"Muddled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of common sense on this question were formulated, which, for the most part, they are not, they would be something like this. Until we begin to think the facts which we know directly are all muddled together and confused: first of all it is necessary to sort them by picking out qualities from the general confusion in which they are at first concealed. It is possible that during this process, which is what is called analysis, we may be obliged, at first, to overlook some of what we already ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... think people that talk over their victuals are like to say anything very great, especially if they get their heads muddled with strong ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... muddled—quarrelled. They always do. They could not decide what to do with you. You know how they ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... requisite to pleasant dining which some more pretentious societies are without: they have leisure. Nothing is done in haste in Honolulu, where they have long ago convinced themselves that "to-morrow is another day." Moreover, you find them well-read, without being blue; they have not muddled their history by contradictory telegraphic reports of matters of no consequence; in fact, so far as recent events are concerned, they stand on tolerably firm ground, having perused only the last monthly record of current events. Consequently, they have had time to read ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... mention her? I don't know, Harry, my wits are muddled. The Nervina? She is a goddess. Never was and never will be woman. She loves; she never hates, and still again she does not love. She is beautiful; too beautiful for man. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... generally. She knew how to be well served. He thought that her manner to servants was often inexcusable, but she "kept" her servants, and they would "do anything" for her. Further, except that she could not shine in conversation, she was a good hostess. She never made mistakes, never became muddled, never forgot. Of course she had friends to whom he was indifferent or perhaps slightly hostile, but she was entitled to her friends, as he to his. And she was a good mother. Stranger still, though ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... drinks because he feels the reverse of all these things when he is sober. He drinks to drown the past and repentance. He doesn't know that a healthy-minded man doesn't waste time in repenting. He doesn't know how easy it is to reform, and is too weak-willed to try. He gets a muddled idea that the past can't be mended. He finds it easy to get drink and borrow money on the strength of his next quarter's allowance, so he soon gets a quarter or two behind, and sometimes gets into trouble connected with borrowed money. He drifts to the bush ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... Marie-Liese or from an intrigue with the pastor's daughter, yet, since he had on the latter's account lost his purity, something else was also laid waste thereby, that which had given peace to him and a purpose to his muddled life, the love for his mother. As he tarried already half in the other world, his last words were, "Yes, yes, were we now together, only you must not hold me so tightly to your breast." This had the mother in her tenderness done to her little boy. We ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... trying to keep her head north-north-east. The rudder might have been gone for all he knew, the fires out, the engines broken down, the ship ready to roll over like a corpse. He was anxious not to get muddled and lose control of her head, because the compass-card swung far both ways, wriggling on the pivot, and sometimes seemed to whirl right round. He suffered from mental stress. He was horribly afraid, ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... too, muddled and mistook things as I shouldn't, if Esther and her mother had lived in a different quarter. If they had lived anywhere over the hill, should I have fancied, though they were so poor, that Mrs. Bowdoin ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... light him to the state bedroom, walking backwards, holding a pair of wax-candles. At this hour of bedtime the Thane used to be in such a condition, that he saw two pair of candles and two Ivanhoes reeling before him. Let us hope it was not Ivanhoe that was reeling, but only his kinsman's brains muddled with the quantities of drink which it was his daily custom to consume. Rowena said it was the crack which the wicked Bois Guilbert, "the Jewess's OTHER lover, Wilfrid my dear," gave him on his royal skull, which caused the Prince to be disturbed so ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the muddled brain of the man retained recollection of an earlier purpose. "Stay inside, you!" he said. "I got work to do. If you go outside I'll kill ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... Dolokhov after he had dealt for some time. "Please place your money on the cards or I may get muddled in ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Northumberland downward, for any town or village that would fit these mysterious letters. It was a wild and foolish idea. In the first place not a quarter of the villages were marked in the map; and in the second place, my brain soon got muddled and dazed with trying to fit in the names with the letters on the flag. Two hours had passed away, and I'd only got as far down as Lancashire and Durham. And, most probably even so, I would ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... brambles, and that worried him, for his whole head seemed one aching bruise and he dreaded anything touching it. But all the time he did not open his mouth, for silence was the one duty that his muddled wits enforced. He felt that he was not the master of his mind, and he dreaded what he might disclose if he ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... allowed her features to subside gradually as if nothing had happened. I saw all this as plainly as if it had all been printed in great-primer type, instead of working itself out in her features. I like to see other people muddled now and then, because my own occasional dulness is relieved by a good solid background of ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... confused Head warns me to leave off.—With a muddled sense of gratefulness, which I shall apprehend more clearly to-morrow, I remain, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... liquor, doubtless adulterated, mounted to my head. As I had gulped it down at a breath, drunkenness seized me promptly; I felt that I was becoming muddled, then I experienced a lucid moment, then confusion followed. Then consciousness left me, I leaned my elbows on the table and said ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... rather despised soldiering as a profession. He thought it was rather a miserable, muddled kind of a job, in which, unless you were a great officer, you got all the hard knocks and none of the honours; and I am not sure that he was far wrong. His great idea of a happy life was to get employment as a scribe, or, as we should say, a clerk, to some big man or to the Government, to keep ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... Even brain-muddled Mullan felt a maudlin impulse to cheer at Feeny's enthusiastic answer. Even poor old Plummer gave a half-stifled cry. Possibly he dreamed that rescue was at hand; but there was little time for rejoicing. ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... continued to revive apace. And the more he revived, the more energetically did he protest against this wearisome perambulation. But he was evidently a polite gentleman, for, muddled as his faculties were, he managed to clothe his objections in courteous and even gracious forms of speech singularly out of agreement with the character that Mr. Weiss had ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... Deb's letters that the change in the family fortunes was as great as it now proved to be; and Deb had not anticipated the effect of adversity upon one so easily depressed. She had no 'heart', poor thing. She struggled and muddled, sighing for flowers for the vases while the beds were unmade; and when she saw a certain look on Deb's face, wept and mourned and gave up hope. So they "pigged" still, although they did not defile the furniture with unwashed hands, and ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... the while; Who feels his freehold's worth, and looks elate, A little prop and pillar of the state. Here he delights the weekly news to con, And mingle comments as he blunders on; To swallow all their varying authors teach, To spell a title, and confound a speech: Till with a muddled mind he quits the news, And claims his nation's licence to abuse; Then joins the cry, "That all the courtly race Are venal candidates for power and place;" Yet feels some joy, amid the general vice, That his own vote will bring its wonted price. These are the ills ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... bewildering place—I get lost whenever I leave my room. I will write you a description later when I'm feeling less muddled; also I will tell you about my lessons. Classes don't begin until Monday morning, and this is Saturday night. But I wanted to write a letter ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... now," she added, sitting up. "I thought it all out while I was sleeping. Isn't it funny that one can think a thing out in one's sleep? And it's so very clear now—as clear as crystal—and it was so dark and muddled before. Will they give ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... tell the present hearers. Hi! To be sure, how the neighbourhood poured into court that afternoon while the cause was on! How my noble and learned brother, and all the rest of 'em, grubbed and muddled away as usual and tried to look as if they hadn't heard a word of the last fact in the case or as if they had—Oh, dear me!—nothing at all to do with it if they had heard of it by ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... and nodded. He signaled with his eyes that Winter was to make Evelyn Forbes understand that she had just escaped being the victim of an extraordinary outrage. Muddled as his thoughts were, he grasped the essential fact that Scotland Yard was better posted in the secret history of the Innesmore Mansions crime than he had given the department credit for before the dramatic ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... was a reply which no resident of St. Fair would have dared to make, Mr. Crows bent a muddled glance on his fare, and by a concentrated effort recalled the face of the man who had given him ten shillings on the previous night. He decided to pocket the present indignity in ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... more and more the illegitimate offspring of immaturity in thought and feeling. We were the slaves of our newspapers; each morning a library was thrown on our doorstep. But what a jumbled, inconsequent, muddled-up library! It was the best that could be made in such a hurry, and it satisfied most of us, though I believe there were conservative people who opened it only to read the marriage and the death notices. The ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... disappointed with to-night's work," he said. "I sent five messages out; two of them died on the way; a third reached its destination, but in such a muddled condition that it was impossible to recognise it as the one sent off. The order to cease work was the only one that seemed to hurry along. Out at the front, where all orders are passed along the trenches in this manner, it is of the utmost importance that every word is repeated distinctly, ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... hadn't ceased for a moment, and I found it prevented the Demon from coming out, as I couldn't help counting in time with the music. It was all right when it was one, two, three, but common time muddled it dreadfully, though now I come to think of it, Julia was not actually in the room when we heard the bad news. She'd gone upstairs to look for a song or something. Of course there's no legal proof that Juliet really is his child," Lady Ruth continued; "she admits that he was ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... schoolmaster is criticised vehemently for teaching the one or two poor useless subjects he can in a sort of way teach, and practically nothing is done to help or equip him to teach anything else. By reason of this uproar, the world is full now of anxious muddled parents, their poor brains buzzing with echoes of Froebel, Tolstoy, Herbert Spencer, Ruskin, Herbart, Colonel Parker, Mr. Harris, Matthew Arnold, and the Morning Post, trying to find something better. They know nothing of what is right, they only ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... degree, the drink cleared his muddled head. Mrs. Vimpany tried his memory once more. Had he said this? Had he said that? Yes: he thought it likely. Had he, or had Mr. Mountjoy, mentioned Lord Harry's name? A glimmer of intelligence showed itself in his stupid eyes. Yes—and they had quarrelled about it: he rather thought he had thrown ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... a good look at his fireman. The latter was muddled, it was plain to see that, but he went about his duties with a mechanical routine born from long experience. Only once did he lurch towards Ralph and speak to him, or rather hiss out ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... a corps where they had seemed indispensable, it would be better for them to remain undiscovered. She had, in fact, decided to withdraw from the fight. When visiting, the Adjutant stumbled upon them, muddled and tired, as they sat amongst their packing cases. Her radiant face and gracious spirit soon drew out of the little woman the confession she had meant to hide. 'When I came in,' says the husband, 'there was the Adjutant sitting on one of the boxes chatting so happily, ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... the Mississippi River water in the big bend below Natchez," said I, fascinated, gazing at the be-muddled drip. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... Triumphant Egghead carefully built up his structure with nicety and tenderness. Only he, the Big Man, sworn to secrecy, knew what Hickey had surreptitiously inserted in the bottom of Egghead's trunk, and also what, from the depths of Wash's muddled clothing, would greet the fond mother or sister who did the unpacking; and every time he thought of it he laughed one of those laughs that pain. Then gleefully he had watched Macnooder stretching a strap until it burst with consequences dire, to ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... a bait for loafers. Well, when the thing was squashed—me, like a fool, I was advised to lay the money out in minin' shares for Molly; an' then I kep' risin' more money, an' buyin' more shares; an' I got sort o' muddled somehow; an' to make a long story short, the whole (adj.) thing went to (sheol). It was goin' that road when I seen the last o' pore Molly; an' when I lost her, I jist roused round an' got a team together, an' signed everything the lyin', cheatin' (financiers) told me to sign; an' then I cleared ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... all the negro-houses in the neighborhood; but kicks, cuts, and other abuses failed to elicit any information of his whereabouts. At length Dunn began to feel the deadening effects of the liquor, and was so muddled that he could not stand up; then, taking possession of a bed in one of the houses, he stretched himself upon it in superlative contempt of every thing official, and almost simultaneously fell into a ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... telegrams; no daily papers to spread the news (or lies), and contradict 'em next day, in the same columns with commentaries or prophetic remarks on what might or should have been, but wasn't, until news got muddled up into a hopeless entanglement, so that when all was at last cleared up you'd been worried out of all your interest in it! Yes, my lads, although I would not wish to see the return of those stirring days, I'm free to assert ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... fairly gone," said Caron, "it is to be hoped that the King's head will no longer be so muddled about these things. I wish it with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the children, I daresay I could keep up the house;—but if he won't do anything, you know, it will take us every farthing just to live. Look here, Dr Edward: I have two hundred a-year;—Susan had the same, you know, but Fred got all the money when they were married, and muddled it away. Now, how much can one do in Carlingford with three children upon ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Thurcae, Hysidorus, habundare, and even haspirafio; or in abhominor, where it bolstered up the derivation from homo: or it might change its place from one consonant to another, as in calchographus, cartha. Papias found it a great trouble, and indeed was quite muddled with it, placing hyppocrita, hippomanes among the h's, but hippopedes and several others under the i's, though without depriving them of initial h. In France, h between two short i's was considered to need support, and so we find michi, nichil, ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... of this landmark in their curious wedded life, passed tranquil though muddled days in his room at the Hotel Godet. A gleam of sunlight on the glazed hat of an omnibus driver, the stick of the whip and the horse's ear, as he was coming home one day on the imperiale, put him on the track of a new sighting apparatus for a field gun which ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... When his muddled brain occasionally awoke to the knowledge that he was a King, he would bully and hector his boon-comrades like any drunken trooper. On one occasion, when a young Jewess refused to drain a goblet of neat brandy ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... out: to drive the bourgeoisie out of power and promote the aims of the revolution, or to adopt the policy of "bridling" the people by resorting to repressive measures. Kerensky and Tseretelli clung to a middle course and only muddled matters the more. When the Cadets, the wiser and more far-sighted leaders of the coalition government, understood that the unsuccessful military advance of June 18th might deal a blow not only to the revolution, but also to ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... paradox came back in the shape of a boomerang from a Westerner who called the Government party "an exploded blister." On a previous occasion talking to the boot manufacturers in convention at Quebec he took a leap into the Agrarian trench with this pack of muddled metaphors. "I see the Agrarians a full-fledged army on the march to submarine our ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... you," Sir Pitt said, thumping the table. "I can't git on without you. I didn't see what it was till you went away. The house all goes wrong. It's not the same place. All my accounts has got muddled agin. You MUST come back. Do come back. Dear Becky, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fixed on the ceiling above her head, he invited her confidence by a few perfectly chosen expressions of comprehension and sympathy. The acuteness and activity of his mental processes delighted her while he questioned her. After the slovenly methods of Madame, after the loose reasoning and the muddled thinking of all the women she met in the course of her work, there was a positive pleasure in following the exactness and inflexibility of his logic. His reasoning was orderly, neat, elastic, without loose ends or tangled skeins ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... mattered—not superficially, but as if they were the things that interested them most, as she knew they were. It was that kind of life she really longed for; she had only got her thoughts a little muddled in London because she had been rather humiliated in feeling herself a stranger where her brothers were so much at home. When she saw Muriel again she must put herself right there. Muriel would understand ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... his desk for that purpose. On the night of the cat's return, the three bugs had become disgracefully intoxicated, and were reeling around the desk beating time with their legs to a rollicking catch sung by the Snake Editor. Before the muddled insects could crawl into a crack, the Mutilator was upon them, and had bolted every one. Then with a look of reproach at the Snake Editor, he drew three perpendicular red lines across that gentleman's features ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... inexperience, the bills dropped. I could not cook rich pastries and fancy desserts, and fell back on simple salads and fruit instead. I dipped into the household magazines, followed on into technical articles on efficiency, substituted labor-savers wherever I could, and started my first muddled set ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... made out she was hard aground, canted on her bilge, and had her ens'n flying, union down. It was breaking 'igh on the reef, and we laid well out, and sent a couple of boats. I didn't go in neither; only stood and looked on: but it seems they was all badly scared and muddled, and didn't know which end was uppermost. One on 'em kep' snivelling and wringing of his 'ands; he come on board, all of a sop like a monthly nurse. That Trent, he come first, with his 'and in a bloody rag. I was near 'em as I am to you; and I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have nothing to complain of. It is somewhat confusing. A 'kuss' sounds as if it ought to be a cushion, but it is not; it is a kiss, while a 'kissen' is a cushion. You muddled up the two words—people have done it before. I don't know much about this sort of thing myself; but you asked for a twenty mark kiss, and from your description of the girl some people might consider the price reasonable. Anyhow, I should not tell Harris. ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... a loophole for lots of our lessons," remarked Raymonde hopefully, as she personally conducted a party of new arrivals over the establishment. "For instance, if I get muddled over circulating decimals, I'll explain that my brains fall naturally into a mediaeval groove in these surroundings, and decimals weren't invented then, so that of course it's impossible for me to grasp them; and the same with geography—the map of Africa then had about ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... a vital thrust. Only a splendidly cultivated self-control prevented the blonde matron from retaliating upon the unfortunate who had muddled things. Even so, her eyes spoke whole shelves ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... Tryphaena, a most charming woman, travelling about here and there in search of pleasure." "But," objected Giton, "they are the very ones we are most anxious to avoid," whereupon he explained to the astonished Eumolpus the reasons for their enmity and for the danger which threatened us. So muddled did he become, at what had been told him, that he lost the power of thinking, and requested each of us to offer his own opinion. "Just imagine," said he, "that we are trapped in the Cyclops' cave: some way out must be found, unless we bring about a shipwreck, and free ourselves ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... bit of anything you like," smiled Lorna. "Rachel gets very muddled about me. I've such a sneaking weakness for Naples that I believe she thinks I'm an Italian at heart. That's a crime Rachel absolutely can't forgive. 'Foreign' is the last ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... rage, for he had a sense that he was going to be outwitted; the Mayor, Yram, and Mrs. Humdrum had already seen that George thought he had all the trumps in his own hand, but they did not know more. Dr. Downie was frightened, and Panky so muddled as to be ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... took her by the hand and led her into the house, with a dignity which would have been admirable, had it not been so pathetic. Miss Barnes felt that she was stepping off terra firma, and lighting on Mars, so strange and muddled was this new ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... have acquired by long practice in very various politics a way of making existing arrangements "do" with some slight patching. They are instinctively seized of the truth of Edmund Burke's maxim, "Innovation is not improvement." They have "muddled along" into precisely the institutions that suit any exigency, their sanest political philosophers recognizing that the exigency must always be most amenable to the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... to have met them last night, but I had to send an apology to Willie in the morning. It was then that he had the bright idea to invite you to fill the place, from a muddled notion that you could be of use. Willie is stupid sometimes. For it is clear that you are the last man able ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... and caused her to reflect for the first time that Chaffey's head waiter had long held a tolerably lucrative position, whilst his expenses must have been trivial; so much the better for her. On the other hand, she strongly resented his suspicions and warnings. In the muddled obscurity of Polly's consciousness there was a something which stood for womanly pride. She knew very well what dangers perpetually surrounded her, and she contrasted herself with the girls who weakly, or recklessly, threw ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... back to descriptions of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, when so many people fled for their lives! What nonsense! Were we not in the twentieth century? Wasn't there a Peace Palace at The Hague? My thoughts became muddled. ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... sentiment which had been stirred in her by Carnaby's startling act of cutting the plum tree down. Ah! let fools believe if they could that she was angry with the boy! She had never felt anger less or pride more. While others talked and argued, shilly-shallied, made love, muddled and made mistakes, her grandson, the man of the race that always ruled, had cut the knot for himself, without hesitation and without compunction, without consulting anyone or asking anyone's leave. That was the way the de Tracys had always acted. And it seemed to Mrs. ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in the case of any executor in the affairs of dead men, or receiver in the muddled business of the living. That accounts for such men's inflexibility in carrying out the provisions of unfeeling testators and the decrees of heartless courts. The law must be applied to the letter, the wishes of the deceased fulfilled ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... into interference with this matter. After all Godfrey was a fine young man whom his daughter cared for, and might do well in life, and he had struck him first after offering him intentional and pre-arranged insult. Such were the thoughts that flashed through his somewhat muddled brain. Also another, that they were too late. The evil was done and never ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... The dull debate, The dreary unimportant question, The pressure of affairs of State, A muddled brain, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... In his muddled fury the man began once again trying to hold her on the animal. It was backing slowly towards a stone seat in the balustrade, and man and woman swayed and ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... want's no watching, I'll lay. But I daresay those City folks, with their stocks going up and going down, and always bringing about the ruin of somebody or other, go which way they will, get their poor heads so muddled with figures that they can't believe there's such a thing ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... struggle with me to sit upright in that carriage in which the poor stricken mother sate so calmly—not to drop from the seat, which would have been worse than absurd of me. Well, all this has blackened Rome to me. I can't think about the Caesars in the old strain of thought; the antique words get muddled and blurred with warm dashes of modern, every-day tears and fresh grave-clay. Rome is spoiled to me—there's the truth. Still, one lives through one's associations when not too strong, and I have arrived at almost enjoying some things—the climate, for ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... innkeepers' nature in particular, does not change between Dover and Calais; yet they would hardly do us the discourtesy to think that our heads muddled so easily." ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... me but my meerschaum light, I behold a bearded man, Built upon capacious plan, Sabre-slashed in war or duel, Gruff of aspect, but not cruel, Metaphysically muddled, With strong beer a little fuddled, Slow in love, and deep in books, More sentimental than he looks, Swears new ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... eruption was the more lamentable from the fact that his poor wife heard this blare of discordant dogmas with unbelieving ears, while even little Kirsty gasped, exclaiming above her breath, "Ye're sair muddled, faither." ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... Post me up, that's a good girl! What I've heard has been so muddled. This hero business, for a starter—what about it? I thought it was an English duke that chartered ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... in his place," continued Fritz, "I should have said to myself that the mind often gives birth to strange fancies, particularly after a heavy supper, and that I had muddled my brain with rum; consequently, that all the things I imagined I had seen were only the chimeras of ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... a writer. But it is quite inaccurate to speak of obscure thought: it is language, the medium, which makes the trouble when there is any. His thought, allowing for the fantasticality of his humor in certain moods, is never muddled or unorganized: it is sane, consistent and worthy of attention. To say this, is still to regret ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... being knocked out is always a slow and painful business. The first thing that Ken's muddled brain took in was the surprising fact that he was lying in a real ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... in the direction he had taken, until the sound of his progress had died away. The shock of it all had considerably muddled my brain, and when at last I had adjusted my thoughts to the new conditions, a sensation of relief, of happiness, of joy (call it what you will), came upon me, and I could scarce restrain an impulse to toss my hat in the air. He was gone at last! But that was not the reason. I was safe ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... she said sincerely, "and believe your purpose was honourable. You have told me frankly all you suspect, and doubtless you have reasons. You have simply made a mistake, that is all. Percival Coolidge was not murdered; he killed himself because he had muddled my affairs, and knew he was about to be discovered. You have got upon a wrong trail. Will you accept my word for this, and drop ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... grateful I am for it, too; but I've never understood it, ma'am. Was it to save me from being blamed by the wicked police, or was it a dream you had, and the gentleman had, for I've heard what he said at the inquest, and it's muddled my head till I don't know where ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... memory of that day has never been wholly clear. Sodden with weariness, dazzled and muddled by the savage sun-glare, he followed, with eyes fixed, the rhythmically, monotonously moving feet of his leader, through an interminable desert of soft, clogging sand; a desert which dropped away ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... preferred her company to that of the other members of his family, and they often took short largely silent walks, usually down to the Salem Marine Railway where the Nautilus was undergoing repairs. His protracted silences were broken by the sudden vehement protests against the generally muddled aspect of affairs or longer monologues of inner questioning and search. He almost never referred to her or made her part of a conversation; she was free to dwell on her own emotions while he, with a corrugated brow, went on in ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... morning came, the captain was awakened by the pitching and tossing of the vessel, the rattle and clatter of the tackle overhead, and the noise of footsteps passing and repassing hither and thither across the deck. Perhaps he lay for a while turning the matter over and over in his muddled head, but he presently rang the bell, and Avary and ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... it, at only fifteen cents a glass. The best of our company tried to dissuade him, but to no avail. The poor mortal closed his "bargain" with the dramseller, and what did he get? A hardened conscience, a ruined home, a diseased body, a muddled brain, a heartbroken wife, wretched children, disappointed friends, triumphant enemies, days of remorse, nights of anguish, an unwept deathbed, an unhonored grave. And only to think that he is only one of many thousands! "What fools ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... circle of a hundred feet diameter was likely to receive the ball. One evening, about dusk, going into camp, I took a running jump over a ditch, and this rapid motion so frightened an honest German sentinel—probably a little muddled with lager—that he actually forgot to fire, and came at me in a more natural way with his musket clubbed. I escaped a broken head at the expense of a severely bruised arm. The rule for challenging, it used to be said, was to 'fire three ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... benevolent of them. They meant Queequeg's best happiness, I admit; but in their hasty zeal to befriend him, and from the circumstance that both he and the sharks were at times half hidden by the blood-muddled water, those indiscreet spades of theirs would come nearer amputating a leg than a tall. But poor Queequeg, I suppose, straining and gasping there with that great iron hook—poor Queequeg, I suppose, only prayed to his Yojo, and gave up his life into ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Terentyeva did not make these statements at one time, but at different intervals, inventing fresh details at each new examination and often getting muddled in her story. The implicated servant-girls at first denied their share in the crime, but, yielding to external pressure—like Terentyeva, they, too, were sent for frequent "admonition" to a local priest, called Tarashkevich, a ferocious anti-Semite—they ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... Turkey is muddled and murky, But the course she's resolved to pursue Is true to her mind, which we constantly find A ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... now with a reproving forefinger, "you are an incurable romanticist. The man disliked her and despised her. At any event, he assured himself that he did. Well, even so, this handsome stupid stranger held his eyes, and muddled his thoughts, and put errors into his accounts: and when he touched her hand he did not sleep that night as he was used to sleep. Thus he saw her, day after day. And they whispered that this handsome ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... Farewell." He wandered on blissfully until he reached the balcony beneath the library window. Here he paused and looked up, but to his dismay found that the window had been closed since his departure. The muddled state of his brain prevented him from suspecting that he had been discovered. He only knew that he felt the cold chills of the dawn all through his frame and he could not help longing for the pillows and warm blankets above. He ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... remember telling me that I ought to study Phyllotaxy? Well I have often wished you at the bottom of the sea; for I could not resist, and I muddled my brains with diagrams, etc., and specimens, and made out, as might have been expected, nothing. Those angles are a most wonderful problem and I wish I could see some one give a rational explanation ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... is that, sir," said the sergeant. "Things look quite muddled up to me. Now turn a little and look ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... powerful journal whose friends may be numerous and influential. Fortunately, however, a Select Committee of the House of Commons has taken a more sensible view of the Public Prosecutor and the duties he has so muddled, and recommended the abolition of his office. Should this step be taken, his duties will probably be performed by the Solicitor-General, and the press will be freed from a danger it had not the sense or the courage to avert. As for ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... 'Smith? Muddled his accounts! Nothing more likely; charges like this are not got up without some grounds of some sort; but as to intentional fraud, that's utter nonsense. Well, I'm off to the station, and I hope in half an hour's time Master Redstone will ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... particular what she had—so much younger—planned. The early suggestion, becoming through constant reiteration a part of her knowledge, had been followed and accomplished; and, as well, her later needs were served. Linda told herself that, in a world where a very great deal was muddled, she had been unusually fortunate. And this made her angry at her pervading lack of interest in whatever ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... in a deep communication trench, away back, where we had come together for a meal after a morning spent in digging. Torrential rain was falling. We were muddled and drenched and hustled by the flood, and we ate standing in single file, without shelter, under the dissolving sky. Only by feats of skill could we protect the bread and bully from the spouts that flowed from every point in space; and while we ate we ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... of heart; and the contrast between Carker the manager and his brother, who for some early dishonest act, long since repented of, remains always Carker the junior; and about Captain Cuttle, and that poor, muddled nautical philosopher, Captain Bunsby, and the Game Chicken, and Mrs. Pipchin, and Miss Tox; and Cousin Feenix with wilful legs so little under control, and yet to the core of him a gentleman; and the apoplectic Major Bagstock, the Joey ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... Muddled indeed I was. Again in my eventful career I felt myself tremble; I knew not what I should say, any savoir faire being quite gone. I had received a crumpler ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Kirby. In one hour his golden ambitions for the mine and for himself had been smashed. At best he saw no hope of getting the obsessed mine crew to work soon enough to save his present contracts. He would be lucky if, on non-receipt of their demanded increase, they did not follow Najib's muddled preachments to the point ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... invented by modern science as the substratum of the events which are spread through space and time beyond the reach of ordinary ponderable matter. Personally, I think that predication is a muddled notion confusing many different relations under a convenient common form of speech. For example, I hold that the relation of green to a blade of grass is entirely different from the relation of green to the event which is the life history of that blade for some short period, and is different ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... th' things that tooches us, my dear, was not so muddled, I should'n ha' had'n need to coom heer. If we was not in a muddle among ourseln, I should'n ha' been, by my own fellow weavers and workin' brothers, so mistook. If Mr. Bounderby had ever know'd me ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... it, Mr Anderson," continued the captain—"just as you muddled your part of the expedition; and the fact is that these slaver people have here an intricate what-do-you-call-it?—the same as the classical fellow. Here, you boys, it is not long since you left school: What did they call that puzzle? ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... and the traffic of war was surging forward ceaselessly in a muddled, confused, aimless sort of way, as it seemed to me, before I knew the system and saw the working of the brain behind it all. A long train of carts without horses stood, shafts down, on the muddy side of the road. Little blue and red flags fluttered above them. A group of soldiers were lounging ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... of the country called for a bold hand and found it. Lord North had muddled the finances of England almost as completely and almost as hopelessly as contemporary French financiers were muddling the finances of France. Pitt faced something that was not altogether unlike financial ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and muddled! I don't quite make out! Oh yes, I do now. I came down such a quelch that it knocked all the sense out of me, and my head feels all knocked on one side. But tell ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... only has knowledge; but I'll see it through. I've spoiled as good chances as ever a young man had that wants to make his way; but drink and cards, Michael, and the flare of this damned life at the centre—it got hold of me. It muddled, drowned the best that was in me. It's the witch's kitchen, is Dublin. Ireland's the only place in the world where they make saints of criminals and pray to them; where they lose track of time and think they're in eternity; where emotion is saturnine logic and death is the touchstone ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... medley, when the Canon made his appearance; and a most prepossessing figure he has, according to Flemish ideas. In my humble opinion his Reverence looked a little muddled or so; and, to be sure, the description I afterwards heard of his style of living, favours not a little my surmises. This worthy dignitary, what with his private fortune and the good things of the church, enjoys a ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... too great. In a case well known to me, a Clergyman imperilled his whole influence, to the verge of ruin, by the simple but effectual process of allowing money collected for a church-object to be mixed and "muddled" with his private funds. He was not business-like, and he was not at all well off. And somehow, when the time of reckoning came, the money had melted, he knew not whither. Strenuous exertions on the part of ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... at the three standing in front of him. His head was throbbing with the knock-down blow he had received, and he had not yet had time to gather the exact meaning of his sensations. The words Palmer Billy used suggested journeying, and somewhere in the muddled confusion of his mind there was a decided ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... have had dealings," said Norman. "He understood at once. I always know my way when I'm dealing with a big man. It's only the little people that are muddled and complex. I hope you'll not forget ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... been tremendous friends. Of course, she never knew anything about my being engaged to Gerald. I lent Fillmore the money to buy that piece, which gave Elsa her first big chance, and so she's very grateful. She says, if ever she gets the opportunity of doing me a good turn... Aren't things muddled? ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... said, patting her head complacently. "You don't understand a word of my stories, do you? And yet I can make the flesh creep on your great clumsy body—and yet I can hold your muddled mind, and make you like it. Poor devil!" He leaned back serenely in his chair, and looked my way again. Would the sight of me remind him of the words that had passed between us not a minute since? No! There was the pleasantly tickled self-conceit smiling ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... like it?" "I don't know, I was all pain, but I think I must at last; I was so muddled like and ill I could not move. Then he dressed and says, says he, 'If ever you tell I'll cut your bloody throat; now you say you were ill, and stopped at home from work', and he went away to his work." I guessed she had ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous |
