"Muddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and politicians, financiers and religious leaders, arise and survive by the operation of the laws of probabilities and chances, rather than by any intelligent selection and cultivation of material. The case, indeed, is simply a subdivision of the vast subject: haphazard muddle in the conduct of life. A cry has been raised for the superman, and a cry has been raised for a method of anthropometry. For the lack of these two, it has been said, all governments have been doomed to defeat. The study of the endocrines will by no means supply a panacea. ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... feeling of shame over Palmerston's bluster followed by a meek British inaction. The debate came on a vote of censure, July 8, in the course of which Derby characterized governmental policy as one of "meddle and muddle." The censure was carried in the Lords by nine votes, but was defeated in the Commons by a ministerial majority of eighteen. It was the sharpest political crisis of Palmerston's Ministry during the Civil War. Every supporting vote ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... Russian and foreign books, pamphlets, and articles in the magazines, to make calculations, to refer to logarithms, to think and to write; then again to read, calculate, and think; but as soon as I took up a book or began to think, my thoughts were in a muddle, my eyes began blinking, I would get up from the table with a sigh and begin walking about the big rooms of my deserted country-house. When I was tired of walking about I would stand still at my study window, and, looking across the wide courtyard, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... case with me, and, consequently, there are no end of school adventures during my long stay at "Old Browne's" that I cannot set down here, for the simple reason that I cannot get at them, or, if I do, I find that the cell is crushed and the memory mixed up all in a muddle with wax. ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... Thou fat sedentary appetite, what a great god thine must be, that he can choose no cleverer servant than thee to muddle his affairs! While you were lulling me to sleep with dreams about a clue to be found in a cellar, she has already sucked the secret out from some cobra's hole and has sold it to the commissioner! ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... Street, a weaving turmoil of farmers' wagons, buggies, delivery carts, about a noisy, fuming centre of motor vehicles. High in the centre would be the motor truck of Trimble Cushman, loaded with cases and nursed through the muddle by a cool, clear-eyed youth, who sat with delicate, sure hands on a potent wheel. Never did he kill or maim either citizen or child, to the secret chagrin of Judge Penniman. Traffic jams to him were a part of ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... identical with Teixeira's Ruknuddin Mahmud above-named, who is represented as reigning from 1246 to 1277. In Wassaf we find, as in Teixeira, Mahmud's son Masa'ud killing his brother Nazrat, and Bahauddin expelling Masa'ud. It is true that Hammer's surprising muddle makes Nazrat kill Masa'ud; however, as a few lines lower we find Masa'ud alive and Nazrat dead, we may safely venture on this correction. But we find also that Masa'ud appears as Ruknuddin Masa'ud, and that Bahauddin does not assume ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... like this, Lawrence," said Jennie Cassavant. "Magen admits that the world in general is a muddle, and she thinks offices are heaven because by comparison with sweat-shops they ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... "What a muddle and mockery the whole thing is!" he cried. "What a fumbling old fool old Mother Nature has been! She drives us into indignity and dishonour: and she doesn't even get the children which are her only excuse for her mischief. See what a fantastic thing ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... these platitudes of the muddle-headed multitude are surely the only people for whom they are true. It is they alone who are the materialists, confusing as they do the spirit of romance with its worn-out garments of bygone fashions. Such people are so clearly out of court as not to be worth ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... must use more colors, mix still more loosely. Put all the colors together, one beside the other, drag them together with the brush, scoop them up loosely on the end of it, and lay the tint on freely and frankly. Never muddle the color on the canvas. Don't put one color over another more than you can help; you will only get a thick mass of paint of one kind mixing with a mass of another, and the result will be dirty color, which of all things ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... interesting of any of the positions on the paper, and one that entailed more work than most. To kick at Mel would be rank ingratitude. It was not likely he had made a mess of things wittingly. Therefore the only alternative, since neither Mel's pride nor his own would permit them to confess to the muddle, was to pay the outstanding bill and slip the rest of the cash as quietly as possible ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... felt none of the dislike of her stepmother that her grandmother felt. In fact, she was too happy-go-lucky and fond of change to feel very strongly about anything. She had got her father's home and all his affairs into such a muddle she was not sorry to go right away and leave it all. She was tired of even the little housework she did. She hated having to get up and light the fire, and, on the whole, she was very glad for someone else to step in and take it all off her shoulders. And as she had ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... My sister must repay you; but you know the muddle in which her husband's affairs were left, and I'm sure you won't refuse ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... Among and beneath the rotten weeds and garbage of old systems and abuses the new seed was being sown. But England saw no signs of the crop; saw only the stubborn husbandmen begrimed with the dust and dirt, and herself hopelessly involved in the Egyptian muddle: and so in utter weariness and disgust, stopping her ears to the gibes and cat-calls of the Powers, she turned towards ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... I can to get at the muddle-headed gentleman's meaning, it appears, by the lettering of his Figure 97, my 25 above, that the 'liber,' number 5, contains the cambium layer in the middle of it. The part of the liber between the cambium and the wood is not marked in Figure 96;—but the cambium is number 5, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... have we made use of a green-colored tablecloth we sometimes use to drape our hills. Of course, a large part of the fun of this game lies in the witty incorporation of all sorts of extraneous objects. But the incorporation must be witty, or you may soon convert the whole thing into an incoherent muddle of half-good ideas. ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells
... wiping out. They killed a couple of "little fellows," or, rather, some of their hired Texas cowboys did it for them, but that was all they accomplished, except well-nigh to bankrupt Wyoming in the legal muddle, out of which, of course, nothing came. There were in this party of cattle men a member of the legislature, a member of the stock commission, some two dozen wealthy cattle men, two Harvard graduates, and a young Englishman in search of adventure. ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... cigar, 'that ar nigger's sassy enough for three legations. Pierce sent him here;—for what, no one about the establishment can tell. Anyhow, seeing it's you, I was about giving out an idea of what an interminable muddle Pierce would get everything into if he had but his own way; but, as there isn't time now, and as you won't join me in a cigar, suppose we send out ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... either—I was never taught. I hope you don't do these uncomfortable sort of things often, Theo. It seems to me you're too much inclined to rush in and help people without stopping to think of—of other people at all! It would have been much better for the Boy if you'd left him to get clear of his muddle, instead of upsetting every one by spending money on him ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... that has a muddle-headed literature, a nation that to say nothing of not being able to express what it has, has not even made a beginning at expressing what it wants; a nation that has not a great, eager, glowing literature, a sublime ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... a terrible muddle, for there had not even been a copy taken of the plaint. The judge, that is to say, his secretary and the assistant debated for a long time upon such an unheard-of affair. Finally it was decided to write a report of the matter to the governor, as the investigation of the matter pertained more ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... then asked himself what he would do and say to-morrow if anything happened to Tom—nothing, of course, fatal, but something perhaps so grave that May himself would be unable to explain it. In that case Henry could only state facts exactly as they had occurred. But there would be a deuce of a muddle if he had to make statements and describe the exact sequence of recent incidents. Already he forgot the exact sequence. It seemed ages since he parted from May. He broke off there, rose, drank a glass of water, and lighted a cigarette. He shook himself into wakefulness, ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... of theogonies as old as the world, treasured up out of respect for ancient customs; and of more recent ideas about the blessed final annihilation, imported from India by saintly Chinese missionaries at the epoch of our Middle Ages. The bonzes themselves are puzzled; what a muddle, therefore, must not all this become, when jumbled together in the childish brain of a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... soon one gets not to care what one is eating, so long as one can satisfy one's hunger? I remember the time when, for a woman, I was almost an epicure, and now I can swallow Mohammed's dinners with positive relish. Do give me another help of that extraordinary muddle he calls a stew." ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... as it goes; but then it is equally true that M. M. —— actually obtained his wife, and that Mynheer Van Holland paid for her. I dare say all this can be reconciled with the eternal fitness of things; but I protest I don't see how it is to be done. It is "all a muddle," in my mind. I cannot even affirm that the banditti were ever hanged; and I am quite sure that the unlucky Dutch merchant, whose goods were so comically mixed up with this whole history, never had any poetical or material justice for his loss of them. But it is as much the reader's business ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... chill mists press upon our spirits, and no rain falls but what rolls off our backs like April showers off the backs of sleek drakes; where flowers bloom forever and birds are always singing; where every fellow hath a merry catch as he travels the roads, and ale and beer and wine (such as muddle no wits) flow like water ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... mingled, and whole companies were swept away and compelled to cross whether they would or no, while others, crowded off to the side of the road, had to stand there and mark time; and by way of putting the finishing touch to the muddle; a squadron of cavalry insisted on passing, pressing back into the adjoining fields the stragglers that the infantry had scattered along the roadside. At the end of an hour's march the column had entirely lost its ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... far more unbelievable." He sighed. "If these men about us realized the terrible ordeal that lies ahead! Misgoverned; unprepared—I shudder at the thought of the sacrifices we must make, many of them in vain. But I suppose that somehow, some day, we shall muddle through." ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... the prudent dramatist strict economy in suicide. The third case, Zoe Blundell's leap to nothingness, in that harsh and ruthless masterpiece, Mid-Channel, is as inevitable as anything can well be in human destiny. Zoe has made a miserable and hopeless muddle of her life. In spite of her goodness of heart, she has no interests and no ideals, apart from the personal satisfactions which have now been poisoned at their source. She has intervened disastrously in the destinies of others. She is ill; her nerves are all on edge; and she ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... stated, and all of it was served in a sauce of strange enthusiasm, thin yet intense. Ann Veronica had had some training at the Tredgold College in disentangling threads from confused statements, and she had a curious persuasion that in all this fluent muddle there was something—something real, something that signified. But it was very hard to follow. She did not understand the note of hostility to men that ran through it all, the bitter vindictiveness that lit Miss Miniver's cheeks and eyes, ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... that mamma is admirable, because she doesn't trouble her head about churches and creeds any longer. She used to do so once, but now she thinks only of what is morally right or wrong, and leaves the ecclesiastical muddle for the divines to get out of as best they can. Mamma used to dread bringing us to Morne when we were younger; we were always so outrageous here; and we told her it was Aunt Fulda who made us so, because she is too good, and the balance of nature has to be preserved. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... he shall do nothing of the kind," returned Mr. Liddell, in a weak, hoarse, impatient voice. "I saw him once, and I know him; he is an ignorant, addle-pated jackanapes. He shall not muddle my affairs; send him away; I can wait for Newton. I don't suppose I ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... a short-sport!" she burst forth. "Any fellow that'll go on making debts when he can't pay his old ones, that'll get things in a muddle and run off and let somebody else face the racket ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... business, as had Froissart and Boswell, he excels in proportion to his unconsciousness of the fact; his colors run truer. For lesser gobblers, who have not genius, the best way to lose consciousness is just to IT themselves go; if they endeavor to paint artistically the muddle will be worse. To such the proverb of the cobbler and his last is of perennial warning. As a barber once sagely remarked to me, "You can't trim a beard well, unless you're born to it." It is possible in ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... the use, of the possessive pronoun here and elsewhere, let it signify also the life of my life-partner—is beyond the range of ordinary experience, since it is immune from the ferments which seethe and muddle the lives of the many, I am assured that a familiar record will not be deemed egotistical, I am scolded because I did not confess with greater zeal, I am bidden to my ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... muddle up the pair of them, bedevil them completely, and Amphitryon's whole household, too, and keep it up till my father has his fill of her whom he loves: then all shall know the truth, but not before. ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... what these "complications" are of which the opponents of Proportional Representation chant so loudly. In the sham election of to-day, which the politicians claim gives them a mandate to muddle up our affairs, the voter puts a x against the name of the least detestable of the two candidates that are thrust upon him. Under the Proportional Representation method there will be a larger constituency, a larger list of ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... native princes, in fact) and voters who dont know what theyre voting about. I dont understand these democratic games; and I'm afraid I'm too old to learn. What can I do but sit in the window of my club, which consists mostly of retired Indian Civil servants? We look on at the muddle and the folly and amateurishness; and we ask each other where a single fortnight of it ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... were in quite a muddle (for them) about the carnival of authors, to be given in Boston. As soon as it was announced, their interests were excited, and they determined that all the ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... bottom of them. The one thing I don't quite understand is how he came to know she was in Ballymoy. I'll find that out later on. In the meanwhile I think I'd better go into Ballymoy after all. It's a nuisance, for I was extremely comfortable on the yacht, but I can't leave things in the muddle they're in now, and there's nobody else about the place I could trust to ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... with us? That is, if there is any. But come round, and gnaw the old hambone—what? I think we got some claret and I know George's got a drop of Three-Star. Young Beryl's off to-morrow on the Northern tour with the White Bird Company, so of course we're in a devil of muddle. George's sister's round there, packing her. But if you'll put up with the damned old upset, why, come ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... in the woods the blast of a horn and the baying of hounds agitates the fleeing quarry; when he vainly endeavours, with all his skill, to confuse and muddle the scent which betrays him to his pursuers; when, an aged beast with full-grown antlers, he puts in his place a younger stag and forces it to carry on the chase with its fresher bait of the scent of its younger body, and ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... light in her eyes. "No, never, Dr. Thorpe. He has never spoken to me, never written a line to me. That's fine of him too. He loves me, I'm sure of it, and he wants me, but it is fine of him not to bother me, now isn't it? He knows he could drag me back into the muddle, he knows he could make a fool of me, and yet he will not take that ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... derivation, "a drawer of water." But a ship also "draws water." Therefore, logically, a Hydrographer is a ship. But a ship is never put into a witness-box, where it would be quite at sea, but in the dock, where it could be quite at home. "Truly," writes our Puzzled Correspondent, "there is a muddle somewhere." Q. E. D. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... me this morning? I believe I'm half asleep, or else my brains are all shook up into a muddle by that brute of a camel. Here, Ben Eddin, rouse up and put on your best white soot. Here's the Sheikh been with a message to say that we're all going to form a procession and march through the town to camp in the groves on the other side. It's to be a triumphal ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... the unpleasant dose, which Lorraine swallowed and straightway forgot, in the muddle of thoughts that whirled confusingly in her brain. Little things distressed her oddly, while her father's desperate state left her numb. She lay down on the cot in the farther corner of the kitchen where her ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... suppose the enemy to be stationed. The sham-fight seemed to me rather clumsily managed, and without any striking incident or result. The officers had prophesied, the night before, that General K———, commanding in the camp, would make a muddle of it; and probably he did. After the review, the Duke of Cambridge with his attendant officers took their station, and all the regiments marched in front of him, saluting as they passed. As each colonel rode by, and as the banner ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... really cared for them, but because gifted writers had for centuries been setting up hypnotic suggestions that in this way was pleasure to be obtained. He had often seen men and women standing before a canvas of REMBRANDT, hating the grubby muddle of it in their hearts, but adoring it in their heads—all because some well-known critic had told them to. Their pleasure, however, was real, and therefore it should, in a world of sadness, be encouraged, and consequently Art ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... a moment, and with the faintest light of Clothes-Philosophy, on what may be called the Habilatory Class of our fellow-men. Here too overlooking, where so much were to be looked on, the million spinners, weavers, fullers, dyers, washers, and wringers, that puddle and muddle in their dark recesses, to make us Clothes, and die that we may live,—let us but turn the reader's attention upon two small divisions of mankind, who, like moths, may be regarded as Cloth-animals, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... the restitution of conjugal rights—however unlikely he is to get it. Further, if in the future she has any children by her real husband (unless she has been married again to him, after divorce from her State-husband) these children will be illegitimate. This is the sort of muddle the Divorce Act has got us into. One course, and only one course, is open to the Church—to disentangle itself from all question of extending the powers of the Act on grounds of inequality, or any other real (and sometimes very real) or fancied hardship, and to consistently fight for the repeal ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... extraordinary thing is that, until you set me looking into these things with your questions, I've always taken this sort of thing for granted, as though it couldn't be otherwise. Now I seem to see with a kind of freshness. I'm astounded at the muddle of it, the waste and aimlessness of it. And here again it is, Lady Harman, that I think your opportunity comes in. With these Hostels as they might be projected now, you seem to have the possibility of a modernized, more ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... on by something Robb or Key had said, troubled him, it was of short duration: something always broke into his mind and scattered the argument framing there. By the time he was free to resume the argument foreign thoughts had intervened, and his brain was in a muddle. Before the muddle could be dissipated by a cold point of common sense, something else had come along. And so things went. So the days and ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... "We're going to muddle along as well as we can," answered Arthur cheerfully, "until we can get back to where we started from. Maybe the people back in the twentieth century can send a relief party after us. When the skyscraper vanished it must have left a hole of some sort, and it ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... happened to say, 'Ascobaruch, I think it's time that definite steps were taken,' I should reply frankly, 'My dear old High Priest, I absolutely agree with you, and I'm with you all the way.' You might even go so far as to suggest that the only way out of the muddle was to assassinate Merolchazzar and start with a ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... fine muddle for somebody to make out when they get it," mused Jack, as he sent out a call for the ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... bitter rage filled his eyes and made furrows on his encrusted cheek. Idiot that he had been, he had wrecked everything! What would Saskia and Dougal and Sir Archie do without a business man by their side? There would be a muddle, and the little party would walk into a trap. He saw it all very clearly. The men from the sea would overpower them, there would be murder done, and an easy capture of the Princess; and the police would turn up at long last to find ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... all this muddle and confusion and slipshod thinking there arose one man with a purpose, one man who fixed his eyes on a single inevitable goal and walked straight at it, not minding what or whom he trod upon on the way. His purpose was the mass-production of crises, and he created crises as rabbits create ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... schargou to me, ven she know notting at all put vat der briests dell her. If dey dell her de moon von pig green scheese she swar it ish so; put dese dings dell der druf, und der great laws vork on for efer no matter vat voolish beoples perlieve. It vas all law und vorce, und it vould be von pig muddle in der heafens if it vas all ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... careless about the people in their underworlds, had to make advances to democracy, and give it some measure of the justice democracy threatened to deal to itself. Without demanding absolutism I do desire a predominant democratic character in our national enterprises, rather than a confused muddle or struggle of interests where nothing really emerges except the egoism of ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... able to say it, and say it better than ever—but no doubt you feel very much lost without it. How do you fill the time?" "I hardly know," I said, "not very profitably—I read, I teach my daughter, I muddle along." "Well," he said, smiling, "the hours in which we muddle along are not our worst hours. You believe in God?" The suddenness of this question surprised me. "Yes," I said, "I believe in God. I cannot disbelieve. Something has placed me where I am, something ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... even the Sailing Instructions, cast-iron as they were, contemplated a fleet in order, not one in process of forming order; and that to bring-to helter-skelter, regardless of order, was to obey the letter rather than the spirit. Muddle-headed as Mathews seems to have been, what he was trying to do was clear enough; and the duty of a subordinate was to carry out his evident aim. An order does not necessarily supersede its predecessor, unless the two are incompatible. The whole incident, from ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... I do, it'll be time enough then to settle about the farm. As for Ellen, I don't see what difference she makes, except that I must see to things for her sake as well as mine. It wouldn't help her much if I handed over this place to a man who'd muddle it all up and maybe bring us to the Auctioneer's. I've known ... I've seen ... they had a bailiff in at Becket's House and he lost them three fields of lucerne the first season, and got the fluke into their sheep. Why, even Sir Harry Trevor's taken to managing things himself ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... old catemeran!" cried Mr. Whitelaw savagely, "and a drunken old fool into the bargain.—Why do you let her muddle herself with the gin-bottle like that, Ellen? You ought to have more respect for my property. You don't call that taking care of your husband's house.—As for you, mother Tadman, if you treat me to any more of this nonsense, you will find yourself turned out ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... opposition to the plan, to continue the expedition and strengthen it as fast as possible. To the American soldier at this distance it looks as though the French and British, perhaps in all good faith, planned to muddle along till the American authorities could be shown the fitness or the necessity of supporting the expedition with proper forces. But this was playing with a handful of Americans and other Allied troops a great game of hazard. Only those ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... not the figure demanded, which turned out, indeed, on investigation, to be in gross excess of fair compensation. Palmerston's action nearly threw Europe into war; Russia protested, and France, who had offered to mediate, was aggravated by a diplomatic muddle to the verge of breaking off negotiations. A vote of censure was passed by the Opposition in the House of Lords, which had the effect of making Lord John take up the cause of Palmerston in the Commons. The question was discussed in a famous four days' debate. "It contained," says Mr. ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... the history of the Criminal Law. It is more than possible that I shall be the last prisoner for blasphemy in England. That alone is a circumstance of distinction, which gives my story a special character, quite apart from my individuality. As a muddle-headed acquaintance said, intending to be complimentary, Some men are born to greatness, others achieve it, and I had it thrust ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... seem to have damn poor luck gettin' ye TO say anything. I dinna ask fra tears, nor faintin' like a woman. Be a mon, and let me into the secret of this muddle. There is a secret, and ye know it. What is it? Why are ye breaking the heart o' Mary Malone? Answer me, or 'fore God I'll wring the ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... clothes. Oh, you'll have to hear worse things than that before we're out of this muddle. If you won't mind a bit of advice from a man of experience, I would suggest that you take things easy. ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... had we known, we should certainly have taken our measures more fittingly. I crave your pardon. No one has yet accused Captain Lingo of rudeness to a lady. Ketch, put up thy cutlass and go straightway to the pool and wet this pocket-handkerchief. Be brisk, thou muddle-pated son of ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... "There, muddle thy stockings in yon mud puddle for that speech, thou water-loving Baptist," cried Christopher Corwin, as he jostled Baptist Bob in ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... expression vanished from Bemmon's face. "I see," he said. "Now that I've turned Anders's muddle into organization, you'll hand my authority over to another of your favorites and demote me back to ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... conversation was a senseless quarrel about the proper division of the income—at a word either would have given it all to the other. It was typical of the muddle and confusion of their lives that on the October night when Anthony reported at the Grand Central Station for the journey to camp, she arrived only in time to catch his eye over the anxious heads of a gathered crowd. Through the dark light of the enclosed train-sheds their glances ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... didn't want Him to be killed. He was horror-struck when he found that Christ would be killed; threw his money away instantly, and hanged himself. How many of our present money-seekers, think you, would have the grace to hang themselves, whoever was killed? But Judas was a common, selfish, muddle-headed, pilfering fellow; his hand always in the bag of the poor, not caring for them. He didn't understand Christ;—yet believed in Him, much more than most of us do; had seen Him do miracles, thought He was quite strong enough ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... before this consciousness of mismanagement became a general conviction, but as it was, the disorder was readily and naturally attributed to the stupid Germans, and everyone was convinced that a dangerous muddle had been occasioned by ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... said to himself as he went home, not caring to stay and talk to Helen when Lois had gone to church,—"well, it is all a muddle. I don't understand about there being no engagement, but I cannot help remembering that she cared, though I have no business to. And she cares yet. Oh, what a confounded idiot ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... fragment of Euripides by Joshua Barnes. There is, I believe, no such fragment at all. In Barnes's Euripides, Cantab. 1694, fol. p. 515, is a fragment of Euripides with a note which may explain the muddle of Boswell's correspondent:— ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... for you; I have known it a long time. Yet she was going to marry van Hert. And van Hert cared ... well, he cared for someone else too, yet he was going to marry Meryl. It was just a silly muddle altogether, do you see?... Honestly, I was at my wits' end-to know how to prevent them making fools of themselves. Then came Mrs. Grenville's letter. Mrs. Grenville had seen you. She had discovered that ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... 'bad,' of course, but come on. I'll fetch you all father's tubes and brushes that are in such a muddle, and you can sort them right near the well, and watch John fix it, and take care of Fayette; I'm going in and help Cleena, in any way ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... patent I don't know, as, with much use, the gold-lettering is almost obliterated from mine, and all I can make out is the word "Eagle"), and the convalescent author may do all his work in comfort, without mess or muddle; and hereto, once again, I set my hand and seal, so know all men by these presents, all to the contrary nevertheless ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... busy all the morning over my accounts; they've got into the most disgraceful muddle, and I want to put them straight. I shall be in the drawing room, for I keep all my household books in the davenport there. I mean to give you a holiday, Judy, but perhaps you won't mind reading some of your history to yourself, and doing a few ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... they are there, whether expressed or not. Most women don't bring the reason to bear at all, and the result is that they hold a mass of beliefs, some simply inherited, some mere phrases which they don't understand, and some real convictions. A great deal of the muddle comes from the feminine weariness of logic, and a great deal, too, from the fact that they never learn how to use words—words are the things that divide people! But I believe more and more, by experience, in the SOUL. I do not believe that the soul begins with birth or ends with death. Now I ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... gasped. "Through your muddle-headed integrity ... you have destroyed not only me ... but Earth's future. I tried to make ... this planet a better place for humanity ... ...
— The Blue Tower • Evelyn E. Smith
... it!" he muttered, as he walked away. "What a muddle it all is! I ought to feel like strangling myself for permitting this doubting, cynical spirit to creep over me. Curse it all! her words and manner haven't the ring of absolute truth. It seems as if I heard a voice in the very depths of my soul, saying, 'Beware!' Am I becoming an imbecile? ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... little Lenas instead of one. But it was the curtains that made it so particularly wonderful. They were very old, but the colours were still quite bright, they had been washed so carefully. And the pattern was something I really could not describe if I tried—it was the most delicious muddle of flowers, and trailing leaves and birds, and here and there a sort of little basket-work pattern that looked like a summer-house or the entrance ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... incompetent father and patiently sobbing mother the Green Valley world buzzed and the prettiest kind of a May day smiled. All their life was a muddle with this dreary ending but the world outside was as young, as bright, as promising as ever. Something of this must have come to these two for Mrs. Sears' sobs quieted and out in the front room Sears sank into a chair ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... given him for first using, so effectively too, the professional sea-life of his country: a motive so richly productive since through Marryat down to Dana, Herman Melville, Clark Russell and many other favorite writers, both British and American. In Smollett's hands, it is a strange muddle of religion, farce and smut, but set forth with a vivid particularity and a gusto f high spirits which carry the reader along, willy-nilly. Such a book might be described by the advertisement of an old inn: "Here is entertainment for man and beast." As to characterization, ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... should remain under the command of his present Colonel, but regretted that he should not continue in the service, declaring it the best school for a young man, and that he did not want to see his son-in-law a muddle-brained sporting country squire. He would have had Sir Amyas exchange into the line, and see a little service before settling down, but Maria Theresa had not as yet set Europe in a blaze, and in the absence of a promising war Sir Amyas did ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you muddle-headed blunderer!" he exclaimed, with a string of oaths. "Take these cuffs off! You'll lose your job for this trick. When ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... he cried, at last. "I can't make them up. They are in a hopeless muddle. I know, though, that I can't raise a thousand cents, much less a thousand dollars, and the builder threatens to make me bankrupt, if ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... consulting the time-table in the muddle-headed way peculiar to railway porters, and stroking his chin with his hand to assist cerebration, announced, after a severe internal struggle, that the 3.45 down, slow, was ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... make him a little present; whereas I have still to rack my brains for weeks before my bear's birthday comes round, to think of something that will in itself have a chance of giving him pleasure. Of course, it would be comparatively easy if I had plenty of money to spare, and hadn't "to muddle it all away" in paying butchers and bakers, and such ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... army was the one which Montcalm had to meet. It was the largest yet seen in the New World. There were 6,000 British regulars and 9,000 American militia, with plenty of guns and all the other arms and stores required. Its general, Abercromby, was its chief weakness. He was a muddle-headed man, whom Pitt had not yet been able to replace by a better. But Lord Howe, whom Wolfe and Pitt both thought 'a perfect model of military virtue,' was second-in-command and the real head. He was young, as full of calm wisdom as of fiery courage, and the idol of Americans ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... would never smile again. I don't think when God made us, and sent us into the world to live our own lives, that He meant us to feel like that. One can't mix up other people's lives with one's own; it would make an awful muddle." ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a d——d muddle-headed country jury will decide a highly technical case like this," said the K.C. peevishly. "I've lost stronger cases than this before a Norfolk jury. Norfolk men are clannish, and Horbury's evidence carried weight. He is a Norfolk man, though he has been in London. One never knows, of course. ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... Worm,' said Mrs. Smith. 'We be rather in a muddle, to tell the truth, for my son is just dropped in from Indy a day sooner than we expected, and the pig-killer is coming presently ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... place when the reading was interrupted with a crimson paper-knife, and often Jimbo would move it several pages farther on without any of them discovering the gap. Jane Anne, however, who made no pretence of listening to 'Daddy's muddle- stories,' was beginning to realise what went on in Mother's mind underground. She hardly seized the pathos, but she saw and understood enough to help. And she was in many ways a little second edition—a phrase the muddle-stories never knew, alas!—of her mother, with the ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... fixed on the mouldings of the ceiling, while a jumble of thoughts mix and muddle themselves in my head. Was Brindley Wood a dream? or is this a dream? Surely one or other must be, and, if this is not a dream, what is it? Is it reality, is it truth? And, if it is, how on earth did any thing so monstrous ever come about? How did he dare ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... work will be carried out thoroughly without order and system. You see people who work all day and work hard, but never make any way, because they work in a muddle, and with no regular plan. At school the child is given the ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... believe, as she had begun to believe at Scutari, that none of her fellow-workers had their hearts in the business; if they had, why did they not work as she did? She could only see slackness and stupidity around her. Dr. Sutherland, of course, was grotesquely muddle-headed; and Arthur Clough incurably lazy. Even Sidney Herbert ... oh yes, he had simplicity and candour and quickness of perception, no doubt; but he was an eclectic; and what could one hope for from a man who went away to fish in Ireland just when the Bison most needed bullying? As ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... Rule of Three Are the laws of earth and sky; Yet fools will muddle all true thought, And pride will have its cry; The banners with their deadly words Go reeling on unfurled, And sin and sadness march along To ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... said I, "and it may just muddle you for to-morrow. Take an easy evening now, and go to bed early. You'll be all the ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... cosmic philosopher must contract his vision to the little island we inhabit, must adjust his interest to mortal proportions and concerns, must match his narrative to the scale by which we ordinarily measure our lives. The muddle of elements so often obvious in Mr. Dreiser's work comes from the conflict within him of huge, expansive moods and a conscience working hard to be accurate in its representation of the most honest ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... inappropriately rules the hour. Once in a hundred years a six months' carnival is allowable to so ponderous a body. Civilization here aims to see itself not simply as in a glass, but in a multitude of glasses. To steer its optics through the architectural muddle in the basin before us it will need the retina that lies behind the facets of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... way, that book of his, it's in an appalling muddle. I hadn't time to do much to it before I left. If you can't get it straight you must come to ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... associates, collar the loot for themselves, and sail the yawl—Heaven alone knew where! But—in that case, what was going to become of me and my helpless companion? It was not likely that these Easterns would treat us with the consideration which we had received from the queer, eccentric, somewhat muddle-headed Netherfield Baxter, who—it struck me with odd inconsequence at that inopportune moment—was certainly a combination of Dick Turpin, Gil Blas, ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... season. Food that was badly cut or served with the wrong sauce he did not eat. However much flesh there might be, it could not conquer his taste for rice. To wine alone he set no limit, but he did not drink enough to muddle him. He did not drink bought wine, or eat ready-dried market meat. He never went without ginger at a meal. ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... his head up at a blowhole a few yards ahead of the team, and they are all on top of him before one can say "knife"! Then one has to rush in with the whip—and everyone of the team of eleven jumps over the harness of the dog next to him, and the harnesses become a muddle that takes much patience to unravel, not to mention care lest the whole team should get away with the sledge and its load, and leave one behind.... I never did get left the whole of this depot journey, but I was often very near it, and several times had only ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... then set off sharply, so that now and again she had to run a few paces to keep up with him. He took her round by the back of the theatre and into a muddle of streets that led thence. The quiet of the night closed about them; Truda was embarked upon ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... has learnt what our journalists denounce as "the doctrine of the bully, of the materialist, of the man with gross ideals: a doctrine of diabolical evil." He frankly accepts that doctrine from us (as if our poor, honest muddle-heads had ever formulated anything so intellectual as a doctrine), and blames us for nothing but for allowing the United States to achieve their solidarity and become formidable to us when we might have divided them by backing up ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... right, Miss Falconer." I was switching on the lamps. Then I extinguished them; their clear acetylene glare seemed almost weirdly out of place. "We can muddle along without any lights. Not much traffic here," I muttered. I had a feeling, anyhow, that unostentatiousness of approach might not ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... she marry? The Lieutenant? Never. He was really not masterful enough mentally, and he had witnessed her discomfiture. And who, then? Oh, the long line of sillies, light-weights, rakes, ne'er-do-wells, who, combined with sober, prosperous, conventional, muddle-headed oofs, constituted society. Here and there, at far jumps, was a real man, but would he be interested in her if he knew the whole truth ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... points of this kind Nelson was a clear and accurate thinker, and in the admiral he had to do with a muddle-headed, irresolute superior. Hughes had already been badly worried and prodded, on matters concerning his own neglected duties, by his unquiet young subordinate, who was never satisfied to leave bad enough alone, but kept ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... wanted to explain to him; I was afraid you might think my father was severe, but he really didn't beli—he didn't suppose—that is, the young people we've known—" He stopped, looking awfully red and embarrassed, then ended up with, "I'm afraid I'm making an awful muddle of it, but I'm really very sorry; I hope you and your brother ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... we weren't to ask anybody else to do shopping for us," said Wendy demurely. "When you've not been told not to do anything, you're not disobedient if you don't do it—oh! I'm getting rather in a muddle, but ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... on digging and knowing all the time as them lads is breaking their necks over the cliff side. Never was in such a muddle as this before. Why didn't they say what ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... an exact parallel to anything that any man can do in the beginning of any human thing, from his momentous setting out upon his life in early manhood to the least decision of his present passing day. It is a very proper emblem of a beginning. It may lead him to that kind of muddle and set-back which attaches only to beginnings, or it may get him fairly into the weather, and yet he may find, a little way outside, that he has to run for it, or to beat back to harbour. Or, more generously, it may lead him to a long and steady cruise in ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... the interesting, dreamy fellows," she said, laughing, "who don't save, and muddle their lives. And as for argument, the Socialist workman doesn't care twopence for facts—that don't suit him. It's superb the way ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had begun to use drugs, and was often in a half- stupefied condition. As a matter of fact, the woman did what she pleased with him. There's no doubt about the validity of the marriage. And what makes it so desperate a muddle is that since the marriage she's taken good care to give no grounds upon which a divorce could be obtained for Harman. She means ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... in his power to conciliate the different parties, but has now concluded that Paris must be conquered by the troops of Versailles. Every day there comes more disturbing news. How will it all end? When shall we get out of this muddle? En attendant, we live ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... being made up. As for the handkerchief, they must think what they like; but it will puzzle Hanky to know why Panky should have been so anxious for a receipt, if he meant stealing the nuggets. Let them muddle it out ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... mounted to the deck at the end of half an hour I found her there alone, in the stern of the ship, looking back at the dwindling continent. It dwindled very fast for so big a place. I accosted her, having had no conversation with her amid the crowd of leave-takers and the muddle of farewells before we put off; we talked a little about the boat, our fellow-passengers and our prospects, and then I said—'I think you mentioned last night a name ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... confused relatives are as a rule grammatically wrong, like the common blunder of putting an "and which" where there is no previous "which" expressed or implied. They, simply, put as they are, bewilder and muddle the reader because the writer has not taken the trouble to break up his sentence into two or three. This is, of course, a very gross abuse, and except when the talents above noticed either fuse his style into something better, or by the interest they excite divert the attention of the reader, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... had taken their own course at the chateau, and the course had been somewhat erratic. There is nothing so costly as muddle, and Gustave Lenoble had of late begun to perceive that he had the maximum of expense with the minimum of comfort. Meanwhile the kind old aunt at Beaubocage gave her nieces much valuable advice against the time when they should be old enough to assume ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... through centuries towards a vague ideal. America proudly began her existence by a proclamation of the equal rights of man. She proudly proclaims them now; but the world is involved in such a complicated muddle, that the utterances of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln (to say nothing of their intellectual and political ancestor Jean Jacques Rousseau) require amplification. The political thought of the older nations of Europe is tired out. It is for the fresher genius of America to lead them ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... you. Half the men at the inquest think that Kit Rhodes did come back to do that shooting, and you know Conrad and the very smooth rat of the Charities Society are accountable for that opinion. The Mexican who dragged in Kit's name is one of Conrad's men; it all means something! It's a bad muddle, but Kit Rhodes and Cap Pike will wander back here some of these days, and I mean to have every bit of evidence for Kit to start in with. He suspected a lot, and all Granados combined to ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... motive : motivo. motto : devizo, moto. mould : model'i, -ilo; tero, sximo. mound : altajxeto, remparo, digo. mourn : funebri. "-ing," funebra vesto. move : mov'i, -igxi. movement : movo, movado. mow : falcxi. mud : koto, sxlimo. muddle : fusxi; konfuzi. muff : mufo. mug : pokaleto. mulberry : moruso. mule : mulo. mummy : mumo. murmur : murmuri. muscle : muskolo. museum : muzeo. mushroom : fungo, agariko. muslin : muslino. mussel : mitulo. must : devi. mustard ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... with considerable philosophy. It meant a return to the quiet service of the Honourable George and that I need no longer face the distressing vicissitudes of life in the back blocks of unexplored America. I would not be obliged to muddle along in the blind fashion of the last two days, feeling a frightful fool. Mrs. Effie would surely not keep me on, and that was all about it. I had merely to make no defence of myself. And even if I chose to make one I was not certain ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... though it is quite evident that his mind is still on the trouble in the shops). Glad to see you back in Foxon Falls, Jonathan. I heard you'd arrived, and would have dropped in on you, but things are in a muddle here just now. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... few hundred yards of the mission-house there was a jetty, and at the end of the jetty was Her Majesty's gunboat Badger, a small schooner-rigged wooden vessel commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Muddle, one of the most irascible men that ever breathed, and who had sat on more Consuls than any ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... accompany you. (Aside) Everything is in such a muddle here, that I must go and look for Vernon. The advice and clear-sightedness of my old friend, the doctor, will be of service in ferreting out what it is that disturbs this household, for there is something or other. Ferdinand, I will follow you. ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... than be forbidden by a policeman to smoke another cigarette, or sit up a quarter of an hour later; hardly a man who would not feel inclined in such a case to raise a rebellion for a caprice for which he did not really care a straw. Unmeaning and muddle-headed tyranny in small things, that is the thing which, if extended over many years, is harder to bear and hope through than the massacres of September. And that was the nightmare of vexatious triviality ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... what you're talking about, and I wish you wouldn't muddle us with new names. Fire just happens. Nobody does it—not as a deed, you know,' Cyril explained. 'If they did the Phoenix wouldn't help them, because its a crime to set fire to things. Arsenic, or something they call it, because it's as bad as poisoning people. The Phoenix ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... to explain, Mr. North, you'd be in a worse muddle than ever," Willa told him candidly. "Dad always said you could take care of the pat hands against you if you froze out the four-flushers.—Don't scold Vernon, please. Remember, he's just balancing; a push either way will determine ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... done. Bertha and Mabel wouldn't have told the truth, and things would only have been in a worse muddle. We'll catch those two sometime if we can only think ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... Mr. Waverton comes here to do his poor possible to make mischief between us. I suppose you saw that. He tells us that he went blundering with my father into a muddle of a plot." ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... Johnstone. Damn him, for a sneaking civilian! I never trusted him!" And the old General rolled away for his family tiffin. "I'll see you when you have translated the private orders. Thank God, the Viceroy keeps me out of this dirty muddle! You see, I have no power over Johnstone—he is a blasted civilian." Two hours later, the grateful old General found Hardwicke pacing up and down impatiently. "I ought only to tell Murray," he murmured, "if I could! He ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... me that we're not within shouting distance of the future. We talk as if we could see the end, and we're nowhere near it, we're in all the muddle of the middle—that's why we're hampered with Miss Quincey and other interesting relics ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... the Treasury has commenced, and brooms and scrubbing-brushes are at a premium—a little anticipative, it is true, of the approaching turn-out; but the dilatory idleness and muddle-headed confusion of those who will soon be termed its late occupiers, rendered this a work of absolute time and labour. That the change in office had long been expected, is evident from the number of hoards discovered, which the unfortunate employes had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... to muddle about with solicitors and pettifoggers and legal obstructions and weighty considerations of the tomfool order, until they have got a number of new gigantic species of vermin well established—Things always have been in ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... I think, as I re-read it, demands a KEY, lest it prove a stumbling-block to the muddle-headed and a perplexity to the foolish. Here ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... remarked that to love one's self is the beginning of a lifelong romance. We know this lifelong romance will resume its sway; we shall lose our tempers, be obstinate, peevish and crank. We shall fidget and fume while waiting our turn in the barber's chair; we shall argue and muddle and mope. And yet, for a few hours, what a happy vision that was! And we turn, on Christmas Eve, to pages which those who speak our tongue immortally associate with the season—the pages of Charles ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... GAIN. To begin with, look at the Church, the 'Pillar of the State!' There, all sorts of worthless, incompetent men are hastily thrust into livings by wealthy patrons who care not a jot as to whether they are morally or intellectually fit for their sacred mission,—and a disgraceful universal muddle is the result. From this muddle, which resembles a sort of stagnant pool, emerge the strangest fungus-growths,—clergymen who take to acting a 'miracle-play,' ostensibly for the purposes of charity, but really to gratify their own tastes and leanings toward the mummer's art, —all the time utterly ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... of formal logic. To oblige a young child to go through a formal syllogistic statement in every step in elementary arithmetic, for instance, is simply absurd. It makes nothing plain to a child's mind which was not plain before. On the contrary, it often makes a muddle of what had been perfectly clear. What was in the clear sunlight of intuition, is now in a haze, through the intervening medium of logical terms and forms, through which he is ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... country, thinking I, like some members of our wealthier classes, had come to escape disruption and dislocation at home. Only in England did I find the belief prevalent that the Americans would somehow muddle through because afterall theyre the same sort of chaps we are, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... kind of courage. He, himself, had called Bob Nancarrow a coward, because he refused to enlist. Now he realised that there was more courage in Bob Nancarrow's cowardice than in his own bravery. Oh, it was all an awful muddle! He ought to tell Nancy what Lieutenant Proctor had related to him just before he was taken away to the hospital; but he couldn't. If he did, he would forfeit his own chance, and he might—yes, he was sure—he ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... the one fact which stands out incontrovertibly from the whole weary muddle. It is quite clear that the inability to act in common arises from the fact that in the international sphere the European is still dominated by illusions which he has dropped when he deals with home politics. The political faith of the Turk, which he would never think ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... Muddle pushed the King's nose back and began spreading his cheek into place. Instead of hands and feet, the Middlings had gnarled and twisted roots which curled up in a perfectly terrifying manner. Their teeth were gold, and their eyes shone like small electric lights. They wore stiff coats ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... features that denotes superiority" ("Though poor in thanks," Redfield, yet I thank thee.) "His speech upon taking the chair, was another event. It was the third good speech of the day and calculated to leave the believers of internal inferiority in something of a muddle. ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Leslie. "Learning, and behaving, and going, and doing, and seeing, and hearing, and having. 'It's all a muddle,' as the poor man ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... found us in a muddle, both from a military and moral view-point, but out of that muddle a miracle has been fashioned. In addition, the Empire, even to its remotest outposts, has been consolidated, and the people over whom ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... the catastrophe itself finally prevented an expenditure of L40,000 in a lump on more land. The house grew likewise to its hundred and fifty feet of front, its slightly confused but not disagreeable external muddle of styles, and reproductions, and incorporated fragments, and its internal blend of museum and seignorial hall. It was practically completed and splendidly 'house-warmed' to celebrate the marriage (3rd February 1825) of the heir, on whom both house and estate were ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... appointment is a nice thing—for the appointee, as Mr. Sanders is aware, but it is not profitable to the tax-payers of the country to multiply them too extensively. In my opinion the easiest way out of the muddle is to strike back and to hit where ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... muddle of dreams became condensed into a good solid nightmare that would not go, for Fitz felt himself obliged to step to the heaviest part of the huge gun and lift, while Chips took the light end and grinned at him in his efforts to raise it, while as he lifted, and they got the gun poised between ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... have seen Eagle just once again," I heard myself thinking, as one hears the ticking of a watch under a pillow. But I felt a strange, throbbing eagerness to know quickly the great secret of what comes next after this world, with its seeming muddle of injustice and disappointment, its joys and broken aspirations. "Why! it was like this with me when we had our accident in the Golden Eagle!" I thought. And even as the remembrance flitted ghostlike through my brain, I saw tearing through the sky, far above the big bulk of the ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... tea-cup, without any definite symbols, just a muddle of tea-leaves, is useless for the purpose of divination, beyond giving an indication of the state of the consultant's mind, so vague and undecided in its character that it obscures everything. Tell such ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... not come here, sir, to complain. I were sent for. Indeed, we are in a muddle, sir. Look round town—so rich as 'tis. Look how we live, and where we live, an' in what numbers; and look how the mills is always a-goin', and how they never works us no nigher to any distant object, 'cepting always, death. Sir, I cannot, wi' my little learning, tell the gentleman what will ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... that perhaps God made him perfect in the first place and then, somehow, He let him get all wrong. I can't see how or why, though I've heard ministers and other people say 'it was for some wise purpose.' It's a great muddle, I think," Dorothy concluded, with ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... resentment of your nobles, and have not even received the thanks of those pitiable hinds, the ploughman in the valley or the shepherd on the hills. You have impoverished us so that the clowns may have a few more coins with which to muddle in drink their already stupid brains. You are hated in cot and castle alike. You would not stand in your place for a moment, were not an army behind you. Being a fool, you think the common people love honesty, whereas, they only curse that ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... Victoria's nomination in the morning papers, Susan breathed a prayer of gratitude for a narrow escape, recording in her diary, "There never was such a foolish muddle—all come of Mrs. S. [Stanton] consulting and conceding to Woodhull & calling a People's Con[vention].... All came near being lost.... I never was so hurt with the folly of Stanton.... Our movement as such is so demoralized by letting go the helm of ship to Woodhull—though we ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... there was nobody to help; and I knew mamma's own book was there—-the very part too—- because Aunt Jane had shown it to us, so I did not think there was any harm in letting her help me out of the muddle.' ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge |
