"Quicksand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is wanting to Government, but reformation. When Ministry rests upon public opinion, it is not indeed built upon a rock of adamant; it has, however, some stability. But when it stands upon private humour, its structure is of stubble, and its foundation is on quicksand. I repeat it again—He that supports every Administration, subverts all Government. The reason is this. The whole business in which a Court usually takes an interest goes on at present equally well, in whatever hands, whether high or low, wise or foolish, ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... floundered more hopelessly into the quicksand of Margaret's enchantment, and when he tried to write to Laura Nesbit, half-formed shames fluttered and flushed across his mind. So often he sat alone for long night hours in his attic bedroom in vague agonies and self ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... loud grief subsided to a lower key, and her voice grew by degrees monotonous and despairing as the turning tide on a quicksand, before bad weather,—not diminished, but deeper drawn within itself; and the low moan came regularly with each breath, while the tears flowed steadily. The first wild tempest had swept by, and the more enduring ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... Betsy cried outright as she heartily kissed him good-bye. When the weather became mild again, Paul engaged a small fishing craft and went down the coast to the vicinity of the wreck but his efforts were in vain. His armour by that time was buried far below in the quicksand so he abandoned the search ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... mysterious interviews at the Arlington; the hurried exposure; the frantic efforts to avoid it; the malignant gratification shown by the Marshses, "we built the foundation on which they grew; we'll hurl them from it into a quicksand from which they will never emerge;" the admissions of guilt made by the unhappy Secretary at a moment when, as it had been suggested, he was contemplating suicide; the imprisonment in his own house; their style of living; the fact of their appearance at a ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... which the water entered so fast, as to almost prevent them from going deeper. They, however, proceeded through another bed of blue clay, twenty or twenty-two feet, and came to a fine yellow sand, resembling quicksand, into which they dug three feet and stopped, having found sufficient water. The whole depth of the ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... taking his hat off and showing her the face of a man of thirty—"Harvey Miller. Me an' my side-kicker was drivin' a bunch of Three Bar beeves to Lazette an' we was fools enough to run afoul of that quicksand at Double Fork, about five miles down the crick. We've bogged down about forty head an' I've come for help. You got ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... looked towards the river, and observing some islands in it, my plan was instantly formed. If I could only reach the river, I would swim out and get behind one of the islands. And the river being high and turbid, with a quicksand bottom, I did not believe they would venture to come after me. (I had learned to swim when a boy, and that now was my means of salvation.) I started for the river as soon as the last Indian had passed me, "double quick," ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... cheerily tramping along, going they know not where, nor care much either, so it be not in retreat. Ready to make roads, throw up works, tear up railroads, or hew out and build wooden bridges; or, best of all, to go for the Johnnies under hot sun or heavy rain, through swamp and mire and quicksand. They marched ten miles to storm Fort McAllister. And how the cheers broke from them when the pop pop pop of the skirmish line began after we came in sight of Savannah! No man who has seen but not shared their life may ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Turnbull had an abstract knowledge of science and some of its applications to navigation, which was worse. The presence of the god or fairy can only be deduced from the fact that they never definitely ran into anything, either a boat, a rock, a quicksand, or a man-of-war. Apart from this negative description, their voyage would be difficult to describe. It took at least a fortnight, and MacIan, who was certainly the shrewder sailor of the two, realized that they were sailing west into the Atlantic and were probably by this time past the Scilly ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... Boyd, his deep bass voice lowered to a whisper. "I be 'feard ter quit the trail furder. 'Pinnock's Mis'ry' be hyar-abouts somewhar, a plumb quicksand, what a man got into an' floundered an' sank, an' floundered agin, an' whenst they fund him his hair war white an' his mind deranged. Or else we-uns mought run off'n a bluff somewhar, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the shin by one of the horses and the doctor ordered him to stay at the Forester's for the present. Innstetten undertook to drive home in his place. Sidonie Grasenabb rode part of the way with Effi and Crampas, till a small stream with a quicksand bottom was encountered, when she left the sleigh and joined her family in their carriage. Crampas who had been sent by Innstetten to look after the ladies in his sleigh, was now alone with Effi. When ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... white as death, and shook and shivered, as I have seen a quicksand shake and shiver at the incoming of the tide. We were all silent. We could do nothing. At length she grew more calm and turning to him said sweetly, but oh so sorrowfully, as she held out her hand, "I promise you, my dear friend, that if God will let me live, I shall strive to ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... getting the squadron over the inner bar was begun. It was a tremendous task. Many of the ships drew too much water for the shallow channel, and it was necessary to remove large parts of their cargoes. The bar, which is known as Buckhead Shoal, was an expanse of quicksand a mile wide, with a tortuous channel ever changing with the shifting sands. Many of the ships stranded, and the tugs were constantly busy in towing them off. Scarcely would one be safely afloat, than another would ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... ere he opened the packet which told of its end. For the last ten years he had labored without ambition, and had been successful. His name was well known as a journalist, and his salary was ample. Before that time he had striven ambitiously, but fruitlessly, patiently, but as in a quicksand, until, on a day, he had none to strive for but himself, and then success had come. Since noon, seven hours and twenty-nine minutes, said the clock before him. His anniversary was near. Mr. Bixby drew the letters near him, and untied the package. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... of women are so inscrutable. You remember the woman at Margate whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose—that proved to be the correct solution. How can you build on such a quicksand? Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Knight to the Spear Point Caves by moonlight," she said. "He's doing a moonlight study, and he doesn't know the lie of the quicksand." ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... two—Keith was not...! Who could consort with one who was never wrong, a successful, righteous fellow; a chap built so that he knew nothing about himself, wanted to know nothing, a chap all solid actions? To be a quicksand swallowing up one's own resolutions was bad enough! But to be like Keith—all willpower, marching along, treading down his own feelings and weaknesses! No! One could not make a comrade of a man like Keith, even if he were one's brother? The only creature ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... down here. Moreover, when the boat returns, you will most certainly be rifled at." He stood over me in the dim light of the dawn, chuckling and laughing to himself. Suppressing my first impulse to catch the man by the neck and throw him on to the quicksand, I rose sullenly and followed him to the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Bride of Lammermoor, where [Edgar] Ravenswood is swallowed up by a quicksand, is singularly grand in romance, but would be inadmissible in a drama.—Encyc. Brit., ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... privileges of the Church or of toleration, were alike subservient. The Minister who desired to govern according to settled principles, and who based his confidence on Charles, was building on the veriest quicksand. And yet of all Ministers, Hyde was the one in whom temperament, tradition, taste and sad experience, had most implanted the belief in rigid adherence to principle. The ill-effect of such a conjunction ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... unstable her strongest barricade. An example of the skill and address necessary to conquer obstacles of the latter kind was illustrated in Mobile Bay. There lay about a sunken vessel an impenetrable mail of quicksand. It became necessary to sink piles into this material. The obstacle does not lie in its fickle, unstable character, but its elastic tension. It swallows a nail or a beam by slow, serpent-like deglutition. It is hungry, insatiable, impenetrable. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... that followed this non-committal remark was most discomfiting. I had a feeling that the moments were critical, and—they were slipping away. Should I leap into the tide of explanation? That way, perhaps, lay safety. Always the quicksand of Qui s'excuse, s'accuse, made me draw back. I became extremely nervous.... Feverishly I tried to think of a remark which would be natural and more or less relevant, and would pilot us into a channel ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... of soil to grow my trees in, stiff clay, rich gravel, quicksand and humus, light sand and silt or bottom land, well drained. I have no sour, undrained spot ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... street of the eternal city. As though all her wealth, all the magnificence of her palaces built by giants, all the resplendence, beauty, and music of her refined life were but the echo of the wind in the wilderness, the reflection of the desert quicksand. Chariots were dashing, and along the streets were moving crowds of strong, fair, proud builders of the eternal city and haughty participants in her life; a song sounded; fountains and women laughed a pearly laughter; ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... plans for rapid transit subways for New York City, very much on the line of the present rapid transit subways, were also prepared for Mr. Corbin by the writer. These plans provided a system of deep tunnels in rock, entirely below the plane of quicksand, and at the Battery the lines were to connect directly into the tunnels to Long Island and New Jersey, respectively, and the stations throughout, where the rock was at a deep level, were to be fitted with elevators, grouped as suggested in Plate V, using private ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • Charles M. Jacobs
... you made such a consecration as this? It must embrace all this, or it will prove a bed of quicksand to sink your soul, instead of a full salvation balloon, which will safely bear you above the fog and malaria and turmoil of the world, ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... strain put upon it when the vessel heaved her stern out of water and the screw raced madly with nothing to catch. On she sped, though her bow was pointed straight for the most treacherous shoals on the Atlantic coast, bars of avid quicksand, on which thousands of vessels had gone to swift and awful destruction. On toward the Diamond Shoals the cutter pierced her way, though the gray veil of driving spray hid everything a score of ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... reaching Castlereagh River in the course of the day; we struggled for nine miles through a line of country that baffles all description: we were literally up to the middle in water the whole way, and two of the horses were obliged to be unladen to get them over quicksand bogs. Finding a place sufficiently dry to pitch our tent on, though surrounded by water, we halted, both men and horses being too much exhausted to proceed farther. Mr. Evans thinking we could not be very far from the river, went forwards a couple of miles, when he came upon ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... make careful note of the following EXCEPTIONS." He runs his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it. So overboard he goes again, to hunt for another Ararat and find another quicksand. Such has been, and continues to be, my experience. Every time I think I have got one of these four confusing "cases" where I am master of it, a seemingly insignificant preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed with an awful and unsuspected ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sententiously, looking wisely down upon the sphinx-like quicksand. "Indians, Dan. They must have loaded the engine on their ponies during the night—did you hear anything?" he demanded, turning to Bucks. Bucks shook his head. "I thought I did," continued Scott. "Thought I ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... bank of the sluggish stream with its flood-worn channel and its treacherous patches of quicksand, the wagon thus halted by the sheer nerve and quick-thinking of mother became a very small island in a troubled sea of weltering backs and tossing horns and staring eyeballs. Riders shouted and lashed unavailingly with their quirts, ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... been worse," said Langdon. "Suppose we had fallen in a quicksand and had been swallowed up utterly. 'Tis better to live muddy than not to live ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... religious education of the child should be supposed to end when the Scripture lesson is over, is the last and strongest proof of the fundamental falsity of that conception of religion on which, as on a quicksand, his education, religious ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... these, while it required as many as 21 to 25 shifts to reach rock in the others, rock being at the same elevation. In fact, the digging all the way to rock in some was the best that could be wished for, while in the others boulders and quicksand were encountered, and the progress was slower, ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... struggled to free my limbs. I could neither move them backward nor forward, to the right nor to the left; and I became sensible that I was gradually going down. Then the fearful truth flashed upon me: I was sinking in a quicksand. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... all in that," asserted Jack, "I'll bet the thing lays in a bed of quicksand. When the tide is just right it softens up and boils. Then any solid substance may be thrown up to the surface. Maybe someone has seen a piece of log or some driftwood at some such time and that's the ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... were straggling about; upon which they all soon came to the boat; but it was past all their strength to launch her, the boat being very heavy, and the shore on that side being a soft oozy sand, almost like a quicksand. In this condition, like true seamen, who are, perhaps, the least of all mankind given to forethought, they gave it over, and away they strolled about the country again; and I heard one of them say aloud to another, calling them off from the boat, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Andronicus and Michael Comnenus, driven from the throne of Constantinople, left their names within the heart and memory of Greece; they had ruled the West with a gentle sceptre, and in a people's grateful remembrance they had their reward. My ancestors, their descendants, held sway in Trebizond, a quicksand which gave way beneath their tread. From adversity to adversity, from country to country, we were finally driven to seclusion in the Isle of Candia, part of the quondam Minos territory. Venice had allowed Candia to fall before Mahomet's bloody sword. Europe lost her bulwark, the Cross of the ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... the banks of a river which Burke named the Cloncurry. A few hundred yards below the camp Billy got bogged in a quicksand bank so deeply as to be unable to stir, and they had to undermine him on the creek side and pull him into the water. About five miles farther on he bogged again, and afterwards was so weak that ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... of quicksand and bog holes," he remarked. "Oh, yes, don't think I've forgotten what happened in that Great Dismal Swamp. But do you mean to yank the carcass up in a tree, Max? Is that the way you expect ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... he threw his Coal holdings on the market in great blocks. His treachery took Roebuck completely by surprise—for Roebuck believed in this fair-weather "gentleman," foul-weather coward, and neglected to allow for that quicksand that is always under the foundation of the man who has inherited, not earned, his wealth. But for the blundering credulity of rascals, would honest men ever get their dues? Roebuck's brokers had bought ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... seldom tread. He spoke of persons with whom she was well acquainted also, and whose names arrested her attention with pathetic significance, offering, for the moment, secure standing ground amid the shifting quicksand of his but half-comprehended words. He spoke of Morabita, the famous prima donna, and of gentle Mrs. Chifney down at the Brockhurst racing-stables. He grew heated in discussion with Lord Fallowfeild. He petted little Lady Constance Quayle. He called Camp, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the tracks of Blake's party, which led up the moraine, and carried us over quicksand and through glacial streams, icy cold. Finally we came to where Blake had started up the mountain side, and with all due regard to my friend, his trail was not an easy one. About noon it began to rain, but we pushed ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... them together in one verse. Add to these of rain, lightning, and of thunder (the loudest you can,) quantum sufficit. Mix your clouds and billows well together until they foam, and thicken your description here and there with a quicksand. Brew your tempest well in your head before you set ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... enough to enable us to transport the wagon to the opposite bank; but although we found no less than four shoals in the course of our first day's search, three of them extended less than halfway across the river, while the fourth proved to be a quicksand in which we narrowly escaped losing both our horses, saving them at last only by the skin of our teeth and after nearly an hour's hard and strenuous labour. This occurred about three o'clock in the afternoon, and when at length we were all once more safe on solid ground we were, horses as well ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... scientific doctrine of heredity—a doctrine which easily accounts for and explains every semblance of truth in transmigration—it seems incredible that any soul in India could, through transmigration, finally emerge out of the quicksand of sin and corruption which surround and overwhelm it, especially when it is assumed that it has already ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... author says: a woman's head is like a quicksand; for pray, mark well this argument, which is most weighty: As the head is the chief of the body, and as the body without a chief is worse than a beast, unless the chief has a good understanding with the body, and unless everything be as well regulated as if it were measured with a pair of compasses, ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere
... heart! and as I muse, Behold a VISION gathers in my soul, Voices and shadowy shapes! In human guise I seem to see the phantom, FEAR, pass by, Hotly-pursued, and pale! From rock to rock He bounds with bleeding feet, and thro' the swamp, The quicksand and the groaning wilderness, Struggles with feebler and yet feebler flight. But lo! an altar in the wilderness, And eagerly yet feebly lo! he grasps The altar of the living God! and there With wan reverted face the trembling wretch All wildly list'ning to his Hunter-fiends Stands, till ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to be true. The stream, a full foot in depth, flowed between banks higher than usual, and its waters, cold and sweet, were entirely devoid of alkali. Following it some distance, they found sloping banks free from the danger of quicksand, and crossed to the other side, where they made a ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... small island to restock the larder, and then head for the mainland of South America. On arriving a party goes ashore, including our heroes, landing through heavy surf. Everyone made it to shore, but Griffin touches ground on quicksand, and suddenly disappears from sight, never to be seen again. At this point our heroes manage to give the mutineers the slip, and disappear into the forest. Unfortunately they become disorientated, so their original plan of regaining the coast and then travelling northward along it until they should ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... shrinking, The draught of failure drinking, In trickery's quicksand sinking, Pulls he not others down? Will PLON-PLON stand securely, The COMTE pose proudly, purely, Whilst slowly but most surely Their tool must choke ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... supposed to be the original of Wolfs Crag in The Bride of Lammermoor. We looked through our glasses at the spot where the unhappy Master of Ravenswood sank with his steed into the treacherous quicksand. ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... of June the Platte River was reached, about twenty-five miles below Grand Island. Captain Bonneville measured the stream at that point, found it to be twenty-two hundred yards wide, and from three to six feet deep, the bottom full of quicksand. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... and looked wonderingly at her companion. Was she indeed so unsuspicious of the quicksand on which stood the fair temple of her hopes ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... what to say or do. It seems that I but sink myself the deeper in the quicksand of thy disapproval at every struggle to escape. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... and that there is some process by which matter has been brought from one state to the other. Whether, however, the nebular hypothesis lays down the road travelled to this transfiguration, we are not sure. Some of it seems like solid rock, and some like shifting quicksand. Doubtless there is a road from that chaos to this fair cosmos. The nebular hypothesis has surveyed, worked, and perfected many long reaches of this road, but the rivers are not bridged, the chasms not filled, nor the ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... there," came the swift reply. "We seek to lay foundations of permanence and without the family we build on quicksand." ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... the foundation of a bridge that was then being erected across the Connecticut river at Springfield, Mass., of 1260 feet in length. It was regarded as a very difficult undertaking, as the bed of the river was composed mostly of quicksand, and a rise of 25-1/2 feet in the river had to be provided for, and floating ice, its full width, fifteen inches in thickness. Maj. George W. Whistler, the first of his profession, was chief engineer of the work, and he had as advisers Maj. McNeal, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... to any visible water. It may be interesting to some of our readers to know that there are many of these curious rivers in western America, which, for miles disappear from the surface of the earth, and, probably, run through the quicksand beneath, as they reappear again. The outline of the river usually exists between the place of its disappearance and the place where the water again comes to the surface of the earth. By digging a few feet into the sand within the outline, the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... you say that, my lad. You are young, strong, and industrious. You'll succeed, I'll warrant, if you steer clear of that quicksand." ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... shot at them it being so level, There is no wood here, except what is procured from the island, the river was not fordable at this time, but some swam accross on horseback & procured some; but with much difficulty and danger, the current being very swift, & the bottom quicksand; we contented ourselves with a few willow bushes; there were some buffalo chips, but we had not as yet got in the way of using them. [May 26—43d day] We are about 5, ms below Ft. Karney.[44] Several indians of the Sioux tribe came to our tent, the best looking ...
— Across the Plains to California in 1852 - Journal of Mrs. Lodisa Frizzell • Lodisa Frizell
... succeeds: a little peat-bed forms itself underneath: generations after generations of mosses and watery plants succeed one another; and in time the prostrate trunk is entirely buried under a bright-green bed, soft as down, but treacherous to the foot as a quicksand. Often may the wanderer amid these wild glades think to throw himself on one of these inviting couches; and, bounding on to it, he sinks five or six feet through moss and weed and dirty peat, till his descent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... continued our journey through a country rich in minerals of silver, where money is sought in the bowels of the earth, to the little cell of Basinwerk, {179} where we passed the night. The following day we traversed a long quicksand, and not without some degree of apprehension, leaving the woody district of Coleshulle, {180} or hill of coal, on our right hand, where Henry II., who in our time, actuated by youthful and indiscreet ardour, made a hostile irruption into Wales, and presuming to pass ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... loss. Our kingdom of Phaeacia, as you know, is chiefly rich in shipping. In all parts of the world, where there are navigable seas, or ships can pass, our vessels will be found. You cannot name a coast to which they do not resort. Every rock and every quicksand is known to them that lurks in the vast deep. They pass a bird in flight; and with such unerring certainty they make to their destination that some have said that they have no need of pilot or rudder, but that they move instinctively, self-directed, ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... sanctity from it. They are correlatives. The one demands the other. Hence they cannot be divorced. The individual passes over to the church through the Christian home. The one is the step to the other. They have the same foundation. Home is not erected upon a quicksand, but reared upon the same rock upon which the church is built. Like the church, it rises superior to all the fluctuations of civil society, and will live and flourish in all its tender charities, in all its sweet enjoyments, and in all its moral force, in ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... when he followed it up by assuring me that there were what he called sand-sinks under the mud, and that whatever was placed on the surface would not only sink through the mud, but also into a mysterious quicksand of unknown depth and extent below it. This may be true, but sounds very strange, although I remember that the frequent occurrence of large patches of quicksand was found to be one of the principal impediments in the ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... waters, and a farther glimmer of more sands beyond them challenged our advance. We had come to a "grapevine ferry." The scow was on the other side, the water too shoal for the horses to swim, and the bottom, most likely, quicksand. Out of the blackness of the opposite shore came a soft, high-pitched, quavering, long-drawn, smothered moan of woe, the call of that snivelling little sinner the screech-owl. Ferry murmured to me to answer it and I sent the same faint horror-stricken tremolo back. Again it ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... his ship under his charge, and had his confidence repaid by seeing her hauled off into deep water in a single tide. Knowing the nature of the bottom,—a soft arenaceous mud, which if beat for some time by the foot or hand, resolved itself into a sort of quicksand, half-sludge, half-water, which, when covered by a competent depth of sea, could offer no effectual resistance to a ship's keel,—the master had set half the crew to run in a body from side to ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... the seamen went out upon the dry flat and found the best bower cable parted, and the anchor so far buried in the quicksand, that it could not be raised. At ten o'clock the flood tide came rolling in, and presently set the brig afloat; the anchor was then weighed with ease, by means of a hawser previously bent to it, and the vessel rode by the small bower, against ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... to a stress of about 25 tons each, or nearly one-half of their ultimate strength. In only one or two instances, covering stretches of 100 ft. in one case and 200 ft. in another, where there were large areas of quicksand sufficient to cause semi-aqueous pressure, or pockets of the same material causing eccentric loading, did these wall-plates show any signs of heavy pressure, and in many instances they were in such good condition that they could be taken out and used a second and a third time. Two especially ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... quagmire, quicksand and hence sundry secondary and metaphorical significations, under which, as in the "Semitic" (Arabic) tongues generally, the prosaical and material sense of the word is clearly evident. I noted this in Pilgrimage ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... drifted on some of the rocks with which the harbour abounds. When we had got the stern of the vessel into the sand we discovered that we had not accomplished much, for the said sand being very loose, almost of the character of quicksand, and the sea running high, the stern kept sinking almost as rapidly as when it had nothing but water below it. The cabins were already full of water, and the object was to land the passengers. As usual, there was the greatest difficulty in launching any of the ship's boats, and ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... and end in two spits of rock jutting out opposite each other, till you lose sight of them in the water. One is called the North Spit, and one the South. Between the two, shifting backwards and forwards at certain seasons of the year, lies the most horrible quicksand on the shores of Yorkshire. At the turn of the tide, something goes on in the unknown deeps below, which sets the whole face of the quicksand shivering and trembling in a manner most remarkable to see, and which has given to it, among the people in our parts, the name of the ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... preparing. I had to arrange my defence without knowing in what way they would try to trip me, and I had to think faster than I ever have thought before. I had no more time to be scared, or to regret my past sins, than has a man in a quicksand. So far as I could make out, they were divided in opinion concerning me. Rupert of Hentzau, who was the adjutant or the chief of staff, had only one simple thought, which was to shoot me. Others considered me a damn fool; I could hear them laughing and saying: "Er ist ein dummer ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... that is wanting to government, but reformation. When ministry rests upon public opinion, it is not indeed built upon a rock of adamant; it has, however, some stability. But when it stands upon private humor, its structure is of stubble, and its foundation is on quicksand. I repeat it again,—He that supports every administration subverts all government. The reason is this: The whole business in which a court usually takes an interest goes on at present equally well, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... first period of youth was over, Leo Battista Alberti devoted his great faculties and all his wealth of genius to the study of the law—then, as now, the quicksand of the noblest natures. The industry with which he applied himself to the civil and ecclesiastical codes broke his health. For recreation he composed a Latin comedy called 'Philodoxeos,' which imposed upon ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... mole, the contents of the subterranean gallery were to be brought to the surface. This interesting work was in busy progress, when, all of a sudden, it was ascertained, that, at about 200 yards from the south end of the tunnel, there existed, overlaid by a bed of clay, forty feet thick, a hidden quicksand, which extended 400 yards into the proposed tunnel, and which the trial shafts on each side of it had almost miraculously just passed without touching. Overwhelmed at the discovery, the contractor instantly took to his bed; and though he was justly relieved by the company from his engagement, the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... well enough," said the Master; "I suppose, at least, you mean the quicksand betwixt this tower and Wolf's Hope; but why any man in his senses ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... only refuge in the coming storm in France was the Monarchy. Never had its power been more absolute. The king's will was law—a harbour of safety, indeed, if he were strong and wise and virtuous: a veritable quicksand, if feeble and vicious. And to pilot the state of France in these stormy times, Henry II. left a sickly progeny of four princes, miserable puppets, whose favours were disputed for thirty years by ambitious and fanatical nobles, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... fortune merely from his contempt of riches. If to fight, or write, or dress be above you, why, then, you can ride, or dance, or even skate; but do not think, as many young gentlemen are apt to believe, that talking will serve your purpose. That is the quicksand of your young beginners. All can talk in a public assembly; that is to say, all can give us exhortations which do not move, and arguments which do not convince; but to converse in a private assembly is a different affair, and rare are the characters who can be endured if they exceed a whisper ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... a confounded blackguard—a living quicksand, and nothing else. Lanty, my lad, if the Mississippi was brandy grog, she'd dry the river—drinking at this hour!—well, never mind, I was drunk myself last night, and I'm half drunk yet. Here, you devil's tinder box, mix me a ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... other pioneer southern Utah settlements were passed on the way to Kanab and Fredonia. The road to the mouth of the Paria and to Lee's Ferry appears to have been found very little less rough than when traveled by the Mormon ox teams, and the river crossing was attended by experiences with quicksand and other dangers, while the pull outward on the south side was up a steep and ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... saw a human fantastic, struggling, writhing, twisting with maniacal might, the while the horrible quicksand held him by the legs, and swallowed him, inch ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... and watched Dalrymple as the latter did likewise, with that deliberate intention which few but Scotchmen can maintain on such occasions. The wine might have been poured into a quicksand, for any effect it had as ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... the storm or the scowling midnight, Cold, or sickness, or fire's dismay— Nor is it the reef, or treacherous quicksand, Will peril you most on your ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... rather," Jim said. "It made us careful about crossing, I can tell you. Even the men look out since Harry Wilson got bogged another time, trying to get over after a bullock. Of course he wouldn't wait to go round, and he had an awful job to get his horse out of the mud—it's something like a quicksand. After that father had two or three good crossings made very plain and clear, and whenever a new man is put on they're explained to him. See, there's ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... first through pleasant country roads, and afterwards along a succession of bays of a fairylike prettiness, to our destination— Cramond on the Almond—a little hamlet on a little river, embowered in woods, and looking forth over a great flat of quicksand to where a little islet stood planted in the sea. It was miniature scenery, but charming of its kind. The air of this good February afternoon was bracing, but not cold. All the way my companions were skylarking, jesting and making puns, and I felt as if a load had been taken off my lungs and spirits, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not the great money; and the little money also has escaped from a quicksand in the bottom ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... shape of a tree—the only one near the spot. It was a tree that had already been instrumental in saving his life: for it was the same that stood by the little straits where Ossaroo had set his nets, and by means of which Caspar had been enabled to hoist him up out of the quicksand. ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... the quicksand behind and entered the village, passing among the groups of lodges. Here they realized more fully than on the hills the great extent of the Indian town. Its inhabitants seemed a myriad to Dick and Albert, so long used to silence and the lack ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... from century to century to human eyes in statu quo. Her body never becomes machinate, whereas this new phase of organism which has been introduced with man into the mundane economy, has made him a very quicksand for the foundation of an unchanging civilisation; certain fundamental principles will always remain, but every century the change in man's physical status, as compared with the elements around him, is greater and greater. He ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... bound to crumble. For thou hast sought support where it was not to be found, for thou hast built thy house on a quicksand...." ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... of the nature of the country, I have no doubt but that in very remote ages, the united Niger and Geir did roll into the sea in all the magnificence of a mighty stream, forming a grand estuary or harbour where now the quicksand is."—"The question to be solved under such a supposition is, what revolution in nature can have produced so great a change in the face of the country, as to cause a great river which once flowed into the sea, to stop short in a desart of sand." "We know from all recent, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... that the Maharajah had was when, returning to camp one evening, he was informed that one of his largest and best elephants, "Kennedy", had got stuck in quicksand. In many parts of Assam there are quicksands and quagmires. This particular one chanced to be in a nala (stream). The elephant had refused to cross the partially dried-up stream. Instinct had warned him through the tip of his trunk that danger lurked there, ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... worked folks in camp, an' yet none of 'em ever goes on the warpath for shorter hours or longer pay, so far as I has notice. Barkeeps that a-way is a light-hearted band an' cheerful onder their burdens. Once when Old Monte brings the stage in late because of some boggin' down he does over at a quicksand ford in the foothills, a shorthorn who arrives with him as a passenger comes edgin' into the Red Light. Bein' it's four o'clock in the mornin', the tenderfoot seems amazed at sech activities as faro-bank, an' high-ball, ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Through sluices smooth to turn a mill, And, taking solid toll of grist, Forget the rainbow in the mist, 60 The exulting leap, the aimless haste Scattered in iridescent waste; Prefer who likes the sure esteem To cheated youth's midsummer dream, When every friend was more than Damon, Each quicksand safe to build a fame on; Believe that prudence snug excels Youth's gross of verdant spectacles, Through which earth's withered stubble seen Looks autumn-proof as painted green,— 70 I side with Moses 'gainst ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the four sides. It is of sandstone and certainly a very singular natural formation. Altogether it is about two hundred feet high. I will mention here that the banks of the Platte are low, that the bed is of quicksand, that the river is very shallow and that it is never clear. One of our company attempted to ford it on foot. When about two-thirds over, in water up to his waist, he halted, being in doubt as to whether he should proceed or return. While hesitating between two ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley
... all the heavy ones on the top. Soon after the Frenchman, "Stick-in-the-Mud" arrived alone, drenched and miserable. His load was again "stuck in the muskeg, a matter of two mile off, he guessed." If left there all night, it would sink so deep in that quicksand-like marsh that there would be little hope of ever extracting it. The poor lad said his team was too done up to be of any use, and he was so "dead tired, he hadn't a leg to stand on." Still, he didn't object to go back if men and teams were sent with him. And after a great deal ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... which, whatever its baleful intent, has suffered in my rude inhospitable hands an 'untimely nipping in the bud,' and most ingloriously failed of consummation. After to-day the luckless incident of our acquaintance must vanish like some farthing rushlight set upon a breezy down to mark a hidden quicksand; for in my future panorama I shall keep no niche for mortifying painful days like this—and you, sir, amid the rush and glow and glitter of this bewildering French capital, will have little leisure and less inclination to recall the unflattering ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... retorted the other, raising a voice now shrill with the strain of this new crisis rushing so unexpectedly upon him: "I heard Jake give a holler. 'What the hell's the trouble?' I yells. Then he lets out a beller, 'Save me!' he screeches, 'I'm into a sink-hole! The quicksand's got me,' sez he. So I drop my rifle, I did, — there she stands against that birch sapling! — and I run down ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... mud holes, they would be in a sorry fix, and they might even be forced to shout for assistance in order to save their lives, thus revealing themselves to their enemy, for the tenacious muck had a tendency to act in the same treacherous fashion as quicksand, clutching the victim and dragging him down, inch after inch into ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... be at least five or six people about the cart, some on foot, others on horseback; the former lent assistance whenever it was in danger of upsetting, or sticking fast in the quicksand; the others rode before and acted as guides, often changing the direction of the vehicle as the precarious ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... he explained. "But," he added, thinking he was getting upon the edge of a quicksand, "we must not forget the object of ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... the sulphur spring that bubbles out of quicksand in a little cavern deep in the hillside—a cavern made almost impregnable by smell. In the old days the determined bather had to shin down a pole through a funnel, and take his curative bath in the rocky oubliette of the spring. Now the Government has ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... to be hoped," he said, drearily; "it is so to be believed. Woman's love-memory is a kind of quicksand that can swallow a score or so of gallant gentlemen and show ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the surrounding swamp was that on the road the soil was comparatively firm, that is to say, one seldom sank into it above the knee, whereas on either side of it quagmires were often apparently bottomless, and what is more, partook of the nature of quicksand. ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... To the rainbow sands—but on looking at them she saw that they were quivering quicksands. Wherever green grass had grown the spears now grew; and wherever the sand was it was a terrible trap of quicksand. She tried to dismount in a little pool, but fortunately for her she noticed in time that what shone in it so silvery was not water but ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... my room without reply. I had put my foot on quicksand, and could not now withdraw it. Struggling would only send ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... fourth and last act shows a room at Ravenswood, wherein is portrayed the betrothal of Lucy to Bucklaw, culminating in Edgar's sudden irruption; and finally, it shows the desolate seaside place of the quicksand in which, after he has slain Bucklaw, Edgar of Ravenswood is engulfed. The house that Scott, when he wrote the novel, had in his mind as that of Sir William Ashton is the house of Winston, which still is ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... Doubtless beyond the swamp there was high land, but in order to reach this, if it existed, they would be obliged to force a path through miles of reeds. Therefore they thought it safer to follow the river bank. Their progress was very slow, since continually they must make detours to avoid a quicksand or a creek, also the stones and scrubby growth delayed them so that fifteen or at most twenty miles ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... we were coming up out of a deep river, a native riding about six feet from me was caught in a quicksand. He jumped off, but the horse sank half way up its body. I wanted to stay and see it extricated, for its struggles only sank it deeper, but the natives shrugged their shoulders, and said in Hawaiian, "only a horse," and something they always say when anything happens, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... the time the shields had entirely cleared the rock, the material in the face had changed to a fine sand, stratified every few inches by very thin layers of chocolate-colored clayey material. This is the material elsewhere referred to as quicksand. As the shield advanced eastward, the number and thickness of the layers of clay increased until the clay formed at least 20% of the entire mass, and many of the layers ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace, Francis Mason and S. H. Woodard
... sadly at the prospect before them, and their horses snorted and started back at the horrible plain, as though it were some insidious quicksand, and even the riders themselves were seized with doubt and dismay. Suddenly they sprung from their saddles, as at some word of command, unbridled their horses, loosened their girths, and turned them loose on the desert, that ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... you called me. I merely want you to think it over soberly and let your heart decide. You know where I stand, don't you, Hazel, dear? I haven't changed—not a bit—I'm the same old Bill. But I'd rather hit the trail alone than with an unwilling partner. Don't flounder about in any quicksand of duty. There is no "I ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... The horses may drop dead," she reviewed swiftly on her slim brown fingers, "Johnny may fall heir to an apoplectic fit and fall on a horse thereby inducing him to run away into a swamp and sink in quicksand. I may be kidnapped and held for ransom in the wilds of Connecticut and the van may burn up some night when I'm asleep in it. Then I may eat poison berries in a fit of absent-mindedness, I may fall into ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... ersatz[&German]; simulated &c 544. Adv. under false colors, under the garb of, under cover of; over the left. Phr. "keep the word of promise to the ear and break it to the hope" [Macbeth]; fronti nulla fides[Lat]; "ah that deceit should steal such gentle shapes" [Richard III]; "a quicksand of deceit" [Henry VI]; decipimur specie recti [Lat][Horace]; falsi crimen[Lat]; fraus est celare fraudem[Lat]; lupus in fabula[Lat]; "so smooth, he daubed his vice with show of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a chuckle he adds that a fleet of these ships bound for Ireland with a crowded company of all the godly persons of England—'piteous people, that be of sin destroyers', 'mourners for sin, with lamentation', and 'good rich men that helpeth folk out of prison'—has been wrecked on a quicksand and the whole company drowned. Next he has an ill-sounding report of his own last voyage to give. When that is finished Imagination proposes an adjournment for pleasures more active than conversation, where purses may be had for ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... mud. I have already spoken of Virginia mud. It beggars description. Your feet sink into it frequently ankle deep, and you lift them out with a sough. In some places it seemed as bottomless as a pit of quicksand. The old-established roads were measurably passable, but, as I have heretofore explained, most of the troops had to march directly across the fields, and here it proved absolutely impossible to move the wagon-trains and artillery any distance. This was ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... said it would come in handy," remarked Eben, quickly and proudly, "and if you stop to think of the many uses we've put that same rope to, from yanking a fellow out of a quicksand, to tying up a bad man who had escaped from the penitentiary, you'll all agree with me that it's been one of the best investments we ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... evidence that helps it, and shed all that harms it. It crawls forward in all weathers, like Richard Edgeworth's hygrometer. It does not stand at the boundary of our ignorance, it seems to me, but is one of the will-o'-the-wisps of its undisputed central domain of bog and quicksand. Yet I should not have devoted so many words to it, did I not recognize the light it has thrown on human actions by its study of congenital organic tendencies. Its maps of the surface of the head are, I feel sure, founded on a delusion, ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... met with a famous resistance from the King's forces in 1648, large mill-stones having been rolled down upon him from the rising grounds, so that the republican general was in considerable danger, and he only escaped with life by making his horse plunge into a quicksand. ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... a bed of quicksand is knows how dangerous it is—dangerous to both man and beast. Just as the scout made his discovery he sank up to his knees in ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... of the uncompounded verb), assigning as his reason, that 'If St. John had written [Greek: erchesthai], no one would ever have substituted [Greek: dierchesthai] for it.' But to construct the text of Scripture on such considerations, is to build a lighthouse on a quicksand. I could have referred the learned Critic to plenty of places where the thing he speaks of as incredible has been done. The proof that St. John used the uncompounded verb is the fact that it is found in all the copies except our two untrustworthy friends. The explanation ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon |
