"Briar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... yellow with fever, and the hand that filled the briar pipe shook with ague. All this ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... place is right off the beat, isn't it?" mused my acquaintance, as sheltered from the keen wind I began to load my briar. "Very inconvenient I've always thought it for a gentleman who gets about ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... from the left, hung a splendid briar that Donald had contributed, and it was to this that Peter Rainy had referred, since there was a rule that a man might borrow his pipe if he needed it, but must be sure to have it returned to ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... was batting grounders and flies to a half-dozen of his fellows. Over by the stables, strings of horses, all of the same color, were being curried and cleaned. A young lieutenant upon a bicycle spun silently past. An officer came from his front gate, his coat unbuttoned and a briar in his teeth. The walks and roads were flanked with lines of black-painted cannon-balls; inverted pieces of abandoned ordnance stood at corners. From a distance came the mellow ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... he, raising his hand. "Let not the groping man thank the lamp, nor the briar the brook. Thank the sun whence the lamp hath his light, and the ocean to whom the brook oweth his waters. Thank that incomparable paragon, that consummate swan, that pearl of all perfection, my mistress, of whose brightness I am but ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... * * Forgive the past! Henceforth flowers shall bloom upon the surface Of your dwellings. The lilac in the spring Shall blossom, and the sweet briar shall exhale Its fragrant smell. E'en the drooping fuchsia Shall not be wanting to adorn your tombs; While the weeping willow, pointing downwards, Speaks significantly to the living, That a grave awaits ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... Louisa more than they had puzzled Archie in the morning; for she wanted to keep her way, which he did not. She lost it, however, continually. Her eyes were scratched by boughs and brambles, the tree roots tripped her up, her dress caught in a briar and was torn. "Archie! Archie!" she cried, as she went along. Her voice came back from the forest in strange echoing tones which made her start. At last, after winding and turning for a long time, she found herself again upon the main path, not far from the place where she had entered the wood. She ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... smaller trees: the Yew with its thick green foliage; the wild Guelder rose, which lights up the woods in autumn with translucent glossy berries and many-tinted leaves; or the Bryonies, the Briar, the Traveler's Joy, and many another plant, even humbler perhaps, and yet each with some exquisite beauty and grace of its own, so that we must all have sometimes felt our hearts overflowing with gladness and gratitude, as if the woods were full ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... and freely get Good words, or meat. Like as my parlor, so my hall And kitchen's small; A little buttery, and therein A little bin, Which keeps my little loaf of bread Unchipt, unflead; Some brittle sticks of thorn or briar Make me a fire, Close by whose living coal I sit, And glow like it. Lord, I confess too, when I dine, The pulse is thine, And all those other bits that be There placed by thee; The worts, the purslain, and the mess Of water-cress, Which ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... heartily. Braxies, sheep that have died of braxie (a disease). Breastie, dim. of breast. Breastit, sprang forward. Brechan, ferns. Breeks, breeches. Breer, brier. Brent, brand. Brent, straight, steep (i.e., not sloping from baldness). Brie, v. barley-brie. Brief, writ. Brier, briar. Brig, bridge. Brisket, breast. Brither, brother. Brock, a badger. Brogue, a trick. Broo, soup, broth, water; liquid in which anything is cooked. Brooses, wedding races from the church to the home of the bride. Brose, a thick mixture of meal and warm water; also a synonym ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... time that the South Carolina Regiment, the oldest branch of the 1st West India Regiment, was raised. Numerous royalists joined the British camp and were formed into various corps;[2] and the South Carolina Regiment is first mentioned as taking part in the action at Briar Creek on the 3rd of March, 1779,[3] the corps then being, according to Major-General Prevost's despatch, about 100 strong. The action at Briar ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... approbation. Oh! pleasant is the riding, highly-seated on the rail, And worthy of the wooden horse, the rascal that we ride; Let us see the mighty shoulders that will never, never fail. To lift him high, and plant him, on the crooked rail astride. The seven-sided pine rail, the pleasant bed of briar, The little touch of hickory law, with a dipping in ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... intention, stretched himself at full length on the dresser. Another who took no part in the syndicate was Barrington, a labourer, who, having finished his dinner, placed the cup he brought for his tea back into his dinner basket, took out an old briar pipe which he slowly filled, and proceeded to ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... hot upon them, and the remainder into a tub, with seven pecks of cowslip pips. Let them remain there all night; then put the liquor and the lemons to eight spoonfuls of new yeast, and a handful of sweet-briar. Stir all well together, and let it work for three or four days; then strain and tun it into a cask. Let it stand six months, and bottle ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... coloured hieroglyphics: it had been brought home by one of our people years before. There was but one man in the place who could bend that bow effectually; so that though we valued it highly we could not use it. By it lay another of briar, which was pliable enough and had brought down more than ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... his breakfast-tray out on the landing, and was thinking of the morning's work, and of some very dubious pages that he had blackened the night before. But when he had lit his disreputable briar, he remembered there was an unopened letter waiting for him on the table; he had recognized the vague, staggering script of Miss Deacon, his cousin. There was not much news; his father was "just the same as usual," ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... and invisible, or dammed and left in soak, breeding frogs, gnats, and flies. The trees are always tall and beautifully grown, whatever their age, for the moisture and warmth force vertical growth; the smaller bushes—hawthorn, briar, and wild guelder-rose—also assume graceful forms unhidden, for they always bow their heads towards the sun-reflecting stream. Part of the charm of the transformation of these brookside jungles into the brookside garden lies in the gradual ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... effusions of an ordinary character, full of a lover's despair and complaint. Three or four are translations or imitations; translations from Marot, imitations from Theocritus, Bion, or Virgil. Two of them contain fables told with great force and humour. The story of the Oak and the Briar, related as his friendly commentator, Kirke, says, "so lively and so feelingly, as if the thing were set forth in some picture before our eyes," for the warning of "disdainful younkers," is a first fruit, and promise of Spenser's skill in vivid narrative. The fable of the Fox and ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... the size of his feet, was Hoofer, to investigate on his own account; and it was the cautious Stalky who found the track of his pugs on the very floor of their lair one peaceful afternoon when Stalky would fain have forgotten Prout and his works in a volume of Surtees and a new briar-wood pipe. Crusoe, at sight of the footprint, did not act more swiftly than Stalky. He removed the pipes, swept up all loose match-ends, and departed ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... which it moves, and from which it draws radiance and light and motion. By all these methods, and many more that I cannot dwell upon now, the problem is triumphantly solved by Christianity. The tree is made good, and 'instead of the briar shall come up ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... tear the hero in pieces.[181] The group is allied, on the one hand, to that of Fearless Johnny who, passing the night in a haunted house, expelled the ghosts, or goblins, which had taken possession of it; on the other hand, to that of the Briar Rose, illustrated by Mr. Burne Jones' ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... had come to live on the Green Meadows, Peter had been afraid to go very far from the dear Old Briar-patch where he makes his home, and where he always feels safe. Now there wasn't any reason why he should go far from the dear Old Briar-patch. There was plenty to eat in it and all around it, for sweet clover ...
— Mrs. Peter Rabbit • Thornton W. Burgess
... And the roadside rose, sweet-briar, we would remember thee And the cinnamon rose that evermore enthralls each passing bee, You old, old-fashioned roses, a-growing wild ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... o' the briar pattern around the edge? I know it's some worruk, but it's a bonnie border to lie under, an' it's not so tedious whan there's plenty o' folks to tak ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... sturdy, well-built and keen, smoked an old briar as he worked. A flannel shirt, open at the throat, showed a well-sinewed neck and powerful chest. Under the inverted cone of a shaded incandescent in his room, at the electricians' quarters of the Oakwood Heights enclosure, one could see the ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... more, but went up to her room, and presently Jeff, moodily puffing at his briar in the porch, heard the notes of her piano overhead. She played softly for some little time, and Jeff's pipe went out before it was finished—a most rare ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... of the firs, in a coppice of heath and vine, Is an old moss-grown altar, shaded by briar and bloom, Denys, the priest, hath told me 'twas the lord Apollo's shrine In the days ere Christ came down from God to the Virgin's womb. I never go past but I doff my cap ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... a fine specimen of Saxon and Gothic, and a small portion of the choir. The church, its transepts, north and south aisles, and chancel, are gone; and the dormitory, refectory, cloisters, &c. have scarcely left any trace of their gorgeous existence. The lonely ash and sturdy briar vegetate over the ashes of barons and prelates; and the unfeeling peasants intrude their rustic games on the holy place, ignorant of its former importance, and unconscious of the poetical feeling which its remains inspire. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... his table and sank into an arm-chair by the study fire, knocking out his briar on a coal and carefully refilling and lighting that invaluable collaborator. With his data presently arranged in better mental order, he returned to the table and covered page after page with facile reasoning. Then ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... heath Erica arborea, from whose roots pipes are made. The digging up and the preparing of these roots for the Paris manufacturers form now an important industry in the mountain villages. In England they are called briar-root pipes, briar being a corruption of the French word bruyre, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... ever nearer, signing to us to stay for him. A minute later, as we slipped and stumbled through the scrub of the wood, we heard him close behind us, crying to us in a smothered voice to stop. We ran on, terrified; and then Hugh's foot caught in a briar, so that he fell headlong with a ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... the valley. The level spot about the house gave perhaps half an acre of good garden ground; from the very edge of that, the grey rising ledges of granite and rank greensward between held their undisputed domain. There the wild roses planted themselves; there many a flourishing sweet-briar flaunted in native gracefulness, or climbed up and hung about an old cedar as if like a wilful child determined that only itself should be seen. Nature grew them and nature trained them; and sweet wreaths, fluttering ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... She was a superb comic actress. I mentally compared her with our young ladies, and even the handsome, dignified Anyuta Blagovo could not stand comparison with her; the difference was immense, like the difference between a beautiful, cultivated rose and a wild briar. ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... should sing; and then followed a wonderful story of Giles Collins, who loved a lady: Giles and the lady both died of true love; Giles was laid in the lower chancel, and the lady in the higher; from the one grave grew a milk-white rose, and from the other a briar, both of which climbed up to the church top, and there tied themselves into a true-lover's knot, which made all the parish admire. At this part, Anna was seen looking up at the ceiling; but the rest had no eyes but for Mrs Enderby, as she gazed full ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... lightened his face, changing the lines of it, making it if not handsome pleasant and friendly. He would talk to himself in English, ruffling his hands through his hair: "And then, at three o'clock I must go with Andrey Vassilievitch ..." or "I wonder whether she'll mind if I ask—" He had a large briar pipe at which he puffed furiously, but could not smoke without an endless procession of matches that afterwards littered the floor around him. "The tobacco's damp," he explained to us a hundred times. "It's ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... the lapse of years since 1861, over some of the great battlefields of the Civil War, we see striking contrasts. On some, where once went carnage and death hand in hand, we now see blooming fields of growing grain, broad acres of briar and brush, while others, a magnificent "city of the dead." Under the shadow of the Round Top at Gettysburg, where the earth trembled beneath the shock of six hundred belching cannon, where trampling legions spread themselves along the base, over crest and through the gorges of the mountain, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... schooling, hardly that. I then set in to help him. I didn't know much, but I did the best I could. Sometimes he would write with a piece of charcoal or the p'int of a burnt stick on the fence or floor. We got a little paper at the country town, and I made some ink out of blackberry briar-root and a little copperas in it. It was black, but the copperas ate the paper after a while. I made Abe's first pen out of a turkey-buzzard feather. We had no geese them days. After he learned to write his name he was scrawlin' it everywhere. Sometimes he would write it in the white sand ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... his den he smoked many pipes. Twice he cleaned the old briar; still there was no improvement. He poured a pinch of tobacco into his palm and sniffed. The weed was all right. Probably something he had eaten. He was always forgetting that his ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... gladden the heart of one who viewed it that morning from the summit of the gently-curving Tamfield Hill Robert McIntyre stood with his elbows upon a gate-rail, his Tam-o'-Shanter hat over his eyes, and a short briar-root pipe in his mouth, looking slowly about him, with the absorbed air of one who breathes his fill of Nature. Beneath him to the north lay the village of Tamfield, red walls, grey roofs, and ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was non-committal as to his profession, with a clean-shaven face which bore the unmistakable stamp of good breeding and unlimited good-nature. He tilted his suit-case on end and sat down on it; then he filled his briar pipe, crossed his legs, and looked about to take stock of the situation. He gazed about curiously; but there was nothing of any special interest in sight, except, painfully conspicuous on the face of a grass terrace, the ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... woman. One to whom heav'n gave beauty, when it grafted roses on a briar. You are the reflection of heav'n in a pond, and he that leaps at you is sunk. You are all white, a sheet of lovely, spotless paper, when you first are born; but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... and came to a briar patch and saw down at the roots little people, not much longer than your finger. Mary spoke so kindly to them; said she would be so glad if they would open a path for her to walk in, she would thank them so much; so they began to pull ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... superb order, and the forts around Washington had been stripped of their garrisons, and most of their guns, to furnish them; but the generalship which cut our army off from its base of supplies, and blundered into the battle of the Wilderness, like a blind horse into a briar patch, without shelling or burning the dry chapperal in which our dead and wounded were consumed together, after the battle, had made no arrangements for the safe arrival of its reinforcements. So they were ambushed soon after passing through Fredericksburg; and that night, before ten o'clock, ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... stables here, When rents are low and provender is dear? Let him go feed upon the public ways: I want him only for the holidays." So the old steed was turned into the heat Of the long, lonely, silent, shadeless street; And wandered in suburban lanes forlorn, Barked at by dogs, and torn by briar and thorn. ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... the briar pipe into the man's hand, and turned away without waiting for a reply. The seaman looked after him in open amazement. That evening he worked on the socket of the steel hook, and in two days he had the job finished. Then he returned ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... with these unpleasant thoughts, Grayson sat at his desk in the office of the ranch trying to unravel the riddle of a balance sheet which would not balance. Mixed with the blue of the smoke from his briar was the deeper azure of a spirited monologue in which Grayson ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... When I went in to where he sat I found Mr. Fethertonge the agent wid him: he had a night-cap on, an' was sittin' in a big armchair, wid one of his feet an' a leg swaythed wid flannel. I thought he was goin' to write or sign papers. 'Well, M'Mahon,' says he—for he was always as keen as a briar, an' knew me at once—'what do you want? an' what has brought you from the country?' I then spoke to him about the new lease; an' he said to Fethertonge, 'prepare M'Mahon's lease, Fothertonge;—you shall have a new lease, M'Mahon. You are an honest man, and your family have been ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... said to him, "Of this sickness I shall die, and thou wilt take another wife. Now wives are the gift of the Lord, but it would be wrong for thee to harm thy son. Therefore I charge thee that thou take not a wife until thou see a briar with two blossoms upon my grave." And this he promised her. Then she besought him to dress her grave every year, that nothing might grow thereon. So the queen died. Now the king sent an attendant every morning to see if anything were growing upon the grave. And at the end of the seventh year the ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... from his briar pipe, but Mutimer had ceased smoking. Near the latter was a vacant seat; Adela took it, as ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good-morrow, Through the sweet-briar or the vine Or the twisted eglantine; While the cock with lively din Scatters the rear of Darkness thin; And to the stack, or the barn door, Stoutly struts his dames before: Oft listening how the hounds and horn Cheerily rouse the slumbering ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Graham was map-sketching that day, and the strange but familiar figure was almost on him when he looked up. It was extremely military, and looked like a general at least. Also it was very red in the face, and was clutching doggedly in its teeth an old briar pipe. But what had appeared from the front to be an ultra military figure on closer inspection turned out to be a procession. Pulling back hard on a rope behind was ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... wildflowers in the fields from the brilliant flowers in garden beds. Interchange of glances, delicate and sweet as blue water-flowers on the surface of the stream; a look in either face, vanishing as swiftly as the scent of briar-rose; melancholy, tender as the velvet of moss—these were the blossoms of two rare natures, springing up out of a rich and fruitful soil on foundations of rock. Many a time Eve had seen revelations of the strength that lay below the appearance of ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... I'll never lin, But I will thorough thick and thin, Until at length I bring her in; My dearest lord, ne'er doubt it." Thorough brake, thorough briar, Thorough muck, thorough mire, Thorough water, thorough fire; And thus goes Puck ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honor, or the like. Therefore why should I be angry with a man, for loving himself better than me? And if any man should do wrong, merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but like the thorn or briar, which prick and scratch, because they can do no other. The most tolerable sort of revenge, is for those wrongs which there is no law to remedy; but then let a man take heed, the revenge be such as there ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... been so liberally promised him; but when he reached there he found that the party whom he sought was not within, nor the landlord either, for that was the precise time when that worthy individual was pursuing his guest over meadow and bill, through brake and through briar, towards the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... on earth; they slept, calm and still, in Barford churchyard, careless of what became of their orphan child, as far as earthly manifestations of care or love went. And Clemence lay there too, bound down in her grassy bed by withes of the briar-rose, which Lois had trained over those three precious graves before ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... McLean conceded, abandoning his demolished cherry tart and pulling out his briar. "And if the locket proves the duplicate of the other it indicates that it's a portrait of Madame Delcasse, but it doesn't indicate what has become of Madame Delcasse.... Though in a general way," McLean deduced with Scotch judicialness, "it supports the theory of foul ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... by me. She must flash to me, and stop there, burning. Oh, look, it is the month of the briar-rose. See how the hedges foam with pink blossom. And the fields, look, knee-deep in long grasses and daisies and buttercups. I am home again, thank Heaven. I am home. Home met me on the pier, my darling—the heart of ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... All over it: it did one good To pass within ten yards when 'twas in blossom. There was a sweet-briar too that grew beside. My Lady loved at evening to sit there And knit; and her old dog lay at her feet And slept in the sun; 'twas an old favourite dog She did not love him less that he was old And feeble, and he always had a place By the fire-side, and when he died at last She made me ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... presumptuous Elf, Exclaim'd a thundering Voice, Nor dare to thrust thy foolish self Between me and my choice!" A falling Water swoln with snows Thus spake to a poor Briar-rose, That all bespatter'd with his foam, And dancing high, and dancing low, Was living, as a child might know, In an ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... in the parish, the one who sewed for the young ladies at Loevdala Manor, and when Glory Goldie tried it on the effect was so perfect that one would have thought the two had blossomed together on one of the lovely wild briar bushes out in ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... "thing to see, not hear"—that brave, rash, resolute imp clinging like a terrier, or a crab, or a briar, on to the back of that gigantic ruffian, whom, if she had no strength to stop, she was ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... as that stick on to your tail, especially if you have no comb to get it off, is it? A politician is like a bee; he travels a zig-zag course every way, turnin' first to the right and then to the left, now makin' a dive at the wild honeysuckle, and then at the sweet briar; now at the buck-wheat blossom, and then at the rose; he is here and there and everywhere; you don't know where the plague to find him; he courts all and is constant to none. But when his point is ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... with his usual agility, inhaled the fresh perfumed air with the delight a Parisian feels at the sight of green fields and fresh foliage, plucked a piece of honeysuckle with one hand, and of sweet-briar with the other. Porthos had laid hold of some peas which were twined round poles stuck into the ground, and ate, or rather browsed upon them, shells and all; and Planchet was busily engaged trying to wake up an old and infirm peasant, who ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... the Great White Silence, the lure of the gold-spell, the delirium of the struggle; a dream, and I will awake to hear Garry calling me to shoot over the moor, to see dear little Mother with her meek, sensitive mouth, and her cheeks as delicately tinted as the leaves of a briar rose. But no! The hall is silent. Mother has gone to her long rest. Garry sleeps under the snow. Silence everywhere; ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... what kind of a first book should we get from the son of one of the most cultured and sensitive classical scholars and translators of this or any day and from the grandson of the painter of the Legend of the Briar Rose? The question is answered by Mr. DENIS MACKAIL'S What Next? (JOHN MURRAY), which on examination turns out to be a farcical novel. The story has certain technical weaknesses, but these are forgotten in the excitements of the chase, for the main theme ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... lattice-work in a friendly way. They reminded Tillie that while she was waiting for the coffee to boil she could get some flowers for her breakfast table. She looked out uncertainly at a bush of sweet-briar that grew at the edge of her yard, off across the long grass and the tomato vines. The front porch, to be sure, was dripping with crimson ramblers that ought to be cut for the good of the vines; but never the rose ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... spinarum. Here is lively represented how laborious sloth proveth in the end; for when things are deferred till the last instant, and nothing prepared beforehand, every step findeth a briar or impediment, which catcheth ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... the light soil of the valleys and table-lands. Excepting the megalonyx,* a kind of sloth of the size of an ox, described by Mr. Jefferson, I know not a single instance of the skeleton of an animal buried in a cavern of the New World. (* The megalonyx was found in the caverns of Green Briar, in Virginia, at the distance of 1500 leagues from the megatherium, which resembles it very much, and is of the size of the rhinoceros.) The extreme scarcity of this geological phenomenon will appear the less surprising to us, if we recollect, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... with thee, In unreproved pleasures free; 40 To hear the Lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night, From his watch-towre in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise; Then to com in spight of sorrow, And at my window bid good morrow, Through the Sweet-Briar, or the Vine, Or the twisted Eglantine. While the Cock with lively din, Scatters the rear of darknes thin, 50 And to the stack, or the Barn dore, Stoutly struts his Dames before, Oft list'ning how the Hounds and horn Chearly rouse the slumbring ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... activity, she had been dragging branches of lilacs, and laburnums, roses, and sweet-briar, to ornament the bower in which her fate was to be decided. It was excessively hot, but her mind was engaged, and she was indefatigable. She stood still, at last, to admire her works; her companions all joined in loud applause. They were not a little prejudiced ...
— The Bracelets • Maria Edgeworth
... laid beneath a tree, (Come back to Brecon Town!) Shouldn't I know? — I was there to see: (It's far to Brecon Town!) It's me that keeps it trim and drest With a briar there and a rose by his breast — The English flowers he likes the best That I bring ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... is quick and green with briar, From their sand the conies creep; And all the birds that fly in heaven ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... course not. You merely picked out that briar patch as a good place to have a fit in. Do you always think the world's coming to an end when you are taken ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine
... but remained silent; she was tired, and not quite inclined for repartee. They had turned into a long, lovely lane, so narrow that no vehicle could have passed them, and the thick hedgerows were full of pink and white briar roses and other wild flowers; on either side lay hop fields. Bessie ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Rosedale. I should say it was like flying! The start! Amazing! "Farewell to this world," I thought, as I felt my breath go. Then I shut my mouth, opened my eyes, and found myself at the bottom of the hill in a jiffy—"over hill, over dale, through bush, through briar!" I rolled right out of the toboggan when we stopped. A very nice Canadian man was my escort, and he helped me up the hill afterwards. I didn't like that part of the ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... the woods; And the buds that break Out of the briar's boughs, When March winds wake, So old with their beauty are— Oh, no man knows Through what wild centuries ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... agitation, and feared that he was yet angry. He did not detect the evidences of large game in the immediate neighborhood. He did not see, by the bend of the broken twigs and the small tufts of hair on the briar-bush, that an elk had pushed through that very copse within a few minutes; nor did he sniff the gamy odor with which the large beast had charged the air. In obedience to his friend's gesture, he flung himself down on hands and knees and cautiously crept after him ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... of the Poocah seems to be to obtain a rider, and then he is in all his most malignant glory. Headlong he dashes through briar and brake, through flood and fall, over mountain, valley, moor, and river indiscriminately; up and down precipice is alike to him, provided he gratifies the malevolence that seems to inspire him. He bounds and flies over ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... which we inspire When it is free to come and go; And sound of brook and scent of briar Rise freshest where the breezes blow, That feed our breath and ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... I parted from my Dear The linnet sang from the briar-bush, The throstle from the dell; The stream too carolled full and clear, It was the spring-time of the year, And both the linnet and the thrush I love them well Since last I ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... them the most anxious study and the most independent, not to say original, interpretation of signs. She talked now as if it were indicated, at every turn, by finger-posts of almost ridiculous prominence; she talked again as if it lurked in devious ways and were to be tracked through bush and briar; and she even, on occasion, delivered herself in the sense that, as their situation was unprecedented, so their heaven was without stars. "'Do'?" she once had echoed to him as the upshot of passages covertly, though briefly, occurring between them ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... by he saw Peter Rabbit coming down the Lone Little Path from the Green Forest on his way to the dear old briar-patch on the Green Meadows. Peter looked sleepy. The truth is, Peter had been out all night, and he was on his ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... hand lightly touching those of his left, listening attentively. Richard Seaton strode up and down the room before his friend, his unruly brown hair on end, speaking savagely between teeth clenched upon the stem of his reeking, battered briar, brandishing a ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... trough. Gaily the pure water, air's first cousin, fleeted along the rude aqueduct, whose sides and floor it had made green with grasses. The path, bearing it close company, threaded a wilderness of briar and wild-rose. And presently, a little in front, the brown top of a mill and the tall mill-wheel, spraying diamonds, arose in the narrows of the glen; at the same time the snoring music of the saws broke ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... withholding their usual nourishment, gave the signal "Come." The obedient little family followed her along the dark passage, and ventured, close at her heels, into the grass-patch in the middle of the briar-brake. Vulp was slightly more timid than his sisters were; even at that early age he showed signs of independence and distrust. While the other cubs played "follow-my-leader" with the dam, he hung back, hesitating and afraid. Even an unusual show of affection by his ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... all at breakfast with Lisbeth in a kitchen as clean as she could have made it herself. The window and door were open, and the morning air brought with it a mingled scent of southernwood, thyme, and sweet-briar from the patch of garden by the side of the cottage. Dinah did not sit down at first, but moved about, serving the others with the warm porridge and the toasted oat-cake, which she had got ready in the usual way, for she had asked Seth to tell her just what his mother gave them for breakfast. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... into the bulrush beds, 'Midst the reeds and osier heads, In the rushy soaking damps, Where the vapours pitch their camps, Follow me, follow me, For a midnight ramble! O! what a mighty fog, What a merry night O ho! Follow, follow, nigher, nigher - Over bank, and pond, and briar, Down into the croaking ditches, Rotten log, Spotted frog, Beetle bright With crawling light, What a joy O ho! Deep into the purple bog - What a joy O ho! Where like hosts of puckered witches All the shivering agues sit Warming hands and chafing feet, By ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... country, running into some of our cavalry on the way. It was just light enough for me to see properly when my engine jibbed. I cleaned a choked petrol pipe, lit a briar—never have I tasted ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... across the lawn and into the outer garden. In this garden every old-fashioned flower imaginable bloomed and thrived, and reared its graceful head. The Major walked down through great lines of tall hollyhocks and peonies of every color and description. Then he passed under a sweet-briar hedge and then along a further hedge of Scotch roses, red and white; and the scent from mignonette and sweet peas and the sweet-briar and the roses came up to his nostrils. Never to the longest day of his life did the Major forget the sweet scent of the old-fashioned garden ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... in smoke, and he felt for the first time in those weeks the return of his old desire. While they were eating, Mukoki and another Indian had brought in his trunk and bags, and he went now to one of the bags, opened it, and got his own pipe and tobacco. As he stuffed the bowl of his English briar, and lighted the tobacco, Father Roland's glowing face beamed at him through the fragrant fumes ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... originally the same word, and in Shakespeare's time both forms were used for the preposition. Cf. Puck's song in "Midsummer Night's Dream," "Thorough bush, thorough briar." ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... surprised a fox eating a rabbit which it had just caught in a briar-patch, and made such a sudden rush upon Reynard that he fled in hot haste, leaving the rabbit for the bear. In this way Black Bruin learned that rabbit was good to eat, even as palatable as squirrel, and after that he ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... her, but at length he caught sight of her some way off struggling with the undergrowth, her dainty head just peeping out over the tops of the ferns. So back he went once more and brought her out from the tangled mass of briar and brake into an open space where blue butterflies fluttered among ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... trees. He knew that if he tried to get over the wall I should catch him, and that there was no other way out, as I had locked the gate. It was heavy running, and we both began to get weary. Then I caught my foot in a briar and fell. Immediately the young man rushed to the wall and began scrambling up it, but just as he was drawing his leg over the top I caught him by the heel. For a moment he struggled and kicked, then by sheer weight I brought him down ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... is coming!" said Uncle Wiggily. "I must get out of the way!" So he hopped on ahead, going down the road quite fast, until he got to a place where there were prickly briar bushes on both ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis
... the sandal, the cord, and the cope, The dread of the devil and trust of the Pope; For to gather life's roses, unscathed by the briar, Is granted alone to the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... jumped o'er a wall, sir, His tail caught on a briar, It reached from Derby town, sir, All into ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... return of the latter mentioned garments but Alfred's climbing of fences, running through briar patches and dangling out of milk wagons had pretty well used the garments up. The mother therefore in return sent ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Briarmains stood near the highway. It was rather an old place, and had been built ere that highway was cut, and when a lane winding up through fields was the only path conducting to it. Briarfield lay scarce a mile off; its hum was heard, its glare distinctly seen. Briar Chapel, a large, new, raw Wesleyan place of worship, rose but a hundred yards distant; and as there was even now a prayer-meeting being held within its walls, the illumination of its windows cast a bright reflection on the road, while a hymn of a most extraordinary description, such ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... audience that could sit out Edward II. could find any pleasure in such sinks of literary infamies as In the Ranks and Harbour Lights. Artistic atrophy is benumbing us, we are losing our finer feeling for beauty, the rose is going back to the briar. I will not speak of the fine old crusted stories, ever the same, on which every drama is based, nor yet of the musty characters with which they are peopled—the miser in the old castle counting his gold by night, the dishevelled woman ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... a charm over all this country, not solely due to its beauty. It is true that it is rather drowsy, that the 'spell of the briar-rose' in part lies over it, but it may be that this adds to the charm. There is an absence of competition, an air of plenty and of kindness, a golden glamour that gives the impression that Nature has told the people theirs is a generous ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... sanctifying the heart of man. "As far as possible;" that is, as far as is consistent with the fulfilment of the sentence of condemnation on the whole earth. Death must be upon the hills; and the cruelty of the tempests smite them, and the briar and thorn spring up upon them: but they so smite, as to bring their rocks into the fairest forms; and so spring, as to make the very desert blossom as the rose. Even among our own hills of Scotland and Cumberland, though often ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... good knight might do nothing against all them, for he was lacking of arms; but amidst all that he slew three, and five were left, who fell upon him and slew his palfrey, and took the knight and stripped him to the shirt, and bound him hand and foot, and cast him into a briar-bush: and the Lady they stripped, and took from her her palfrey. They beheld the Lady, and saw that she was full fair, and each one would have her. At the last, they accorded betwixt them hereto, ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris
... whose mail Siegfried's sword penetrated as the sun rays penetrate the frost, and lastly the King's daughter, who pricked herself with the fateful spindle, and sank into deep sleep. And as Sigrdrifa was surrounded by walls of flame, so now we have a thorny hedge of wild briar round the beautiful maiden (hence named Dornroeschen) when the lucky prince comes to waken ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... came to the other side of the wood. Apparently Tommy Brock had turned the same way. Upon the top of the wall, there were again the marks of badger; and some ravellings of a sack had caught on a briar. ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... Rendal felt in his pockets for a cigar-case; was annoyed and amused (in a sub-conscious sort of way) to find only a briar pipe and a pocketful of coarse-cut tobacco; filled and lit his pipe, and started ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... with wild briar overtwined, And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind Upon their summer thrones; there too should be The frequent chequer of a youngling tree, That with a score of light green brethen shoots From the quaint mossiness of aged roots: ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... Georgia. Before he was able to execute this plan, General Prevost withdrew his troops from Augusta to Hudson's Ferry. Ash was then ordered to cross the Savannah, and take post near the confluence of Briar Creek with that river. This camp was thought unassailable. Its left was covered by a deep swamp, and by the Savannah. The front was secured by Briar Creek, which is unfordable several miles, and makes an ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... a briar—I die where I grow; only, instead of your finding me, as you did the first time, on the first or second floor, you will have to look for me on the fifth or sixth, seeing that, by a very natural see-saw movement, as my ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... heat and the glow and the hush of the summer afternoon; the scent of the sweet-briar bush over bowing grass-blades ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... standing was furnished in embossed leather. A leather couch stood near one of the windows, and a large reclining-chair of the same material was drawn up before the fireplace. Near the mantel was a pipe-rack filled with fine specimens of briar-wood and meerschaum pipes. Signs of tennis, golf, and various athletic sports were visible on all sides; in the centre of the room stood a large roll-top desk, open, and on it lay a briar pipe, filled with ashes, just ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... man with grotesquely wide shoulders, wore a long flowing moustache, and a black coat, covered with dust, that reached to his knees. He held a smoking briar pipe in his hand, and with it beat time for a row of men sitting on a long stone under the store window and pounding on the sidewalk with their heels to make a chorus for the song. Sam's smile broadened into a grin as he looked at the singer, ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... Minty, Irish maid, Picks roses sweet in briar's shade; On higher briar, by the rock, Are ten Sparrows in a flock, That sit and sing By cooling spring, When shoot one! shoot two! Comes sportsman ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... I've got to see the end of this," said Tom, and led the way by a side path to the Widow Taylor's cottage. This was a short cut, but Aleck would not take it, because of the briar bushes and the dust. As the boys were in their knockaround suits ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... the prickly briar, It prickles my throat so sore— If I get out o' the prickly briar, I'll ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... remembering as she did, how he took it, had its part in the freedom which he presently found for offering hospitality on his own account, not at his home, as he explained to them, his sister being away, but say a dinner at Briar Crest to which they might motor out pleasantly Saturday afternoon, returning by moonlight. He offered Briar Crest tentatively on the strength of the Lessings having once given a dinner there, and was relieved to find that he had made ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... was; open-faced and guileless as the day. Farm-bred, raw-boned, slow of speech, clear of eye, no vices, no habits that pulled a man down, unless a fondness for his briar-root pipe might be so classed. But in the way Mackenzie smoked the pipe it was more in the nature of a sacrifice to his gods of romance than even ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... moment confusedly, for she called to mind that in her nakedness she had neither knife, nor scissors, nor bodkin to let her blood withal. But even therewith close to hand she saw hanging down a stem of half-dead briar-rose with big thorns upon it; she hastily tore off a length thereof and scratched her left arm till the blood flowed, and stepped lightly first to stem and then to stern, and besmeared them therewith. Then she sat down on the ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... up the lane. On, on they went! at last a pathway, over a stile, appeared on the right, leading through a thick copse. They dashed into it, but soon found that the pathway had not been kept; and through briar and underwood they had to force a passage; now losing the scent, now catching it again; a wide, dry, sunny field lay before them; along it, and two or three others of a similar character they had to go; and then across another brook, over which, one after the other, they ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... dark form stirred and made a hasty movement. It was the boy Johnny—now grown tall as Mahony himself—and, to judge from the smell, what he tried to smuggle into his pocket was a briar. ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... Nicholas from head to foot, and his gaze was returned with stolid defiance. Nicholas did not flinch, but for the first time he felt ashamed of his ugliness, of his coarse clothes, of his briar-scratched legs, of his freckles, and of the unalterable colour of his hair. He wished with all his heart that he were safely in the field with his father, driving the one-horse harrow across upturned furrows. He didn't want to learn anything any ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... grew thick and tangled. Furze, too, and heath covered the slopes, and in places vast quantities of fern. There had always been copses of fir and beech and nut-tree covers, and these increased and spread, while bramble, briar, and hawthorn ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... are exceedingly aggravating. They consult you, they ask your advice upon the best way of concealing the stem of a rose, of giving a graceful fall to a bunch of briar, or a happy turn to a scarf. As a neat English expression has it, "they fish for compliments," and sometimes for better ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... respect, but here almost exclusively; and it is the only object pursued, not through brake and briar, but over rocks and waves; yet of what use would riches be to me, I have sometimes asked myself, were I confined to live in such in a spot? I could only relieve a few distressed objects, perhaps render them idle, and all the rest of ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... Sophia was helping her. Peace and tranquility brooded over the Glen; the sky was fleeced over with silvery, shining clouds. Rainbow Valley lay in a soft, autumnal haze of fairy purple. The maple grove was a burning bush of colour and the hedge of sweet-briar around the kitchen yard was a thing of wonder in its subtle tintings. It did not seem that strife could be in the world, and Susan's faithful heart was lulled into a brief forgetfulness, although she had lain awake most of the preceding night thinking of little Jem far out on the Atlantic, ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... it," responded Roy. "I've got it now. Inte, minte, cute corn, apple seeds and briar thorn, briar thorn and limber lock, three geese in a flock, one flew east and one flew west, one flew into a cuckoo's nest, O-U-T out, with a ragged dish ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... how that process was to be effected; to him the message had been committed, 'The Spirit also helpeth our infirmity.' There is but one way by which a corrupt tree can be made good, and that is by grafting into the wild briar stock a 'layer' from the rose. The Apostle had a double message to proclaim, and the one part was built upon the other. He had first to preach—and this day has first to believe that God has sent His own Son in the likeness of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of Lushington's condition were few and not such as would have seemed dramatic to an acquaintance. When he was in his room at the hotel in the Rue des Saints Peres, he got an old briar pipe out of his bag, filled it and lit it, and stood for nearly a quarter of an hour at the window, smoking thoughtfully with his hands in his pockets. The subtle analyst, observing that the street is narrow and dull and presents nothing of interest, jumps ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... I spoke about the scrub Ashmead-Bartlett calls furze. I now find it is almost certainly the plant from which our briar pipes are made. The stem is slender, but the root expands to a considerable extent, and I have seen parts of these, which our men have dug up when clearing the ground, about 4 to 6 inches thick. The fibres are twisted ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... Mirth's my trade and follies fond, Methinks a fair name were Joconde; And for thy sake I travail make Through briar and brake, O'er fen and lake, The Southward ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol |
