"Murky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of murky clouds generally observed over the surface of the Mediterranean previous to a violent storm or an earthquake. The ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... huddling together, some fled under the wide skirts of sable, which Darkness, climbing to the roof in fear, drew up after her; some hid with lesser shadows between columns of great girth, or in the remotest murky niches, or down in the black profound of resounding chasms; some, bewildered or quite blinded by the flashes of the co-eternal beam, dashed themselves against the stony walls, and fell crippled, gasping, staring, at our feet. And when, at last, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... despair. Safe may we sleep beneath thy care, Though banished, outcast, and reviled— Maiden! hear a maiden's prayer; Mother, hear a suppliant child! 720 Ave Maria! Ave Maria! undefiled! The flinty couch we now must share Shall seem with down of eider piled, If thy protection hover there. 725 The murky cavern's heavy air Shall breathe of balm if thou hast smiled; Then, Maiden! hear a maiden's prayer; Mother, list a suppliant child! Ave Maria! 730 Ave Maria! stainless styled! Foul demons of the earth and air, From this their wonted haunt exiled, Shall flee before thy presence fair. We bow ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... simple sweet presence drove away anything that "defiled or made a lie." Agias did not worship her; she was too winning; too cunning and pretty to attract the least reverence; but in her company the young Greek was insensibly raised pinnacles above the murky moral atmosphere in which most men and youths ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... the example of murder. Is she very weak, or very trustful in him, or infirm, or old? It gives a hideous courage to what would be mere slaughter otherwise; for there it is, a presence always about her, darkly menacing him with that penalty whose murky secret has a fascination for all secret and unwholesome thoughts. And when he struggles with his victim at the last, "though he should be hanged for it", it is a merciless wrestle, not with one weak life only, but with that ever- haunting, ever-beckoning shadow of the gallows, ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... understood what was the matter, for I had seen a similar case before. Yet for the moment a certain feeling of shyness made me edge away from her a little; and as I did so, she uttered a prolonged moan, and her almost bursting eyeballs vented hot, murky tears which trickled down ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... which abstracts from the matter.] By the way, I have never seen it noticed, that Milton was indebted for the hint of this immortal passage to a superb line-and-a-half, in Lucan's Pharsalia.] and upturn'd His nostril wide into the murky air, Sagacious of his ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... permit myself to criticise is your omission to slay the kid. That, however, was due, I take it, to the fact that you were interrupted. We will now proceed to examine the future. I cannot see that it is altogether murky. You have lost a good job, but there are others, equally good, for a man of your calibre. New York is crammed with dyspeptic millionaires who need an efficient physical instructor to look after them. Cheer up, Cuthbert, for the sun is ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... California, looking farther off than ever through the wonderfully transparent atmosphere, and for that very reason infinitely more beautiful, bends over all the matchless blue of its resplendent arch. Ah, the heaven of the Golden Land! To you, living beneath the murky skies of New England, how unimaginably lovely it is. A small poetess has said that she could not love a scene where the blue sky was always blue. I think it is not so with me. I am sure I never weary of the succession of rainless months, nor of the ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... loss was only two and one-half horse-power. In this respect the phenomenon followed the same rule as that to which telegraph wires are subject—namely, that the loss of insulation is greater in damp, murky weather when the insulators are covered with wet dust than during heavy rains when the insulators are thoroughly washed by the action of the water. In like manner a heavy rain-storm cleaned the tracks from the accumulations due chiefly ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... liberty to religious liberty, and emancipated disenthraldom from the dark despotism of yonder terrific prince of darkness! whose broad, black, piniony wings spread wide o'er the aerial concave like a dense cloud upon a murky sky?—(A-a-men!)—And ain't it, ye men of yards and measures, philosophical to make a noise about this?—(Amen!—yes!) Yes! yes! and I ain't ashamed to rejoice and shout aloud. Ay! as long as the prophet was ordered to stamp with his foot, I will stamp with my foot;—(here he ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... falsehood which, be it remembered, he had declared to Charles Fox upon his honor to be a truthful statement. The moralist may be a little puzzled how to make up his mind as to the bearing of this incident upon the character of George the Fourth. Does it relieve the murky gloom of George's life by one streak of light if we find that, after all, he did love Mrs. Fitzherbert to the last, and that in his dying moments he wished her portrait to go with him to the tomb? Or ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... bright moonlight lay like a long string of diamonds on the bosom of the lake; a blue, cloudless sky spread over our heads; but far away to the south a great bank of murky clouds, lined with silver, was momentarily rent by fierce flashes of forked lightning, followed by ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... to him that he woke almost immediately; the fire still burned, though low and fitfully on the hearth. Otto was sleeping, breathing quietly and regularly; the shadows had gathered close around him, thick and murky; with every passing moment the light died in the fireplace; he felt stiff with cold. In the utter silence he heard the clock in the village strike two. He shivered with a sudden and irresistible feeling of fear, and ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... Sleep and his sister Nightmare pay him a visit, and after a long parley, constrain him to accompany them to the Court of their brother Death. Hieing away through forests and dales, and over rivers and rocks, they alight at one of the rear portals of the City of Destruction which opens upon a murky region—the chambers of Death. On all hands are myriads of doors leading into the Land of Oblivion, each guarded by the particular death-imp, whose name was inscribed above it. The Bard passes by the portals of Hunger, where misers, idlers and gossips enter, of Cold, where scholars and travellers ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... nearing London; already the coquettish veil of smoke with which the "hub of the Universe" conceals the full horror of her ugliness from the eyes of critics, gave the summer sky a murky yellow tinge. Leonetta yawned, glanced across the vast city which she hoped would hence-forward be her home, and then suddenly recollecting that her mother and sister would probably be at King's Cross to meet her, quickly folded the letter that ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... hunting-grounds of his Huron allies. As we turn the ancient, worm-eaten page which preserves the simple record of his fortunes, a wild and dreary scene rises before the mind,—a chill November air, a murky sky, a cold lake, bare and shivering forests, the earth strewn with crisp brown leaves, and, by the water-side, the bark sheds and smoking camp-fires of a band of Indian hunters. Champlain was of the party. There was ample occupation for his gun, for the morning was ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... tenderest green of spring, and the river beyond, calm and transparent as a mirror, and the ships fixed and motionless as statues on its surface, and the whole landscape bathed in a flood of that bright Canadian sun which so seldom pierces our murky atmosphere on the other side of the Atlantic. I began to think that persons were to be envied who were not forced by the necessities of their position to quit these engrossing interests and lovely scenes, for the purpose of proceeding ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... griefs that will come? Well, it will limit them, for one thing; it will prevent them from absorbing the whole of our nature. There will always be a Goshen in which there is 'light in the dwelling,' however murky may be the darkness that wraps the land. There will always be a little bit of soil above the surface, however weltering and wide may be the inundation that drowns our world. There will always be a dry and warm place in the midst of the winter, a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... apothegms, familiar at their own firesides, to bear upon the principles he was inculcating, but flowers of rhetoric he knew would be feeble weapons for the warfare in which he was engaged. He once indeed complimented Sheil, by calling him "the brightest star that ever rose in the murky horizon of his afflicted country;" but that suited the man ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... heard the swift feet of Dapple splash out upon the road. The night was growing still and close, and the gusts occurred at longer intervals. The murky cloud had covered the sky, utterly obscuring the moonlight, and there was a steady and heavy ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... were hours on the road. The murky atmosphere, obscured by storm-clouds, made the evening grow dark earlier than is usual in northern latitudes. The heavy rumbling of the wretched vehicle, the cramped position in which they were obliged to sit, the fatigue ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... gloomy night is gath'ring fast, Loud roars the wild, inconstant blast, Yon murky cloud is foul with rain, I see it driving o'er the plain; The hunter now has left the moor. The scatt'red coveys meet secure; While here I wander, prest with care, Along the lonely banks ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... explode Spain, give England a cotton-field, Ireland a hospital, and Africa a hell. This could by no means seem sufficient. The crew of the Pinta shouted, "Land! Land!"—peering through the dark at the new shores; the Spanish nation chanted, "Gold! Gold!"—gazing out through murky desires toward the wondrous West; but it is only with the cry of "Man! Man!" as at the sight of new cerebral shores and wealth of more than golden humanities, that the true America is discovered and announced. So whatever reason we have to assert for America a really ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... a human being, this or that one, not a crowd. She had been starving, killing the self which was her value. This home on the Devon coast received her like an earthly paradise; looking back on New Wanley, she saw it murky and lurid; it was hard to believe that the sun ever shone there. But for the most part, she tried to keep it altogether from her mind, tried to dissociate her husband from his public tasks, and to remember him as the man with whom her life was irrevocably bound ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... confronted Locke, for the place was well guarded. Several henchmen darted forth from dark corners of the murky place ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... pertness, her Anglo-Saxon vivacity, were gone; her face was wooden, expressionless; her restless eyes slow-moving and dull; her cheek-bones, always noticeably high, looked higher, and her skin was murky ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... lines of crimson lightning belched from the German trenches as the explosives broke about them. To this lurid picture was added the spectacle of burning oil, which the British threw on the enemy lines. Great clouds of pinkish colored smoke rolled across the country from the flaming liquid and the murky sky threw back myriad colors ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... the scaffold, And he turned him to the crowd; But they dared not trust the people, So he might not speak aloud. But he looked upon the heavens, And they were clear and blue, And in the liquid ether The eye of God shone through: Yet a black and murky battlement Lay resting on the hill, As though the thunder slept within— All ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... in a friendly manner. Yes, the bright day had settled to the threatening of storm. The air was heavy and murky and cut with the promise of coming sleet. Willard drew the girl's hand through his arm and they ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the Monongahela River as "murky"—but where's the boy who ever basked in its cooling waves who will not qualify the statement that its waters are the clearest, its depths the most delightful, its ripples the softest ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... the air with smoke. At the same time the dry grass about the seamen catching fire, they were surrounded by so dense an atmosphere that it was impossible for some moments to see what was going forward. The wind, however, soon blowing aside the murky veil, the fleet of merchantmen were seen passing quickly down, while the steamers took up their position ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... came before the critical tribunals, public and private, recognised or irresponsible, there was much lamentation even in quarters where a manlier humour might have been expected, over the poet's choice of a subject. With facile largeness of censure, it was pronounced a murky subject, sordid, unlovely, morally sterile, an ugly leaf out of some ancient Italian Newgate Calendar. One hinted in vain that wisdom is justified of her children, that the poet must be trusted to judge of the capacity of his own theme, and that it is his conception and treatment ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... substitutes for history, for a written or printed language, embody the story of the Flood. One of these pictures, for example, shows us a man afloat with his family in a rude boat on a shoreless sea; in another, the raven of Bible story is cleaving on black wing the murky sky; in a third, the heads of the hills appear in the background like islands emerging from the waste of waters, while, with such confusion as is inseparable from traditionary lore, the raven is substituted for the dove, and appears making ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... traveling now,—back into the rumpled mountains where the blue haze hung low and protecting as though over mysteries and treasures which awaited one man and one alone. Robert Fairchild momentarily had forgotten the foreboding omens which, like murky shadows, had been cast in his path by a beaten, will-broken father. He only knew that he was young, that he was strong, that he was free from the drudgery which had sought to claim him forever; he felt only the surge of excitement that can come with new surroundings, new ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... noise or bombast, and, by its gentle influence, softens asperities and wins a smile from the face of sorrow, or discouragement, or anger. Its presence transforms discord into harmony, irradiates gloom, and evokes rare flowers from the murky soil of discontent. Whatever storms may rage elsewhere and whatever darkness may enshroud, it ever keeps its place as the center of a circle of calm and light. It is Venus of Milo come to life, silently distilling ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... States of America at the port of St. Kentigern was sitting alone in the settled gloom of his private office. Yet it was only high noon, of a "seasonable" winter's day, by the face of the clock that hung like a pallid moon on the murky wall opposite to him. What else could be seen of the apartment by the faint light that struggled through the pall of fog outside the lustreless windows presented the ordinary aspect of a business sanctum. There were a shelf of fog-bound admiralty law, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... few hundred piasters? No, billah! no. What is unlawful by virtue of the Divine Law the wealth of all the Trust-Kings of America can not make lawful. And what is so by virtue of your Canon Law concerns not me. You may angle, you and your Church, as long as you please in the murky, muddy waters of Bind-and-Loosen, I have nothing to ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... away, and the rain admitted freely upon their beds, whence the most awful lightning flashes could be seen, making "darkness visible." It appeared as if the genius of the storm were driving through the murky clouds in his chariot of fire to awaken the slumbering creation, and make them feel and acknowledge his power. It was, indeed, a grand lesson to human pride, to contemplate the terrors of a tornado through the trembling walls ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... 1779, and even the succeeding winter and spring,—scarcely able to hear the far-off noises of the great struggle in which he had hitherto borne so rugged a part, and of which the victorious issue was then to be seen by him, though dimly, through many a murky rack of ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... gold Or silver; I with pray'rs and fasting mine; And Francis his in meek humility. And if thou note the point, whence each proceeds, Then look what it hath err'd to, thou shalt find The white grown murky. Jordan was turn'd back; And a less wonder, then the refluent sea, May at God's pleasure work ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... the ruined Legation lines and picked our way slowly though the debris which still stood stacked on the streets. Fatigue parties of many corps were finishing their work of attempting to restore some order and cleanliness, and clouds of murky dust hung heavily in the air. All round these narrow streets there was an atmosphere of exhaustion and disorder, crushed on top of one another, which oppressed one so much after the open streets, that an immense nostalgia suddenly swept over ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... calling aloud into the darkness. An artillery train passed, covering me with mud to my eyes. Finally, I picked up my friends, and we marched on through villages illumined by the camp fires which were flickering under a driving rain, through a murky country which the flash of cannon suddenly showed to be covered with a multitude of men, of horses, and of ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... made me feel a little more like the self I thought I knew. So I watched the lightning flare and string along the horizon. Some time in the night thunder awakened me. The imminence of a severe storm forced us to roll out and look after the tent. What a pitch black night! Down through the murky, weird blackness shot a wonderful zigzag rope of lightning, blue-white, dazzling; and it disintegrated, leaving segments of fire in the air. All this showed in a swift flash—then we were absolutely blind. I could not see ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... once given over to the Spaniard. Here were still his forbidding abodes of concrete and adobe, standing cold and indomitable against the century. From the murky fissure, the eye saw, flung against the sky, the tangled filigree of his Moorish balconies. Through stone archways breaths of dead, vault-chilled air coughed upon him; his feet struck jingling iron rings in staples stone-buried for half a cycle. Along these ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... novel excitement of the brief encounter with Matheny or not. When Kentuck had left him, he stood for some time irresolute, with no wish for rest, and no desire to go anywhere in particular. He looked up to the sky. It was murky with filmy fog-clouds and dust not yet settled to the earth. Not a star was visible in the whole arch of heaven. He looked down the street, and his eyes, accustomed to the darkness, could just faintly distinguish the outlines of the wagons that crowded it. ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... Public are taught to look with delight upon murky old masters, with dismally demoniac trees, and dull waters of lead, colourless and like ice; upon rocks that make geologists wonder, their angles are so impossible, their fractures are so new. Thousands are given for uncomfortable Dutch sun-lights; but ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... very low as she turned into the dismal street and trod the muddy pavement. A few illusions shrivelled up that wintry morning under that murky sky. The name she was so fearful of staining; the name she had fondly imagined as noised from mouth to mouth; the name for which she had demanded so great a sacrifice, and had sacrificed so much herself, was ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... a narrow street. I had an impression of tall houses looking fantastically dilapidated in the dim gas-light, of little shops on the ground floor, and of little murky gateways leading to the habitations above. Beside the gateway of No. 11 was a small workman's drinking shop, sometimes called in Paris a zinc on account of the polished zinc bar which is its principal feature. Untidy, slouching people filled ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... in the early eighties, in Mornington, Ohio, in a section of that great, steel-manufacturing city which was neither city, suburb, nor country,—but a muddy, green-splashed, murky ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... inseparable friend. Sir Charles's speech, which he counted to have been the best of his life, dealt briefly with the leading political topics of the day—Home Rule and the Radical programme—but soon passed to the personal issue. He recalled the change from the murky dreariness of March to the height of summer loveliness which reigned about them, and the change no less great in the moral atmosphere. He reviewed the history of the attacks that had been made, the avowed determination to prevent ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... Boches to hear. I wasn't in doubt long, for they began to send over the "Berthas" in flocks. The "Bertha" is an uncommonly ugly breed of nine-inch shell loaded with H.E. It comes sailing over with a querulous "squeeeeeee", and explodes with an ear-splitting crash and a burst of murky, dull-red flame. ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... slowly, grumbling and murmuring among themselves. The captain's manner, as he urged them on with oaths and threats, convinced me we were in danger. I looked again to windward. The one little cloud had enlarged to a great bank of murky vapor, and the sea at the horizon ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... eyes were resting upon me with that disapproval I had come to know. To her, sociology and evolution and all "isms" were new-fangled inventions and murky with offense; to touch them was defilement, and in disclosing them to John Mayrant I was a corrupter of youth. She gathered it all up into a word that was radiant with a kind of ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... chosen. On this climbing hill, While, lost in ecstacy, I stand and gaze On the fresh beauties of a world disrobed, How does thy searching breath, oh, infant Day! Inspire the languid frame with new-born life, And all its sinking powers rejuvenate, Freshening the murky hollows of the soul! Good Heaven! How glorious this morning hour, Nature's new birth-time! All her mighty frame, In lowly vale, on lofty mountain-top, And wide savannah, stirs, with sprightful life, Life ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... another's; whether his child shall receive the protection of its natural guardian, or be ranked among the live-stock of the estate, to be disposed of as the caprice or interest of the master may dictate; whether the sun of knowledge shall irradiate the hut of the peasant, or the murky cloud of ignorance brood darkly over it; whether "every one shall have the liberty to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience," or man assume the prerogative of Jehovah and impiously seek to plant himself upon the throne of the Almighty. These considerations are all involved in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the side, and peered at the coming boats, while Hilary stood fretting and fuming at his side. There was, however, something so ominous in the look of the boats, dimly-seen though they were through the murky night, that the lieutenant did give orders, and cutlasses and boarding-pikes were seized, the men then clustering about ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... walls were corroded by yellowish spots and streaked by drippings from the roof gutters. The walls went straight up to the eaves with no molding or ornament except the angles on the drain pipes at each floor. Here the sink drains added their stains. The glass window panes resembled murky water. Mattresses of checkered blue ticking were hanging out of several windows to air. Clothes lines stretched from other windows with family washing hanging to dry. On a third floor line was a baby's diaper, still implanted with filth. This crowded tenement was bursting ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... the recent works of Turner.[20] Again, take any important group of trees, I do not care whose—Claude's, Salvator's, or Poussin's—with lateral light (that in the Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca, or Gaspar's sacrifice of Isaac, for instance:) Can it be seriously supposed that those murky browns and melancholy greens are representative of the tints of leaves under full noonday sun? I know that you cannot help looking upon all these pictures as pieces of dark relief against a light wholly proceeding from the distances; but they are nothing of the kind—they ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... was that of a vast depot where, in ordered spaces, and under careful arrangement, goods of every kind were heaped and pent. Though the light was murky and the air stifling, men moved about briskly; and in places he saw workmen with saws and hammers making packages for shipments. Down a path between the piles he walked slowly, wondering if the man of whose genius there were here such abounding proofs could have been his father's slave? If so, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... days were brighter; it began with wholesale and audacious requests for self, then towards the end passed into vague generalities for the welfare of others. And just here it was that the lines of grey turned brighter and tried to struggle out of the murky atmosphere. The sight was pathetic, yet deeply significant. Mother understood its meaning. There was hope. Behind the prayer for others still shone at least an echo ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... middle main Come winging, and their shrieks are shoreward borne, When ocean-loving cormorants on dry land Besport them, and the hern, her marshy haunts Forsaking, mounts above the soaring cloud. Oft, too, when wind is toward, the stars thou'lt see From heaven shoot headlong, and through murky night Long trails of fire white-glistening in their wake, Or light chaff flit in air with fallen leaves, Or feathers on the wave-top float and play. But when from regions of the furious North It lightens, and when thunder fills the halls Of Eurus and of Zephyr, all the fields With brimming ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... Jupiter lowered its murky disk as the miles streamed past, breeding a legion of shadows welcome to the fabric-clad monster skimming through them and to the creatures who blinked and stirred as night approached. The stream broadened into shallow pockets; patches of swamp appeared ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... vulgar—but to the practical-minded Billy it was more like an envious involuntary swallowing at the sight of another's drinking. Then the pianist mounted his wooden throne, where, amid the dust and tramplings of low conquests and in the murky air, he began to toll out the bells of ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... ringing hammers, and suffer the iron to grow cool; and the sooty spectre in brown paper cap, labouring at the bellows, leans on the handle for a moment, and permits the asthmatic engine to heave a long-drawn sigh, while he glares through the murky smoke and ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... a stage that is always set. The youthful Dickens watching the murky Thames found the setting for his moments of horror, just as surely as cheery coach-houses, many of them but little changed to this day, bespoke the entrance of Wellers senior and junior. London gave to Wilde's exotic genius the scenes wherein his brilliantly futile ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... sobs, oaths and insults, fumbled awkwardly at the great mirror that had opened one night, before his eyes, to let Christine pass to the murky dwelling below. He pushed, pressed, groped about, but the glass apparently obeyed no one but Erik ... Perhaps actions were not enough with a glass of the kind? Perhaps he was expected to utter certain words? When ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... with a message to Captain Bayard, we pushed on to Lithodendron Creek, a distance of thirteen miles, and found about an acre of water, four inches deep, in the bed of the stream, under the shadow of a sandstone cliff. It was miserable stuff—thick, murky, and warm—but it was better than nothing; I sent a soldier back to the command, and sat down with Frank under ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... 1857 General Harney came very near being appointed Governor of Utah. And so it came very near being Harney governor and Cradlebaugh judge! —two men who never had any idea of fear further than the sort of murky comprehension of it which they were enabled to gather from the dictionary. Simply (if for nothing else) for the variety they would have made in a rather monotonous history of Federal servility and helplessness, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... collar, felt the demoniacal strength shooting down his arm, the fever at his finger tips. He saw the terrified face of his victim, a strong man but impotent in his grasp; heard the splash of the turgid waters; saw himself, his lust for vengeance unsatisfied, peering downwards through the dim and murky gloom. It was not only a physical nightmare which seized him. His brain, too, was his accuser. He saw with a hideous clarity that even the excuse of motive was denied him. It was a sense of personal loss which had driven him out ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... words he slid off into the night. From somewhere in the murky middle distance came a scornful 'Hawg!' and he was gone, leaving me with a settled conviction that, while I had frequently had occasion, since my expedition to Sanstead began, to describe affairs as complex, their complexity had now reached its height. With a watchful Pinkerton's ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... length we're off for Turkey, Lord knows when we shall come back! Breezes foul and tempests murky May unship us in a crack. But, since Life at most a jest is, As philosophers allow, Still to laugh by far the best is, Then laugh on—as I do now. Laugh at all things, Great and small things, Sick or well, at sea or shore; While we're quaffing, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... by. The lowering sun colored only the upper half of the crater walls. Far down the depths were murky blue. Again Gale felt the insupportable silence. The red haze became a transparent veil before his eyes. Sinister, evil, brooding, waiting, seemed that yawning abyss. Ladd staggered along the trail, at times he crawled. The Yaqui gained; he ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... shore, much less encounter the seething billows on the Eddystone. As each night drew on, one by one the lights glimmered out above the rock, until the bright beams of the fully illuminated lantern poured like a flood through the murky air, and then men went home to their firesides, relieved to know that, whatever might be wrong, the keepers were at all events able to ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... signifies the river of wailing; Pyriphlegethon, the river that burns with fire; Acheron, the river of woe; and the Styx, another river of the lower world, the river of hatred. Thus Homer, in describing "Pluto's murky abode," says: ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... 6th of May, the First Consul was encamped with his whole army between Casale and Turin on the 26th of the same month. It had rained the whole day; but, as often happens in Italy, toward evening the sky had cleared, changing in a few moments from murky darkness to loveliest azure, and the stars ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... flat of the oar Marcu was handling, and every time Mehmet had saved it from breaking by a deft stroke of his own oar or by some other similar movement. He was a waterman and knew the ways of the water as well as Marcu himself knew the murky roads of the marshes. The gipsy could not help but admire the powerful quick movements of the Tartar—yet—to be forced into selling his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... adoration of all Venice—the gayest of the gay—the most lovely where all were beautiful—but still the young wife of the old and intriguing Mentoni, and the mother of that fair child, her first and only one, who now, deep beneath the murky water, was thinking in bitterness of heart upon her sweet caresses, and exhausting its little life in struggles to call ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the bright sun, Which slowly, slowly to extinction goes, The while she, girt with splendour burning lies; Yields to her star antagonistic fief Through that which towards the sky to Heaven ascends. Black smoke, and sombre fog of murky hue Concealing thus his radiance from our eyes, And veiling that which makes her burn and shine. And so my soul, illumined and inflamed By radiance divine, would fain display The brightness of her own effulgent thought; The lofty ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... of a great vapour-cloud looking like an immense wall being momentarily lighted up "by bursts of forked lightning like large serpents rushing through the air. After sunset this dark wall resembled a blood-red curtain, with edges of all shades of yellow, the whole of a murky tinge, through which gleamed fierce flashes of lightning." As Professor Judd observes, the abundant generation of atmospheric electricity is a familiar phenomenon in all volcanic eruptions on a grand scale. The steam-jets rushing through the orifices of the earth's crust ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... was inducted into the office of President of the United Slates. It was at that time far from being an enviable position. At home the country was rent into contending factions. Our foreign affairs were in a condition of the utmost perplexity, and evidently approaching a dangerous crisis. The murky clouds of war, which had for years overshadowed Europe, seemed rolling hitherward, filling the most sanguine and hopeful minds with deep apprehension. Russia, under its youthful Emperor Alexander, was rising to a prominent ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... swept the beach, the invaders did indeed waver for a moment—so closely it resembled the real thing. As the smoke lifted, however, by the murky glare of the torches they were seen to be less demoralised than infuriated. And now, upon the volley's echo, a drum banged thrice, and from a boat just beyond the water's edge the ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... though, to flush out the gutters. We needed it a month ago.—I say, Hackh, if you don't mind, you might as well cheer up. From now on, it's pure heads and tails. We're all under fire together." Glancing out of window at the murky sky, he added thoughtfully, "One excellent side to living without hope, maskee fashion: one isn't specially afraid. I'll take you to your office, and you can make a start. Nothing else to ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... scent-laden, from Madagascar. The moon was shining in tropical splendour, paling the lustre of the attendant stars, and making the glorious Milky Way but a faint shadow of its usual resplendent road. Gradually from the westward there arose a murky mass of cloud, fringed at its upper edges with curious tinted tufts of violet, orange, and crimson. These colours were not brilliant, but plainly visible against the deep blue sky. Slowly and solemnly the intruding gloom overspread the sweet splendour of the shining sky, creeping like a death-shadow ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... death. Unsexed women, liberated thieves, and bloodthirsty tramps prey on the unwary, the wounded, or the feeble. On April 3Oth, the great fort of Issy falls into the hands of the government. Blazing shells rain, in the murky night air, down on Paris. Continuous fighting from April 2d until May 21st makes the regions of Auteuil, Neuilly, and Point ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... night is gath'ring fast, Loud roars the wild inconstant blast; Yon murky cloud is foul with rain, I see it driving o'er the plain; The hunter now has left the moor, The scatter'd coveys meet secure; While here I wander, prest with care, Along the lonely ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... rotund and noble product of the truck-farm in varying aspects and with varying accessories. Sometimes he posed it, gallantly cleft asunder, on the corner of the bran-bin, with its umber and chrome standing out boldly against a background of murky bitumen; and sometimes he placed it on the threshold of the barn door, with a rake or a pitchfork alongside, and other squashes (none too certain in their perspective) looming up from ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... about five minutes without any apparent diminution of force. It then subsided into fitful and convulsive jets, as if making a last effort, and finally disappeared with a deep growl of disappointment. All was now quiet save the gurgling of the murky water as it sought its way back. Zoega said it was not done yet—that this was only a beginning. I took my sketch-book and resolved to seize the next opportunity for a good view of the eruption, taking, in the mean time, a general outline of ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... breakfast and the sincere apologies of the hotel people did much to restore his good humor. But a certain haziness grew in his mind as to who was who, and at times the disquieting thought skidded through his murky brain that he might be in the enemy's camp for all he knew. Angus and Mrs. Angus had said, "Do what you think is right and vote for Hastings," and that was plain and simple and easily understood. But now things seemed to ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... Mongols. He was ordered, but refused, to write and advise capitulation, and every effort was subsequently made to induce him to own allegiance to the conquerors. He was kept in prison for three years. "My dungeon," he wrote, "is lighted by the will-o'-the-wisp alone; no breath of spring cheers the murky solitude in which I dwell. Exposed to mist and dew, I had many times thought to die; and yet, through the seasons of two revolving years, disease hovered around me in vain. The dank, unhealthy soil to me became Paradise itself. For there ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... all very well for Hal to be a main feature in her life, blessing it with her friendship, while she turned kindly, unseeing eyes away from the corners where the murky shadows lay: Hal, who knew about the mad, discreditable marriage and its violent termination, and probably also of her mother's insatiable thirst for admiration and ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... lift his hat to look up at the Bell tower when he came to the old church on his return. He halted there a moment, from habit: and knew that it was growing dark, and that the steeple rose above him, indistinct and faint, in the murky air. He knew, too, that the Chimes would ring immediately; and that they sounded to his fancy, at such a time, like voices in the clouds. But he only made the more haste to deliver the Alderman's letter, and get out of the way before they began; for he dreaded to hear them tagging 'Friends ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... seen, whole troops left the waning squadrons, and rushed to hide themselves from the ferocity of the tempest. To right and left nought could be descried but the broad expanse of the moor, and the figures of their fellow-rebels seen dimly through the murky night, plodding onwards through the sinking moss. Those who kept together—a miserable few—often halted to rest themselves, and to allow their lagging comrades to overtake them. Then onward they went again, still hoping for assistance, reinforcement, and supplies; onward again, through ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... regions safe and sure, * And against froward foes bars every gate: Bold lion, hero, saint, e'en if you call * Seraph or Sovran [FN493] he with all may rate! The poorest supplicant rich from him returns, * All words to praise him were inadequate. He to the day of peace is saffron Morn, * And murky Night in furious warfare's bate. Bow 'neath his gifts our necks, and by his deeds * As King of freeborn [FN494] souls he 'joys his state: Allah increase for us his term of years, * And from his lot avert all ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... dark night with but a glimpse of the new moon when Harry left Captain McBean. From Bow Street to the "Hand of Pork" in Long Acre was only a few hundred yards, but murky enough, and Harry took Mr. Gay's ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... and let it, rolling its long sound, Speak to the surge below, that we may gain Tidings from those who traverse the wide main. Or tread we now some spot of wizard-land, And mark the sable trump, that may command The brazen doors to fly, and with loud call 180 Scare the grim giant in his murky hall! Hail, solitary castle! that dost crown This desert summit, and supreme look down On the long-lessening landscape stretched below; Fearless to trace thy inmost haunts we go! We climb the steps:—No warning signs are sent, No fiery shapes flash ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... of course more free to take after he had left the house. He walked up the Bayswater Road, but he stopped short, under the murky stars, before the modern church, in the middle of the square that, going eastward, opened out on his left. He had had his brief stupidity, but now he understood. She had guaranteed to Milly Theale through Mrs. Stringham that Kate didn't care ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... Grayskin roamed the forest that he might become more familiar with the place. Late in the afternoon he happened to squeeze through some thickets behind a clearing where the soil was muddy and slimy, and in the centre of it was a murky pool. This open space was encircled by tall pines almost bare from age and miasmic air. Grayskin was displeased with the place and would have left it at once had he not caught sight of some bright green calla leaves which grew ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... is rapidly passing from murky gloom to obscurity. Gusts of icy rain and sleet are sweeping full against a man who, though driving, bows his head so low that he cannot see his horses. The patient beasts, however, plod along the miry ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... morning, with the valley still gray and murky before the dawn and damp with bitter cold, Gral was gone in advance of the others. He clambered down to the river and there he pursued his way—far along toward the place where it widened into shallows. ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... aslant towards the candle-end, which threw a murky yellow light upon the background of the garret, contrasting oddly with the thin, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... it in dread, and wearies it with cares; And even when evil acts are of the past, Still gnaw the old transgressions bitterly. Add, too, that frenzy, peculiar to the mind, And that oblivion of the things that were; Add its submergence in the murky ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... my eyes were not as sharp as Miranda's. But presently from somewhere in the murky dusk I heard Bumpo singing his African comic songs with the full force of his enormous voice. And in a little, by peering and peering in the direction of the sound, I at last made out a dim mass of tattered, splintered wreckage—all ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... left Doctor Franklin predicting to the discouraged remnant of the constitutional convention that the nation then formed would be a "rising sun" in the constellation of the nations. The sun, however, was destined to rise through a bank of dark and murky clouds, for the Constitution could not take effect until it was ratified by nine of the thirteen States; and when it was submitted to the people, who selected State conventions for the purpose of ratifying or rejecting the proposed plan of government, ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... degradation. That men are becoming alive to this; that students of political economy solemnly warn the producer what responsibility is his; and that the certainty of some instant step as vital and inevitable is plain,—are gleams of light in this murky and sombre sky, from which it would seem at times only the thunderbolt could ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... Reckless of toil and danger, if he win The tributary meed of grateful hearts. From pavement rough, or frozen ground, His engine's rattling wheels resound, And soon before his eyes The lurid flames, with horrid glare, Mingled with murky vapors rise, In wreathy folds upon the air, And veil ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the 'Red Lion,' or whatever they call it." He put a hand, rather timidly, on her sleeve, and Toni allowed him to lead her towards the entrance of the hotel, whose lamps shone bravely through the fog, making blurred splashes of yellow light in the murky grey gloom. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... point of brilliance in the murky gloom. It showed, on the floor where they stood, a litter of dried vegetation—food, doubtless placed there as an offering. It was dry now, and dusty, and through it there shone the bleak whiteness of bones. Beyond was the floor, and beyond that.... The whiteness that had been but a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... embarrassed as he was, hardly knowing what he was doing. He seized the oars and rowed out again, towards the island. The evening was wondrously calm. Now, when he was alone, he realised how deep was his despair; another disappointment, another fall, the very worst! And not a star in the murky night! He suddenly remembered Hanka, who probably had looked for him to-day; who perhaps was seeking him even now. No; Hanka was not fair; Hanka was dark; she did not radiate, but she allured. But how was it—didn't she ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... overcast with dense, murky vapours, which totally hid the sun, and the air was excessively hot, moist, and sultry as before a thunderstorm—an unusual phenomenon in Womla. Black boulders and crags, speckled with lichens, and carpeted with ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... when the hour of rehearsal drew nigh, conducted Aristide to the murky recesses of a dirty little theatre in the Batignolles, where Aristide performed such prodigies of repercussion that he was forthwith engaged to play the drum, the kettle-drum, the triangle, the cymbals, the castagnettes ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... only response. He was too chagrined, puzzled, and disappointed to venture upon a reply, and after this one lurid gleam of unnatural mirth the murky gloom of the day seemed to settle down ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... old Scotia, and love thee I will, Till the heart that now beats in my bosom is still. My forefathers loved thee, for often they drew Their dirks in defence of thy banners of blue; Though murky thy glens, where the wolf prowl'd of yore, And craggy thy mountains, where cataracts roar, The race of old Albyn, when danger was nigh, For thee stood resolved still to conquer ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... stand and touched a button. Instantly the scene changed; fields, forests, streams and hills ran by in a murky blur, and then a larger town flashed on the mirror. Here the same stir and alertness characterized the scene. The gaze of every inhabitant was fixed on the threatening horizon. Rapidly the scenes shifted at the king's will, ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben |
