron von Blitzenberg, deserted and dejected, his face still buried in his hands, endured the slow passage of the doleful afternoon. Unlike the prisoner at The Lash, who, by a coincidence that happily illustrates ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... entirely different person—a low, vulgar creature proud of the brutal strength and coarseness of her man. I seem to be a part of this human beast! When I wake up I feel as if my soul had been stained, dragged in the mire, almost lost. It seems as if I could never again feel any self-respect. Oh, doctor," Penelope's voice broke and the tears filled her eyes, "you must help me! I cannot bear this torture any longer! What can I do to ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... wine the shower Which to mire fresh mire amasses, But to fair fields brings a dower Rich ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... tongues that whisper "Don't," but the will lies prostrate, and the debauch goes on. What a mute confession of degradation there is in the very appearance of a confirmed sot. Behold a man no longer in possession of himself; the flesh is master; the spiritual nature is sunk in the mire of sensuality, and the mental faculties are a mere mob of enfeebled powers under bondage to a bestial or mad tyrant. ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... forget. We shall be cheerful and happy. You remember: 'Where beauty shines amidst mire and baseness there is only torment'.... You need not ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... 'saints' make up for adultery and murder by making or singing psalms; not that 'righteousness' as a standard of conduct is lower than 'morality'; but that, having fallen, he learned to abhor his sin, and with deepened trust in God's mercy, and many tears, struggled out of the mire, and with unconquered resolve and strength drawn from a divine source, sought still to press towards the mark. It is not the attainment of purity, not the absence of sin, but the presence and operation, though it be partial, of an energy which is at war ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Ursula three times in the course of that day, for she was really in danger of death from the horror of this mysterious persecution. Feeling that some infernal hand had plunged her into the mire, the poor girl lay like a martyr; she said nothing, but lifted her eyes to heaven, and wept no more; she seemed awaiting ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... father, child?" she exclaimed. "See what a bonnie gentleman he is, and what a pretty horse he rides, while we tread along through the mire." ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... thou dost meet with sorrow and need and the sun of happiness is for thee o'erclouded, then I will be near thee with my weak support. Go thou out into life, see what wrongs are done there; but when 'midst filth and mire thou hast seen how even the flower of beauty thrives, then think on this: Life is made up ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... only read what is the newest instead of what is the best of all ages, that writers remain in the narrow circle of prevailing ideas, and that the age sinks deeper and deeper in its own mire. ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... by heaven, I'll never speak to her again. She dragged me into the mire once, but I'll not pollute myself with such filth as that—' And the archdeacon gave a shudder which shook the whole room, so violently was he convulsed with the thought ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the highways throughout Manzi, so that you ride and travel in every direction without inconvenience. Were it not for this pavement you could not do so, for the country is very low and flat, and after rain 'tis deep in mire and water. [But as the Great Kaan's couriers could not gallop their horses over the pavement, the side of the road is left unpaved for their convenience. The pavement of the main street of the city also is laid out in two parallel ways of ten paces ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... indeed they threatened, Otherwise events had happened, For they wanted to o'erthrow me, Threatened they would sink me deeply 160 In the swamp when I was walking, That in mire I might be sunken, In the mud my chin pushed downward, And my beard in filthy places. But indeed a man they found me, And they did not greatly fright me, I myself put forth my magic, And began my spells ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... persons still living who remember many a weary hour and trying adventure between these points. Passengers, almost perished with cold or famished with hunger, were often forced to trudge through mud and slush up to their knees, because the jaded horses could barely pull the empty vehicle through the mire or up the weary hill. They were frequently compelled to alight and grope around in impenetrable darkness and beating storm for rails from a neighbouring fence, with which to pry the wheels out of a mud-hole, into which ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... night of frosty wreck, Enrobed in morning's mounted fire, When lowly, with a broken neck, The crocus lays her cheek to mire.' ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Con he tramps from shire to shire, And he must till the crack of doom; He takes the road in the dust and mire, And he sleeps in the windy broom; He's no address and he's no abode, And his jacket's the worse o' wear; And I've met him once on the Portsmouth Road, And once at a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... the junior counsel of the wretched plaintiffs in the Ferrers case, and that the belief was in the mother being implicated, although not from the beginning. It was believed too that the miserable girl had herself taken step after step into the mire, involved herself gradually, the first guilt being an extravagance in personal expenses, which she lied and lied to account for in the face of her family. 'Such a respectable family,' said George, 'the grandfather in court looking venerable, and everyone indignant ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... and cattle-sheds and stalls. In the midst of it was a quantity of manure, all wet and sloppy, and upon the very top of this heap stood that charming boy, Master Tom, with his shoes and stockings all covered with mire. ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... discovered, instead of diamonds* and emeralds, a mine (four) of rock-crystal. (* These legends of diamonds are very ancient on the coast of Paria. Petrus Martyr relates that, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, a Spaniard named Andres Morales bought of a young Indian of the coast of Paria admantem mire pretiosum, duos infantis digiti articulos longum, magni autem pollicis articulum aequantem crassitudine, acutum utrobique et costis octo pulchre formatis constantem. [A diamond of marvellous value, as long as two joints of an infant's finger, and as thick as one of the joints of its thumb, sharp ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... our way, passing through every mire, running along the verge of every abyss; and we are the most industrious, ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... throwing more dust into the eyes of the police. Patience Crabstick had, of course, been one of the gang throughout, and she had now been allowed to go off with her mistress's money and lesser trinkets,—so that the world of Scotland Yard might be thrown more and more into the mire of ignorance and darkness of doubt. To this view Gager was altogether opposed. He was inclined to think that Lord George had taken the diamonds at Carlisle with Lizzie's connivance;—that he had restored them in London ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... now bind sixty millions of people, spread over half a continent, into one nation, were then unknown. The means of communication and transportation between the colonies were very primitive. Roads were rough, full of steeps and cuts, and in many places, especially near cities, almost impassable with mire. It took seven days to go by stage from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, four days from Boston to New York. The mail service was correspondingly inadequate and slow. At times in winter a letter would be five weeks in going from Philadelphia to Virginia. The newspapers were few, contained ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... off with two 2nd Corps motor-cyclists. There was an almost continuous line of transport on the road—motor-lorries that did not dare deviate an inch from the centre of the road for fear of slipping into the mire, motor ambulances, every kind of transport, and some infantry battalions. After following a column of motor-lorries a couple of miles—we stuck twice in trying to get past the rearmost lorry—we tried the road by Dranoutre and Locre. But these country lanes were worse of surface than the ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... round and ridge By the inimical lance. They gain the bridge And village of Genappe, in equal fence With weather and the enemy's violence. —Cannon upon the foul and flooded road, Cavalry in the cornfields mire-bestrowed, With frothy horses floundering to their knees, Make wayfaring a moil of miseries! Till Britishry and Bonapartists lose Their clashing colours for the tawny hues That twilight sets on all ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... time, in the depth of winter, the roads were often wrought into rivers of mire, and at many points almost impassable even for well-appointed conveyances. In connection therewith, I had one very perilous experience. I had to go from Clunes to a farm in the Learmouth district. The dear old Minister there, Mr. Downes, ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... natures—how many glorious hopes—how much of the seraph's intellect, have been crushed info the mire, or blasted into guilt, by the mere force ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... lifted us forth from the melly, Thou hast told, with thick heavings of pride, Of the Package in Jonadge's belly, And the Camel that rich folks may ride; From the mire and the murk of a stern Age In the Font of St. Polge we are clean, O Gold as has passed through the Furnage, ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... beautiful crowns, though they have received their trust from God to discharge their princely office. For the world must be governed, the youth must be educated, the wicked must be punished. But if thou desirest the honor only, and art not willing to step in the mire, to suffer people's displeasure, and through it all learn to trust God and for his sake do everything, thou art not worthy of the grace given for the accomplishment of a good and praiseworthy work. In punishment, resting under God's ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... arms, as plainly as I had ever seen her in the one happy year of our wedded life. At last, one dreary foggy morning, just three months ago, with a drizzling rain wetting me to the skin, up to my neck in clay and mire, half-starved, enfeebled by fever, stiff with rheumatism, a monster nugget turned up under my spade, and I was in one minute the richest man in Australia. I fell down on the wet clay, with my lump of gold in the bosom of my shirt, and, for the first ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... dolefully, "and little good has come of that. I hope he won't disgrace the family any more than he has done, in my time, Frank. You young fellows have all your life before you; but when a man comes to my age, and expects a little comfort, it's hard to be dragged into the mire after his children. I did my duty by Jack too—I can say that for myself. He had the same training as Gerald had—the same tutor at the university—everything just the same. How do you account for that, sir, you that are a philosopher?" ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... returning to the post a hog was sacrificed to ... the village deity ... the blood from the carcass being allowed to flow into a pit prepared to receive it. The victim, made senseless by intoxication, was now thrown into the pit, and his face pressed down till he died from suffocation in the blood and mire, a deafening noise with instruments being kept up all the time. The priest then cut a piece of flesh from the body and buried it with ceremony near the village idol, all the rest of the people going through ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... a window noisily closed, and Gilian fell back with a shock upon a wet world with roads full of mire and a salt wind from the sea moaning in the trees ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... rather the Eternal itself that the Mystics are seeking. They have first to awaken the Eternal within them, then they can speak of it. Hence the hard saying of Plato is quite real to them, that the uninitiated sinks into the mire, and that only one who has passed through the mystical life enters eternity. It is only in this sense that the words in the fragment of Sophocles can be understood: "Thrice-blessed are the initiated who come to the realm of the shades. They alone have life there. For others there is only misery ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... on a big snow-bridge below the point where our old enemy came thundering down the mountain-side, we tramped gaily through mud and mire and over slippery rocks until we were gladdened by the sight of our camp, dripping away peacefully in the midst of ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... when four important parishes had a dispute about their boundaries, she summoned all their principal men to meet her on the top of a swampy hill, and throwing her ring into the bog told them that where it lay was where the parishes met; the place is known to this day as "Ring-in-the-Mire." ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... she had struck the unuttered word from his lips. "Did you think I should? Those who bear it have suffered enough. There's no need to drag it through the mire a second time." ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... replied Edith. "When our feet were in slippery places, and we leaned on Him, did he not support us firmly? and when the mire and clay were deep in our path, did He not keep us ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... sir," said Fairthorn, "be his most bitter open enemy, and fall down in the mire, the first hand to help you would be Guy Darrell's; but be his professed friend, and betray him to the worth of a straw, and never try to see his face again if you are wise,—the most forgiving and the least ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "I remember but too well how much your choler was inflamed, in spite of the various remonstrances which I made to you respecting the sacred nature of the place. Alas! alas! you cannot say you leaped into the mire ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... at a country inn whose bed and board were such as few horny-handed laborers of to-day would endure. Long before daybreak the next morning a blast from the driver's horn summoned him to the renewal of his journey. If the coach stuck fast in a mire, as it often did, the passengers must alight and help lift it out." No wonder a man made his will and had prayers offered in church for his safe return before he ventured forth. But even such a conveyance was a luxury. As a rule people traveled on foot, ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... thoughts the proletarian movement of both worlds. Whatever we all are, we are through him; and whatever the movement of to-day is, it is through his theoretical and practical work; without him we should still be stuck in the mire of confusion."[2] ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... we did not go to church because the weather was bad, or there was no preaching within twenty miles of us, or my mother was not well, or the roads were impassable with mire or frost, Mary 'Liza and I learned two questions in the Shorter Catechism, and she learned the references as well. We also committed a hymn to memory, and five verses of a psalm. Beyond this, no religious exercise was binding ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... the other in perplexity and dismay, and I think I never beheld more pale faces assembled. By my father's direction, we looked about to find anything which might indicate or account for the noise which we had heard; but no such thing was to be seen—even the mire which lay upon the avenue was undisturbed. We returned to the house, more panic struck than I can describe. On the next day, we learned by a messenger, who had ridden hard the greater part of the night, that my sister was dead. On Sunday evening, she had retired ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... side of the river Dee, where the ship was to be launched. Here the train stopped, and absolutely deposited our whole party of excursionists, under a heavy shower, in the midst of a muddy potato-field, whence we were to wade through mud and mire to the ship-yard, almost half a mile off. Some kind Christian, I know not whom, gave me half of his umbrella, and half of his cloak, and thereby I got to a shed near the ship, without being entirely ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reacted in these vast western solitudes, and the fate of the unfortunate traders would be unknown, until some day, perchance, a living skeleton, a famished being, covered with blood, dust, and mire, would arrive at one of the military posts on the borders, and relate an awful and bloody tragedy, from which ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... that we could not pursue him, by which means he made his escape to the Shore badly wounded. I have observed buffalow floating down which I suppose must have been drounded in Crossing above. more or less of those animals drown or mire in passing this river. I observed Several floating buffalow on the R. Rochejhone imediately below where large gangues had Crossed. The wind blew hard all the after part of the day. I derected the men to dress their Skins except one which I took with me and walkd. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... in your care, Who watched o'er pits of blood and mire, From iron roots leap up in air Wild forests, magical, of fire; Yet while the Nuts of Death were shed Your memory would ever stray To your own isle. Oh, gallant dead— This wreath, Will Redmond, on ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... herself as Maitland knew her. The burglar out of the way, by ruse, evasion, or subterfuge she would be secreted from the prying of the police, smuggled out of the house and taken to a place of safety, given a new chance to redeem herself, to clean her hands of the mire of theft, to become worthy of the womanhood ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... a bright morning and the plain lay beneath them like a planted garden, in all the flourish and verdure of June; but the roads being deep in mire, and unrepaired after the ravages of the winter, it was past noon before they reached the foot of the hills. Here matters were little better, for the highway was ploughed deep by the wheels of the numberless vans and coaches journeying from one town to another during the Whitsun ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... The vessel freighted. Soon as both embark'd, Cutting the waves, goes on the ancient prow, More deeply than with others it is wont. While we our course o'er the dead channel held. One drench'd in mire before me came, and said; "Who art thou, that thou comest ere thine hour?" I answer'd: "Though I come, I tarry not; But who art thou, that art become so foul?" "One, as thou seest, who mourn: " he straight replied. To which ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... entrance into Parliament, as the following curious political memorandum will prove:—"I like it no better for being from France—whence all ills come—altar of liberty, begrimed at once with blood and mire." ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... filled his glass, the others followed his example— the toast was given and drunk—more toasts were given and drunk—the three men returned to their drink and their old ways, and haunts and comrades, as the sow returns to her wallowing in the mire. ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... mud, through mire, they came to our cottage. The poor princess was forced to change shoes and stockings. M. de Lally is more accustomed to such expeditions. Nothing could be more sweet than they both were, nor indeed, more ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... woman, hearing the mournful voice at her door, as the spirit passed on its way to space, ran out and rescued her husband from his plight. She told, too, of the feu follet, or will-o'-the-wisp, that led a girl on Grosse Isle to the swamp where her lover was engulfed in mire and enabled her to rescue him. There was Grand'mere Duchene, likewise, who worked at her spinning-wheel for many a night after death, striking fear to her son's heart, by its droning, because he had not bought the fifty masses for the repose of her soul, but when he had fulfilled the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... a steep bent on the further side, on to a marvellously rough mountain-neck, whiles mere black sand cumbered with scattered rocks and stones, whiles beset with mires grown over with the cottony mire-grass; here and there a little scanty grass growing; otherwhere nought but dwarf willow ever dying ever growing, mingled with moss or red-blossomed sengreen; and all ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... depressions brought about by scouring and periodical renewings of color. In short, there is no illusory grace left to the poverty that reigns here; it is dire, parsimonious, concentrated, threadbare poverty; as yet it has not sunk into the mire, it is only splashed by it, and though not in rags as yet, its clothing is ready to drop ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... vision of better things breaks through the cloud and storm. Then the vision strikes clarity into reason, memory and imagination. In these hours the soul scoffs at sordid things. As the flower climbs upward to escape from the slough, as the foot turns away from the mire, as the nostril avoids the filth, as the ear hates discord, so in these hours the soul scoffs at selfishness and sin. Oh, how beautiful seem purity and gentleness, and sympathy and truth! And these hours are big with prophecy. ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... girl's hand, the old man half dragged her through the opening into a yard devoted to coal storage. Picking their way through the spotted mire, they entered a shed where trip hammers were pounding in showers of sparks, stepped over a great revolving shaft, and came to a stairway; up, up, to the fifth floor, where ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... most readily for help, and it is he whom the legends represent as being the most prompt of all the heavenly host to assist the unfortunate among mankind. Thus in one of the stories a peasant is driving along a heavy road one autumn day, when his cart sticks fast in the mire. Just then St. Kasian ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... 'It is more meete for a litle ffootpage, That has run through mosse and mire, To take his supper vpon his knee & sitt downe by the kitchin fyer, Then to go into the chamber with any ladye That ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... irony of dragging behind him in his suite his imperial household, cent-gardes, horses, carriages, cooks, silver stew-pans and cases of champagne, trailing his flaunting mantle, embroidered with the Napoleonic bees, through the blood and mire of the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... spongy, shell-torn areas, repair broken roads beyond No Man's Land, and build bridges. Our gunners, with no thought of sleep, put their shoulders to wheels and dragropes to bring their guns through the mire in support of the infantry, now under the increasing fire of the enemy's artillery. Our attack had taken the enemy by surprise, but, quickly recovering himself, he began to fire counterattacks in strong force, supported by heavy bombardments, with large quantities of gas. ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... with the ecstasy of one who has abandoned herself, freely and with a glad heart, to all the vices. She dug her hands into the mire, she scattered it about her, she scooped and delved and excavated. It was her intention to build something in the nature of a high, high hill. She patted the surface of the sand, and behold! it was instantly a beautiful ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... days passed by until autumn was near at hand. One day, returning before the sun was fully set, he found seated beside his mother a lovely girl. In spite of his contemptible appearance after a day's toil, working barelegged in the mire, she welcomed him with the ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... passed out of the Gridiron one thought alone occupied him. Murray McTavish had lied. He had lied deliberately to Bill Brudenell. He had made no attempt to save the boy from the mire into which he had helped to fling him. On the contrary, he had thrust him deeper and deeper into it. Why? What—what was the meaning of it all? Where were things heading? What purpose lay ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... end by one's own wrongdoing. Still, most modern readers will think that Goethe, in elaborating the Brocken scene as an interesting study of the uncanny and the vile, let his hero sink needlessly far into the mire. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... snow-white lilies grew, and you waded in and gathered them for me. Oh dear heart, don't you see? It's this! Everywhere the wind carried that thistledown, other thistles sprang up and grew prickles; and wherever those lily seeds sank to the mire, the pure white of other lilies bloomed. But, Freckles, there was never a place anywhere in the Limberlost, or in the whole world, where the thistledown floated and sprang up and blossomed into white lilies! Thistles grow from ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... shepherd staggered into the place, pale, bleeding, bruised, covered with mire. The Prussians, he told them, had forced him to be their guide, had knotted him tight to a trooper's saddle, and had dragged him with them until he was half dead with fatigue and pain. At night ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... guns over rocks and through mire, Trembling with weakness, yet straining each nerve, Fated at last in despair to expire, ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... all-powerful and terrible mystery will not be defied. It produces result. You are here. Do I dare to lose caste? Yes. Do I dare to be your mistress—your concubine—your slave—your chattel? Joyfully. Gwynplaine, I am woman. Woman is clay longing to become mire. I want to despise myself. That lends a zest to pride. The alloy of greatness is baseness. They combine in perfection. Despise me, you who are despised. Nothing can be better. Degradation on degradation. What joy! I pluck the double blossom of ignominy. Trample ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... this guide, I traversed hedges and ditches; for I would not venture to travel in the highway, lest I should fall into the hands of my pursuer, and after I had actually tumbled into the mire, and walked six or seven long miles by the help of a good spirit, which never failed me on such occasions, I arrived at the place, and rung the bell at the garden gate for admittance. Seeing my figure, which was very uncouth, together ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... David Lawrence. That part of courage allied to hope seemed crushed out of him as if by torture. Could he drag his daughter's name through the mire? for it would be that in any attempt to bring Eastman to the point ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... the free and home of the brave, America is assumed to be so openhearted, munificent and princely, so liberal and so generous that could she but behold a man, of whatever hue, trampled in the mire, or hear his piteous cry, she would hasten to his aid and deliver him. So much does she admire genuine human worth that a man of heart and spirit and fortitude cannot perish while she is nigh at hand. Such, ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... in darkness, face down in the mire, And prayed that darkness might become my pall; The rabble rout roared round me like some quire Of filthy animals primordial; My heart seemed like a toad eternally Prisoned in stone, ugly and sad as he; Sweet sunlight seemed a dream, a mythic ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... turning on His critics, hurled burning replies upon them. "Ye hypocrites!" He cried, "You cling to the commandments of men and neglect the commandments of God! You cleanse your hands but not your souls! You are the blind leaders of the blind, and both yourselves and your followers fall in the mire and ditches! Away with you and your hypocrisy!" But the adverse comment aroused by His actions would not down, and, discouraged and disheartened by the evidences of the barrenness of the soil in which He had been sowing ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... said Peabody energetically. "I wouldn't have started if I had known what was before me. I expected to travel like a gentleman, instead of wading through this cursed mud till I'm ready to drop. Look at my pantaloons, all splashed with mire. What would my friends say if I should appear in this rig on ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... volcano was unusually furious, insomuch that the air was loaded with its ashes. The rain which fell at this time was a compound of water, sand, and earth; so that it properly might be called showers of mire. Whichever way the wind was, we were plagued with the ashes; unless it blew very strong indeed from the opposite direction. Notwithstanding the natives seemed well enough satisfied with the few expeditions we had made in ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... Gentlemen, to pursue this reasoning to its extreme limits without offending against the commonest decency. We should have to descend into blood and mire, continuing to declare the while that everything is right. I pause therefore, and leave the rest to your imaginations. Open the most dismal pages of history. Choose out the acts which inspire the most vivid horror and disgust, the blackest ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... as to deny that the devil might afflict mankind, but they declared themselves unqualified to prove it. There began in them, in short, the dawn of human sympathies, and the growth of spiritual humility. Cotton Mather, with all that he represented, sinks into the mire; but the true Puritan arises, and goes forward with lightened heart to the mighty ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... spoken since his fall, so furious was he at having been outwitted by a boy, and having not only allowed him to escape, but being himself rolled in the mire—raised his voice in a tremendous shout. All listened intently, but no answering sound ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... his maimed hand, and even smiled faintly. "I knew you'd say that. I knew what you'd think about it, but it's all the same now. I did it for you and Safie! I knew I was in the way; I knew you was the man she orter had; I knew you was the man who had dragged her outer the mire and clay where I was leavin' her, as you did when she fell in the water. I knew that every day I lived I was makin' YOU suffer and breakin' HER heart—for all she tried ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Such, at least, were our reveries at times, though sorely jarred, now and then, by events that took our philosophy aback. For after all, philosophy—that is, the best wisdom that has ever in any way been revealed to our man-of-war world—is but a slough and a mire, with a few tufts of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... white and red morning-glories,[1] and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,[2] And the Third-month lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal, and the cow's calf, And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side, And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there—and the beautiful, curious liquid, And the water-plants with their graceful fiat heads—all became part of him. The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... to hear it. We'll ride together. Look out for your horse! He may go knee deep into mire at any time. Harry, the Wilderness looks even more somber to me than it did a year ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I arrayed her, And goodly raiment, Or ever I gave her To the folk of the Goths. That was the hardest Of my heavy woes, When the bright hair,— O the bright hair of Swanhild!— In the mire was trodden ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... a confused scrambling, and spattering, and splashing, through the soft mire—a growling on the part of the bear, and the wildest screeching from the throat of the affrighted negro—all of which came to an end by Bruin—whose body was now bedaubed all over with black mud—once more regaining his feet, ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... wearied the body, diseased and demoralized the mind. The pocket has been emptied, theft committed, lies unnumbered told, to play the part of the harlot's mate—perchance a six-foot fool, dragged into the filth and mire of the harlot's house. You called her your friend, when, but for her mess of meat, you would have passed her like ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... that a summons to the tea-table rescued her from her mire of embarrassment. The meal was spoiled for her, however; the mortifying recollection of her mysterious blunder conspired with her curiosity to banish appetite. As soon as possible after tea she decoyed Mrs. Frederick out into the garden and in the dahlia walk solemnly ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that we were eight days closely confined in this one lodge, and then came the night when we were lifted from out the mire of despair into which we had fallen, so suddenly as to make us literally ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... consubstantial to the Father, but, as Mediator, he is not equal to his Father, but less than his Father, and subject and subordinate to his Father—a distinction used by our divines against the Anti-Trinitarians and Socinians. Now by his not admitting of this distinction, he doth by consequence mire himself in Socinianism; for Christ, as Mediator, is the Father's servant, Isa. xlii. 1; and the Father is greater than he, John xiv. 28; and as the head of the man is Christ, so the head of Christ ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... hat, and the water soaked out of Nasmyth's jacket, which he had tied by the arms about her shoulders. Her drenched skirt clung about her, rent to tatters, and one of her little shoes was caked with mire. The ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... why I should not read it! A German comedy! That must be fine stuff for the German theatre, the most miserable of all. In Germany, Melpomene has untutored admirers, some walking on stilts, others crawling in the mire, from the altars of the goddess. The Germans will ever be repulsed, as they are rebels to her laws, and understand not the art to move ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... down drenchingly; but we unblenchingly Trudged on beside them through mirk and through mire, They stepping steadily—only too readily! - Scarce as if ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... is all mud and mire. Where, abroad, the business is carried on largely, as to supply the London market, hordes of the poorest wretches are employed, their grimy tatters naturally adapting them to an employ where cleanliness is as much out of the question as with a drowned man at the bottom of ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... obliged to go from one city to another, he often rode on horseback. Instead of a trunk for his clothing, he carried a pair of saddlebags. Instead of sitting at his ease in a parlor car, he went jolting along through mud and mire, exposed to ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... to imagine a more discomforting atmosphere in which to be abroad: yet Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse was trudging through the mire, and getting wet to the skin, even when he might just as well be sitting beside the fire in the withdrawing-room ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... have been able to bring about elsewhere, we desire to thank God that they have not, as yet, overcome the love of liberty, fidelity to true republican principles, and a sacred regard for the Constitution in that State whose soil was drenched to a mire by the first and best blood of the Revolution." Perhaps the peculiar power of Webster in condemning a measure by a felicitous epithet, such as that he employs in describing "the plunging spirit of party devotion," was never more happily exercised. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... the soil cursed the traveller who brought them potatoes in place of bread, the daily food of the poor man.... They snatched the precious gift from the hands outstretched to them, flung it in the mire, ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... instructed in all proper discipline by the commandment of his father, and spent that time like the other little children of the country,—that is, in drinking, eating, and sleeping; in eating, sleeping, and drinking; and in sleeping, drinking, and eating. Still he wallowed in the mire, blackened his face, trod down his shoes at heel; at the flies he did oftentimes yawn, and willingly run after the butterflies, the empire whereof belonged to his father. He sharpened his teeth with a slipper, washed his hands with his broth, combed his ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... Kate Roby," says Mr. Herndon, "for an incident which illustrates alike his proficiency in orthography and his natural inclination to help another out of the mire. The word 'defied' had been given out by Schoolmaster Crawford, but had been misspelled several times when it came Miss Roby's turn. 'Abe stood on the opposite side of the room,' related Miss Roby to me in 1865, 'and was watching me. I began d-e-f—, ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell |
