"Murk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unilluminated, sunless, dusky, rayless, Cimmerian, pitchy, tenebrific, murk, murky, dingy, shadowy, shady, mirky, lowering, overcast, gloomy, sullen, Stygian, sombre; obscure, mysterious, incomprehensible, recondite abstruse, cabalistic, cryptic, enigmatical, occult; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... infinite, rebelled. It was not a matter of filial duty; it was not a matter of love; to her it was a matter of existence. She saw her ideals dimly enough at best, and she would burst every cord of affection and convention rather than allow them to be submerged in the grey, surrounding murk of materialism. ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... yet, of tents and rough board buildings squatting upon the bare brown soil near the river bank, north of us, and less than a month old. The wagon road was a line of white dust from the river clear to Benton, and through the murk plodded the water haulers and emigrants and freighters, animals and men alike befloured and choked. The dust cloud rested over Benton. It fumed in another line westward, kept in suspense by on-traveling stage and wagon—by wheel, hoof and boot, bound ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... strove to hold it rigidly erect, passed silently out of the little office. Through the opened door the trio with their eyes followed him while he crossed the concrete floor of the concourse and passed through a gate. They continued to watch until he had disappeared in the murk, going toward where a row of parked sleepers stood at the far end of ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... touched the heights of the unexpected. He stretched out his arm toward the near window through which could be seen the white splendor of Mount Carstairs, dim in the wreathing murk. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... over the littered table by the open window. The red untidy head made a patch of grotesque colour in the general murk. He looked like a poor rag doll that had been torn and battered in some wild carnival scrimmage and ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... awry. Some care, poor eagerness, ambition of work, Some old offence that unforgiving did lurk, Or some self-gratulation, soft and sly— Something not thy sweet will, not the good part, While the home-guard looked out, stirred up the old murk, And so I gloomed away from ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... by other layers again sweated in, absorb'd by those excited souls—their clothes all saturated with the clay-powder filling the air—stirr'd up everywhere on the dry roads and trodden fields by the regiments, swarming wagons, artillery, &c.—all the men with this coating of murk and sweat and rain, now recoiling back, pouring over the Long Bridge—a horrible march of twenty miles, returning to Washington baffed, humiliated, panic-struck. Where are the vaunts, and the proud boasts with which you went forth? Where are your banners, and your bands ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... boat as the officer in command of the expedition. His intimate knowledge of the position of the war vessels would be of use in this murk and darkness. Humphrey took an oar in the same boat; and the little fleet got together, and commenced its silent voyage just as the clocks of the fortress boomed out the ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of fantastic beauty. It was as if a huge, rounded piece of amber, mellow, golden, lay in the murk of the sea-floor. Not steel, hard and grim, but of transparent, shimmering stuff she was built, all coated a soft yellow by her lights, clearly visible inside. Ken had known something of her radical construction; knew that a substance called ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... and at length came upon the shrieking inferno of the shops. The uproar and din were maddening. Overhead, huge cranes were swinging great bulks of steel from one end of the cavernous shed to the other; vague figures were moving obscurely in the murk; the floor was piled and littered with heaps of iron-work of unimaginable shapes. After a time we made our way into another area where there was more quiet but no less confusion. I yelled to my guide, ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... over the divided channel of the St. Lawrence, between Orleans and the mainland. Montmorency Falls in a moment showed dimly white through the murk to our left, a great hanging veil of ice higher than Niagara. Further ahead, the lights of the little village of St. Anne de Beaupre were visible with the gray-black towering ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... the eye could see, myriads of lights glimmered like watch fires through the murk of the dismal streets, growing thicker and thicker as we approached the heart of the city, and appearing to blend their lustres. Through the midst of the glittering expanse we could trace the black tide of the river, crossed by the sparkling lines of the bridges, and reflecting the red ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... had chased every star from the sky, and lifted the dank murk of night from the earth, when, Filostrato being risen, and having roused all his company, they hied them to the fair garden, and there fell to disporting themselves: the time for breakfast being come, they took it where they had supped ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... House of Peers, where his Majesty's body lay in state. This was on the very afternoon of the funeral, that would start for the Abbey after nightfall, and at Westminster I found a throng already gathered in the mud and murk. In the chambre ardente, which was hung with purple, a score of silver lamps depended from the roof around a tall purple canopy, under which the corpse reposed in its open coffin, flanked with ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... cold mind of stags has more of wind, And speedier through their inwards rouses up The icy currents which make their members quake. But more the oxen live by tranquil air, Nor e'er doth smoky torch of wrath applied, O'erspreading with shadows of a darkling murk, Rouse them too far; nor will they stiffen stark, Pierced through by icy javelins of fear; But have their place half-way between the two— Stags and fierce lions. Thus the race of men: Though training make them equally refined, It leaves those pristine vestiges behind Of each mind's nature. ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... Lieutenant muttered, wrinkling his eyes in a vain endeavour to see through the murk. "We've been forty-eight hours on patrol, and now we're due to go into harbour this beastly fog comes down and delays ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... O shades of night—O moody, tearful night! O great star disappeared—O the black murk that hides the star! O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me! O harsh surrounding cloud that will not ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... evidently overcome at the idea. "Why did they send her here? I should as soon have expected them to send her into the murk of the bottomless pit. A girl, an innocent girl, ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... blow from underneath. While he staggered to it the heavens split over his head with a crash in the lick of a red tongue of flame; and a sudden dreadful gloom fell all round the stunned d'Alcacer, who beheld with terror the morning sun, robbed of its rays, glow dull and brown through the sombre murk which had taken possession of the universe. The Emma had blown up; and when the rain of shattered timbers and mangled corpses falling into the lagoon had ceased, the cloud of smoke hanging motionless under the livid sun cast its shadow ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... and Mr. G. P. R. James, the most distinguished passenger, vanished one Sunday morning in a furious gale in the Mersey, to make place for the drearier picture of a Liverpool street as seen from the Adelphi coffee-room in November murk, followed instantly by the passionate delights of Chester and the romance of red-sandstone architecture. Millions of Americans have felt this succession of emotions. Possibly very young and ingenuous tourists feel them still, but in days ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... the sky and the two armies appeared and disappeared. The champions fought and heads flew from trunks and the blood ran in rills; nor did brand leave to play and blood to flow and battle fire to flow, till the murk o' night came, when the two hosts drew apart and, alighting from their steeds rested upon the field by the fires they had kindled. Therewith the Seven Kings went up to Hasan and kissed the earth before him. He pressed forwards to meet them and thanked them and prayed Allah to give them ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... progress was slow, but they expected to arrive before mid-day. Saltash, carelessly sauntering in the doctor's wake, found himself the object of considerable interest on the part of those passengers who were already up in the murk of the early morning. He was stopped by several to receive congratulations upon his escape, but he refused to be detained for long. He had business below, he said, and the doctor was waiting. And so at last he came to a cabin at the end of a long passage, at the door of which a kind-faced stewardess ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... when one is in jest.) Once or twice she shook her head at the moon, and as she stared, moody and quiet, it seemed that the moon had slid beyond her vision and she was looking into great caverns of space, bursting with blackness. Some horror of emptiness was reaching to roll her in pits of murk, where her screams would be battered back on ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... behind the big wax light; And were I only young again! My children lie in the murk at night— To honied ...
— The Return of the Dead - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... somewhere on the invisible shore was sending out its unearthly blasts. Then a whistle seemed to cut the gloom right ahead, and a big black shape loomed through the murk. The Merry Seas sounded her warning, and the helm was jammed hard a-starboard. Another shriek came from the phantom that had seemed to rise right out of the sea. With that shriek, she also ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... into the murk amidships when Terence Reardon rolled groggily down the companion after him. Terence had no means of ascertaining which alleyway the skipper had charged into—and he did not care. Blind with fury he lurched into the port alleyway; in consequence of which the fugitive, ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... untoward events, the "Tarlac," coastwise transport blew into the bay through the murk and rain, and Captain North, of "B" Troop, the "Ole Cap'n," returned to the station. Hearing the shots and yells, he concluded that the Major was "shooting up the town," and splashed hurriedly to his quarters for his saber and revolver. There in the darkness he stumbled over his muchacho, who ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... almost walked under the bodies of great, spheroidal creatures with massive short legs, whose tremendously long, sinuous necks disappeared in the leafy murk above, swaying gently like long-stalked lilies in a terrestial pond. These were azornacks, mild-tempered vegetarians whose only defense lay in their thick, blubbery hides. Filled with parasites, stinking and rancid, their decaying covering of fat effectively concealed the tender ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... hear and obey,' and sailed on till they came to the island, where they landed and amused themselves with exploring the place. Then they again embarked and taking with them the gazelle, set out to return homeward, but the murk of evening overtook them and they missed their way on the main. Moreover a strong wind arose and crave the boat into mid-ocean, so that when they awoke in the morning, they found themselves lost at sea. Such was their case; but as regards King Teghmus, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the Rum Jar, Bringing a boon To the Folk in the Front Line. Scatheful the sky With no stars shining; Monstrous the mud That lay deep on the Duck Boards. A weary while Wandered he on; No wit he wotted Of fate that followed Stalking his steps. So passed he the posts All silent and sunken In mire and murk, Till fearful he felt for The doubtful Duck Boards No longer beneath him. Then spake Sidni, Steward of Stores: "Now know I well I have come to the Country That men name No Man's;" And with woe his heart Waxed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... glee! Twinkle with brilliant mockery! Glitter on ice-robed roof and floor! Jewel the bear-skin of the door! Gleam in my beard, illume my breath, Blanch the clock face that times my death! But do not pierce that murk so deep, Where in their sleeping-bags they sleep! But do not linger where they lie, They who had all the luck to ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... her arms—a wide-eyed mite that stared up into the murk overhead with preternatural solemnity. Their talk, of an inarticulate simplicity, is no concern of ours. The little group has been recorded because of the woman. Mechanically rocking the child in her arms, with her neat clothes and brave little bits of finery, with, above all, her anxious, ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... was no coward. But, as he came out from the murk of those chambers with their rotting floors, many of them undermined by oubliettes and dungeons, he felt a chill of fear. Even the occasional bursts of sunshine through the cloud-fog which perpetually sweeps ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... from Boston to Denver. We will flash first to Worcester, cross the Hudson on the high bridge at Poughkeepsie, swing southwest through a dozen coal towns to the outskirts of Philadelphia, leap across the Susquehanna, zigzag up and down the Alleghenies into the murk of Pittsburg, cross the Ohio at Wheeling, glance past Columbus and Indianapolis, over the Wabash at Terre Haute, into St. Louis by the Eads bridge, through Kansas City, across the Missouri, along the corn-fields of Kansas, and then on—on—on with ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... hundreds of feet above the densely packed roofs and spires of the city crowded upon the hill's rocky sides. It was like some fine and pure old Greek temple, standing on a romantic headland, far above the murk and toil of sordid striving. But over the symmetrical pile floated a banner that meant to the world all that was signified even by the banners which Greece folded and laid away in eternal rest thousands ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... darkness &c adj., absence of light; blackness &c (dark color) 431; obscurity, gloom, murk; dusk &c (dimness) 422. Cimmerian darkness^, Stygian darkness, Egyptian darkness; night; midnight; dead of night, witching hour of night, witching time of night; blind man's holiday; darkness visible, darkness that can be felt; palpable obscure; Erebus [Lat.]; the jaws of darkness [Midsummer ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... himself unable to keep his eyes open; so he began to unclose the lids a little and to close them a little until his eyeballs regained force and got used to the light and were purged of the noisome murk.—And Shahrazad was surprised by the dawn of day and ceased to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... that I was in the enemy's land on a wild mission. The rain came on, and we passed through dripping towns, with the lights shining from the wet streets. As we went eastward the lighting seemed to grow more generous. After the murk of London it was queer to slip through garish stations with a hundred arc lights glowing, and to see long lines of lamps running to the horizon. Peter dropped off early, but I kept awake till midnight, trying to focus thoughts that persistently strayed. Then I, ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... could all be broken. She wished it could be gone for ever, like a lantern-slide which was broken. She wanted to have no past. She wanted to have come down from the slopes of heaven to this place, with Birkin, not to have toiled out of the murk of her childhood and her upbringing, slowly, all soiled. She felt that memory was a dirty trick played upon her. What was this decree, that she should 'remember'! Why not a bath of pure oblivion, a new birth, without any ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... says Murkison, 'let's get our gumption together and inoculate a plan for defeating the enemy. Suppose while I'm exchanging airy bandage with the gray capper you gents come along, by accident, you know, and holler: "Hello, Murk!" and shake hands with symptoms of surprise and familiarity. Then I take the capper aside and tell him you all are Jenkins and Brown of Grassdale, groceries and feed, good men and maybe willing to take a chance while away ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... him whose bratta on the wind roared like fire, and there was a sound of voices calling and acclaiming, and a noontide darkness descended upon him and accompanied him as he went, and all became obscure and shapeless, and all the ways were murk. And the mind of Laeg, too, was disturbed and shaken ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... of the Fisherman's bottle. One supposes the Indians might have learned the use of smoke signals from these dust pillars as they learn most things direct from the tutelage of the earth. The air begins to move fluently, blowing hot and cold between the ranges. Far south rises a murk of sand against the sky; it grows, the wind shakes itself, and has a smell of earth. The cloud of small dust takes on the color of gold and shuts out the neighborhood, the push of the wind is unsparing. Only man of all folk is foolish ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... the crushed essence of this world, The wine of life, and he who treads the press Is lofty with imperious disregard Of the burst grapes, the red tears and the murk. But nay! that is a thought of the old poets, Who sullied life with the passional bitterness Of their world-weary hearts. We of the sunrise, Joined in the breast of God, feel deep the power That urges all things onward, not to an end, But in an endless flow, mounting and mounting, Claiming ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... phantasma which hovered about Lord Byron has been more or less felt by all who ever approached him. That he sometimes came out of the cloud, and was familiar and earthly, is true; but his dwelling was amid the murk and the mist, and the home of his spirit in the abysm of the storm, and the hiding- places of guilt. He was, at the time of which I am speaking, scarcely two-and-twenty, and could claim no higher praise than having written a clever worldly-minded ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... whirling through the mad whirlpool of life, dancing the dance of death, groping for the nameless, indefinite something, the magic formula, the essence, the intrinsic fact, the flash of light through the murk and dark—the rational sanction for existence, in short—Foma Gordyeeff goes down to ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... did not present itself insistently until daylight began to penetrate the murk of the cell. What would the authorities do with him? How was he to get his liberty? Would the thing become public? He felt his helplessness, his inadequacy. He could not ask his father to help him, for he did not want his father ever to ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... had gone out. The mindless old man—he who had been President—went with it. A New Year had come in, and on its infant heels shambled a tall, gaunt shape that seated itself by the White House windows and looked out into the murk of things with ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... eyes through the greenish murk. They could barely make out a shadowy figure about half a block down the near-black canyon of the dismal, dust-blown street, into which the greenish moonlight hardly reached. It seemed to them that the figure was scooping something up from the pavement and letting it sift down along ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... falling now, and the hollows choking with murk. Over the ridge, the evening star showed in a lonely point of pallor. The peaks, which in a broader light had held their majestic distances, seemed with the falling of night to draw in and huddle close in crowding herds of black masses. The distant tinkling ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... July which I once owned. She loved to walk in the fields. Snakes, bugs, worms and spiders enthralled her. Each hour brought its vivid message, its wonder and its delight, and when now and again she was allowed to explore the garden with me at night, the murk and the stars, and the stealthily moving winds in the corn, scared, awed her. At such moments the universe was a delicious mystery. Keeping close hold upon my hand she whispered with excitement, "What was that, Poppie? What was that noise? Was ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... help his brother in his parish. Yet all the while he felt a strange sinking at heart which he could not explain or account for. And when, in the grey light of the dawn, he said adieu to his friend, and saw him vanish through the just opened gate and out into the dim murk of the frosty morning, there came over his ardent and impulsive spirit a strange sense of desolation and sinking; and when he returned to his chill and lonely rooms, the first thing he did was to fling himself upon his bed ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... encounter with Tom Lillywhite were long and heavy ones for Natalie and Garth. A haggard misunderstanding rode between them on the trail. Denied the all-explaining, all-healing touch of hands—or lips, the unreasonable despair of lovers seized on each; and the sunny way was plunged in murk. They rode, and camped, and ate their supper in silence; and in silence they turned in for the night. But there was little sleep for either; they lay apart, each nursing a burden of unhappiness; unable to say now what it was all about, only ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... seen them from the Shoals in broad daylight, when tempestuous columns scooped themselves up from the green gulfs and shattered in loam on the shuddering rock,—ah! but that was day, and this was midnight and murk!—storms as I'd heard tell of them off Cape Race, when great steamers went down with but one cry, and the waters crowded them out of sight,—storms where, out of the wilderness of waves that far and wide wasted white ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... Paolo's grief Dante fell swooning with pity, and awoke to find himself in the circle where a cold rain fell forever on the gluttons. Cerberus guarded the entrance, and now and again devoured the unhappy ones who lay prone on their faces in the murk and mire. Here Ciacco of Florence recognized and spoke with Dante, falling back in the mire as the poet passed on, to rise no more ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... with a start and stared confusedly about him. A ripple of low laughter came to his ears as he widened his pupils in the effort to accommodate his eyes to the murk. Then the moon broke out once more and the place became one of silver light and dark, soft shadow-blots. She was sitting with her back against a tree, her knees gathered between her arms, fingers interlocked. She had thrown a long, rough cape about her, ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... her side Desire, * And Night o'er hung her with blackest blee:— 'O Night shall thy murk bring me ne'er a chum * To tumble and futter this coynte of me?' And she smote that part with her palm and sighed * Sore sighs and a-weeping continued she, 'As the toothstick beautifies teeth e'en so ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... thing Private Macgregor Robinson lay on the Flanders mud, under the murk and rain. A very long time it seemed since that short, grim struggle amid the blackness and intermittent brightness. The night was still rent with noise and light, but the storm of battle had passed from the place where he had fallen. He could ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... round her lips and laughter in her eyes. Aristide, worker of miracles, strutted by her side choke-full of vanity. They wandered through the picturesque streets of the old town with the gaiety of truant children, peeping through iron gateways into old courtyards, venturing their heads into the murk of black stairways, talking (on the part of Aristide) with mothers who nursed chuckling babes on their doorsteps, crossing the thresholds, hitherto taboo, of churches, and meeting the mystery of coloured glass and shadows and the ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... Romeo. And yet I go up alone on the freezing poop, and under my breath chant defiantly at the snorting gale, and at the graybeards thundering down on us, that I am a lover. And I send messages to the lonely albatrosses veering through the murk that I am a lover. And I look at the wretched sailors crawling along the spray-swept bridge and know that never in ten thousand wretched lives could they experience the love I experience, and I wonder why ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... scattered houses, two miles of widely separated farms and then two last miles of bayberry, salt meadow, coarse grass, rocky sand and blue, inrolling seas. I know how the salty, strengthening air blew Roger's lungs clean of the frightful murk of the car, how the strange, stunted windrocked trees gave an odd, unreal air of Japan to that bleak shore; I can half close my eyes now and lo, Atami and her thundering, surf-swept beach broadens out before me, and ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... and waggons, piled high with phantom loads, that moved with no sound of hoofs or wheels; spectral horsemen flitted by, soundless; in the shadow of hissing hedgerow and raving, wind-tossed trees crawled miserable, nebulous shapes, seen but to be lost again, swallowed in the howling murk. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... he told someone, "It's cruel to tie ticklers to slow-witted snaily humans when ticklers can think and live ... ten thousand times as fast," he finished, plucking the figure from the murk of his unconscious. ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... exclamations of astonishment to the lips of her now devoted Beaubien. Hour after hour the latter would sit in the twilight of the great hall, with her eyes fastened upon the absorbed girl, and her leaden soul slowly, painfully struggling to lift itself above the murk and dross in which it had lain buried for long, meaningless years. They now talked but little, this strange woman and the equally strange girl. Their communion was no longer of the lips. It was the silent yearning of a dry, desolate heart, striving to open ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... stealeth from the vine Singing, "Heigho, my dearie! And will you hear this song of mine,— A song of the land of murk and mist Where bideth the bud the dew hath kist? Then let the moonbeam's web of light Be spun before thee silvery white, And I shall sing the ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... an inferno of detonating fog-signals. For outside the fog still held. The air was cold and raw and tasted coppery. In the street traffic moved at a funeral pace, to the accompaniment of hoarse cries and occasional crashes. Once the sun had worked its way through the murk and had hung in the sky like a great red orange, but now all was darkness and discomfort again, blended with that odd suggestion of mystery and romance which is a London fog's ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse |
