"Rut" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and—and so it grew to be natural for me to go. Then, of course, being the only lawyer you have, a considerable amount of my business is mixed up in one way or another with your membership; you see those are really the things which settle a man in a rut, ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... it?" demanded Elliot mercilessly. He was so furious that he forgot to hold the umbrella over Miss Daggett, and the rain drove in her hard, unhappy face. She did not seem to notice. She had led a poisoned life, in a narrow rut of existence, and toxic emotions had become as her native atmosphere of mind. Now she seemed to be about to breathe in a better air of humanity, and she ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... a purpose; to accomplish something; to get ahead in the world; to make a new start; perhaps to live down something, or to get out of the rut cut by ancestors; some may only want to drink, and shout, and shoot, but even these do it ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... sometimes the sexual and social alertness is constant in the male, only periodic in the female. Sometimes the group established for procreation endures throughout the seasons, and from year to year; sometimes the males herd together, as if normally they preferred their own society, until the time of rut comes, when war arises between them for the possession of what they have just discovered ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... care of, according to the amount of land he owns, and at intervals slabs of cast iron are erected bearing his name and the section of the road he is to keep in order. Thus every man's reputation is at stake in the neighborhood, and if there is a muddy place or a rut, everybody knows who is to blame for it, and it can not be laid to the county commissioner, as is the case in America. On the outside of each road is a line of large blocks of stone set upright, which serves as a barrier to ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... here an' readin', while I go an' c'nsult with my foreman," Dan said, and went away and presently returned with a big thick book, which was very heavy, and gave it to Whitey. "This here's my fav'rut book," Dan continued, "an' is very absorbin'. Set in my chair there, an' read y'self t' death, 'f you feel like it," and Dan ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... monster called Science[7] when he is up against the eternal truths that belong to every simple untutored man. Shun the monster as you would a priest, to whom he has a great likeness, and unite with me in a long strong pull to get "M.D." out of the rut in which the monster holds him, so that we may have him with us on the road, for he carries much treasure and ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... naturally out of a dull, uninspired life. It goes with the energetic, the forceful. The dull soul who is content to plod along year after year in the same rut may be honest, and this one redeeming feature may be of such inestimable value to him that it sweetens and softens his entire days. It will bring him friends ... true-blue friends, who will excuse all other shortcomings ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... chum, seriously. "For all we know they may have run across some sign of the rustlers, and thought it best to get out of the beaten rut here before ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... iron arch-piece, gave entrance to this place through a kind of courtyard formed by the rear of the chateau and the walls of two low wings devoted to the stables and the servants' quarters. Within, a high clump of dark- green myrtle, ringed with muddy, rut-scarred turf, marked the theoretical limits of a driveway. Along the right-hand wall stood the rifles of the wounded, and in a corner, a great snarled pile of bayonets, belts, cartridge-boxes, gas-mask satchels, greasy tin boxes of anti-lice ointment, ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... his party were ready to begin. Each side was accompanied by two boys, carrying a number of other clubs, one of which was of iron, and some were shorter, and some longer, to enable the players to strike the ball out of any hole, or rut, or other place in which it might ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... dinner-party had been an expedition into the artistic fakery of London, and he would have dismissed the whole affair as a stimulating and amusing diversion from the ultra-aristocratic rut if the personality of Elise Durwent had not remained with ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... about them. "I wanted to say I didn't get you that time when you told me you'd pretty much done with the world. I though Mum was right: cafard, you remember. But I've swung round into the same rut. It's a rotten system. I'm done ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... had lived there, and after I had given them a general description of the place, and explained how the Chinese had gone ahead there, I pointed out as well as I could with my limited vocabulary that if the people of Yuen-nan only had a conscience, and would only get out of the rut of the ages, they, too, might go ahead, explaining incidentally to them that as lights of the church at Tong-ch'uan-fu, it was their sacred duty to raise the standard of moral living among their countrymen wherever they might wander. Their ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... said and done the illustrator's strongest asset is spirit. Technique and a grain of insight will help a man over many a rut in portraiture, and a knowledge of patting clay and using a chisel has saved many a sculptor, but technical equipment alone never made an illustrator, because he deals too directly with life in action. Slack drawing and impatience of method will always ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... my explanation by talking to the players whose games are not yet formed. At least once every season I go back to first principles to pull myself out of some rut ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... it as thou wilt; I hear, But cannot stop the bursting tear.' The Minstrel tried his simple art, Rut ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... winter falls: the frozen rut Is bound with silver bars; The white drift heaps against the hut; And night is pierced ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... world, and all at once shadows fell across the road like bars. They seemed to her, in her daze of terror and exhaustion, insurmountable: the road was level now, but she pulled and pulled, agonizingly, over those bars of nothingness; then one wheel sank into a rut, and the wagon came to a dead standstill; but at the same moment she saw ahead of her, among the trees, Doctor Bennett's dark, sleeping house. So, dropping the shafts, she went stumbling and running, to pound on ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... there was light enough to shoot by, and nipped once and with precision at the ripest in every bunch. Afterward they dusted themselves in the chaparral and twitted the proprietor with soft contented noises. At the end of the October rut the deer came back plentifully to the Tonkawanda District, and Greenhow gave up the greater part of the rainy season to auditing his account with them. He spent whole days scanning the winter colored slope for the flicker and slide of light on a hairy flank that betrayed his enemy, or, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... built, for the convenience of the people. It was a poor excuse for a public thoroughfare. There had probably been a pavement of some sort at one time, but now the street was a mass of rubbish of every sort, straw, dust, old bricks, and bits of stone being thrown together in every rut, so that it was exceedingly difficult to walk ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... som'eres, Long 'z U. S. Texes are sech reg'lar comers. But, O my patience! must we wriggle back Into th' ole crooked, pettyfoggin' track, When our artil'ry-wheels a road hev cut Stret to our purpose ef we keep the rut? War 's jes' dead waste excep' to wipe the slate Clean for the cyph'rin' ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... because your father isn't a man to carry his troubles home, but I believe that he is failing rapidly, largely from overwork. He worries about conditions here which really do not exist. I have been trying to take the load off his shoulders so that he could ease up a bit, but he has got into a rut from ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... down-hearted upon anniversaries. You need not tell me what I know so well of myself. Another year has gone, another year has dawned, and you are in the same old rut of ordering and cooking meals and clearing up after they have been eaten, sweeping, dusting, making and mending clothes, washing, dressing and training children, and the thousand and one nameless tasks that fritter away strength, ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... teaching by formulas;' and that 'We are quite too apt, in the education of children, to "sail over their heads," to present subjects that are beyond their comprehension,' etc. Its way of escape 'out of the rut' is by importation into our country of the object-lesson system, as improved from the Pestalozzian original through the labors of Mr. Kay, now Sir J.K. Shuttleworth, and his co-laborers, of the Home and Colonial Infant and Juvenile School Society, London. In the report ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the expression of the distant past—of former lives—the second is a mixture of the past and of the energies of the present incarnation; the end of life is nothing but a sinking into an ever-deepening rut for those who crystallise in only one direction; the force of habit sets up its reign, and man finds himself bound by the chains he himself has forged. This is the reason an old man does not like the present times; he has stopped whilst time has advanced, and ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... disdain, particularly as the chemist was a man of questionable reputation. Moreover, he thought it a duty to insist on his own superiority in the presence of those old school-fellows of his, whom he found toiling away in the common rut, like other people. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... poisoning powers on a dog—got elaborately ready for the experiment, and then discovered that he had no dog. A wiser person would have kept such a thing discreetly to himself, but with this harmless creature everything comes out. He hurts his foot in a rut two thousand years old in exhumed Pompeii, and presently, when staring at one of the cinder-like corpses unearthed in the next square, conceives the idea that maybe it is the remains of the ancient Street Commissioner, and straightway his horror softens down to a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... goose! A fault done first in the form of a beast; O Jove, a beastly fault! and then another fault in the semblance of a fowl: think on't, Jove, a foul fault! When gods have hot backs what shall poor men do? For me, I am here a Windsor stag; and the fattest, I think, i' the forest. Send me a cool rut-time, Jove, or who can blame me to piss my tallow? Who comes here? ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... permit our marriage to drag us down into the kind of rut we see all about us. Take Flora and Vincent. Married five months and she never so much as wears corsets when she takes him to the street car, mornings. And he used to be such a clever dresser, and look at him now. All baggy. Let's not get ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... sorrow kept Marie much to the rut in which she had moved since Osborn's departure; but the grief for a parent is so natural and inevitable a grief; it is not as the grief for a husband or a child; and when the first warm days of April came Marie took some ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... never come, if we sink deep into our souls the conviction that a great effort is required, and fling our hearts into it; that the ever increasing new needs and foes of to-day cannot be met with the antiquated weapons of the past; that the old rut must be abandoned and the new ground broken: then the future is secure. The old citadel of Catholic Christendom will continue a fortress, flying the old flag, towering above the Atlantic breakers with a strength impregnable and a Faith undimmed—a ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... the life is rich and varied. Then, after a while, the reporter finds his interest growing jaded. The same kind of assignment card keeps cropping up for him, day after day. He perceives that he is in a rut. He tells himself: "I've written that same story half a dozen ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... the cross-road; the way became frightfully bad; the cart lurched from one rut to the other; ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... never been refused demands the most unreasonable, and who had been inured to see all the powers of nature bend to his will. "Is this," cried he, "a return for services so unwearied and sincere as mine? Foolish and ungrateful youth! Rut I will point you to a remedy. Had you not been blinded with fury and impatience, you would have seen that your situation was not yet irremediable, by means the most obviously in your power. Did I not at ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... it'll take to get that old rut smooth and green like the rest of the yard," he thought. Stephen White absolutely hated ugliness. It did not merely irritate and depress him, as it does everybody of fine fastidiousness: he hated not only the sight of it, he hated it with a sort of ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... encouraging in all this, but it was better than New York. At least it gave her something to look at, and to think about. Even Lord Dunbeg preached practical philanthropy to her by the hour. Ratcliffe, too, was compelled to drag himself out of the rut of machine politics, and to justify his right of admission to her house. There Mr. French discoursed at great length, until the fourth of March sent him home to Connecticut; and he brought more than one intelligent member of Congress ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... brother had been left in camp as guards. They were sitting idly warming themselves in the first sunbeams, when their attention was sharply drawn to four buffaloes that were coming to the pool to drink. The beasts came down a game trail, a deep rut in the bluff, fronting where they were sitting, and they did not dare to stir for fear of being discovered. The buffaloes walked into the pool, and after drinking their fill, stood for some time with the water running out of their mouths, ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... hoped to pass through by the way of religion, and instead they have formed a place of thought and feeling so marked and fixed that it seems as though long ages would be insufficient to enable them to get out of the rut! Some have believed that by the aid of pure intellect a way was to be found; and to such men we owe the philosophy and metaphysics which have prevented the race from sinking into utter sensuousness. But the end of the man who endeavors to live by thought ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... was thoughtful, brooding through the hours of darkness with his head slightly bent and his eyes, so far as Casey could determine, fixed steadily on the uneven trail where the headlights revealed every rut, every stone, every chuck-hole. But Casey was not deceived by that quiescence. The revolver barrel never once ceased its pressure against his side, and he knew that young Kenner never for an instant forgot that he was riding with Casey Ryan at the wheel, waiting for ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... the son of Thorarin of Acres, was healed; a stout man he was, and had to wife Steinun, daughter of Rut of Combeness; Thorleif of Lavadale, the father of Steinulf, was a very mighty man, and from him are come the men ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... "I suppose you will all be satisfied now that you are back in your old rut wretchedly doing ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... Journalist Reporter find livelihood: even these jolt madly out of the ruts, from time to time. How much more a poor National Convention, of French vehemence; urged on at such velocity; without routine, without rut, track or landmark; and dreadfully in earnest every man of them! It is a Parliament literally such as there was never elsewhere in the world. Themselves are new, unarranged; they are the Heart and presiding centre of a France fallen wholly into maddest disarrangement. From ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... when they reached the top, and the team plunged furiously down the slope. He straightened himself in his seat with both hands on the reins, and Agatha held her breath when she felt the light vehicle tilt as the wheels on one side sank deep in a rut. Then something seemed to crack, and she saw the off-side horse stumble and plunge. The other beast flung its head up, Hawtrey shouted something, and there was a great smashing and snapping of undergrowth and fallen branches ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... His prose is at the best, as in the "Life of Stirling," when it is most transparent and freest from mannerisms. Carlyle's manner at its best is very pleasing; at its worst it becomes a wearisome mannerism. When a writer's style gets into a rut his reader is not happy. Ease, flexibility, transparency, though it be colored transparency, are among the ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... spirit of modern philosophy—with the views of intelligent, moral, humane human beings of this period? Or are you one of your robust English brotherhood worthy of a Caligula in his prime, lions in gymnastics—for a time; sheep always in the dominions of mind; and all of one pattern, all in a rut! Favour me with an outline of your ideas. Pour them out pell-mell, intelligibly or not, no matter. I undertake to catch you somewhere. I mean to know you, hark you, rather with your ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... exaggeration to say that this is one of the most interesting and profitable books that has been placed upon the American book market for many years. It follows no old rut; it has found a new path, and the reader is permitted to walk in regions which he never saw and of which he never read before. It is indeed a triumph of literary genius to give a picture of intelligent life in other worlds upon ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... the month of gloom, despair, and many suicides. In the wild world, November is the Mad Moon. Many and diverse the madnesses of the time, but none more insane than the rut of the white-tailed deer. Like some disease it appears, first in the swollen necks of the antler-bearers, and then in the feverish habits of all. Long and obstinate combats between the bucks now, characterize the time; neglecting ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... show the exit pallet as disengaged. To vary from this beaten track we will draw our exit pallet as locked. There are other reasons which prompt us to do this, one of which is, pupils are apt to fall into a rut and only learn to do things a certain way, and that way just as ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... harsh and heavy echoes of the tonga's flight through riven gulch and scrub-grown valley. And then it was that Ram Nath proved his mettle. Hardened himself, he showed no mercy to his passenger, and never once drew rein, though the tonga danced from rock to ridge and ridge to rut and back again, like a tin can on the tail of an astonished dog. As for Amber, he wedged his feet and held on with both hands, grimly, groaning in spirit when he did not in the flesh, foreseeing as he did nine hours more of this heroic torture ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... appetite, sexual appetite, carnal appetite, lasciviousness, venery, concupiscence, salacity, salaciousness, aphrodisia; satyriasis (immoderate); nymphomania (morbid in women); (of animals) oestrus, rut, heat, oestruation. Antonym: anaphrodisia. Associated Words: aphrodisiac, antaphrodisiac, anaphrodisiac, aphrodisiacal, amative, amativeness, amorous, amorousness, amatory, antiorgastic, philter, oestrual, sedative, erotic, erotomania, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... now became most serious; we could not see the branches of hooked thorns that over-hung the broken path. I rode in advance, my face and arms bleeding with countless scratches, while at each rip of a thorn I gave a warning shout—"Thorn!" for those behind, and a cry of "Hole!" for any deep rut that lay in the path. It was fortunately moonlight; but the jungle was so thick that the narrow track was barely perceptible; thus both camels and donkeys ran against the trunks of trees, smashing the luggage and breaking ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... fittest was at variance with free choice of the best men, and that it was calculated, if carried out, to strike at the root of the chief source of our prosperity. If every workman of the same class went in the same rut, and were paid the same uniform rate of wages, irrespective of his natural or acquired ability, such a system would destroy the emulative spirit which forms the chief basis of manipulative efficiency and practical skill, and on which, in my opinion, the prosperity of our ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... the broad prairies and were climbing the tremendous heights that lie like a barrier between the center of the continent and the Pacific Slope. "How much more of it do we have before us, Frank? I'm getting so filled with wonder and awe that my tongue is getting into a rut with ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... left on the meadow by the mowers, then he counted his steps, calculating how often he must walk from one strip to another to walk a mile, then he stripped the flowers from the wormwood that grew along a boundary rut, rubbed them in his palms, and smelled their pungent, sweetly bitter scent. Nothing remained of the previous day's thoughts. He thought of nothing. He listened with weary ears to the ever-recurring sounds, distinguishing the whistle of flying projectiles from ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... they were given shelter at a farmer's house, and were on their journey again by the rising of the sun, but shortly afterward the cart ran into a rut and one of the wheels was broken. Margaret petulantly wondered if the Lord were trying to keep her from reaching Nashville, and ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... it sticks in the mud, but Try soon drags the wagon out of the rut. The fox said Try, and he got away from the hounds when they almost snapped at him. The bees said Try, and turned flowers into honey. The squirrel said Try, and up he went to the top of the beech-tree. The snow-drop said Try, and bloomed in the cold snows of Winter. The sun said Try, and ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... not very pretty," he smiled grimly, as he wiped the perspiration from his grimy face. "However, you got the car out of the rut, so perhaps we can proceed on ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... of naked moorland, now plunged again into forest, with no sign of habitation but here and there a cowherd's hut under the trees or a chapel standing apart on some grassy eminence. When night fell the waters grew louder, a stinging wind swept the woods, and the carriage, staggering from rut to rut, seemed every moment about to land them in some invisible ravine. Fear and cold at last benumbed the little boy, and when he woke he was being lifted from his seat and torches were flashing on a high escutcheoned doorway set in battlemented walls. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... fauna of the older half of the Tertiary epoch, for which we have no parallel in Europe. The researches of Leidy and others have shewn that forms allied to the Hipparion and the Anchitherium are to be found among these remains. Rut it is only recently that the admirably conceived and most thoroughly and patiently worked-out investigations of Professor Marsh have given us a just idea of the vast fossil wealth and of the scientific importance ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... Trafton's fine roadster, "Billy," was pretty well trained, the combined effect was a little too much for his nerves. He gave a sidelong leap and started to run. His master checked him sharply, and veering from the road, he ran the wheels into a deep rut, and over went ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... be truly spoken of as a swamp, a rut, a steep hill; in a word, an obstacle, whose effect is to augment the difference between the price of consumption and that of production. It is equally incontestable that a swamp, a bog, &c., are veritable ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... now," he said, in the course of his address; "I've got you in the right rut if you will but stick in it." Here he looked very hard out of the window for some seconds. "You've learned soberness and industry, and with those things you can always make up any loss you may sustain. I guess there isn't one ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... how he did it he could never in subsequent days remember. He must have hoisted Jean upon his shoulders and crawled through the brush and brambles, falling a dozen times only to pick himself up and go on again, stumbling at every rut, at every pebble. His indomitable will sustained him, his dogged resolution would have enabled him to bear a mountain on his back. Behind the low wall he found Rochas and the few men that were left of the squad, firing away as stoutly ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... "still, I am glad you have it. It's very much in the picture, and lifts the sentiment of the place out of the awful suburban rut. It's a little symbolic of you yourself, too, Dominic—there's style, and poetry, and breeding about it. Only, thank the powers, you differ from it mightily in this, that its best days are over, while you are but in the flower of your age. And your rooms are delightful—they're ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... efficient, but professionally non-committal. The boy was badly injured, and he must be moved at once to the nearest house. Somehow they lifted Joseph and held him so as to break the jar of stone and rut as the doctor drove his car as carefully as he could down the road leading to the ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... to leave that trail, for it seemed to her that a path along which people had ridden enough to make a deep rut in the sward must be a path that was more or less used all the time. She expected to meet somebody by sticking to this path, or else ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... replied he. Then, with seeming irrelevance, he added: "People are so illogical! They so insist that a man shall think in the beaten rut. They are angry because I don't like the taste of life. Good Heavens! Why haven't I the same right to dislike life that I have to hate sweet champagne? If other people want to live and to drink Perrier Jouet, I am perfectly willing that they should, but, for my own part, I don't ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... acted as if it had the hiccoughs and made us all talk as though we were affected in the same way. Once Mr. Stewart asked me if I did not think it a "gey duir trip." I told him he could call it gay if he wanted to, but it didn't seem very hilarious to me. Every time the stage struck a rock or a rut Mr. Stewart would "hoot," until I began to wish we would come to a hollow tree or a hole in the ground so he could go in with the ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... might be as fully and justly stirred—for there are great men to be found in less conspicuous, though not less useful spheres of life. A son who knew its history enjoyed with me this goodly scene. His father was the first bold pioneer. The rut made by the wheel of his rude cart, drawn by two oxen, was the first impress made by civilization in the whole of this rich and far-famed valley. A brother shared with him his early toils and privations; ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... cynically. Would she have refused Rodney's offer of help, she wondered, if she had known an hour ago, that the two hundred dollars she'd relied on so confidently to pull her out of this rut and give her a fresh start whenever she was ready to attempt it, were gone into the pockets of ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... thermometer," commanded the old man. "You should not lie, Francois. It is a bad fault in servants. Leave it to your masters; it is a polite vice. The privilege of the world's potentates, diplomats and great people. Never fall into the rut of lying, Francois, or you will soon outlive your usefulness ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... to just take things as we meet 'em, as Frank does. You notice that he seldom finds fault with the way things happen; just puts his shoulder to the wheel and lifts it out of the rut," remarked Bluff. ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... somehow we can't fetch it. According to the Professor, we have got into the habit of thinking in terms of rock, soil, and water, and we can't get over it. There are some few of us who stand for better things; but the majority keep thinking in the old rut, and we can't sway them. The Professor says that all we need is to get together and agree and then concentrate. But agreement doesn't seem to be necessary. You know that there was a time when everybody, after much concentration, agreed that the world was flat—everybody but one man. Now the ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... right. And he knows they are right because he has faith. This is an unbreakable circle of false logic that can't be touched. In reality, it is plain mental inertia. A case of thinking 'what always was' will also 'always be.' And not wanting to blast the thinking patterns out of the old rut. ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... her right hand she detaches the yarn from the distaff that lies inert in the little iron rut before her. With her left hand she seizes the revolving circle of the large spool's top in front of her, holding this spool steady, overcoming the machinery for the moment not as strong as her grasp. This demands ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... didn't know ourselves, not till long afterward. You see, we thought we had got away from the Potawatami because our ponies were fresh and theirs had been running buffaloes. Rut the truth was they had followed us until they heard the noise of the shooting where Our Folks attacked the Kitkahhahki. It was the first they knew of the attack and they went to the help of their friends. Until they came Our Folks ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... not to say decidedly dull. TIM HEALY did something to lift it out of rut. But he was more concerned to belabour JOHN REDMOND and to dig DEVLIN in the ribs than to argue merits of measure. Taunted his much-loved fellow-patriot and countryman with facing both ways on question of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... much attention to him, one or two merely glancing at his trousers. The road was deep with slush and mud-ploughed and torn by wheels and hoofs. A soldier in front of him wrenched his foot in an icy rut and dragged himself to the edge of the embankment groaning. The plain on either side of them was grey with melting snow. Here and there behind dismantled hedge-rows stood wagons, bearing white flags with red crosses. Sometimes the driver was a priest in ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... now appeared in sight, and the nearer they approached it, the more the paths were thronged with people. Anabella was often separated from her mamma; but this did not at present much disturb her, as by skipping over a rut, or slipping between the people as they passed, she soon got up again to her mother. However, the nearer they approached the market, the crowd of course increased, which kept her eyes in full employment, to spy which way her mother went; but a little ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... a girl as you are!" exclaimed Winn, impatiently. "You are always making objections to my plans, and telling me that I'm only a boy. You'd rather any time travel in a rut that some one else had made than mark out a track for yourself. For my part, I'd much rather think out my own ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... the shell-holes came closer and closer together. Dead horses, shattered guns, wagons, and limbers lay overturned in the ditches. At one spot on the roadside the legs and buttocks of a man, all brown and shrivelled, slanted upwards from a deep, wide rut, many heavy wheels having passed across the ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... rest of the party. Her life had been so free from tiresome obligations that she had but a small stock of patience to meet them with; and already, after a night at Hanaford, she was pining to get back to the comforts of her own country-house, the soft rut of her daily habits, the funny chatter of her little girl, the long stride of her Irish hunter across the Hempstead plains—to everything, in short, that made it conceivably worth while to get up in ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... grocer. "Arbuckle has made an immense business in coffee, and made it by his brains. It's encouraging to see a concern get out of the rut and show folks that the end of everything hasn't been ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... an epoch in American church history was the treatise of "Christian Nurture" (1847). This, with the protracted controversy that followed upon the publication of it, was a powerful influence in lifting the American church out of the rut of mere individualism that had been wearing deeper and deeper from the days of the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Thomson. These first attempts smacked so decidedly of the older manner that we cannot censure the critic for failing to foresee that Wordsworth was destined to glorify the "poetry of nature," and to rescue it from the rut of listless and soporific topographical description. Both poems, in the definitive text, are readable, and exhibit here and there a glimmer of the poet's future greatness; yet it must be borne in mind that Wordsworth was continually tinkering at his verse, to the ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... to the great divine truth contained in the inspired Book. The Bible text is God's part of our sermon; and the more thoroughly we get the text into our own souls, the more will we get it into the sermon, and into the consciences of our hearers. To keep out of a rut I studied the infinite variety of Sacred Scripture; its narratives and matchless biographies, its jubilant Psalms, its profound doctrines, its tender pathos, its rolling thunder of Sinai, and its sweet melodies of Calvary's redeeming love. I laid hold of the great themes, and I found a half hour ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... journey to the other side of the forest, the verderers eating what Humphrey had brought for them as they walked along. It was a tedious and painful journey for the wounded man, who shrieked out when the cart was jolted by the wheel getting into a rut or hole; but there was no help for it, and he was very much exhausted when they arrived, which was not till past midnight. Corbould was then taken to his cottage and put on the bed, and another verderer ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... is better not to stick entirely to one teacher, for it is easy to get into a rut in this way, and someone else may have a quite different and more enlightening way ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... to the wheel. The men from the other guns joined us, and, at last, when we were nearly wild with excitement, we gave one tremendous jerk, all together, and lifted the whole thing bodily out of that rut, and over the bank. The horses, as excited now, as we were, snatched the gun over the bank, across the stream, nearly upsetting it, and then went tearing, at a full gallop, up the hill; we running at ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... and he pointed toward the left, indicating a piece of hedge. The leveret threaded its way along, almost concealed by the field, only its large ears visible. Then it swerved across a deep rut, stopped, again pursued its easy course, changed its direction, stopped anew, disturbed, spying out every danger, and undecided as to the route it should take. Suddenly it began to run, with great bounds from its hind legs, disappearing finally in a large patch of beet-root. All the men had ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... Northland; Lapland. Pok-ka'nen. The Frost, the son of Puhuri; a synonym of Tiera. Puh-hu'ri. The North-wind; the father of Pokkanen. Rem'men. The father of the hop-vine. Re'mu. The same as Remmen. Ru-o'tus. A persecutor of the Virgin Mariatta. Rut'ya (Rut'ja). A waterfall of Northland. Sah'ri (Saari). The home of Kyllikki. Sam'po. The jewel that Ilmarinen forges from the magic metals; a talisman of success to the possessor; a continual source of strife between the tribes of the North. Samp'sa. A synonym of Pellerwoinen. Sa'ra. The same ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... inviting to their own home those who seemed in a position to help them. During these second visits, the conversation was turned to what might be done by "people like ourselves" to prevent getting into a rut. Dozens of helpful activities were recommended, and they made it a business to explore the most valuable, so that they could tell others about forthcoming meetings of discussion groups, plays, lectures, and the like. Within ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... science is full of tranquil pleasure, down to the end of life. If the rich old man has no enjoyment apart from money-making, his old age becomes miserable. He goes on grinding and grinding in the same rut, perhaps growing richer and richer. What matters it? He cannot eat his gold. He cannot spend it. His money, instead of being beneficial to him, becomes a curse. He is the slave of avarice, the meanest of sins. He is spoken of as a despicable creature. He becomes ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... time to flog a dead horse.' There is not a little well-meant work flung away, because it is expended on obviously hopeless efforts to revivify, perhaps, some moribund thing or to continue, perhaps, in some old, well-worn rut, instead of striking out into a new path. Paul was full of enthusiasm for the evangelisation of Asia Minor, and he might have said a great deal about the importance of going to Ephesus. He tried to do it, but Christ said 'No.' and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... hands of Duryodhana, and proud of the strength of his arms, and conscious also of Krishna looking at him, Vrikodara began to swell in vigour. And fried with anger, Bhima seized the Rakshasa with his arms, as one elephant in rut seizeth another. And the powerful Rakshasa also in his turn seized his adversary, but Bhimasena that foremost of all men endued with strength, threw the cannibal down with violence. The sounds that in consequence of those mighty combatants pressing each other's hands, were frightful ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... he extended his arm towards the left, pointing to a piece of hedge. The animal threaded its way along, almost concealed by the field, raising only its large ears. Then it swerved across a deep rut, stopped, pursued again its easy course, changed its direction, stopped anew, disturbed, spying out every danger, undecided as to the route it should take; when suddenly it began to run with great bounds of the hind legs, disappearing finally, in a large patch of beet-root. All the men had woke up ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... are coming in rut. Ha! I am exceedingly afraid of you. But yet you are only tracking your wife. Her footprints can be seen there directed upward toward the heavens. I have pointed them out for you. Let your paths stretch out along the tree tops (?) on the lofty mountains (and) ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... little out of the rut, that you have taken a hand, even if it is a dummy's hand, in the game of life! Do ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... like the one on the other side of the hill, but it had fallen in, the rocks wedging to form a low passage into the tunnel inside. The whole hillside was overgrown with brambles, down to the two-rut road below them, almost at the place where ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... of all the world as well? For all the world sees it as well as England. These meteors came and went before our day, Not harming any: it threatens us no more Than French or Norman. War? the worst that follows Things that seem jerk'd out of the common rut Of Nature is the hot religious fool, Who, seeing war in heaven, for heaven's credit Makes it on earth: but look, where Edward draws A faint foot hither, leaning upon Tostig. He hath learnt to love our Tostig ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... with your children," he said. "It means keeping up with everything new. And you stay in your rut and then it's too late. Before you know it you ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... in no way recede from the position above adopted in regard to Richardson, we may quite consistently accord an even higher place to Fielding. He relieved the novel of the tyranny and constraint of the Letter; he took it out of the rut of confinement to a single or a very limited class of subjects—for the themes of Pamela and Clarissa to a very large extent, of Pamela and Grandison to a considerable one, and of all three to an extent not small, are practically the same. He gave it ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... light trap through the black slush of the highroad. One day, I remember, was particularly unlucky: three times we got 'stuck' in the mud up to the axles of the wheels; my driver was continually giving up one rut and with moans and grunts trudging across to the other, and finding things no better with that. In fact, towards evening I was so exhausted that on reaching the posting-station I decided to spend the night at the inn. I was given a room with a broken-down wooden ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... mid-Lent fantasy; try to take part. Laughter is a splendid medicine. We shall give you a costume; they tell me that you were very good as a pastry cook at Pauline's! If you are better, be certain it is because you have gotten out of your rut and have distracted yourself a little. Paris is good for you, you are too much alone yonder in your lovely house. Come and work, at our house; how perfectly easy to send on ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... into a new adventure—a high and splendid adventure, and while many of them may snap back after the war to the old egoistic individualistic way of looking at life, their examples will persist, and their lives, when they go back to the old rut, will never be the same lives that ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... brickfields. The fog was lighter here, and he could see the strange bottle-shaped kilns with their orange fan-like tongues of fire. A dog barked as they went by, and far away in the darkness some wandering sea-gull screamed. The horse stumbled in a rut, then swerved aside, and broke into ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... haven't seen anything or been anywhere. Trouble with you is you've been in the rut too long. Thinking there's nothing left in the universe but the commonplace. Right, too, if you stick to the regular routes of travel. But the Nomad's different. I'm just a rover when I'm at her ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... dropped into his rut. For an hour or more Miss Strong's fingers flew as she noted down his dictation, and at the end of that time the letters were answered, and the communications which had so perplexed Amidon were filed away among other things done. The ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... until I had exhausted every incident of the place that I sought out the companions of my school-days. What strange irony of fate is that which sends some of us out into the restless world to grow away from our old ideals and make others, and restrains some in the monotonous rut of village life, to drone peacefully their little span! But happy he, who, knowing nothing, misses nothing. If there were any village Hampdens, or mute, inglorious Miltons among my playmates, they gave no ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... went up like a crab, sideways. Presently we reached a ledge, narrow enough at first, but which widened as we followed it, and moreover sloped inwards like the petal of a flower, so that as we followed it we gradually got into a kind of rut or fold of rock, that grew deeper and deeper, till at last it resembled a Devonshire lane in stone, and hid us perfectly from the gaze of anybody on the slope below, if there had been anybody to gaze. This lane (which appeared to be a natural formation) continued for some fifty or ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... this glorious chance. A new world seemed to open up to the farm hand, as he heard of the wonderful things the Bird boys had seen, and taken part in. Perhaps ambition was beginning to awaken in the boy's soul, and he might not after this be so satisfied to plod along in the same old rut every day of the year. Perhaps the seed thus sown might take root, and bring him either great good or harm, as the tide of ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... do something to keep my thoughts fresh and growing. I dread nothing so much as falling into a rut and feeling myself becoming ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... have the highest respect; nevertheless, there are times when respect for Christ's church, duty to country, love for the children and anxiety for their eternal welfare, compels you to step out of the beaten rut to expose, though with pain, wrong-doing. In a day and Sunday school-yard connected with the Church of England, not one hundred miles from London, there are to be seen—and I am informed by them, except during the hop-picking ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... anyway; they don't rust! They're bound to get the most that's possible out of life, and they get it! It shakes a fellow up to get out of the rut here and have a taste ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... birthday Martin Sutter decided life was too short to continue in the rut that had been his existence for more than twenty years. He withdrew his savings from the Explosion City Third Federal Bank, stopped in a display room and informed a somewhat surprised clerk he was taking the electric runabout with the blue ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... quite dark, and the road appeared to be growing rougher. Every now and then they jolted over a big stone, or sunk into a deep rut. Ralph let down ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... of her eyes. Her calm, steadfast face showed that she was not given to depression, but nevertheless this evening, as she stood watching for her husband's return, for the first distant speck of him where the cart-rut vanished into the plain, a sense of impending misfortune enfolded her with the dusk. Was it because the first snow had fallen? Ah me! how much it meant. It was as significant for her as the grey pallor that falls on a sick man's face. It meant the endless winter, ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... all of you settling down into a rut before it happened, and the old place needed a thorough going over anyhow. You know you couldn't have afforded it, Jerry, if it hadn't been for the fire insurance money coming in so handy like. Now, you'll all move back the first ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... us to Saint-Paul-du-Var along the road that began to avoid the valley after passing Villeneuve-Loubet. It was one of those routes nationales of which the France of motorists is so proud, hard and smooth and rounded to drain quickly, never allowing itself a rut or a steep grade or a sharp turn. This national highway was like all the easy paths in life. It meant the shortest distance comfortably possible for obtaining your objective. It eliminated surprises. ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... thing," he said. "You will not fall into the rut? Let me keep the ideal you have given me. For the sake of heaven, do not cloud for me the one bright image I hold! Let me know always that you are growing, and that the pure, noble intelligence which distinguishes you advances, and will not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that the one next to me, towards whose face the smoke sometimes drifted, seemed to like it very much, and, I would almost have said that she was trying to sniff some of it herself. A little later on, when we came to an unusually big rut in the road, we all went up as usual against the roof, and all came down again, missing the narrow seat. Extracting ourselves from our awkward positions, I came across a foot which certainly seemed to me not to belong to a lady, but, as it happened, it was a foot belonging to one of the ladies. ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... be ardent affection, but it drooped into bored routine. Yet she existed only for him and for the children, and she was as sorry, as worried as himself, when he gave up the law and trudged on in a rut of listing real estate. ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... forme of a beast, (O Ioue, a beastly fault:) and then another fault, in the semblance of a Fowle, thinke on't (Ioue) a fowle-fault. When Gods haue hot backes, what shall poore men do? For me, I am heere a Windsor Stagge, and the fattest (I thinke) i'th Forrest. Send me a coole rut-time (Ioue) or who can blame me to pisse my Tallow? Who comes heere? my Doe? M.Ford. Sir Iohn? Art thou there (my Deere?) My male-Deere? Fal. My Doe, with the blacke Scut? Let the skie raine Potatoes: let it thunder, to the tune of Greenesleeues, haile-kissing Comfits, and snow Eringoes: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... couldn't bear to think of his father's being attacked like that, hit with a lightning bolt out of a clear sky. The more he thought about it the more he resented it. Of course Dad would agree. He was a good sport as Mr. Cressy said. Rut that didn't make the thing any easier or ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... feel in need of a change. I had been running in a rut, and wanted to get out of it, so I left my lodgings in New York and bought a ticket to St. Louis; arrived there, I determined to come farther. So here I have been, living in communion with nature, seeing scarcely anybody, enjoying ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... shuffle with my feet for a secure footing, I waggle my club in an airy manner. Then I take it up and whack it down. A variety of things may occur. I may smite the top of the hall, when it runs on for twenty yards and lies in a rut on the road. I may hit her on the heel of the club, when she spins, with much "cut" on, into the sea. I may hit her with the toe of the club, when she soars to square leg, and perhaps breaks a window. I used to try running in at the ball, as if ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... rudeness he felt he was guilty of in his last letter, and the fact that he knew that Father O'Grady had come to talk to him about Nora increased his nervousness. But their talk continued in commonplace and it seemed impossible to lift it out of the rut. Father O'Grady complimented Father Oliver on his house and Oliver answered that it was Peter Conway that built it, and while praising its comfort, he enlarged on the improvements that had been made in the houses ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... bore him thirteen children, six of them sons, none of whom were remarkable musically, though their mother was more musical than the mother of Bach's first children. Perhaps the newcomers thought it time to take the name out of the rut. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... father to pay for mending it. We're all awfully sorry, sir. Dr Winter sends his regards, and we shall hear the result of the exam. on Thursday. One of the wheels came off, but I fancy it will go on again. It was a rut did it. We were coming along at a very good pace, and should have been here an hour ago if it hadn't been for the accident. We're ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... just as they were passing the priest, made the wheel of the wagon, which was going at full speed, sink into a rut, splashing the abbe with mud from head ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... incomparably greater advantages of soil and climate than Ulster, with better harbours and a better trading position. But instead of working they stand with folded hands complaining. Instead of putting their own shoulders to the wheel they wait for somebody to lift them out of the rut. Instead of modern methods of agriculture, fishing, or what not, they cling to the ancient ways, and resent advice. The women will not take service; the men will not dig, chop, hammer. They are essentially bone-idle—laziness is in their blood. They will not exert themselves. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... hold of the things of the house with her hands, till they fell all about us as he dragged her to the door. Then he took her in his great arms, and when she tore at his yellow hair laughed with a sound like that of the big bull seal in the rut. ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... first to die, a week after the liquidation of the business, was Anna Markovna herself. However, this frequently happens with people put out of their accustomed rut of thirty years: so die war heroes, who have gone into retirement—people of insuperable health and iron will; so quickly go off the stage former stock brokers, who have happily gone away to rest, but have been deprived of the burning allurement of risk and ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... he "had killed three wives, two for himself and one for Mr. Lawson." She affirmed that she saw him then. Mr. Burroughs, it will be borne in mind, was at this time a hundred miles away, at his home in Maine. Hutchinson asked her where she saw him. She said "There," pointing to a rut in the road made by a cart-wheel. He had an iron fork in his hand, and threw it where she said Burroughs was standing. Instantly she fell into a fit; and, when she came out of it, said, "'You have torn his coat, for I heard it tear.'—'Whereabouts?' said I. 'On one side,' said she. Then we ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... well for no birds, anyhow, Tom," he exclaimed, dropping his butt to load. "Go and gather that bird, Frank, to save time; he lies in the wagon rut, there. How now? down charge, you Chase, sir! ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... Nancy darnin' by her ker'sene lamp,— I love, I say, to start upon a tramp, To shake the kinkles out o' back an' legs, An' kind o' rack my life off from the dregs Thet's apt to settle in the buttery-hutch Of folks thet foller in one rut too much: Hard work is good an' wholesome, past all doubt; But 't ain't so, ef the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... of the Downs at a lurching gallop; down the ragged rut-worn lane, the dusty convolvuluses glimmering up at him in the dusk; past the squat-spired Church in the high Churchyard among the sycamores; down the rough and twisted Highstreet of Newhaven in the chill of that August evening, as no ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... do any of these things, but you could never enlighten her on the subject. The rudest savage can, in a measure, be enlightened, he can be taught the reason why of things, but an animal cannot. We can make its impulses follow a rut, so to speak, but we cannot make them free and self-directing. Animals are the victims of habits inherited ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... heads together. Condemnation and reproach are not in my line; but there is so much in the world that merits condemnation and reproach, and receives indifference and even reward, there is so munch acquiescence in wrong doing and wrong thinking, so much letting things jolt along in the same rut wherein we and they were born, without inquiring whether, lifted into another groove, they might not run more easily, that, if one who does see the difficulty holds his peace, the very stones will cry out. However gladly one would lie on a bed of roses and glide silken-sailed ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... as my job," continued Robb. "There's no difference between one post and another—except in the amount of work done, of energy wasted. It's all a matter of getting into a rut and plugging along there, like a plowman. A fellow needs certain qualifications like accuracy, speed, and a rhinoceros' constitution; but what is there to it, from the standpoint of prospects? Nothing—except ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... signs of love sickness as I had occasionally observed in other people, I only succeeded for two days (and that at intervals, and mostly towards evening) in reminding myself of the fact that I was in love, and finally, when I had settled down into the new rut of country life and pursuits, I forgot about my affection ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... one who wins it. It does not satisfy for long, but it is valuable in other ways. For instance, success, based on service, is a benefit to the community. If, it were not for successful people of this type the ordinary man in the rut would have a bad time. Also, the winning of success builds up character. One who would be successful in the battle of life, must be prepared to be tested and tried in every possible way. One who survives them all is built up in character in almost ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... reflecting credit on himself and his position, but, comparing the mind of a philanthropist to the Murrumbidgee in breadth, his, in comparison, might be likened to the flow of a bucket of water in a dray-rut. ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... bounded forward. The buggy leapt high at a rut. For a frantic minute perhaps everything seemed to be going in ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... September, when school-time was drawing near and the nights were already black, we would begin to sally from our respective villas, each equipped with a tin bull's-eye lantern. The thing was so well known that it had worn a rut in the commerce of Great Britain; and the grocers, about the due time, began to garnish their windows with our particular brand of luminary. We wore them buckled to the waist upon a cricket belt, and over them, such was the rigor of the game, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... close-growing and dark, where a man might ride to his death at every stride of his horse. And down the road they raced, till they saw by the loom of the open bush where the boundary fences ceased. The leader turned his horse in his stride, and the four behind turned theirs. A fallen log; a rut; a snag; and one rider's race would be done; for the pace they were going left no escape if once a horse came down. Through the low-grown brush they crashed. A rider ducked to miss a branch that was level with his head; a horse swerved sharp to the right to ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... through the shrubbery and reached the road at the point whither the loud voices of the two men led him. He came upon the wagon with one hind wheel stuck in a muddy rut and the other one smashed at the hub. From the shelter of a handy bush Frank surveyed the situation and listened to what ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... pilgrimage to seek to make the journey short and rapid, merely consuming the mind for nothing, as is our modern habit; for they seem to think nowadays that to remain as near as possible to what one was at starting, and to one's usual rut, is the great good of travel (as though a man should run through the Iliad only to note the barbarous absurdity of the Greek characters, or through Catullus for the sake of discovering such words as were like enough to English). That is not the spirit ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc |
