"Muddled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with a half-sarcastic laugh, "w'y, now, you an' the doctor 'ave tried to worrit that electricity into my brain for many months, off an' on, and I do believe as I'm more muddled about it to-night than I ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... the repute of her house ruined by a scandal which could not possibly be hidden. For some reason, blinded perhaps by her interests, this possibility had never occurred to her; and now, her wits muddled by a terrible fear, she could hardly be prevented from turning the girl out of the house at once. It was due to Anna's good sense that a cautious letter was written to the uncle in Berlin suggesting that Cacilie should be ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... have acquired by long practice in very various politics a way of making existing arrangements "do" with some slight patching. They are instinctively seized of the truth of Edmund Burke's maxim, "Innovation is not improvement." They have "muddled along" into precisely the institutions that suit any exigency, their sanest political philosophers recognizing that the exigency must always be most amenable to the most ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... wax-candles. At this hour of bedtime the Thane used to be in such a condition, that he saw two pair of candles and two Ivanhoes reeling before him. Let us hope it was not Ivanhoe that was reeling, but only his kinsman's brains muddled with the quantities of drink which it was his daily custom to consume. Rowena said it was the crack which the wicked Bois Guilbert, "the Jewess's OTHER lover, Wilfrid my dear," gave him on his royal skull, which caused the Prince to be disturbed so easily; but added, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... still up to his neck in debt; but worse remained behind. In his business he had sums of money for investments and for settlements of cases passing through his hands; and from time to time he had, when hard pushed, used his clients' money to pay his own debts. Beginning with small sums, he had muddled along, meaning to make all straight out of the first big case he had; and each time he had a big case the money seemed to be all spent before he earned it. He was not exactly bankrupt, for he was owed a great deal of money, enough perhaps to put him straight if he could get it in; but the ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... a safe adviser; they respect me; the law has never been able to lay hold of me; and when I say to them, 'That fellow drinks, blabs, and boasts, and would bring us all into trouble,' they will have nothing to do with him; but I cannot prevent his doing what he pleases out of his own muddled head, and with ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... round her and holding her close to him, as he used to do when, a little girl, she came sidling up to him for sugar-plums. "Poor Dick's affairs are in a terrible muddle. Unknown to me he speculated right and left, and he has not only muddled through everything he had, but he has left a number of debts, and unfortunately I ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... said the Squire, "only a little muddled and queer in my head; been riding too hard lately, perhaps. I don't get lighter, you know, Rorie, and a quick run shakes me more than it used. Old Martin, our family doctor, has been against my hunting for a long time; but I should ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... the registers half the time in winter to see if any gas is escaping from the furnace. And as to this Gretchen, it is possible there was some woman with him on the ship, or in New York, and he may be a little muddled there. You can inquire at the ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... courage and sentiment. He used to be fond of repeating that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of our public schools, until it was painfully obvious that Colenso and Spion Kop were lost in the same place. We have muddled through so often that we have come half to believe in a providence which watches over unintelligent virtue. "Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever," we have said to Britannia. So we have acquiesced ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... Lee Randon, in this connection, was amazingly muddled; and he wondered what would happen if the restraint, since it was no better than sham, should be swept away, and men acknowledged what they so largely were? A fresh standard, a new set of values, would have to be established. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of muddling away money. When the windmill was new, Peter's forefathers had been, for village people well off. The family had never done anything to bring themselves into disgrace; they had never speculated; but their money had been gradually muddled away, leaving the last little better than a labourer. To see him crawling along the road by his load of flints, stooping forward, hands in pocket, and then to glance at the distant windmill, likewise broken down, the roof open, ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... picture the horror of it from personal experience, for my rear rank man has nearly brained me a dozen times when the specials have bayonet drill (I also have nearly brained—but I am wandering from the subject). Well, the Funk at the critical moment ran away, but, being muddled by German gas clouds, ran straight into the German lines. He thought that people were trying to intercept his flight. In panic he cut them down. At the last moment he cut the CROWN PRINCE'S smile in twain. (In fiction, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... also given her a cordial letter of recommendation to Herr Bock, Counsellor of Archives, who was just then engaged in writing a voluminous work on the history of Nuremberg. It would be her task to arrange Herr Bock's muddled manuscript. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... news which had necessitated the appointment of Maurice of Nassau. The Dutch and English in Sluys fought magnificently. But the dissensions of the opposing parties outside prevented any effective relief. Leicester's arrival did not, mend matters. The operations intended to effect a relief were muddled. At last the garrison found themselves with no alternative but capitulation on the most honourable terms. In the meanwhile, however, Drake had effected his brilliant destruction of the fleet and stores preparing in Cadiz harbour; though his proceedings were duly ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... suggestions, and rapidly-dissolving views, of the various classes from Guy's to the London University, from St. George's to the London Hospital, perpetually crowding upon our brains (if we have any), and rendering our ideas as completely muddled as those of a "new man" who has, for the first week of October, attended every single lecture in the day, from the commencement of chemistry, at nine in the morning, to the close of surgery, at eight in the evening. Lecture! auspicious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... it necessary to make certain general rules. Houses and sheds must be made of solid lumps of bricks, and not hollow so that soldiers can be put inside them, because otherwise muddled situations arise. And it was clearly necessary to provide for the replacement of disturbed objects by chalking out the outlines of boards and houses upon the floor or boards ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... laughed, as a light entered my muddled outlook because of this astonishing information that accounted for much I had not been able to reconcile with her isolated life. From the moment she had mimicked the cook I had been kept in a state of wonderment. I had felt her superiority; I had marveled at the cultivation ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... that really mattered—not superficially, but as if they were the things that interested them most, as she knew they were. It was that kind of life she really longed for; she had only got her thoughts a little muddled in London because she had been rather humiliated in feeling herself a stranger where her brothers were so much at home. When she saw Muriel again she must put herself right there. Muriel would understand ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... no time to lose. The least muddled of the party had cleared the room in a moment, and then addressed themselves to the more difficult task of trying to quiet Eric and Wildney, and conduct them steadily into ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... individual, now hopelessly muddled by drink, staggered towards the door and lurched wildly round the corner, just in time to see mademoiselle cross the Boulevard and daintily make her way between the rows ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... and then you got it like a thunderbolt. There was no dribbling of advance telegrams; no daily papers to spread the news (or lies), and contradict 'em next day, in the same columns with commentaries or prophetic remarks on what might or should have been, but wasn't, until news got muddled up into a hopeless entanglement, so that when all was at last cleared up you'd been worried out of all your interest in it! Yes, my lads, although I would not wish to see the return of those stirring days, I'm free to assert ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... spiritual parent of his monks, and sought to train them in the humility, obedience, self-denial and gentle suppleness of character which are the authentic fruits of the Spirit. This ideal, it seems to me, has something still to say to us; some reproof to administer to our hurried and muddled existence, our confusion of values, our failure to find time for reality. We shall find in it and its creator, if we look, all those marks of the regenerate life of the Spirit which history has shown to us as normal: namely the transcendent aim, the balanced career of action ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... wuz Flannigan; Boss of the siction wuz Finnigin; Whiniver the kyars got offen the thrack An' muddled up things t' th' divil an' back, Finnigin writ it to Flannigan, Afther the wrick wuz all on agin. That is, this Finnigin ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... shouldn't matter. We have all done foolish things. I, for instance, invented a dress—a kind of bloomer thing—only it wasn't a bloomer. I took a shop for it in Bond Street, and it nearly ruined me. But I muddled through—that's our English way, isn't it?—and somehow things come right. Now, I am very political, and Winifred's very churchy—it doesn't really matter what you take up. So do come. You can bring your maid and have a sitting-room. Nobody ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the man, who was getting muddled by his wife's eloquence,' how am I to feed her? they won't sell me fodder from ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... but he looked much older. He had lost his wife some five years ago and was now alone in the world, for his three children had died in their infancy. Slyme's reference to drink had roused Philpot's indignation; he felt that it was directed against himself. The muddled condition of his brain did not permit him to take up the cudgels in his own behalf, but he knew that although Owen was a tee-totaller ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... not knowing what to do next. She felt that she had muddled things dreadfully. Instead of making Belle feel better as she hoped to do, she realized she had hurt her in some unintentional way. Presently, she slowly drew herself up from her chair and began to clear the table, piling the few dishes they had used, under the ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... (Don't say you can if you can't, please....) She comes from Chiswick. I'll give you her address before I go. But I don't want it muddled, ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... says Nicholas, starting up; and the church being so dark and his head so muddled he thought he was at the party they had played at all the night before, and away he went, bow and fiddle, at "The Devil among the Tailors," the favourite jig of our neighbourhood at that time. The rest of the ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... was not there. A search was now made in all the negro-houses in the neighborhood; but kicks, cuts, and other abuses failed to elicit any information of his whereabouts. At length Dunn began to feel the deadening effects of the liquor, and was so muddled that he could not stand up; then, taking possession of a bed in one of the houses, he stretched himself upon it in superlative contempt of every thing official, and almost simultaneously fell into a profound sleep. In this manner he received the attention of the ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... back. And she early discovered that, if he had not been to the "Dog and Pheasant," he had been somewhere else where he could get whisky. They walked home together, and she made neither comments nor inquiries; she did not consider that evening a suitable time. The Captain was only a little muddled and, as has been before said, a very little alcohol was sufficient to do that; he was quite clear enough to be a good deal relieved by his daughter's behaviour, and even thought that she noticed nothing amiss. Indeed, by the morning, ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... fair specimen of my lord in the morning and I must have described my patron very ill if the reader does not perceive a notable falling off. To behold the man thus fallen: to know him accepted among his companions for a poor, muddled toper, welcome (if he were welcome at all) for the bare consideration of his title; and to recall the virtues he had once displayed against such odds of fortune; was not this a thing at once to rage and to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their printed and paid-for sentences. On this particular occasion he was deep in a most involved tale of a psychological character, and had just worked his way into a sentence, or set of sentences, that completely baffled and muddled him. ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... from the same motive, Thad. On the contrary, while he went out to try and find a reason for believing Nick guilty, in spite of his alibi, I mean only to ask a few questions that will clear up a little point that is a bit muddled." ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... morning when Mr. Gerzson raised his muddled head from the table. The sun was shining brightly ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... and his mind is dense, And his lack of saving wit complete; But most amazingly immense Is his inane self-confidence And his innate conceit. But every Glug, and great King Splosh Bowed to Sir Stodge, the fuddled Swank, The muddled Swank of Gosh— The engineering, peeping, peering, Sneering Swank ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... and gallantly. He and his men helped clear the frontier for those who were to follow, and the task took its toll. Thus, slowly but steadily, even though handicapped by a vacillating governmental policy regarding the Indians, we muddled through these great Indian wars of the frontier, our soldiers doing their work splendidly and uncomplainingly, such work as no other body of civilized troops has ever been asked to do or could have done if asked. At the close of the Civil War we ourselves were a nation of fighting men. We were fit ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... died away there was distinct, though slight, applause, which partially drowned the accompanist's muddled conclusion. Then a woman walked in from the second drawing-room with an angry expression ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... wind, such was the potent effect of the single drink and those which had followed it, he was scared almost into soberness by a remarkable apparition. As it seemed to Sandy, he saw himself hurrying along in front of himself toward the house. Possibly the muddled condition of Sandy's intellect had so affected his judgment as to vitiate any conclusion he might draw, but Sandy was quite sober enough to perceive that the figure ahead of him wore his best clothes and looked exactly like ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... returning home either boisterously drunk or sullen and scowling-faced. In the latter case, he would come into the office where Denison worked (he had left the schooner of which he was supercargo, and was now "overseering" Solo-Solo) and try to grasp the muddled condition of his financial affairs. Then, with much variegated language, he would stride away, cursing the servants and the place and everything in general, mount his horse, and ride off again to the society of the loafers, gamblers, ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... trouble about the girl has really muddled your brains, Mr. Schomberg. Believe me, you had better part friends with us; for, deportation or no deportation, you'll be seeing one of us turning up before long to pay you off for any nasty dodge you may be hatching in that fat head ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... Evie talked cricket averages till I nearly screamed. I cannot think how I stood her all the other days. At last Charles and his father started for the station, and then came your telegram warning me that Aunt Juley was coming by that train, and Paul—oh, rather horrible—said that I had muddled it. But ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... vice and crime. What vice was, I did not know, but crime meant murdering somebody or doing something else dreadful. I thought about what I heard the fine ladies say until my poor little head became quite muddled. Left to myself, I could not see anything so terrible about these places, but if these finely dressed ladies said they were terrible, why they must be so. They knew better than I did. But I wondered dreamily if all terrible places were as nice ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... only in the new ideas which I discovered to arise from that conviction, and in the forming of brilliant plans for a moral, active future, while all the time my life had been continuing along its old petty, muddled, pleasure-seeking course, and the same virtuous thoughts which I and my adored friend Dimitri ("my own marvellous Mitia," as I used to call him to myself in a whisper) had been wont to exchange with one another still pleased my intellect, but left my sensibility untouched. ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... the circle of a hundred feet diameter was likely to receive the ball. One evening, about dusk, going into camp, I took a running jump over a ditch, and this rapid motion so frightened an honest German sentinel—probably a little muddled with lager—that he actually forgot to fire, and came at me in a more natural way with his musket clubbed. I escaped a broken head at the expense of a severely bruised arm. The rule for challenging, it used to be said, was to 'fire three ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... old story, the story of every war that England had gone into and "muddled through" somehow; but with two differences. Her soldiers had never had to fight an enemy in the skies before, and—there was no time now to straighten out the muddle, even if every able-bodied man in the United Kingdom had been trained soldiers, as ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... skinny hands, and tapping cheerfully in the palm with the knuckles of the other. Agravating Benjamin, seeing what she was about, roused up a little, chuckled and tapped in imitation of her, got an idea of his own into his muddled head all of a sudden, and bolted it out charitably for the ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... boy, at what part of my narrative had I arrived when I got muddled over that great Saint Peter, the prince of apostles? If I remember well I spoke to you of a glass of white wine I drank at daybreak. I came down to the pantry in my shirt, and took out of a certain cupboard, the key of which I had prudently kept by me the day before, a bottle, ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... you lie on the hearthrug Sleeping in the warmth of the stove, Even through your muddled old canine brain Shapes from the past ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... but the other soldier, either too drunk for rapid movement or too muddled to understand the gravity of the situation, only rose to his feet and stood leering at Jean ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... to admit and whom to turn away. In like condition were the several other worthy gentlemen who would have asked nothing better than to so serve. To fill the coveted place, Mrs. McFee would have risked her chance of salvation, and did, one night, when a certain trio passed in under her guns and muddled things considerably before their identity was discovered. Thereafter only the fit were chosen, and very ungracefully ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... fantastic with rings and long gilded fingernails, upon his shoulders so that ripples of delight, at all the voluptuous images of his desire, went through his whole body, making it quiver like a flame with yearning for unimaginable things. It all muddled into fantastic gibberish—into sounds of horns and trombones and double basses blown off key while a piccolo shrilled the first bars of ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... Even brain-muddled Mullan felt a maudlin impulse to cheer at Feeny's enthusiastic answer. Even poor old Plummer gave a half-stifled cry. Possibly he dreamed that rescue was at hand; but there was little time for rejoicing. Springing back whence he came, the unseen emissary was heard ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... old Egyptian rather despised soldiering as a profession. He thought it was rather a miserable, muddled kind of a job, in which, unless you were a great officer, you got all the hard knocks and none of the honours; and I am not sure that he was far wrong. His great idea of a happy life was to get employment as a scribe, or, as we should say, a clerk, to some big man or to the Government, to keep ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... abomination to walk through, give me kokos for good all-round tryingness, particularly when they are wet, as is very much the case now. Getting through these we meet the war hedge again, and after a conscientious struggle with various forms of vegetation in a muddled, tangled state, Sasu says, "No good, path done got stopped up," so we turn and retrace our steps all the way, cross the river, and horrify Herr Liebert by invading his house again. We explain the situation. Grave headshaking between him and Sasu about the practicability ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... fastidiously honest in some things, yet they were persistent rogues who could not see the wrong or folly of dishonesty; many of them were clear-headed in ninety-nine directions, but in the hundredth they were muddled if not mentally blind. ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... trailed this bunch from the water hole. Perhaps the wind and sand storms had muddled the tracks, but Drew still had faith in the Pima. And Rennie's party had followed with the knowledge of the Mexican's bolt hole to the south. Why, right now they could have circled ahead—could be waiting for Kitchell again as they had at the pass. An attack could give him a thin chance ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... are fools enough, They will not speak that way, But with a cloud of muddled thought They hide the light of day; Yet laughing words and candid truth Abide by field and hall, Where the best of true philosophers Are the children, ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... country. The woods blocked all sense of direction above and around. The ground was at any angle you please, and all sounds were split up and muddled by the tree-trunks, which acted as silencers. High above us the respectable, all-concealing forest had turned into sparse, ghastly blue sticks of timber—an assembly of leper-trees round a bald mountain top. "That's where we're going," said Alan. ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... of reform or sympathy for the prisoners is carried so far, in attempting to reform, as to lead the prisoners to believe that they are injured persons instead of transgressors, which is, in our opinion, wrong, and has a bad tendency." Is not the writer here a little muddled? or would he hold up these reformers as so absurd a set as to think of reforming men by making them believe they are good already and really sinned against? Indeed, would not the labors of such men of straw be bad? True, the writer pretends to found his objections ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... is muddled and murky, But the course she's resolved to pursue Is true to her mind, which we constantly find ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... it," exclaimed Mr. Granger; "and you will have more time to be my companion, Clarissa, if your brain is not muddled with groceries and butcher's-meat. You see, Sophia has such a ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... commit himself. She was enchanted—that seemed to breathe upon him; she waited, she hung there, she quite bent over him, as Diana over the sleeping Endymion, while all the conscientious man of letters in him, as she might so supremely have phrased it, struggled with the more peccable, the more muddled and "squared," though, for her own ideal, the so much more banal comrade. Yes, he could keep it up now—that is he could hold out for his real reply, could meet the rather marked tension of the rest of their passage ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... you how it came to be made, and then I'll relate the story in my own fashion, as the way in which the confession is written is too muddled for you to understand clearly. Still, it shows plainly enough that Clyne, for ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... seaside places. It was on sale from Morecambe to Barmouth, and at all the landing-stages of the steamers for the Isle of Man and Anglesey. Nothing surprised Denry so much as the vogue of the Chocolate Remedy. It was a serious anxiety to him, and he muddled both the manufacture and distribution of the remedy, from simple ignorance and inexperience. His chief difficulty at first had been to obtain small cakes of chocolate that were not stamped with the maker's name or mark. Chocolate manufacturers seemed to have a passion for imprinting their Quakerly ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... heard of it in later years. Some asserted it was a money-making scheme for the proprietor, and that the Negroes taught there were in reality slaves; others went to the press to defend it as a benevolent effort. Both sides so muddled the affair that it is difficult to determine exactly what the ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... she didn't take arithmetic, at any rate," groaned Avis. "I never can get my sums right, especially those horrid problem ones she's so fond of. The more she explains, the more muddled I feel, and then she says I'm the stupidest girl in the class, and tells Miss Lincoln it's no use sending me in for the 'Cambridge', because she's sure I ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... silly such a sentence when only yesterday, just here, there was the beggar who sold boot-laces, and just there, where the man lay, an old muddled Isvostchick asleep ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... unstinted measures and some of the women so forgot themselves as to attempt to rival the men in drinking. The barrier being thrown down Charles drank freely, till his tones began to thicken, and his eye to grow muddled, and he sat down near Jeanette and tried to converse; but he was too much under the influence of liquor to hold a ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... in the books. Indeed, I am acquainted with scarcely any writer on ornithology whose head is not muddled on the subject of our three prevailing song-thrushes, confounding either their figures or their songs. A writer in the "Atlantic" [Footnote: For December, 1853] gravely tells us the wood thrush is sometimes called the hermit, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... evil are the days of man." Soon, very soon, our brief lives will be lived. Soon, very soon, we and our affairs will have passed away. Uncounted generations will trample heedlessly upon our tombs. What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal? And I avow my faith that we are marching towards better days. Humanity will not be cast ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... human sentiment which had been stirred in her by Carnaby's startling act of cutting the plum tree down. Ah! let fools believe if they could that she was angry with the boy! She had never felt anger less or pride more. While others talked and argued, shilly-shallied, made love, muddled and made mistakes, her grandson, the man of the race that always ruled, had cut the knot for himself, without hesitation and without compunction, without consulting anyone or asking anyone's leave. That was the way the ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... upon the other almost without a pause. Mrs. Windsor requested the curate to take her in, after introducing him to her guests in the usual rather muddled and perfunctory manner. When they were all seated, and Mr. Amarinth was beginning to hold forth over the clear soup, she murmured confidentially ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Triumphant Egghead carefully built up his structure with nicety and tenderness. Only he, the Big Man, sworn to secrecy, knew what Hickey had surreptitiously inserted in the bottom of Egghead's trunk, and also what, from the depths of Wash's muddled clothing, would greet the fond mother or sister who did the unpacking; and every time he thought of it he laughed one of those laughs that pain. Then gleefully he had watched Macnooder stretching a strap until it burst with consequences dire, to the complete satisfaction ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... distant. He went back to bed, to lie with that taint of smoke in his nostrils, thinking of Doris and the boy, of himself, of Charlie Mills, of Myra, of Archie Lawanne. He saw ghosts in that dusky chamber, ghosts of other days, and trooping on the heels of these came apparitions of a muddled future,—until he fell asleep again, to be awakened at last by a hammering ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... really occupied, during the administration of John Quincy Adams, in the selection of his successor. At first the political outlook was rather muddled, although keen eyes averred that they could perceive, moving restlessly to and fro, the indefinite forms of those shadows which coming events project. Different seers interpreted the phantasmal appearances ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... to the youth of France a little more than a year ago. Suddenly with no preparation or warning they were called to defend their country from invasion. It was no longer possible to argue the rights of that diplomatic tangle into which European statesmen had muddled. Whatever the ultimate truth, the ultimate right of the controversy, the state—that larger self which was their home, their mesh of loves and interests and beliefs—demanded their service. The youth of France had been brought up with the knowledge that ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... that talk over their victuals are like to say anything very great, especially if they get their heads muddled with strong drink before they ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... till we know that we must absolutely go there. Where is our journey of discovery to take us to first, then? Clearly to the north of Scotland. What do you say to that, Mr. William? Is my catechism all correct, or has your strong ale muddled my head?" ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... the smile, but, finding no encouragement, allowed her features to subside gradually as if nothing had happened. I saw all this as plainly as if it had all been printed in great-primer type, instead of working itself out in her features. I like to see other people muddled now and then, because my own occasional dulness is relieved by a good solid background ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... which is full of life and actuality, and should be read by all middle-aged supporters of that institution who wish to obtain a glimpse of its hard-working and high-spirited heart. The other is the episode of the muddled elopement, in which Nan and Tony, having got as far as Dover on their way to the Higher Liberty, severally——But I don't think I will spoil for you the delightful comedy of what happens at Dover ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... writer. But it is quite inaccurate to speak of obscure thought: it is language, the medium, which makes the trouble when there is any. His thought, allowing for the fantasticality of his humor in certain moods, is never muddled or unorganized: it is sane, consistent and worthy of attention. To say this, is still ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... would perhaps be muddled and not take it all in exactly, but I knew, too, that she would grasp the gist of it, very well indeed. And so, indeed, she did. She turned white as a handkerchief, tried to say something, and her lips worked painfully; but she sank on a chair as though she had been felled by ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... been called 'Mad Hedley,' or 'Hedley, the mad tailor.' Sometimes one and sometimes the other. It don't matter which. There's truth in, it. I am a bit mad. You, Mr. Brott, were one of those who understood me a little. I have brooded a good deal perhaps, and things have got muddled up in my brain. You know what has been at the ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... were abroad; for a gale was howling across the tableland, which the Moors of old had named 'Majerit'—a draught of wind. The conductor, who, like a good and jovial conductor, had never refused an offer of refreshment on the road, was now muddled with drink and the heat of the sun. He was, in fact, engaged in a warm controversy with a passenger. So the Padre found his own humble portmanteau, a thing of cardboard and canvas, and trudged up the Calle de Toledo, bearing the bag in one hand and his cloak ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... liked it enormously. It was a novelty for them, and we saw right there that it was a case of organize the female vote or have things hopelessly muddled up before the end of the year. In the interests of harmony things had to be done in a businesslike manner. Certain candidates had to be put through and certain factions had to be gently but firmly stepped on. Harmony, you know, Miss Allstairs, is a most important thing in politics. Without ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... jollity and the sociability and all the rest of it! Force yourself to study the vile spectacle, and you will soon harbour a brood of aching reflections. The whole of that chattering, swilling mob are employing their muddled minds on frivolity or obscenity, or worse things still. You will hear hardly an intelligent word; you will not catch a sound of sensible discussion; the scraps of conversation that reach you alternate between low banter, ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... track soon proved a thorny one. Griffiths was a hard business man, of shrewd, worldly good sense, but little refinement or cultivation. He meddled, or rather muddled with literature, too, in a business way, altering and modifying occasionally the writings of his contributors, and in this he was aided by his wife, who, according to Smollett, was "an antiquated female critic and a dabbler in the 'Review.'" Such was the literary vassalage ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... has muddled his matters most uncommonly," continued Sir Louis, filling his glass for the second time before he passed the bottle. "What do you suppose now he owes me alone; just at one ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... out some broken excuses, to which I very impatiently listened; and so thoroughly muddled did his brain appear, that he either could not or would not comprehend the possibility of Mrs. Allerton and her children being turned out of house and home, as he expressed it, and over and over again ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... loathe them for themselves! She just picked up the scraps of her damaged little affairs and went, without a whimper, to the doing of the only job she could ever hope to succeed in. And she let the man-who-learned go! Gee! but that was a big decision. She might so easily have muddled the whole scheme of things, but she didn't! The ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... them trail a mile behind. Ask the bulls, if you want to know about Slippy McGee! And I let the happy dust alone. Most dips are dopes, but I was too slick; I cut it out. I knew if the dope once gets you, then the bulls get next. Not for Slippy. I've kept my head clear, and that's how I've muddled theirs. They never get next to anything until I've cleaned up and dusted. Why, honest to God, I can open any box made, easy as easy, just like I can put it all over any bull alive! That is," a spasm twisted his face ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... resemblance, however, and finally, with a little sigh of fatigue, she gave up the attempt. Her brain still felt muddled and confused from the blow she had received. Perhaps later she would be able to think things out ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... and never waste the while; Who feels his freehold's worth, and looks elate, A little prop and pillar of the state. Here he delights the weekly news to con, And mingle comments as he blunders on; To swallow all their varying authors teach, To spell a title, and confound a speech: Till with a muddled mind he quits the news, And claims his nation's licence to abuse; Then joins the cry, "That all the courtly race Are venal candidates for power and place;" Yet feels some joy, amid the general vice, That his own vote will bring its wonted price. ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... difficult subject to treat shortly. Chronology, an important aid, helps us not very much, though such help as she does give has been as a rule neglected by historians, so that plays before 1590 (which may be taken roughly as the dividing date), and plays after it have been muddled up ruthlessly. We do not know the exact dates of many of those which are (many of the plays of the earlier time are not) extant; and of those which are extant, and of which the dates are more or less known, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... asleep after dragging myself from the pool—a swoon-like sleep, from which I awoke in a confused, muddled state—only gradually grasping my position and realising how long I must have been insensible, for the kopje above me was glowing as if on fire, bathed in the glory which suffused the west. My horse was lying down a dozen yards away, with his head just raised; ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... is just what I can't possibly recollect, but they divided them somehow, and there was the great rock riddle all read out. Now, haven't we been just like that this summer? And I wonder if the world isn't like it, somehow? And ourselves, too, all muddled up, and not knowing what we are made of, till the right chemicals touch us? There's so much in it, Mr. Wharne, I can't put it in clear order. But it ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... fairly gone," said Caron, "it is to be hoped that the King's head will no longer be so muddled about these things. I wish it with all ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... If you go about with that dismal face and strong disapproval, it will really seem as if it was the having your dominion muddled with that you dislike. Besides, it is putting yourself forward to censure what is not absolutely wrong in itself, and ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... she wondered? What could she do with this awful, this unspeakable doubt pressing ever upon her? It might all be a mistake, a hideous mistake on Beelzebub's part. She had no great faith in his intelligence. It might be that by some evil chance his muddled brain had registered the name of Bowker Creek in connection with the fight which she did not for a moment doubt had at some time taken place. Beelzebub was never reliable in the matter of details, and he had not been able to answer ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the longest way round. To descend, the deer were fastened behind the sleds, which we all held back as much as possible as they dashed down the incline. But nearing the valley the pace increased until all control was lost, and we landed in a deep snow-drift half-way down, men, deer, and sleds being muddled up in inextricable confusion. I remember thinking at the time what a fortune such a snow-slide would make for its proprietor at Earl's Court. Imagine an "ice chute" more than a mile in length. To stand upright was even now, half-way down the mountain, out of the question, so the rest of the ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... always aesthetically pure and definite, and aimed at ascribing to the world something clean and intellectual in the way of inner structure. As compared with all these rationalizing pictures, the pluralistic empiricism which I profess offers but a sorry appearance. It is a turbid, muddled, gothic sort of an affair, without a sweeping outline and with little pictorial nobility. Those of you who are accustomed to the classical constructions of reality may be excused if your first reaction upon it be absolute contempt—a shrug ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... is not according to my nature to 'fall in love,' as you term it. The very phrase is repugnant to me. When a man is falling in any sense of the word, his reason is rather apt to be muddled and confused, and he cannot be very sure where he will land. If you had not appeared on the scene my reason would have approved of my marriage with Miss St. John—that is, if I had seen the slightest chance of acceptance, which, of course, I never have. I ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... them the girls are better educated than the boys. They stay longer at school—sometimes twice as long. They are more open to the purifying and elevating influences of religion. Their brains are neither muddled away with drink and profligacy, or narrowed by the one absorbing aim of turning a penny into five farthings. They have a far larger share than their brothers of that best of all practical and moral ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... morning she had collapsed altogether. All the time before, her hot childish heart had been telling her that her father could not really be so cruel, that he did not really mean to send her away among strangers, away from dear, muddled old Misrule and all her sisters and brothers; he was only saying it to frighten her, she kept saying to herself, and she would show him she was not a ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... had been muddled; and an attempt to make a merchant of him having fallen through, he found himself, on his father's death, aged eighteen, 'without education, profession, or employment,' and his whole fortune, during his mother's life, consisting ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... became more of a blockhead every day. In the country he had been much sharper. But, added she, it was the uniform's fault; all the lads who donned the uniform became sad dolts. The fact is, his change of life had quite muddled Zephyrin, who, with his staring round eyes and solemn swagger, looked like a goose. Despite his epaulets he retained his rustic awkwardness and heaviness; the barracks had taught him nothing as yet of the fine words and victorious attitudes ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... I say of the personal habits you must form if you wish for success? Temperance is first upon the list. Intemperance in a physician partakes of the guilt of homicide, for the muddled brain may easily make a fatal blunder in a prescription and the unsteady hand transfix an artery in an operation. Tippling doctors have been too common in the history of medicine. Paracelsus was a sot, Radcliffe was much too fond of his glass, and Dr. James ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... search at my place to-morrow.' And he kept it. 'You have given it to the Church,' he declared. I said to him: 'You're a scoundrel,' I said. 'No,' said he, 'I'm not a scoundrel, but I'm broad-minded.' But that wasn't he, that was some one else. I've muddled him with some one else ... without noticing it. Come, another glass and that's enough. Take away the bottle, Ivan. I've been telling lies. Why didn't you stop me, Ivan, and tell me I ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... no uncommon creature; A leaden-witted thief—just huddled Out of the dross and scum of nature; 340 A toad-like lump of limb and feature, With mind, and heart, and fancy muddled. ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Farnsworth had flown, giving no hint of the length of their absence. They had slipped away and left me with a prisoner that I didn't know what to do with; with an inquiry by the American Department of State hanging over me; with Torrence to reckon with, and, in general, a muddled head that only a vast number of lucid ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... from the first upon two main assets: one was the exceptional popularity of their candidate, especially in the South and West; the other was a political situation so muddled that at the coming election it might be made to yield almost any result. For upwards of a generation the presidency and vice presidency had been at the disposal of a working alliance of Virginia and New York, ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... we've taught her a deal—weaving, household work, dyeing, cutting out. Been here too long, you say?' Well, I'd got my answer ready for that all right, but it could wait, so I only said her case had been badly muddled, and had to be taken up again; now, after the revision of the criminal code, she'd probably have been acquitted altogether. And I told him about the hare. 'A hare?' says the Governor. 'A hare,' says ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... do wish I could see papa. It would make me quite sure he's alive, you know, for it all seems so muddled in my head since the day I was so naughty. And if he'd forgive me, and if he'd get better, I think, perhaps, I'd ask God to make me better too, so that I might make papa's tea and read aloud ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... kind intentions. Had you known him before the War, and had he liked you, and had you wished to take a ride upon a battleship, he would be disposed to order up a battleship and send you for a ride, even if, by doing so, he muddled up the fleet a little. That would be in line with his fixing it for moving picture people to act scenes on a battleship's deck—which he permitted. He saw no reason why that was not proper, and the kind of people who admire him most are those who, likewise, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... was kicked, more and more violently, until the need of crawling through the door to safety dawned on his muddled wits and he made his exit from the room snake fashion. By that time Coutlass was on his feet, and he too elected to force the issue with a chair. The guard sprang at the chair as Coutlass raised it, bore it down, and drove his fist hard home into the Greek's right eye ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... guessed that also and he said: "Wait and join the legions here. At present, the country is alarmingly apathetic. The man in the subway is muddled. The call to arms does not stir him. The issues, clear enough to us, seem to him mixed as macaroni. He does not understand a war that is three thousand miles away. But in a year, every man in the country—a country that has never been beaten!—will be in it body and soul. Undividedly, shoulder ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... members of his Staff. The talk turned largely on this point of training, Staff work, and general efficiency. There was no boasting whatever; but one read the pride of gallant and devoted men in the forces they had commanded. "Then we have not muddled through?" I said, laughing, to the Army Commander. Sir Henry smiled. "No, indeed, we have ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "You've thrown cold water," she said, "over the spirits of the whole company; why, if uncle should ask to see you, well, say that aunt Hseh detained you. This old nurse of yours has been drinking, and again makes us the means of clearing her muddled head!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Mr. Sleary: a stout man as already mentioned, with one fixed eye, and one loose eye, a voice (if it can be called so) like the efforts of a broken old pair of bellows, a flabby surface, and a muddled head which was ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... of one of the Rajah's roosts; but, as I tell you, my head's felt so muddled, and just as if some of the works had been knocked loose, that even now I don't seem to be able to tell t'other from which. Well, I am getting it clearer now, and of course it must be at Mr Prince Suleiman's. Why, to be sure it must; and ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... led into interference with this matter. After all Godfrey was a fine young man whom his daughter cared for, and might do well in life, and he had struck him first after offering him intentional and pre-arranged insult. Such were the thoughts that flashed through his somewhat muddled brain. Also another, that they were too late. The evil was done and never could ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... Muddled indeed I was. Again in my eventful career I felt myself tremble; I knew not what I should say, any savoir faire being quite gone. I had received a crumpler of some sort—but ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... The poor muddled-headed old King in fact could not understand that the question submitted to him allowed of no middle course of compromise. He seemed to think he had gone far enough in the way of conciliation when he offered to allow his ministers to create a certain number of peers. No concession, however, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... me up, that's a good girl! What I've heard has been so muddled. This hero business, for a starter—what about it? I thought it was an English duke that chartered ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... know anything about that case?" eying him with sudden interest. "It was a muddled account that was sent up ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... sure, was very disinterested and benevolent of them. They meant Queequeg's best happiness, I admit; but in their hasty zeal to befriend him, and from the circumstance that both he and the sharks were at times half hidden by the blood-muddled water, those indiscreet spades of theirs would come nearer amputating a leg than a tall. But poor Queequeg, I suppose, straining and gasping there with that great iron hook—poor Queequeg, I suppose, only prayed to his Yojo, and gave up his life into the hands of his gods. Well, well, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... yellow journal! Do you dream for one instant that his word would stand against mine in a court of law? See here, Matheson, you'd better go back and read over your brief with the man who's instructing you. He's muddled up ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... out of the Foreign Office in as muddled a frame of mind as any diplomatist who ever left its portals. I was most desperately depressed. To begin with, I was in a complete funk. I had always thought I was about as brave as the average man, but there's courage and courage, and ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... plain enough, but that cocktail has muddled me a little. But I will no, I do understand for that matter; but I would get the hang of it all the better if you went over it again-and I'll pay ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... making their way into the hall, and after Joseph had held a dispute with the man who had shown them into their place, and who had muddled the tickets and their numbers, they settled down, ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice |
