"Flounder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of salt water Fish, are best fresh from the water, tho' the Hannah Hill, Black Fish, Lobster, Oyster, Flounder, Bass, Cod, Haddock, and Eel, with many others, may be transported by land many miles, find a good market, and retain a good relish; but as generally, live ones are bought first, deceits are used to give them a freshness ...
— American Cookery - The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables • Amelia Simmons
... an attempt to save the table from going over, lost his own balance, and fell flounder-flat on the floor, where he lay shuddering, with his hair in a dish of Shaker apple-sauce: the rest of the family escaped unscathed, but were sadly astonished at the sudden turn ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the foggy stars, they missed the stakes and her horse had to swim, but they managed to flounder safely back to the ford each time; and after a little while her mount rose, straining through the red mud of the shore, struggled, scrambled madly, and drew ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... pure. Our ancestors had some excellent ideas in home living and housebuilding. Their houses were, generally speaking, very sensibly contrived,—roomy, airy, and comfortable; but in their water arrangements they had little mercy on womankind. The well was out in the yard; and in winter one must flounder through snow and bring up the ice-bound bucket, before one could fill the tea-kettle for breakfast. For a sovereign princess of the republic, this was hardly respectful or respectable. Wells have come somewhat nearer in modern times; but the idea of ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... fins, and ending in a long tail; the whole body covered with strong plates which overlap each other, and the head forming only a slight rounded projection from the general figure. The specimens in the lower beds are not above the size of a flounder; but in the higher strata, to judge by the size of the scales or plates which have been found, the creature attained a comparatively ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... boy took him up. Then he began to construe;—a frightful confusion of nominatives without verbs, accusatives translated as ablatives, and adverbs turned into prepositions, ensued, and after a hopeless flounder, during which Mr Gordon left him entirely to himself, Barker came to a full stop; his catastrophe was so ludicrous, that Eric could not help joining in the ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... please you, be dull, (For Britons deem dulness "respectable"); Stale flowers of speech you may cull, With meanings now scarcely detectable; You may wallow in saturnine spite, You may flounder in flatulent flummery; Be sombre as poet YOUNG'S "Night," And dry as a Newspaper "Summary"; As rude as a yowling Yahoo, As chill as a volume of CHITTY; But oh, Sir, whatever you do, You ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... flounder into four filets. Roll each one up, stuffing with a mixture of sal piquant sauce. Roll around each a thin slice of pork and fasten with a skewer. Stand on end in a baking pan and put a small piece of butter and a slice of lemon on ...
— Joe Tilden's Recipes for Epicures • Joe Tilden
... and, as such, has figured time out of mind in allegorical pictures. The sense in which it was used by me is plain from the context; at least, it would be plain to any one but a fisher for faults, predisposed to carp at some things, to dab at others, and to flounder in all. But I am possibly in error. It is the female swine, perhaps, that is profaned in the eyes of the Oriental tourist. Men find strange ways of marking their intolerance; and the spirit is certainly strong enough, in Mr. W.'s works, to set up ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the white fisher hamlets now nestle. Reefs white as lace fret line the coast. Lonely as death, bare as a block of marble, Gull Island is passed where another crew in later years perish as castaways. Gray finback whales flounder in schools. The lazy humpbacks lounge round and round the ships, eyeing the keels curiously. A polar bear is seen on an ice pan. Then the ships come to those lonely harbors north of Newfoundland—Griguet and Quirpon and Ha-Ha-Bay, rock girt, treeless, always windy, desolate, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... connection with the messenger. But the trail grew more and more indistinct as it neared the summit, until at last it utterly vanished. Still he kept up his speed toward the active little figure—which now seemed to be that of a mere boy—skimming over the frozen snow. Twice a stumble and flounder of the mustang through the broken crust ought to have warned him of his recklessness, but now a distinct glimpse of a low, blackened shanty, the prospector's ruined hut, toward which the messenger was making, made him forget all else. ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... must be united in holy matrimony with Lysbeth van Hout. (2) That if it proved impossible to remove the young man, Dirk van Goorl, from his path by overmatching him in the lady's affections, or by playing on her jealousy (Query: Could a woman be egged into becoming jealous of that flounder of a fellow and into marrying some one else out of pique?), stronger measures must be adopted. (3) That such stronger measures should consist of inducing the lady to save her lover from death by uniting ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... pelican, a fowl between a stork and a swan—a melancholy water-fowl brought from Astracan by the Russian ambassador." This writer tells us, "It was diverting to see how the pelican would toss up and turn a flat fish, plaice or flounder, to get it right into its gullet at its lower beak, which being filmy stretches to a prodigious wideness when it devours a great fish. Here was also a small water-fowl, not bigger than a more-hen, that went almost quite erect ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... a ready victim. To tell the truth, no one but the Jam-wagon was particularly sorry. If there was a sump-hole in sight, that horse was sure to flounder into it. Sometimes twice in one day we had to unhitch the ox and pull him out. There was a place dug out of the snow alongside the trail, which was being used as a knacker's yard, and here we took him with a broken leg and put ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... desires to prop the tottering fortunes of his chowder-headed rag, let him obtain support from the pasty-faced pack of cacklers who surround him. I would stretch no finger to help him, no, not if I saw him up to his chin in the oleo-margarine of which his brains and those of his bottle-nosed, flounder-eared friends seem to be composed. So much then for Mr. J. Du reste, as TALLEYRAND once said, my important duties to the readers of this journal ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... of water. To traverse this desert one must wade and flounder through liquid mud waist deep and sometimes deeper. Yet it had to be done. We had nine positions up there at each of which a handful of men must be relieved daily; or rather nightly, as it was, obviously, impossible to move about over that ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... the same writer how both eyes of the flounder get, quite unintentionally, on the same side of the head. The writer makes much of this case (see p. 306), and we are not ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... miserable hovel close by the sea, and every day he went out fishing. And once as he was sitting with his rod, looking at the clear water, his line suddenly went down, far down below, and when he drew it up again he brought out a large Flounder. Then the Flounder said to him, "Hark, you Fisherman, I pray you, let me live; I am no Flounder really, but an enchanted prince. What good will it do you to kill me? I should not be good to eat; put me in the water again, and let me go." "Come," said the Fisherman, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... growth; it has been of good use, and has enabled us to do great things. But the use is at an end, and the stage is over. Ask yourselves if you do not sometimes feel in yourselves a sense, that in spite of the strenuous efforts for good of so many excellent persons amongst us, we begin somehow to flounder and to beat the air; that we seem to be finding ourselves stopped on this line of advance and on that, and to be threatened with a sort of standstill. It is that we are trying to live on with a social organization of which the ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... my mother," said Priscilla gently; and this was strictly true, for the deceased Grand Duchess had also been Priscilla. Then a feeling came over her that she was getting into those depths where persons with secrets begin to flounder as a preliminary to letting them out, and seized with panic she got ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... man came over with a rush as he neared the bank, for suddenly from a reed-bed above them there was a wallow and a flounder, with a tremendous disturbance in the water, as something shot ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... fresh meat now more than when he had only himself to think of. But it would not do to fire his rifle there. So he broke off a cedar branch and threw it. He crippled the rabbit, which started to flounder up the slope. Venters did not wish to lose the meat, and he never allowed crippled game to escape, to die lingeringly in some covert. So after a careful glance below, and back toward the canyon, he began to ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... away from under me, so that if I had not been obeying orders by hanging tight I should most certainly have plunged forward against the horses. We seemed to slide and slither down a steep declivity, then hit water with a splash, and began to flounder forward. The water rose high enough to cover the floor of the Invigorator, causing the Captain to speculate on whether Redmond had packed in the shells properly. Then the bow rose with a mighty jerk and we ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... promised to have a care against seeking to hurry myself right out of the flounder class and right into the ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... with his messmates, for it is not those who are most capable of arguing who are most fond of it; and, like all arguers not very brilliant, he would flounder and diverge away right and left, just as the flaws of ideas came into ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... little by himself, but in another minute Hetty was kneeling on the horse's head, while, at more than a little risk from the battering hoofs, he loosed some of the harness. Then, the Badger was allowed to flounder to his feet, and Clavering proceeded to readjust his trappings. A buckle had drawn, however, and ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... me struggling like a drowning man in deep water. I felt that it must be possible for me to come to the surface, but I could do nothing but flounder; beating fiercely with limbs that were so powerful and yet so utterly useless. I saw that my very metaphors symbolised my feebleness; I had no terms for my own mental condition; I was forced to resort to some inapplicable ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... how I ever got away," said the hunchback, huskily. "I do know that monster was chasin' me right through the woods, tryin' to ram his spear inter my back as if I was a flounder an' he was arter lobster bait. I managed to hold onter my old gun, though at the time I didn't know I was a-doin' of it. If I hed stopped ter think, I'd throwed the gun erway. When I came out ter ther bank nigh ter whar my dory was hitched, I made a jump that took me ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... which Michael's Place and Brompton Crescent are built was known by the name of "Flounder Field," from its usual moist and muddy state. This field contained fourteen acres, and is said to have been part of the estate of Alderman Henry Smith, which in this neighbourhood was upwards of eighty-four acres. He was a native of Wandsworth, where he is buried. It has been ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... a series of questions demanding close reasoning. As he pins you down to statement of facts and forces you to draw valid conclusions, you feel in a most perplexed frame of mind. Either you find yourself unable to give reasons, or you entangle yourself in contradictions. In short, you flounder about helplessly and feel as though the bottom of your ship of knowledge has dropped out. And when the ordeal is over and you have made a miserable botch of a recitation which you thought you had been perfectly prepared for, you complain that "if the ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... amusement. I think, perhaps, after all, the most remarkable being exhibited in the reptile house is Tyrrell. I don't think much of the Indian snake-charmers now. See a cobra raise its head and flatten out its neck till it looks like a demoniac flounder set on end; keep in mind that a bite means death in a few minutes; presently you will feel yourself possessed with a certain respect for a snake-charmer who tootles on a flute while the thing crawls about him. But Tyrrell comes along, without a flute—without as much as a jew's-harp—and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... after the rains enables it to resume its active habits. At this period the natives of the Gambia, like those of Ceylon, resort to the river, and secure the fish in considerable numbers as they flounder in the still shallow water. A parallel instance occurs, in Abyssinia in relation to the fish of the Mareb, one of the sources of the Nile, the waters of which are partially absorbed in traversing the plains of Taka. During the summer its bed is dry, and in ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... "Give me a flounder, Johnny?" said a little girl of eleven, dressed in coarse and ragged garments, as she stooped down and looked into the basket of the dirty young fisherman, who sat with his legs hanging over ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... lightly, being so bandied. Now I think on it, 'twere possible his legs were cushioned thus to hide a senile thinness! 'Tis human nature when badgered by excess of limit to flounder into limitless excess. Look upon the Burgomaster at thy feet with a surfeit of good round legs, he is unfortunate for being in excess, he cannot whittle down. 'Tis a queer being with whom he dances,—here comes a queen, ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... madly for shelter. Luckily he had the advantage of Grumpy in one way. He had a bare ledge to run on, while Grumpy Weasel had to flounder for some ...
— The Tale of Grumpy Weasel - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... think this funny, nor did Mrs. Doane, but the father was chuckling to himself as they sat down to their baked flounder. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... fish called the flounder, perhaps you may know, Has one side for use and another for show; One side for the public, a delicate brown, And one that is white, which he ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various
... the stout boy thought he could do the same. Two or three heavy jumps landed him, not among the bulrushes as he had hoped, but in a pool of muddy water where he sank up to his middle with alarming rapidity. Much scared, he tried to wade out, but could only flounder to a tussock of grass and cling there while he endeavored to kick his legs free. He got them out, but struggled in vain to coil them up or to hoist his heavy body upon the very small island in this sea of mud. Down they splashed again, and Sam gave a dismal groan as he thought ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... was unable to observe miralets, triggerfish, puffers, seahorses, jewelfish, trumpetfish, blennies, gray mullet, wrasse, smelt, flying fish, anchovies, sea bream, porgies, garfish, or any of the chief representatives of the order Pleuronecta, such as sole, flounder, plaice, dab, and brill, simply because of the dizzying speed with which the Nautilus hustled through these ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the parents that he would make a third attempt to secure the child, whereupon they applied in their despair to Loki, who carried the boy out to sea, and concealed him, as a tiny egg, in the roe of a flounder. Returning from his expedition, Loki encountered the giant near the shore, and seeing that he was bent upon a fishing excursion, he insisted upon accompanying him. He felt somewhat uneasy lest the terrible giant should have seen through his ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... burning clutch at tender membranes, gnawing and tearing at their meal like beasts at the kill, then, still wadded in their clothing, sinking to the floor—and to sleep. The air was rancid with the odor of wet, steaming clothing. Men crawled over one another, then dropped to the first open spot, to flounder there a moment, then roar in snoring sleep. Against the wall a bearded giant half leaned, half lay, one tooth touching the ragged lips and breaking the filmy skin, while the blood dripped, slow drop after slow drop, upon his black, tousled beard. ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... thrice-honored ladies, flounder about in a tangled net of prejudice, of intrigue. We are blinded by conventions, we are crushed by misunderstanding, we are distracted by violence, we are deceived by hypocrisy, until only too often villains receive the rewards of nobility ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... followed us into the bog and had done fairly well at first, but when he neared us he too sank to his belly and could only flounder about. We were in this predicament when Du-seen and his followers approached the edge of the horrible swamp. I saw that Al-tan was with him and many other Kro-lu warriors. The alliance against Jor the chief had, therefore, been ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... engendered by the centrifugal force of its rotation, ceased, so that passengers, most of whom were assembled in the main salon, which occupied the entire midship section, drifted away from the curved floor, whose contour followed that of the outer skin, to flounder in helpless confusion. ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... around, to see the different kinds of fish, displayed on the stalls. Here were to be seen the Sea-Bass, Black-fish, the Sheep's-Head, the Pike, the Flounder, and a number of others, so many that it would fill a good part of this little book, just to print the pictures of them all. But we will give them ...
— Susan and Edward - or, A Visit to Fulton Market • Anonymous
... small wires to the extremity of the principal wire used, and introducing the tongue between those plates, I succeeded in obtaining powerful shocks upon the tongue and gums, and could easily convulse a flounder, an eel, or a frog. None of these effects could be obtained directly from the electromotor, i.e. when the tongue, frog, or fish was in a similar, and therefore comparative manner, interposed in the course of the communication ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... indeed, he must have had an ugly fall, but, picked up quickly by the delicate and steady finger of his rider, the good horse found some slight projection of the bank, whereby to make a second spring. After a heavy flounder, however, which must have dismounted any less perfect horseman, he recovered himself well, and before many minutes was again abreast ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... and thought Hinduism is definite and unmistakeable. In whatever shape it presents itself it can be recognized at once. But it is so vast and multitudinous that only an encyclopedia could describe it and no formula can summarize it. Essayists flounder among conflicting propositions such as that sectarianism is the essence of Hinduism or that no educated Hindu belongs to a sect. Either can easily be proved, for it may be said of Hinduism, as it has been said of zoology, that you ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... but wagging a roguish forefinger at him; "people can't undo their mistakes so easily. If, as you say, you brought about this painful situation, then you must sit patiently by and watch me as I flounder about in the various ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... come back. At the highest point of the hill she stood as if transfixed, a slim little silhouette against the darkening sky, her hands clasped in amazement. Suddenly she turned and came tearing down the hill, floundering through sand, falling and picking herself up, only to flounder and fall again, finally rolling down the last few yards ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... one thrust. And he did not withdraw his bill, either. Instead he set up a terrible squawking and began to flounder about on the bank of ...
— The Tale of Ferdinand Frog • Arthur Scott Bailey
... after a flounder or two the pony started the load and struggled up the ascent. Leaving the woman at the top, voluble with thanks, Vane came down and sauntered ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... Meeting such droves of cattle and of people, May take a fright; so down the lane I trundled, Where Goodman Dobson's crazy mare was founder'd, And where the flints were biggest, and ruts widest, By ups and downs, and such bone-cracking motions We flounder'd on a furlong, till my madam, In policy, to save the few joints left her, Betook her to her ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... Celery Fillets of Flounder, Piedmont Guinea Hen, Marie Cranberry Jelly Candied Sweet Potatoes Cauliflower Coleslaw Pumpkin Tarts Coffee Cheese ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... a suffering brother!" remarked Bob, and seated himself, with a few words in Gaelic which drew a hearty laugh from the men about him, on a heap of turf to watch the unyielding flounder in the peat-hole, where there was no room to swim. He had begun to think the man would drown in his contumacy, when his ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... me that it is the practice of muleteers in the neighbourhood of Erzeroum, when their animals lose their way and flounder in the deep snow, to spread a horse-cloth or other thick rug from off their packs upon the snow in front of them. The animals step upon it and extricate themselves easily. I have practised walking across deep snow-drifts on ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... the people were to be taken like fishes in a net; and, by assistance of the Pope, who sets up to be the universal Fisher of Men, the whole innocent nation, was, according to our common expression, to be "laid as flat as a flounder." ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... this moment a gust of whirling snow swept down upon her. There was a flounder, a mis-step, a fatal strain on the wrong rein, a fall, a few plucky but unavailing struggles, and both horse and rider slid ignominiously down toward the rocky shelf. Mrs. Rightbody screamed. Miss Alice, from a confused debris of snow and ice, uplifted a vexed ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... bright-coloured handkerchiefs which the women of this village twisted round their heads like turbans, and pinned across their bosoms. I think it is absurd, though, to say that German peasants dance well. They enjoy the exercise immensely, but are heavy and loutish in their movements, and they flounder about in a grotesque way with their hands on each other's shoulders. At a Kirchweih they dance in ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... his mount to do the same thing; but to make it absolutely certain that no unwise flounder on the part of Domino might betray them, he sat upon the horse's head, soothing him by little pats ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... faith. If I ever really and truly believed in spiritualism and then found, as so many people have done, alas! that the prophet of it was himself a fraud, I should be cut, as it were, from all my spiritual bearings, to flounder hopeless and broken-hearted mid the desolate wastes of agnosticism. I cannot give myself unless I am convinced that the sacrifice is for something which I must believe in spite of all doubt; not entirely what I want to believe because belief is full of happiness ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... the entertainment of the company; but, for my part, I throw myself upon your mercy. I wouldn't, for the world, hint that we are more solid than the girls, but 'tis very certain that we are more lumbering. If I were to begin a tale, I'd flounder through it, like a whale with a harpoon in its body; while any of the girls, even down to little Anna, would glide along, like a graceful, snow-white swan upon a silver lake—happy in her element, and giving pleasure to all who ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... some of the paternal ire. "Stewart, I asked you to be candid with me. You're leaving me to flounder around disgracefully ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... for something he, in his superior enlightenment, would think she oughtn't to like; or to pass by something at which the truly initiated mind would arrest itself. She had no wish to fall into that grotesqueness—in which she had seen women (and it was a warning) serenely, yet ignobly, flounder. She was very careful therefore as to what she said, as to what she noticed or failed to notice; more careful than she had ever ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... could fire again Quintana's shot in reply came ripping through the juniper and tore a ghastly hole in the calf of his left leg, striking a blow that knocked young Hastings flat and paralysed as a dead flounder. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... of a little fish, however, called a sand dab—he is a tiny, flounder-shaped titbit hailing from deep water; and for eating purposes he is probably the best fish that swims—better even than the pompano of the Gulf—and when you say that you are saying about all there is to be said for a fish. And ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... attach their eggs to sea-weeds. In every instance, however, their fruitfulness far surpasses that of any other race of animals. According to Lewenhoeck, the cod annually spawns upwards of nine millions of eggs, contained in a single roe. The flounder produces one million; the mackerel above five hundred thousand; a herring of a moderate size at least ten thousand; a carp fourteen inches in length, according to Petit, contained two hundred and sixty-two thousand two hundred and twenty-four; a perch deposited three hundred and eighty thousand ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... we see at once that the track is far from being a hard, well-rolled "cinder path"; on the contrary, it is of soft sand into which the naked foot sinks if planted too firmly, and upon it the most adept "hard-track" runner would at first pant and flounder helplessly. The Greeks have several kinds of foot races, but none that are very short. The shortest is the simple "stadium" (600 feet), a straight hard dash down one side of the long oval; then there is the "double course" ("diaulos") down one side and back; the "horse race"—twice ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... alike: how happens it, once more, that the baptism of civilization has not been equally efficacious for all? Does this not show that progress itself is a privilege, and that the man who has neither wagon nor horse is forced to flounder about for ever in the mud? What do I say? The totally destitute man has no desire to improve: he has fallen so low that ambition even is extinguished ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... you," avouched Mrs. Maxwell zealously; then she began to remember, and start, and flounder—"only she is so modest. Joanna, my dear, you cannot be so stupid as to hesitate from ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... fiskar," i. e. "sacri pisces," id. p. 148. The Danish phrase is "helleflyndre," i. e. "holy flounder." The English halibut is hali holy but flounder. This word but is classed as Middle English, but may still be heard in the north of England. The fish may have been so called "from being eaten particularly on holy days" (Century ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... "where is this letter? Why didn't you speak of it before? What do you mean by allowing us to flounder about here in the dark, when a glimpse at this letter might have ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... his younger brother Stephen Mallet, had set up house. I remember to this day owning to my brother that though I had intended my review of Gulliver's Travels to be epoch-making, it had turned out a horrible fiasco. However, I somehow felt I should only flounder deeper into the quagmire of my own creation if I rewrote the two reviews. Accordingly, they were sent off in the usual way. Knowing my father's experience in such matters, I did not expect to get ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... his bill with it," said Frank, "and very good-natured he was to take the monster off my hands,—it had already hugged two soldiers and one groom into the shape of a flounder. I tell you what," resumed Frank, after a short pause, "I have a great mind even now to tell my father honestly ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the bath Step like a ray of moonlight. Then she snaps The light on where the onyx tub and walls Dazzle the air. I enter then her room And stand against the closed door, do not pry Upon her in the bath. Give her the chance To fly me, fight me standing face to face. I hear her flounder in the water, hear Hands slap and slip with water breast and arms; Hear little sighs and shudders and the roughness Of crash towels on her back, when in a minute She stands with back toward me in the doorway, A sea-shell ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... feeling something on the line, I drew up with great eagerness and vigor. It was two of those broad-leaved sea-weeds, with stems like snakes, both rooted on a stone,—all which came up together. Often these sea-weeds root themselves on muscles. In the morning, our pilot killed a flounder with the boat-hook, the poor fish thinking ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... flounder—but you leave him to ask what you want, ma'am; don't mention this [He puts the deed back into his pocket]. The Centry's no mortal good to him if he's not going to put up works; I should say he'd be glad to save what ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the kind being a low dwarf birch, hardly worthy of being called a shrub,) we would cut across the shoulder of some projecting spur, and obtain a wider prospect of the level land upon our right; or else keeping more down in the flat, we had to flounder for half an hour up to the horses' shoulders in an Irish bog. After about five hours of this work we reached the banks of a broad and rather singular river, called the Bruara. Halfway across it was perfectly fordable; but exactly in the middle was a deep ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... wounding and suffering, out of the breeding darknesses of Time, that will presently crush and consume him again. Why not flounder with the rest, why not eat, drink, fight, scream, weep and pray, forget Hugh, stop brooding upon Hugh, banish all these priggish dreams of "The Better Government of the World," and turn to the brighter aspects, the funny and adventurous aspects ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... swept howling on. But she never in the world would have attended. Not in that emergency! She would not, for anything, have peeped out of the windows, in perfectly proper curiosity, to watch the Bottle River jacks flounder into town. Not she! Pattie Batch was busy. Pattie Batch was so desperately employed that her swift little fingers demanded all the attention that the most alert, the brightest, the very most bewitching gray eyes in the ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... half-breed tried to drive him away with the whip; but he paid no heed to the stinging lash, and the man had not the heart to strike harder. Dave refused to run quietly on the trail behind the sled, where the going was easy, but continued to flounder alongside in the soft snow, where the going was most difficult, till exhausted. Then he fell, and lay where he fell, howling lugubriously as the long train of sleds ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... raving. He has a clear and powerful voice, which often serves him in good stead. The congregation has a knack of getting out of time and tune when the melody is unfamiliar; this, in turn, distracts the choir, who flounder hopelessly, until the schoolmaster drags them back by putting full steam on the harmonium and singing at the top of his voice. Every Sunday afternoon, at least, he was obliged to display his vocal prowess in this manner. After every one of the commandments ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... my attempts to discover very adroitly and pleasantly. The knowledge she showed of many passages in my life seemed to me all but unaccountable; and she appeared to take a not unnatural pleasure in foiling my curiosity, and in seeing me flounder in my eager perplexity, from one ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a thing of my own here!" declared Frank. "If we except, of course, my fire stick and the remains of a flounder." ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... cannot stand is his morality. If ever a man on this earth lived to embody the tremendous text, "But if the light in your body be darkness, how great is the darkness," it was certainly he. Great men like Ariosto, Rabelais, and Shakspere fall in foul places, flounder in violent but venial sin, sprawl for pages, exposing their gigantic weakness, are dirty, are indefensible; and then they struggle up again and can still speak with a convincing kindness and an unbroken honour of the best things in the world: Rabelais, ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... honest prayer in stock, and at least two purely automatic social speeches of this sort, no man needs to flounder altogether hopelessly for words in any ordinary emergency of life. Thus with no more mental interruption than the two-minute break in time, the Senior Surgeon ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... readers, to note it in the very commencement, and to learn, like the thoughtful students of painting, to put aside any half-childish over-estimate of the absurdity of a blue stroke transfixing a huge flounder-like fish as a likeness of a sea, (which you have been accustomed to see translucid, in breakers and foam, in modern marine pictures,) or your quick sense of the ugliness of straight figures with long hands, wooden feet, and ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... the masters have established, every word and tone sounding clearly, the voice rising and falling as it should...." etc., etc., etc.; "but if, when you have done all these things correctly, you should make a mistake, or in any wise stumble and flounder, whatever your success up to that moment, you would have failed in the song-trial! In spite of great diligence and application, myself I have not brought it to that point. Let me be an example to you, and drop this folly of seeking ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... want the pleasure of seeing how you look as you flounder through the rapids; and then, again, I may pick up a few points as to ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... communication trench. But it is always unpleasant to step off the duck-boards in wet weather. Seeing that the enemy may have fixed rifles trained on you at any bend of the trench, it is unwise to carry a light; and in a dark night and an unaccustomed trench you are almost sure to flounder. ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... let me flounder through that perplexity for a time, fearful, I suppose, to hurt my feelings by showing me how little I knew of it, and finally he hinted at three cairns he was acquaint with, each elevated somewhat over the general run of the country, and if not the harbourage a refugee ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... the valiant Walter "squattered" through the ford. The twilight was darkening fast, and, in the shadow of the ravine, we were almost safe from the eyes of our pursuers; but I marvel that even at such a distance their ears were not attracted by the flounder and the splash. My squire and I followed more leisurely; indeed, throughout, the former had displayed a creditable coolness and determination; also, he seemed to take very kindly to my own favorite motto, "Festina lente"—"More ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... into the darkness of the future, the impatience of an ungiven love to find its goal, the nobility of all her thoughts of life, the decision of her mind to suffer in a sphere of higher things rather than flounder in the marshes of provincial life like her mother, the pledge she had made to herself never to fail in conduct, but to respect her father's hearth and bring it happiness,—all this world of feeling ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... from those boggy valleys where our progress had been already so much impeded. Smoke arose from various parts of the lower country—a proof that at least some dry land was there. We were provided with horses only, and therefore desperately determined to flounder through or even to swim if necessary, we thrust them down the hill. On its side we met an emu which stood and stared, apparently fearless as if the strange quadrupeds had withdrawn its keen eye from the more familiar ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... harsh, hard, and solid, for their purpose, which they relinquish, and go to a fresh spot that works more freely? Or may they not in other places fall in with a soil as much too loose and mouldering, liable to flounder, and threatening to ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... the fact that the world is full of books of the highest value for cultivation, entertainment, and information, which the utmost leisure we can spare from other pressing avocations does not suffice to give us knowledge of, it does seem to be little less than a moral and intellectual sin to flounder about blindly in the flood of new publications. I am speaking, of course, of the general mass of readers, and not of the specialists who must follow their subjects with ceaseless inquisition. But for most of us who belong to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... fish occupy the remainder of the wall cases. These include perch; bream; the john-dory; carp; barbel; salmon; pike; trout; sturgeon; the shark; thornback; lamprey; turbot; plaice; sole; flounder; cod; ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... speech, the two boys pitched in. There was no lack of ammunition aboard the Seamew, and there seemed to be no lack of porpoises anxious to serve as moving targets. And, indeed, Mart soon found that he need spend no worry over leaving wounded fish to flounder out their lives. ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... reason that influenced the young navigators in deciding to take the longer course across the Atlantic. This concerned the fogs such as can always be met with off the Newfoundland Banks, and which are often so dense that vessels flounder through them for several ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... stirred Hoccleve's muse to unwonted vivacity. In the London Lick-penny Lydgate, if Lydgate's it be, wrote humorous satire with success. Skelton himself, though in his (much too respectfully spoken of) play Magnificence he could flounder with the worst of his predecessors, in his light and railing rhymes was nimble enough, and ranged easily from vigorous invective of Wolsey to pretty panegyrics of fair ladies. Now and again also these good souls ceased their search for polysyllables, looked at ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... one of my three friends, a gentleman whom I knew to possess an enviable flow of silver speech, and obtested him, by whatever he deemed holiest, to give me at least an available thought or two to start with, and, once afloat, I would trust to my guardian-angel for enabling me to flounder ashore again, He advised me to begin with some remarks complimentary to the Lord-Mayor, and expressive of the hereditary reverence in which his office was held—at least, my friend thought that there would be no harm in giving his Lordship this little sugar-plum, whether quite ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... close about 8 o'clock. Men go to bed betimes who know that a bugle will sound the reveille at 5.30 in the morning. The end of the entertainment is planned to allow time for a final cup of tea or a glass of Horlick's Malted Milk before we go out to flounder through the mud to ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham |
