"Mire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... do as she is bid," he cut in wrathfully. "If she will drag my good name in the mire, I'm damned if she sha'n't pay the scot. And now about the settlements, Captain Ireton; you'll be ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... alternative is horrible. I can't escape one conviction, however. It is turning out just as I expected and told her it would. Arnault's aid to her father has been delusive, and Wildmere is deeper in the mire than ever. This is a fine ending of my social career! The girl of my choice puts me off until she can end this Wall Street business more satisfactorily. She must wait and hear her father's reasons for further diplomacy before she can answer me. If Henry knew ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... Major Smith Wyndham was falling back with his two guns, which had been advanced after the first charge, he found one of the other guns stuck in a water-course. The greatest efforts of the remaining horses were insufficient to draw it from the mire in which it was bogged. Lieutenant Hardy was killed by a shot through the head, and the gun was abandoned. The other three guns were taken back 400 or 500 yards farther. They were then stopped by a channel, deeper ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... He rejoiced when he heard your oaths, the foul words, and all the corruption of your hearts. Did you not see his crooked claws when he set the bowl before you, that you might wallow in the debasing drink? Did you not hear him laugh, when you sat befouling yourselves in the mire of your sin, ripening for the pains ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... all, upon the wagon beame Rode Sathan, with a smarting whip in hand, With which he forward lasht the laesie teme, So oft as Slowth still in the mire did stand. Hugh routs of people did about them band, 320 Showting for joy, and still before their way A foggy mist had covered all the land; And underneath their feet, all scattered lay Dead sculs and bones of men, whose life had ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... crept along the back to his neck, and biting and striking at the vertebrae, quickly extinguished the strong life in the great frame and the huge head gradually sank in the mire. For several days Black Bruin came and gorged himself upon the carcass and did not desist until it had entirely disappeared in ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... despair that had precipitated him into the mire of politics. She conceived the impression that it must be so, and throughout the day she had an inexplicable unsweet pleasure in inciting him to argumentation and combating him, though she was compelled to admit that he had been colloquially charming antecedent ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance" (Psalm xlii. 5). And Jeremiah, remembering the wormwood and the gall, and the deep mire of the dungeon into which they had plunged him, and from which he had scarcely been delivered, said: "It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord" (Lam. ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... which would have done honor to a six foot pugilist,—his legs, though short and bowed a little outward, by continual horse exercise, were right tough serviceable members, and I have seen them bearing their owner on through mud and mire, when straighter, longer, and more fair proportioned limbs were ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... wish to reach the place over which it happens to shine. But an eternal possibility has no material power. It is only one of an infinity of other things equally possible intrinsically, yet most of them quite unrealisable in this world of blood and mire. The realm of eternal essences rains down no Jovian thunderbolts, but only a ghostly Uranian calm. There is no frown there; rather, a passive and universal welcome to any who may have in them the will and the power to climb. Whether any one has the will depends on his material constitution, and ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... were advanced a good way into the fields, when the duke, making efforts for his liberty, threw himself to the ground, and brought down with him the assassin to whom he was fastened. They were struggling together in the mire, when Ormond's servants, whom the alarm had reached, came and saved him. Blood and his companions, firing their pistols in a hurry at the duke, rode off, and saved themselves ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... calumnies easily obtained belief. The violence with which Luther had declared against the rebels had displeased even moderate men. The friends of Rome exulted; all were against him, and he bore the heavy anger of his times. But his greatest affliction was to behold the work of heaven thus dragged in the mire and classed with the most fanatical projects. Here he felt was his Gethsemane: he saw the bitter cup that was presented to him; and, foreboding that he would be forsaken by all, he exclaimed: "Soon, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... founts of liquid blue; And little hands that evil never knew, Pure as the new-formed snow; Thy feet are still unstained by this world's mire, Thy golden locks like aureole of fire ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... a lone cabin, where the cane Hid the black mire before the lowly door, De Soto died—although they sought to feign By some pretended magic mirror's lore That still he lived, a gentleman of Spain,— And the dread flood rolled onward ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... a Chastity in Writing or Thinking on such exalted Subjects, that great Minds are apt to Cherish, which keeps them Cautious and Diffident, where weak Men are as bold and as rash (to use an homely Phrase) as a blind Mare in a Mire. I have known many silly Preachers, and paperscull'd Writers in my Time, that were troubled with the Divinity Squirt, and were forc'd to print, or to be tormented with the Cholick, or foul themselves; and so they exposed their Nakedness to the World, with all their Rhapsodies of ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... They would not go so far 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 destiny ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Seventh Man Who is So Angry He Wallows in the Mire; journey to Vait-hua on Tahuata island; fight with the devil-fish; story of a cannibal feast and the two ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... there was a sharp wrench at his head, and he knew that from it a lock of hair was missing. This was too much. He ought to have stopped there and let them kill him if they would, but a terror of these human wolves entered his soul and mastered him. To be trodden beneath those mire-stained feet, to be rent by those filthy hands, to be swung up living by the ankles to some pole and then carved piecemeal—he could not bear it. He drew his sword and turned ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... without, a tramp of feet, and the door swung suddenly open to admit two men, or rather three, for between them they dragged one, a short, squat fellow in riding boots and horseman's coat, but all so torn and bedraggled, so foul of blood and mire, as to seem scarce human. His hat was gone and his long, rain-soaked hair clung in black tangles about his bruised face and as he stood, swaying in his bonds, I thought him the very ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... days tillers of 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, trod it under foot. ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... bad laws can degrade and demoralize a people in a comparatively short time, in spite of race and creed and public opinion; and that, where class interests are involved, the most sacred rights of humanity are trampled in the mire of corruption. Even now the pauperism resulting of necessity from the large-farm system is degrading the English people, and threatening to rot away the foundations of society. On this subject I am glad to find a complete corroboration of my own conclusions in ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... cat-skin, she wore a scarlet 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, and thick ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... he, also, was in the far country, when he, also, was a rebel against law and love, when even he was "lost already." Can he forget those days of darkness and of shame? Can he forget how the warning ambassador of his hitherto despised Redeemer came to him? Can he forget the mire and the clay and the horrible pit from which a strong hand brought him forth? Let him "think on these things" as he looks upon his congregation, as he rebukes their contumacy. Let him remember that he has come into ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... worldly fury with which Henry Fox, from very different motives, had fought the marriage bill of 1753. The thought that stirred him was indicated in a phrase or two to his wife at Hawarden: 'July 31.—Parliamentary affairs are very black; the poor church gets deeper and deeper into the mire. I am to speak to-night; it will do no good; and the fear grows upon me from year to year that when I finally leave parliament, I shall not leave the great question of state and church better, but perhaps even ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... water, and the march was sufficiently difficult. Nevertheless, it was possible; so the stout Hollanders, Zeelanders, and Englishmen struggled on manfully, shoulder to shoulder, through the mist and the mire. By nightfall the expedition had reached Ravels, at less than a league's distance from Turnhout, having accomplished, under the circumstances, a very remarkable march of over twenty miles. A stream of water, the Neethe, one of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... his bibulous fortune will not be all on your head. And"—he turned to Farquhart—"if the roads to Camberwell be as good—God save the mark!—as the roads from London here, Mistress Babs will not be calling for our escort until midnight. Gad! I never traversed such mire. I thought my horse ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... but from herself as well—from 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 ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... false hopes; saying what they did not mean, and meaning what they did not say. It is a very Slough of Despond, through which we must plunge desperately as we may; and we can cheer ourselves in this dismal region only by the knowledge that, although we are now approaching the spot where the mire is deepest, the hard ground ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... place, and stopped in hesitation, fearing to soil her slippers. This was the young courtier's chance. Raleigh had been in the background, but seeing the Queen hesitate he sprang forward, and sweeping his new plush cloak from his shoulders, spread it in the mire, so that she might cross. The Queen's face lighted up with pleasure at the graceful act, and she thanked the youthful gallant. Later she saw that he was given many court suits for the cloak he ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... into an expression of the deepest sorrow, not unmingled with contempt, on beholding the degradation of this splendidly endowed young man. He reminded him of a fallen angel, with his glorious plumage all soiled and polluted with the mire and corruption of earth. He never had had faith in his integrity; be believed him to be the tempter of Louis, the deceiver of Mittie, reckless and unprincipled where pleasure was concerned, but he did not believe him capable of such a daring transgression. Had he been alone, he would have ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... refusing to drink with a young gentleman of such wealth, and (as a necessary consequence) such distinction? Besides, I suddenly felt quite a curiosity to drink some liquor, just to see how it tasted. After all, it was only very low people who got drunk and wallowed in the mire. Gentlemen (I thought) never get drunk, and they always seem so happy and joyous after they have been drinking! How they shake hands, and swear eternal friendship, and seem generously willing to lend ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... intelligent co-ordination of studies in Ireland and we suffer as no other country from ignorantly imposed "systems" which have had for their object, not the development of Irish brains but the Anglicisation of Irish youth, who were drenched with the mire of "foreign" learning when they should have been bathed in the pure stream of Irish thought ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... He had sat at meat with lords and chiefs and the high representatives of alien powers who protected the interests of traders and missionaries. Such had been Kapalei. But now, as Koolau had said, he was a hunted rat, a creature outside the law, sunk so deep in the mire of human horror that he was above the law as well as beneath it. His face was featureless, save for gaping orifices and for the lidless eyes that burned under ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... battle of life. Wounded and fallen, trampled in the mire and mud of the conflict, then the ranks closed again and left no place for her. So she crawled aside to die. With a past whose black despair was as the shadow of a starless night, a future which her early religious training lit up with the lurid light of hell, and the ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... could buy Heaven by their own works. Nay, Heaven and salvation be free gifts—the glorious gifts of a glorious God, and worthy of the Giver. But when such gifts are set before you but for the asking, is it too much that ye should rise out of the mire ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... slime permeated with gold and perfumes, this careless indifference to all things, these unbridled passions, these religious beliefs cast into that heart like diamonds into mire, this life begun, and ended, in a hospital, these gambling chances transferred to the soul, to the very existence,—in short, this great alchemy, for which vice lit the fire beneath the crucible in which fortunes were melted up and the gold of ancestors ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... one made white, Thy singing lips, and golden hair; Born of the city's mire and light, The shame and splendour of the night, She trapped and fled thee unaware; Not through the lamplight and the rain Shalt thou behold ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... chief of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a wilderness'; v. 25: 'He 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, and commit iniquity, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... 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
... influence, save in the regions where the highest crime against humanity has become a matter of interest, of sordid speculation. Alas! what sadder spectacle could be seen than the ministers of Christ using their talents to lead their people into wrong, mocking religion, trailing its snowy wings in the mire of the most corrupt political dogmas, doing their utmost to upheave that grand corner stone set by Christ himself in the primal temple of Christianity and humanity: 'All things whatsoever you would that men should do to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and it is as though the whole houseless, outside earth were racing through it. Towards evening, under a gray sky, flies by an unframed picture of desolation. In the foreground a farm wagon almost axle deep in mud, the mire dripping from the slow-turning wheels as the man flogs the horses. Behind him on a knoll of sodden soggy grass, fenced off by raw rails from the landscape at large, are a knot of utterly uninterested citizens who have flogged horses and raised ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... tune,—its association,—is like spreading before LAURA'S eyes a panorama of the inevitable depravity that awaits her. She is torn from every ideal that she so weakly endeavoured to grasp, and is thrown into the mire and slime at the very moment when her emancipation seems to be assured. The woman, with her flashy dress in one arm and her equally exaggerated type of picture hat in the other, is nearly prostrated by the tune and the realization of the future as it is terrifically ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... now to carry out her scheme in coming to Washington, for she was already deep in the mire of politics and could see with every advantage how the great machine floundered about, bespattering with mud even her own pure garments. Ratcliffe himself, since entering the Treasury, had begun to talk with a sneer of the way in which laws were made, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... at night, and the pasty's made hot, They broach the brown ale, and they fill the black pot, And the goodwife would wish the goodman in the mire, Ere he lack'd a soft pillow, the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... rushed to the pile, but no more light was there: all had disappeared, even the executioner. They tore up and threw aside the beams; one of them was still burning, and its light showed under a mass of ashes and ensanguined mire a blackened hand, preserved from the fire by a large iron bracelet and chain. A woman had the courage to open it; the fingers clasped a small ivory cross and an image ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... call them to repentance. The prophet faithfully discharged his trust; but labored to very little effect. The chiefs of the nation were offended at its warnings and predictions—rose up against him—shut him up in prison; yea in a dark dungeon, where he sank in the mire; and even sought his life! He was not, however discouraged.. He continued "to warn the wicked from his way, that he should turn from it. None of these things ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... barrel of our muskets a little below the muzzle and just above the end of the stock, poise the piece on the hammer on either shoulder, stock uppermost, and roll up our breeches to the knees. Then like Tam O'Shanter, we "skelpit on through dub and mire, despising wind, and rain, and fire," and singing "John Brown's Body," or whatever else came handy. But rainy days in camp, especially such as we had at Benton Barracks, engender feelings of gloom and dejection that have to be experienced in order to be realized. ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... through mud and cold water, it was at first suggested and then strongly advised, that we should not undertake to make the trip to Blondy's Throne: and yearning to see what is considered the cave's chief beauty was not easy to overcome, but after careful attention to the deep mire of the approach the advice seemed good, especially as Mr. Powell kindly promised to write a description of its trials and treasures; which he promptly did, thereby making it possible for us to continue the journey now without a disappointing interruption, ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... risk. Isn't my safety worth a little sacrifice of dogmatic principle? I am in terror lest, if you leave me, it will be with me another case of the pig that was washed turning back to his wallowing in the mire!" ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... consistently adds in a note to p. 137, "I cheerfully agree with one of the most active 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 ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... face, its youthful beauty distorted by horror, its pallid cheeks stained with mire, and I blenched before the ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... emergency, but fortunately a small party of troopers on the other side, who had watched the chase, now galloped briskly forward to the rescue, and, beating off his pursuers, they recovered Cepeda from the mire, and bore him ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... 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
... crashing down the surging river, carrying men, women and children beyond the hope of rescue; of a night of horrors, multitudes dying amid the awful terrors of flood and fire, plunged under the wild torrent, buried in mire, or consumed in devouring flames; of helpless creatures rending the air with pitiful screams crying aloud in their agony, imploring help with outstretched hands, and finally sinking with no one to ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... pull him out of the mire and quieted him down, but we could never again put anything on him that rattled. We took our guns and provisions and only such clothing as we had on, leaving all else behind. I remember putting on a pair of new boots that I had brought from home, which I did not take off until I had been some time ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... Thirty Mountains had reached the spot where Slavata with his cavalry was attempting the passage of the morass. Some of the Hulans were entangled there from the soft nature of the ground, the horses having sunk in the mire almost up to their saddle-girths. Others, among whom was their leader, had ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... and—would be none the worse for being a widow, whereas I should be laughed at as a silly fool. Shall I sue for a legal divorce? "Si fuerit dolus?" Had I not had enough of notoriety? Enough of laughter, calumny, and ridicule? Must I drag my honest and hitherto respected name through the mire, and become the laughing-stock of every fop throughout the country? No, anything but that! Help me, thou worser self, thou Devil in my own breast, help me to find some revenge worthy of a Devil's teaching! Give me death, for it is death I crave; ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... forms of the tawny Dakotas, And they led his feet from the fen, —from the slough of despond and the desert. Half-dead in a dismal morass, as they followed the red-deer they found him, In the midst of the mire and the grass, and mumbling "Te Deum laudamus." "Unktomee [72]—Ho!" muttered the braves, for they deemed him the black Spider-Spirit That dwells in the drearisome caves, and walks on the marshes at midnight, With a flickering torch in ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... 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
... it would assuredly be a terrible blow for the nobility in general, and for the Count de Toumeville in particular, and the freethinkers would be triumphant. The evilly disposed newspapers would sing songs of victory for six months; my mother's name would be dragged through the mire and brought into the prose of Socialistic journals, and my father's would be bespattered. It was impossible that such a ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... will have their judgment-day, and their names, which went down in the dust like a gallant banner trodden in the mire, shall rise again all glorious in the sight ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... ignored. With us there is a feeling that it is pitiful, mean almost beyond expression, to wrong a laborer of his hire. We have men who go in debt to tradesmen perhaps without a thought of paying them; but when we speak of such a one who has descended into the lowest mire of insolvency, we say that he has not paid his washerwoman. Out there in the West the washerwoman is as fair game as the tailor, the domestic servant as the wine merchant. If a man be honest he will not willingly take either goods or labor without payment; and it may be hard to prove ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... death and hell Against us did combine, And with united forces fell Upon us, with design To root us out, then had not God Appeared to take our part, And them chastized with His rod, And made them feel the smart, We then had overwhelmed been And trodden in the mire; Our enemies on us had seen Their cruel hearts' desire. When stoned, when stocked, when rudely stripped, Some to the waist have been (Without regard of sex), and whipped, Until the blood did spin; Yea, when their skins with stripes looked black, Their flesh ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... alone. He had no guide to help him out of the mire. When he thought he was out of it he slipped back again. He went blindly on, wasting his time and strength in futile efforts. He was spared no trial: and in the disorder of his creative striving he never knew what was of greatest worth in what he created. He tied ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... arid plain, sapp'd with underground fire, Soak'd with snow, torn with shot, mash'd to one gory mire! There Fate's iron scale hangs in horrid suspense, While those two famished ogres—the Siege, the Defence, Face to face, through a vapor frore, dismal, and dun, Glare, scenting the breath of each other. The one Double-bodied, two-headed—by separate ways Winding, serpent-wise, nearer; the ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... glow, the stern joy of the fight. But she!—let her leave the human brute and his unsavoury struggle alone! It cannot be borne—it was never meant—that she should dip her delicate wings, of her own free will at least, in such a mire of blood and tears. It was the feeling that had possessed him when Mrs. Boyce told him of the visit to the prison, the ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... moment there was 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, and shuffling off up the bank, as ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... soul is sick of calumny and lies: Men gloat on evil—even woman's hand Will dabble in the mire, nor heed the cries Of the poor victim whom she seeks to brand In thy sweet name, Religion, through the land! Like the keen tempest she doth strip her prey, Tossing him bare and wrecked upon the strand, While vaunting her misdeeds before the day, Bearing ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... own grounds. At Castelnau de Montmirail, near Cahors, the head of one of two brothers, De Ballud, was cut off and the blood left to drip upon the face of the surviving brother; the Comtesse de la Mire was seized in her own house by the peasants and her arms cut to pieces; M. Guillin was slain, roasted, and eaten before the eyes of his wife. At Bordeaux the Abbes de Longovian and Dupuy were beheaded and their heads carried about on pikes. M. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... scanned the red moccasins. They showed not a grain of dust, not a speck of mire, not a stain of grass, or weed, or water, although he had walked in them—or, if you please, they had walked with him—through many a mile of grassy wood and reedy swamp, where path was none, that had ever been trodden by foot of man. As ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... perversity of those who use them wrongfully. Corrupt mind never understood word healthily, and even as seemly words profit not depraved minds, so those which are not altogether seemly avail not to contaminate the well-disposed, any more than mire can sully the rays of the sun or earthly foulness the beauties of the sky. What books, what words, what letters are holier, worthier, more venerable than those of the Divine Scriptures? Yet many there be, who, interpreting them perversely, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... think up," Dolly answered. "Warren Wilks reads all the philosophical and scientific magazines, and he fairly floors us—there I go again; when I talk I either grab the stars or stick my nose in the mire. I mean that Warren's subjects are generally abstruse ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... build new roads across 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 drag ropes 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 counter attacks in strong ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... ecstasy of the women, and you, as a sensible man, not inclined to mysticism, suspected me of fraud, of a hideous fraud. No, no, don't excuse yourself. I understand you. But I wish you would understand me. Out of the mire of superstitions, out of the deep gulf of prejudices and unfounded beliefs, I want to lead their strayed thoughts and place them upon the solid foundation of strictly logical reasoning. The iron grate, which I mentioned, is not ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... Her ears were shell-like, and her hair soft, wavy and warm. These things I marked minutely, thinking she was more than beautiful—she was even pretty. I was in a state of extraordinary elation, like a man that has found a jewel in the mire. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... to approach, Iver was regardless where he trod. He sank over his knees in the mire, and was obliged to extricate himself before he ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... Progressive party and oppose it whenever it departs from that interest, and thus force the Progressive party either to develop progressively and to rise above its own level or to sink deeper and deeper into the mire of insignificance and weakness in which it already stands knee deep; these must be the straightforward tactics of the German workingmen's party with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing; I am come into deep waters, where the floods ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... to be an 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 escape from such ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... difficulty faced her. As far as she could see stretched a low, swampy marsh of wet land. The mud and slime did not look very inviting, but the thought of her little blind sister came to her again, and she bravely plunged into the mire. The dirty, dripping mud clung to her dress and made her feet so heavy that she grew weary lifting them out of it. Sometimes she seemed to be stuck fast, and it was only with a great effort that she could pull out, first one foot, and ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... poetry; Forgot by all almost as well as me. Sometimes he has some humour, never wit, And if it rarely, very rarely, hit, 'Tis under so much nasty rubbish laid, To find it out's the cinderwoman's trade; Who for the wretched remnants of a fire, 260 Must toil all day in ashes and in mire. So lewdly dull his idle works appear, The wretched texts deserve no comments here; Where one poor thought sometimes, left all alone, For a whole page of ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... not to be just yet. Autumn withered and sank into winter. The rain came down on the stubble, and the red cattle waded through red mire to and from their pasture; the skies grew pale above, and the earth grew bare beneath; the winds grew sharp and seemed unfriendly; the brooks ran foaming to the rivers, and the rivers ran roaring to the ocean. Then the earth dried a little, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... tells that God commanded Moses and Eleazar, the priest, to produce vice and perpetrate crime on an unparalleled scale. It tells us that they obeyed the order, and that 16,000 helpless girls were dragged in the mire of infamy and divided amongst the victorious soldiers. They were made dissolute by force, and by direct command ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... become of my patience? my sunny mildness? Then, as the recollection of the velvet-gown and mob-cap episode recurs to me, I repent me, and, crossing the road, pick up again my harmless catkins and snow-drops, and rearrange them. I have hardly finished wiping the mire from the tender, lilac-veined snow-drop petals, before I hear his voice in the distance, in conversation with some one. Clearly, Delilah is coming to see the last of him! I expect that she mostly escorts them to the gate. In my present frame of mind, it would be physically impossible ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... metaphysical inquisition in the convivial atmosphere of Socratic discussion, while to right and left of him were accommodated the flippant prognosticator, fresh from the hippodrome, and that vigilant wanderer, soiled by the dust of travel and combat and stained by the mire of an indelible dishonour, but from whose steadfast and constant heart no lure or peril or threat or degradation could ever efface the image of that voluptuous loveliness which the inspired pencil of Lafayette has limned ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Assumption to the young peasant girl. The beautiful Adeline was translated at once from the mire of her village to the paradise of the Imperial Court; for the contractor, one of the most conscientious and hard-working of the Commissariat staff, was made a Baron, obtained a place near the Emperor, and was attached ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... its peculiar municipal laws, throughout the Middle Ages, Oxford had the proud distinction of being the cleanest city in England. That is to say, it was not quite so appallingly smothered in mire and filth as others were. Down the midst of every narrow street ran a gutter, which after rain was apt to become a brook, and into which dirt of every sort was emptied by every householder. There were no causeways; and there were ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... onset, the shrieks of the wounded, and the groans of the dying; the despair of the widow and the orphan; smouldering ruins of once happy homes; the fruits of the husbandman's toils trodden into the mire; starvation, misery, and death—these are ever the fruits ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... you tread and boast, Yourself enamored of the dirtiest most. One day to be a miser you aspire, The next to wallow drunken in the mire; The third, lo! you're a meritorious liar![C] Pray, in the catalogue of all your graces, Have theft and cowardice ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... thinking to make this rock of virtue a sure foundation of love. But you have in a moment shown me, Amadour, that instead of a pure and cleanly rock, this foundation would have been one of shifting sand or filthy mire; and although a great part of the house in which I hoped always to dwell had already been raised, you have suddenly demolished it. Lay aside, therefore, any hope you had concerning me, and make up your mind not to seek me by look or word wherever I ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... came," broke out MacIan, "and my soul said to me: 'Give up fighting, and you will become like That. Give up vows and dogmas, and fixed things, and you may grow like That. You may learn, also, that fog of false philosophy. You may grow fond of that mire of crawling, cowardly morals, and you may come to think a blow bad, because it hurts, and not because it humiliates. You may come to think murder wrong, because it is violent, and not because it is unjust. ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... Then, to add to its interest, it borders on Sedgemoor, the scene of the bloody battle during the Monmouth rising, whereat a thousand were slain on the field. It is a local legend that the unhappy Duke and his staff may be seen, on stormy nights, crossing the path which skirts the mire, after which this building is named, with flaming torches ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... at the root, bent backwards, and of a triangular form, with a flat side above. One of the peculiarities of the buffalo is its voice, which is quite low, and in the minor key, resembling that of a young colt. It is as fond of mire as swine, and shows the consequence of recent wallowing, in being crusted over with mud. The skin is visible, being but thinly covered with hair; its color is usually that of a mouse; in ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... know what he proposed giving me. "Bed-rock wages," said he. Now that means good money if a strike is made, and nothing if it is not. So I shook my head, and he turned away, leaving me to wallow in the mire of contemptible security. I can hardly doubt that he will be one day found dead in the mountains, and that his Eldorado ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... tyrannies, as well as in this of scorched England, now in the furnace: Only they have varied the Scene, pouring out all their fury upon us at the present: That so, having once troden us under as mire in the streets, they may afterward more easily; (which God avert) set their proud and impure feet upon your necks also. Wherefore the good leave and favour of the honourable Houses of Parliament, we shall now spare ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... MIND: The previous lessons give you the key to Supreme Mental Healing. Your mind is limitless. Begin where you may, conditions do not count. No matter how weak, how isolated, how deep in the mire of trouble, you can rise, you can be free, you can be renewed. You may have a whole library of all sorts of books and treatises on healing. You may have a library of biology and pathology, but you can never read yourself well. ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... 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, Our Lady ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... It is not the white man you fear, but the Indian you have betrayed. Your tongue lies, your heart lies. You are neither brave nor squaw-man. Your heart is the heart of a snake that is filled with venom. Your brain is like the mire of the muskeg which sucks, sucks its victims down to destruction. Your blood is like the water of a mosquito swamp, poisonous even to the air. I have eyes; I have ears. I learn all these things, and I say ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... [Footnote: That is to say, the influence of Gottsched on German literature, of which more is said in the next book.—TRANS.] had inundated the German world with a true deluge, which threatened to rise up, even over the highest mountains. It takes a long time for such a flood to subside again, for the mire to dry away; and as in any epoch there are numberless aping poets, so the imitation of the flat and watery produced a chaos, of which now scarcely a notion remains. To find out that trash was trash was hence ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... whether you like to think about it or not, you have broken God's law, and are a sinful man. You carry a burden on your back whether you realise the fact or no, a burden that clogs all your efforts, and that will sink you deeper into the darkness and the mire. 'Come unto Me, all ye that labour,' and with noble, but, at bottom, vain, efforts have striven after right and truth. 'Come unto Me all ye that are burdened,' and bear, sometimes forgetting it, but often reminded of its pressure ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... to his knees, struggled to his feet with quick, frantic lumbering, like a horse clambering out of the mire. He stood weaving, his red eyes watching those around him, perhaps reading something of the crowd's threat in the growl that ran through it, beginning in the center as it died on the edge, quieting not at ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... challenge to fate; and this was the answer? The vague distrust, the subtle sombre presentiment, the haunting shadow of an inexplicable ill, had all meant this; this bloody horror, dragging her fair name down to the loathsome mire of the slums of crime. Had some merciful angel leaned from the parapets of heaven and warned her; or did her father's spirit, in mysterious communion of deathless love and prescient guardianship, stir her soul to oppose her mother's scheme? Sceptical and heedless Tarquins ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... being cut down on both sides is for long distances little better than a ditch. The soil being a stiff clay, the tremendous rain-fall having insufficient escape converted the road into a canal—six inches to a foot of water overlying six inches to a foot of mire. And into this infernal passage we plunged as night closed upon us. For a couple of hours we floundered along with desperate energy, losing shoes sucked off by the tenacious slime, and some even throwing away their blankets. It was pitch ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... his friends,—and who were, while the sunshine lay upon his path,—all these things, like so many strong winds, sweep across the soul so that it cannot rest in the cheerless tranquility of honesty, but casts up mire and dirt. How stately the balloon rises and sails over continents, as over petty landscapes! The slightest slit in its frail covering sends it tumbling down, swaying widely, whirling and pitching hither and ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher
... bear to let the English suppose that a Scotsman and a Stewart could be afraid of weather. As the rain became harder with the evening twilight, silence sank upon the whole troop, and they went splashing on through the deep lanes, in mud and mire, until the lights of Pontefract Castle shimmered on high from its hill. The gates were opened, the horses clattered in, torches came forth, flickering and hissing in the darkness. The travellers went through ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... deluges down pour Beating earth to mire, Though heaven shattering with the thunder's roar Scorcheth now in fire, Though every planet molten from its place Should trickle lost ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... 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 to ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... moaning throughout the town. Most like it seemed as though all beetling Ilios were burning utterly in fire. Scarcely could the folk keep back the old man in his hot desire to get him forth of the Dardanian gates. For he besought them all, casting himself down in the mire, and calling on each man by his name: "Hold, friends, and though you love me leave me to get me forth of the city alone and go unto the ships of the Achaians. Let me pray this accursed horror-working man, if haply he may feel shame before his age-fellows and pity an old man. He also ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... knew not how to enjoy it. His household, for the most part, reflected the coarseness of his nature, and as time passed his retribution was meted out in rebellious sons and daughters, who wasted his substance and dragged down his name still further in the mire. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... reconsideration of Gibson's news did not improve. We save Bonaparte however, and that is a great thing. I will not be downcast about it, let the worst come that can; but I wish I saw that worst. It is the devil to be struggling forward, like a man in the mire, and making not an inch by your exertions, and such seems to be my fate. Well! I have much to comfort me, and I will take comfort. If there be further wrath to come, I shall be glad that I bear it alone. Poor Charlotte was too much softened by prosperity to look adverse circumstances ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... doubtfully down at the colour of his cowskin boots, and the mire upon the horses, for the sloughs were exceedingly mucky. Peggy, indeed, my sorrel pony, being lighter of weight, was not crusted much over the shoulders; but Smiler (our youngest sledder) had been well ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... father, used to boast that he never got drunk—I used to boast that I never got sober. Finally, I bumped my last bump and found myself at the bottom. And there I stayed, until Captain Dabney, and the dear girl, pulled me out of the mire." ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... have cold water dashed over them, until the fit is passed. No doubt she will do any mad thing while it lasts, things that no man would do, but it is quickly over, this contemptible short-lived fury; and then she is a woman again, ready to drag herself through the mire for her tyrant, ready to kiss the brutal hand that has smitten her—to watch and wait and pine and pray for a smile from the lying bestial lips, as the humble Christian prays for heaven! A woman—oh, what a ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... by this time have given him up, disgusted at his weakness, his vanity, his low instincts, his cowardliness—who say let him wallow in the mire he has prepared for himself, who know so glibly what you would have done, what you would have said, what you would have felt, remember once more that Tom Drift was not such as you; and unfortunately did not know you. He was not gifted with your heroic resolution or your ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... burning sands and under the burning sky, a stalwart, splendid-appearing set of men, who looked equal to any daring, and capable of any heroism; men whom nothing could daunt and few things subdue. Now, weary, travel-stained, with the mire and the rain of a two days' tramp; weakened by the incessant strain and lack of food, having taken nothing for forty-eight hours save some crackers and cold coffee; with gaps in their ranks made by the death of comrades who had ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... three dark spots; but there had been heavy showers in the night, and as the mould had been thrown up here and there, discoloring the verdure, I could not determine whether these spots were blood-marks, as I feared, or the mere beating of rain and mire. But I did not trouble myself any further. Our persecutor was gone. That was all we cared to be assured of; and our next step was to escape from a place in which it was no longer safe ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... prison, the only access to which was from above. Prisoners were let down into it with ropes, and left there to die of hunger. The bottom of it was wet and miry, and the prophet, when let down into its gloomy depths, sank into the deep mire. Here he would soon have died of hunger and misery; but the king, feeling some misgivings in regard to what he had done, lest it might really be a true prophet of God that he had thus delivered into the hands of his enemies, inquired what the people had ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... came, Eve was obliged to find a wet-nurse; her milk had dried up. She had made a god of her brother; now, in her eyes, he was depraved through the exercise of his noblest faculties; he was wallowing in the mire. She, noble creature that she was, was incapable of swerving from honesty and scrupulous delicacy, from all the pious traditions of the hearth, which still burns so clearly and sheds its light abroad in quiet country ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... sinful expense, save for after dinner, and frothed chocolate for a man is an invention of Satan. The meal is sauced either with blame of me, messages from the farm-folk, or Bob's exploits in the chase. Then my father goes his rounds on the farm, and would fain have me with him to stand knee-deep in mire watching the plough, or feeling each greasy and odorous old sheep in turn to see if it be ready for the knife, or gloating over the bullocks or swine, or exchanging auguries with Thomas Vokes on this or that crop. ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was that the ascendancy of the Corsican brought in a reign of violence and blood. Napoleon became the trampler of vineyards. His armies made Europe into mire. England—agreeing at Amiens not to fight—fought. Pitt, now in the last year of his life, used all of his resources to bring about a league against France. He persuaded Alexander of Russia, Francis of Austria, and Gustavus of ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various |
