Muddy Quotes

The woman took the faded shirt and muddy overalls and laid them away from remembrance. It was a weapon against her strength and if it turned out of no significance, still it was a hope that she might fall to their level some day. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

The blacks have their parties, hustle a little liquor, get some things together, and I used to play for those peoples. They'd come get me on time, but they wouldn't bring me back on time ... Done picked cotton all day, play all night long, then pick cotton all day the next day before I could get a chance to sleep. ~ Muddy Waters

At the Muddy Waters thing, I played the first song by myself on an acoustic guitar. I thought that was great that y'all did that tribute to Muddy Waters. I had a real good time. ~ Gregg Allman

The mind is like a muddy road. Two ruts run down its center, from all the carts that have passed that way. no matter how many carts try to roll alongside the ruts, to stay out of the mud, sooner or later, a turn here or a jolt there will send them down into the ruts for good. Just so is the mind. As hard as we try to keep our thoughts out of the old ways, the old patterns, the old ruts, any little jog or jerk will send them right back down into the mud." -The Chronicler ~ Adam Gidwitz

All the muddy waters of my life cleared up when I gave myself to Christ. ~ Mickey Rooney

What, in nature," Kit asked, "is the most beautiful thing you've seen? Or the most terrible?"
"The Dismals," Giles answered promptly. "A beautiful aberration in the lay of the land
North Alabama. A section mysteriously lowered, strewn with boulders, ferny, mossy, cooler
the vegetation, they say, typical of Canada. There the creek runs clear, but all other Alabama rivers and waterways are muddy with sediment. I even like the name
the Dismals. An eternal place, disjunct with the climate, the time, and its location."
"You think being dismal is an attractive association with eternity?" I asked.
"It is a cool Eden in the Southern summer heat. What's yours, Una?"
"The Kentucky hills in spring. Layers of pink and white
redbud and dogwood."
"And you?" Giles asked Kit.
"Stars," he said. That was all. ~ Sena Jeter Naslund

Times like this are like muddy water, Rea, you just got to keep moving through it until you get to the other side. ~ Jodi Thomas

The best musicians in the world were raised on the same kind of music I was raised on and that is black, soulful, authoritative, ultra-tight, ferocious, uppity, defiant music that from the Howlin' Wolf, the Muddy Waters, the Lightnin' Hopkins, the Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Little Richard. ~ Ted Nugent

JENKINS AND VIRGIL walked back up the valley to the Ruff house, and found Muddy inside, tootling on a black electric guitar, a complex ~ John Sandford

That muddy black sneaker wasn't supposed to drop. ~ Kami Garcia

The symbol of the Lotus flower gives a precious teaching that can inspire us to deal with life in the best possible way. Its roots take nourishment from muddy waters and yet bloom in full delicacy and beauty on the surface. Similarly, to have a positive mindset is a beautiful quality; nonetheless to be transformational it needs to be rooted firmly in reality to then blossom with the value which can be created from the muddy problem(s) ~ Dorotea Brandin

Let muddy water stand and it will become clear. ~ Laozi

There, there, sweetin'," he murmured into her hair.

"He loved me, he truly did," she gasped.

"I know he did," Michael said.

"And I loved him."

"Mm-hmm."

She raised her head, glaring angrily. "You don't even believe in love. Why are you agreeing with me?"

He laughed.

"Because" - he leaned down and licked at the tears on her cheeks, his lips brushing softly against her sensitive skin as he spoke, "ye've bewitched and bespelled me, my sweet Silence, didn't ye know? I'll agree that the sky is pink, that the moon is made o' marzipan and sugared raisins, and that mermaids swim the muddy waters o' the Thames, if ye'll only stop weepin'. Me chest breaks apart and gapes wide open when I see tears in yer pretty eyes. Me lungs, me liver, and me heart cannot stand to be thus exposed."

She stopped breathing. She simply inhaled and stopped, looking at him in wonder. His lips were quirked in a mocking smile, but his eyes - his fathomless black eyes - seemed to hold a great pain as if his strong chest really had been split open. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

I'd like to get something together - like a Handel, Bach, Muddy waters, flamenco type of thing. If I could get that sound, I'd be happy ~ Jimi Hendrix

The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful re-invasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer's eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare (The Carew Murder Case) ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring [making music] to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it. ~ William Shakespeare

Muddy Waters, I suppose, was my first great hero. You know, every boy wants to be a guitar player, and Muddy Waters was just the king. He was the King Bee. He was it. ~ Hugh Laurie

In 1952, Muddy cut the song 'Rollin' Stone.' It was a nationwide success, and the song echoes down through rock n' roll history. Bob Dylan cut a tribute by the same name, an English band decided to call themselves the Rolling Stones, and the magazine that first embraced music as a serious cultural phenomenon was itself called 'Rolling Stone.' ~ Tim Cahill

A great many film stars perched on unstable ravine edges in the canyon systems of Los Angeles will, like the cemeteries there, eventually slide down to join their unfortunate fellows in the canyon floors, with mud, cars, and embalmed or living film stars in one glorious muddy mass. We should not lend our talents to creating such spectacular catastrophes ... ~ Bill Mollison

She is intuition, she is far-seer, she is deep listener, she is loyal heart. She encourages humans to remain multilingual; fluent in the languages of dreams, passion, and poetry. She whispers from night dreams, she leaves behind on the terrain of a woman's soul a coarse hair and muddy footprints. These fill women with longing to find her, free her, and love her. She is ideas, feelings, urges, and memory. She has been lost and half-forgotten for a long, long time. She is the source, the light, the night, the dark, and daybreak. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Floating"

Our canoe idles in the idling current
Of the tree and vine and rush enclosed
Backwater of a torpid midwestern stream;
Revolves slowly, and lodges in the glutted
Waterlilies. We are tired of paddling.
All afternoon we have climbed the weak current,
Up dim meanders, through woods and pastures,
Past muddy fords where the strong smell of cattle
Lay thick across the water; singing the songs
Of perfect, habitual motion; ski songs,

Nightherding songs, songs of the capstan walk,
The levee, and the roll of the voyageurs.
Tired of motion, of the rhythms of motion,
Tired of the sweet play of our interwoven strength,
We lie in each other's arms and let the palps
Of waterlily leaf and petal hold back
All motion in the heat thickened, drowsing air.
Sing to me softly, Westron Wynde, Ah the Syghes,
Mon coeur se recommend à vous, Phoebi Claro;
Sing the wandering erotic melodies
Of men and women gone seven hundred years,
Softly, your mouth close to my cheek.
Let our thighs lie entangled on the cushions,
Let your breasts in their thin cover
Hang pendant against my naked arms and throat;
Let your odorous hair fall across our eyes;
Kiss me with those subtle, melodic lips.
As I undress you, your pupils are black, wet,
Immense, and your skin ivory and humid.
Move softly, move hardly at all, part your thighs,
Take me slowly w ~ Kenneth Rexroth

Authenticity is the sine qua non of everything that matters. When you encounter someone unguarded, without artifice or pretense--Mon Dieu!--you know it. I compare it to being at the top of the mountain: the air is clearer, there's nothing to muddy the senses. It's bracingly refreshing. ~ Ellen Lubin-Sherman

When the third soldier, the leader and one she'd struck with the limb, joined the others, Lia gasped. The three men stood talking in low voices for several minutes, and then they drew closer, heads down, slowly following her muddy footprint trail. Lia breathed ~ Lindsay McKenna

A lily does not lose its beauty because it blooms in muddy waters. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Ain't nobody's business, if I bark like a dog. ~ Muddy Waters

10 ways to raise a wild child. Not everyone wants to raise wild, free thinking children. But for those of you who do, here's my tips:

1. Create safe space for them to be outside for a least an hour a day. Preferable barefoot & muddy.

2. Provide them with toys made of natural materials. Silks, wood, wool, etc...Toys that encourage them to use their imagination. If you're looking for ideas, Google: 'Waldorf Toys'. Avoid noisy plastic toys. Yea, maybe they'll learn their alphabet from the talking toys, but at the expense of their own unique thoughts. Plastic toys that talk and iPads in cribs should be illegal. Seriously!

3. Limit screen time. If you think you can manage video game time and your kids will be the rare ones that don't get addicted, then go for it. I'm not that good so we just avoid them completely. There's no cable in our house and no video games. The result is that my kids like being outside cause it's boring inside...hah! Best plan ever! No kid is going to remember that great day of video games or TV. Send them outside!

4. Feed them foods that support life. Fluoride free water, GMO free organic foods, snacks free of harsh preservatives and refined sugars. Good oils that support healthy brain development. Eat to live!

5. Don't helicopter parent. Stay connected and tuned into their needs and safety, but don't hover. Kids like adults need space to roam and explore without the constant voice of an adult ~ Brooke Hampton

Of all the unchristian beverages that ever passed my lips, Turkish coffee is the worst. The cup is small, it is smeared with grounds; the coffee is black, thick, unsavory of smell, and execrable in taste. The bottom of the cup has a muddy sediment in it half an inch deep. This goes down your throat, and portions of it lodge by the way, and produce a tickling aggravation that keeps you barking and coughing for an hour. ~ Mark Twain

The poor taxpayer may wipe his shoes on a $3 doormat when he goes home, but not the Navy. It is, damn the cost, full feet ahead on a doormat you would be ashamed to get muddy. ~ William Proxmire

The word that most perfectly describes the city of Cuzco is evocative. Intangible dust of another era settles on its streets, rising like the disturbed sediment of a muddy lake when you touch its bottom. ~ Che Guevara

Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horse pond. ~ Thomas Love Peacock

There was a time when I had the blues - I mean I really had it bad. I couldn't pay my light bill and I couldn't pay my rent and I really had the blues. But today I can pay my rent and I can pay the light bill and I still got the blues. So I must been born with 'em ... That's my religion - the blues is my religion. ~ Muddy Waters

I can't remember if it was in the third grade in school, I was being told that two amoeba happened to hit in a muddy puddle of water two billion years ago, and I was an accident. I was the result. I wasn't real smart, but I said, 'I don't like the sound of that.' ~ Joe Gibbs

Did Muddy Waters play an acoustic? Well of course he did. But did he turn his back on being able to plug it in and play louder? No, he plugged in and turned it up and got miles and miles ahead of the game in one fateful act of just plugging in. ~ Billy Gibbons

The music of hope is everywhere, but to hear it, you need to ignore the muddy jangle of life's hassles. ~ Christine M. Knight

Memphis was almost like going to California. Beale Street was the black man's street. ~ Muddy Waters

The driver and conductor on top were still, too, or only spoke at long intervals, in low tones, as is the way of men in the midst of invisible dangers. We listened to rain-drops pattering on the roof; and the grinding of the wheels through the muddy gravel; and the low wailing of the wind; and all the time we had that absurd sense upon us, inseparable from travel at night in a close-curtained vehicle, the sense of remaining perfectly still in one place, notwithstanding the jolting and swaying of the vehicle, the trampling of the horses, and the grinding of the wheels. ~ Mark Twain

I wandered aimlessly through this muddy lane bespattered with blood, fragments of the past detached themselves and floated listlessly before my eyes, taunting me with the direst forebodings [ ... ] My world of human beings had perished; I was utterly alone in the world and for friends I had the streets, and the streets spoke to me in that sad, bitter language compounded of human misery, yearning, regret, failure, wasted effort ~ Henry Miller

When I woke again, I was in darkness.
Fighting my way to awareness, I realized I'd heard sharp voices. Yells echoed back and forth, calling commands to different ridings; from the distance there came the clang and clash of steel.
It's Bran, I thought, elated and fearful. He's attacking the camp!
As if in answer, I heard his voice. "Mel! Mel!"
I rolled to my knees, fighting against invisible knives of pain. One more cry of "Mel!" at slightly more of a distance enabled me to gather my courage and stand up.
Diving through the tent flap, I screamed with all my failing strength, "BRAN!" And I clutched at the tent to keep myself from falling full-length on the muddy ground. A light mist bathed my face, making me shiver--a distant part of me acknowledged that in addition to everything else I had a pretty hot fever going.
"Meliara! Mel! Mel!" A number of voices took up the cry, and I realized that all our people must have attacked.
Again I gathered all my strength and started forward. Which was a mistake. My left foot simply refused to carry my weight.
I started to fall, felt hard hands catching one of my arms. My leg jolted--and thank goodness, that finished me. ~ Sherwood Smith

Spring is the only time you can feel suddenly clean while you're getting muddy dirty. ~ Toni Sorenson

Brush snapped. The stag shambled forth from the outer darkness. It loomed above Scobie, its fur rank and steaming. Black blood oozed from gashes along its flanks. Beneath a great jagged crown of antlers its eyes were black, its teeth yellow and broken. Scobie fell to his knees, palms raised in supplication. The stag nuzzled his matted hair and its long tongue lapped at the muddy tears and the streaks of drying blood upon the man's upturned face. Its muzzle unhinged. The teeth closed and there was a sound like a ripe cabbage cracking apart. ~ Laird Barron

It was a wild, tempestuous night, towards the close of November. Holmes and I sat together in silence all the evening, he engaged with a powerful lens deciphering the remains of the original inscription upon a palimpsest, I deep in a recent treatise upon surgery. Outside the wind howled down Baker Street, while the rain beat fiercely against the windows. It was strange there, in the very depths of the town, with ten miles of man's handiwork on every side of us, to feel the iron grip of Nature, and to be conscious that to the huge elemental forces all London was no more than the molehills that dot the fields. I walked to the window, and looked out on the deserted street. The occasional lamps gleamed on the expanse of muddy road and shining pavement. A single cab was splashing its way from the Oxford Street end. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I've not got a first in philosophy without being able to muddy things pretty satisfactory. ~ John Banham

And in a small house five miles away was a man who held my mud-encrusted charm bracelet out to his wife.
Look what I found at the old industrial park," he said. "A construction guy said they were bulldozing the whole lot. They're afraid of sink holes like that one that swallowed the cars."
His wife poured him some water from the sink as he fingered the tiny bike and the ballet shoe, the flower basket and the thimble. He held out the muddy bracelet as she set down his glass.
This little girl's grown up by now," she said.
Almost. Not quite.
I wish you all a long and happy life. ~ Alice Sebold

You use your whole body like you did when you played as a kid. Grown-up amusements don't allow for crawling and wriggling, getting good and muddy, and tearing the knees of your pants. ~ Nevada Barr

The first band I identified with from Chicago was the Muddy Waters band. ~ Eric Clapton

ARIEL. The charm dissolves apace,
And, as the morning steals upon the night,
Melting the darkness, so their rising senses
Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle
Their clearer reason.
Their understanding
Begins to swell: and the approaching tide
Will shortly fill the reasonable shores
That now lie foul and muddy. ~ William Shakespeare

It is time,my darling."
"Oh,Frankie,no-"
"You chose dare," he reminded her.
"I did," she agreed sadly, stepping up. "You're right."
It hadn't been entirely fair of him, starting the game in the middle of Neiman Marcus. The King of Prussia Mall, a zillion acres of retail-and-food-in-a-box, is many people's idea of perfect therapy. Me? If given the choice, I might opt for swimming with sharks instead. But today was about Frankie.
"So," he told her, "I pick out three outfits,head to toe. You put them on."
"Fine." Sadie pulled her jacket closer around her.This one was a muddy pruple, and had a third sleeve stitched tot he back. "But if you pick anything like that"- she pointed to a tiny tartan dress that seemed to be missing its entire back- "I will cry."
"Have faith," he replied with a slightly twisted smile, and dragged her toward women's sportswear. "What our sport is," he said apropos of very little save the sign on the wall, "I have no idea."
Ten minutes later, Sadie was heading into the dressing room with an armful of autumn color and a look like she was on her way off a cliff. ~ Melissa Jensen

Obscure, like muddy waters. ~ Laozi

Well, it's hard to stumble And land in some muddy lagoon When it's nine below zero And three o'clock in the afternoon. ~ Bob Dylan

Open the windows and the doors, she shouted, cook some meat and fish, buy the largest turtles around, let strangers come in and spread their mats in the corners and urinate in the rose bushes and sit down to eat as many times as they want, and belch and rant and muddy everything with their boots, and let them do whatever they want to us, because that's the only way to drive off ruin. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Once you have a thick mixture, stop and use the cloth to strain the muddy water. It is this muddy water which contains the hair growing magic. This water should then be mixed with shampoo and applied to your head to help your hair grow. ~ Roc Marten

It mattered little if one was mute; people did not understand one another anyway. They collided with or charmed one another, hugged or trampled one another, but everyone knew only himself. His emotions, memory, and senses divided him from others as effectively as thick reeds screen the mainstream from the muddy bank. Like the mountain peaks around us, we looked at one another, separated by valleys, too high to stay unnoticed, too low to touch the heavens. ~ Jerzy Kosinski

After a while I understood that, talking this way, everything dissolves: justice, pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman I made love to and I remembered how, holding her small shoulders in my hands sometimes, I felt a violent wonder at her presence like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat, muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her. Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances. ~ Robert Hass

Durga wore a simple sea-green dress and a lei of lotus flowers ... "Take this," it has no special power except that the blooms will not fade, but it will serve a purpose on your voyage. I want you to learn the lesson of the lotus. This flower springs forth from muddy waters. It raises its delicate petals to the sun and perfumes the world while, at the same time, its roots cling to the elemental muck, the very essence of the mortal experience. Without that soil, the flower would wither and die." She placed the lei over my neck. "Dig down and grow strong roots, my daughter, for you will stretch forth, break out of the waters and find peace on the calm surface at last. You will discover that if you hadn't stretched, you would have drowned in the deep, never to blossom or share your gift with others. ~ Colleen Houck

The Black-Eye-of-the-Month Club I was born with water on the brain. Okay, so that's not exactly true. I was actually born with too much cerebral spinal fluid inside my skull. But cerebral spinal fluid is just the doctors' fancy way of saying brain grease. And brain grease works inside the lobes like car grease works inside an engine. It keeps things running smooth and fast. But weirdo me, I was born with too much grease inside my skull, and it got all thick and muddy and disgusting, and it only mucked up the works. My thinking and breathing and living engine slowed down and flooded. My brain was drowning in grease. But ~ Sherman Alexie

He sounds like kind of a hacker. Which makes his nam-shub very difficult to
understand. If he was such a nice guy, why did he do the Babel thing?"
"This is considered to be one of the mysteries of Enki. As you have noticed,
his behavior was not always consistent with modern norms."
"I don't buy that. I don't think he actually fucked his sister, daughter, and
so on. That story has to be a metaphor for something else. I think it is a
metaphor for some kind of recursive informational process. This whole myth
stinks of it. To these people, water equals semen. Makes sense, because they
probably had no concept of pure water -- it was all brown and muddy and full of
viruses anyway. But from a modern standpoint, semen is just a carrier of
information -- both benevolent sperm and malevolent viruses. Enki's water --
his semen, his data, his me -- flow throughout the country of Sumer and cause it
to flourish."
"As you may be aware, Sumer existed on the floodplain between two major rivers,
the Tigris and the Euphrates. This is where all the clay came from -- they took
it directly from the riverbeds."
"So Enki even provided them with their medium for conveying information -- clay.
They wrote on wet clay and then they dried it out -- got rid of the water. If
water got to it later, the information was destroyed. But if they baked it and
drove out all the water, sterilized Enki's semen with heat, t ~ Neal Stephenson

NEWT rummages in his pockets and pulls out a tiny bottle with only a couple of muddy drops left inside it.
TINA: Is that Polyjuice?
NEWT (of the bottle): Just enough to get me inside.
He looks down at his coat and finds one of THESEUS'S hairs on his shoulder. He adds it to the mixture, drinks, and turns into THESEUS, still wearing NEWT'S clothes.
TINA: Who - ?
NEWT: My brother, Theseus. He's an Auror. And a hugger. ~ J.K. Rowling

If a man's thoughts are muddy, If he is reckless and full of deceit, How can he wear the yellow robe? Whoever is master of his own nature, Bright, clear and true, He may indeed wear the yellow robe. ~ Gautama Buddha

It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the season. A great chocolate-colored pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapors; so that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr. Utterson beheld a marvelous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the black end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths. The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful reinvasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer's eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I love that your house plans for you to get muddy. Like it's in the architecture. ~ Rainbow Rowell

William Asquith Farnaby was nothing but a muddy filter, on the hither side of which human beings, nature, and even his beloved art had emerged bedimmed and bemired, less, other and uglier than themselves. ~ Aldous Huxley

Nietzsche lampooned the romantics of his day (a half century later), noting that "they muddy the waters to make them look deep. ~ Robert Solomon

Even when muddy your wings sparkle bright wonders that heal broken worlds. ~ Aberjhani

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery. Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds this day in the sight of heaven and earth. On ~ Charles Dickens

Movie directors often shoot funerals in the rain. The mourners stand in their dark suits under large black umbrellas, the kind you never have handy in real life, while the rain falls symbolically all around them, on grass and tombstones and the roods of cars, generating atmostphere. What they don't show you is how the legs of your suit caked with grass clippings, cling soaked to your shins, how even under umbrellas the rain still manages to find your scalp, running down your skull and past your collar like wet slugs, so that while you're supposed to be meditating on the deceased, instead you're mentally tracking the trickle of water as it slides down your back. The movies don't convey how the soaked, muddy ground will swallow up the dress shoes of the pallbearers like quicksand, how the water, seeping into the pine coffin, will release the smell of death and decay, how the large mound of dirt meant to fill the grave will be transformed into an oozing pile of sludge that will splater with each stab of the shovel and land on the coffin with an audible splat. And instead of a slow and dignified farewell, everyone just wants to get the deceased into the ground and get the hell back into their cars. ~ Jonathan Tropper

Yet complicated people were getting wet - not only the shepherds. For instance, the piano-tuner was sopping. So was the vicar's wife. So were the lieutenant and the peevish damsels in his Battlesden car. Gallantry, charity, and art pursued their various missions, perspiring and muddy, while out on the slopes beyond them stood the eternal man and the eternal dog, guarding eternal sheep until the world is vegetarian. ~ E. M. Forster

I still can't believe we are tracking Bigfoot," Sophie whispered as she stared at the giant footprint in the muddy soil. Each massive toe was as wide as her arm, and the print formed a deep, mucky puddle.

Dex laughed, flashing two perfect dimples as he stood on his tiptoes to examine a scuff in the bark of a nearby tree. "Do humans really think there's a giant hairy ape-man running around trying to eat them?"

Sophie turned away, pulling her blond hair around her face to hide her flushing cheeks. "Pretty crazy, right? ~ Shannon Messenger

he gained a real pleasure in befriending a man whom he privately had cause to despise, for he liked very much the feeling that his regard for others was a private font, a well, that he could muddy, or drink from, at his own discreet pleasure, and on his own time. ~ Eleanor Catton

I honestly wish I could believe that things will end perfectly with one big bright happy ending. But these last few days have taught me that life isn't made up of shiny moments. Life is hard; it's gritty. One day you are filled with joy and the next, you are crawling through the muddy trenches with no inkling of when you might be able to climb your way back up again. ~Willow Mosby (Exposing ELE) ~ Rebecca Gober

That's where my influences lie, in the blues with people like Muddy Waters and Tina Turner. At first I didn't really like the idea of working with synthesizers but now I think they're fun, there are no restrictions. Not that I understand how they work. ~ Vince Clarke

People kept on longing for meaning and hope, but the annals of the past are a muddy story of chaos only. ~ Richard Flanagan

To the inhabitants of the pond, the pond was the world; and to the inhabitants of the world, the world was but a muddy pond. ~ Ruskin Bond

I want you to learn the lesson of the lotus. This flower springs forth from muddy waters. It raises its delicate petals to the sun and perfumes the world while, at the same time, its roots cling to the elemental muck, the very essence of the mortal experience. Without that soil, the flower would wither and die. ~ Colleen Houck

I don't have anything to say about the guy [Muddy Waters], you know. Treat me all right. But I can this: they are jealous hearted, you know. Are jealous hearted musicians, you know. See, if you can't do like your songs, get kinda jealous of you. Like you, like they think you better than them and all that, but I don't fool with those kind of peoples, you know. I ain't got the time. ~ Howlin' Wolf

He had been thinking of how landscape moulds a language. It was impossible to imagine these hills giving forth anything but the soft syllables of Irish, just as only certain forms of German could be spoken on the high crags of Europe; or Dutch in the muddy, guttural, phlegmish lowlands. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

My mother's rules had to do with feminine deportment, so I never played hard enough to break a toy or muddy my dress. My father's rules had to do with never shaming the family by even a hint of scandal, and not providing business rivals with an opportunity to kidnap me or throw acid in my face. ~ Bharati Mukherjee

Poppy Pink is a unicorn, but not just any unicorn. She is a member of the Pinkerton Manor family of unicorns.
She was indeed a vision as she stepped from her transport.
Poppy Pink is pink all over, but her mane and tail are the purest white and so soft and silky. Her hooves are silver and look like dancing shoes, and they match her sparkling, silver, spiralled horn.
'Oh Poppy,' gasped Oona. 'You look beautiful.'
'I know I do Oona. I suppose you don't look too bad either… for a dragon.'
Poppy Pink was a snob, and there wasn't anyone, unicorn or dragon, who was better than her. Well, she was a third generation Pinkerton Manor unicorn, and Pinkerton Manor was only the biggest Manor House in the county.
How could anyone possibly be better?
Poppy Pink looked down at her feet. They were very muddy.
'Ugh, look at my beautiful, shiny, hooves Oona,' whined Poppy Pink. 'We don't have mud at Pinkerton Manor, even when it rains.'
Poor Oona Orange-Blackspot looked downhearted. 'So sorry Poppy. I wish it hadn't rained for your visit.'
'So do I,' sniffed Poppy Pink. 'I find this weather very tiresome. It never rains enough to cause mud at Pinkerton Manor. ~ Ann Perry

I submit that the real reason we criticized and disliked Lynch's Laura's muddy bothness is that it required of us an empathetic confrontation with the exact same muddy bothness in ourselves and our intimates that makes the real world of moral selves so tense and uncomfortable, a bothness we go to the movies to get a couple hours' fucking relief from. ~ David Foster Wallace

We'd been told that the village was already liberated, that there would be no resistance, but there it was, sat between the bakery and the church like a horsefly on a slice of melon. We'd been so relaxed we didn't even notice it until the barrel swung round towards us like the eye of a muddy crocodile and its jaws released the shell that killed two of us outright and young Tommy Kenah three days later in his hospital bed. ~ Claire North

The men rode into Beaver Run like two horsemen of the apocalypse, justice on a white horse and war on a red. The few citizens walking through the muddy streets hurried to get out of their path, while those milling on the plank walkways stared as the duo passed.
Danger.
Long and lean, both sat their saddles with the ease of men accustomed to mastering both the beasts beneath them and the world around them. Their dusters hung to the tops of their boots and were covered in trail dust. Their hats, pulled low, cast shadows over their faces. Rifles were mounted to their horses' saddles and each man had a gun strapped to his thigh. ~ Suzanne Ferrell

I wish you the sweetness of sticky kisses,
the fragrance of muddy bouquets of weeds,
the simplicity of macaroni necklaces,
the warmth of bedtime snuggles,
the promise of beautiful tomorrows.
I wish you the hope to carry your heart
through the hard times,
the grace to forgive your inevitable mistakes,
the strength to start again every morning,
the wisdom to enjoy the journey.
I wish you enough joy and laughter in the present
to fill the silence that comes too soon
when life grows quiet and rooms grow still
and your heart beats in constant prayer
for the once-small feet
that now choose their own path
guided by the whisper of their childhood. ~ L.R. Knost

This whole thing about winning and losing is muddy waters. But I can remember, as a young actor, just walking around this city and not being able to get arrested. ~ Jeffrey Tambor

Once we get those muddy, maddening, confusing thoughts [nebulous worries, jitters, and preoccupations] on the page, we face our day with clearer eyes. ~ Timothy Ferriss

What is it with folks always talking about where they're from? You could grow up in a muddy ditch, but if it's your muddy ditch, then it's gotta be the swellest muddy ditch ever. ~ Jennifer L. Holm

On this material plane, each living being is like a street lantern lamp with a dirty lampshade.

The inside flame burns evenly and is of the same quality as all the rest - hence all of us are equal in the absolute sense, the essence, in the quality of our energy.

However, some of the lamps are "turned down" and having less light in them, burn fainter, (the beings have a less defined individuality, are less in tune with the universal All which is the same as the Will) - hence all of us are unequal in a relative sense, some of us being more aware (human beings), and others being less aware (animal beings), with small wills and small flames.

The lampshades of all are stained with the clutter of the material reality or the physical world.

As a result, it is difficult for the light of each lamp to shine through to the outside and it is also difficult to see what is on the other side of the lampshade that represents the external world (a great thick muddy ocean of fog), and hence to "feel" a connection with the other lantern lamps (other beings).

The lampshade is the physical body immersed in the ocean of the material world, and the limiting host of senses that it comes with.

The dirt of the lampshade results from the cluttering bulk of life experience accumulated without a specific goal or purpose.

The dirtier the lampshade, the less connection each soul has to the rest of the universe - and this includes ~ Vera Nazarian

Don't look so grim. When you get home, I'm sure Randall will buy you all the rings you want. One for every day of the week," Oscar said, thick with sarcasm, as they walked back toward the harbor.
"I don't care about the ring!" Camille shouted. She stopped walking and turned to Oscar. "I'm sorry, it's just that…"
Oscar patiently waited for her to finish her sentence. Camille looked away, embarrassed. She had scraped Randall's skin with the ring, too. It had been one of their rare moments alone. He'd run his fingers down her back, nibbled on her neck, and she'd waited for her legs to turn to warm butter. She'd waited to feel the desire to kiss him. But the feelings hadn't come. Camille had swept her hand up to stop him, and the ring had left a puffy red scratch on his arm.
Oscar watched her fumble for words, his expression one of concern.
"Never mind," she said quickly and stepped up onto a raised sidewalk, out of the mud.
"Never mind what?"
"It's private."
He continued walking in the street, his head level with hers.
"Private between who?"
"Between me and Randall. You wouldn't understand," she said and lifted her skirt as she descended back down into the muddy street where the sidewalk ran out.
"And why is that?" he asked, sounding put off. Daphne's place came into view. The air smelled of bitter salt water and of wood smoke curling up from the kitchen chimney.
"Oh, Oscar, you're a man of the sea. What could you possibly ~ Angie Frazier

The more I think of it, the more our ideas, our idols and our so-called holy practices, and those of our visions which supposedly are ineffable, all seem to me to be engendered merely by the stirrings of the human machine, exactly as is the wind from our nostrils or from our netherparts, and as is our sweat and salty water from tears, or the white blood passed in love, or the muddy excrement of the body. It enraged me to think that man should so waste his own substance in construction of theories that were almost always pernicious, and should speak of chastity before having examined the whole machinery of sex; that he should debate the question of free will instead of pondering the thousand obscure reasons which, for example, cause you to blink if I suddenly point a stick at your eyes; or that he should talk of Hell before having looked more closely into the question of death. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar

At one point, so many people had assembled on the bridge that linked the ship to the shore that the timbers began to creak and groan. Suddenly, there was a tremendous crack and a hundred or more people were plunged into the muddy river. Wiser heads might have seen this as a warning that Elizabethan technology did not always match its enthusiasm. ~ Giles Milton

When rain comes finally, washing away a low sky of muddy ocher, we who could not control the phenomenon are pressed into relief. The near-occult feeling: The face of being witness to the end of the world gives way to tangible things. Even if the succeeding sensations are not common, they are at least not mysterious. ~ Maya Angelou

Our little house was way back in the country. We had one house close to us, and hell the next one would've been a mile. If you got sick, you could holler and wouldn't nobody hear you. ~ Muddy Waters

as Emma, stood and gathered plates. "And thin as a rail, you are. Looks like I need to fatten you up." She cackled again. Dakota moved to help her clean the small kitchen, really just a small corner of the entire living space, but Emma waved her off. "No, you been sick. Just sit there and talk to us." "How sick was I?" "With that fever of yers, I's afraid you just might not make it." Hank hurried the words, then looked at her from the bottom of his bifocals, bearded chin in air. "Didn't your grandparents teach you not to roll around in muddy water when it's freezing outside?" Dakota shrunk a little lower. They knew ~ Cathy Bryant

We focused our attention on the tall businessman. His rhetoric did not soar. Even his voice was gray; bleak like a dead possum in melting, muddy snow. ~ James Aura

Struck dumb by love among the walruses
And whales, the off-white polar bear with stuffing
Missing, the mastodons like muddy buses,
I sniff the mothproof air and lack for nothing. ~ L.E. Sissman

My greatest pleasure is going out on a horrible, cold, wet January morning to pick the vegetables for our Sunday lunch, putting them in a muddy pile on the table, and then spending 45 minutes washing and preparing them. I like doing it because it's so different to what I do in the week. The same holds for cleaning the car or shining my shoes. ~ Peter Hargreaves

Like most geniuses, the Countess was a very limited person. Sigmund Freud was so ignorant of the art that Surrealist painters had to explain then- use of Freudian symbols over and over again, and he still didn't get it. Einstein never could remember to take the biscuits out of oven. Those same forces that drive a genius to create things or ideas that entertain or enlighten us often gobble so much of his personality that he has none left for the social graces (Should you invite Van Gogh to your home he might stand on your sofa in his muddy boots and pee where he pleased), and the very act of creation requires such focused concentration that vast areas of knowledge may be completely overlooked. Well, so what? There is no evidence that generalized skills are in any way superior to specialized brilliance, and certainly that sputter less little candle. Same of the mediocre mind known as "common sense" has never produced anything worth celebrating. ~ Tom Robbins

Everything is clear to me - outline, details, future, emotion. Not like the world, where everything is muddy and messed, and nothing ever works out the way you mean it to - no matter how skilful or how honourable you are, no matter how vile your enemy. When ~ Kelly Gardiner

The girls seemed unconcerned and went about their days, each as lovely in their own way as the flowers they tended. Sorrel's black hair became streaked with premature white, which gave her an exotic air, although the elegance was somewhat ruined by the muddy jeans and shorts she practically lived in. Nettie, on the other hand, had a head of baby-fine blonde hair that she wore short, thinking, wrongly, that it would look less childlike. Nettie wouldn't dream of being caught in dirty jeans and was always crisply turned out in khaki capris or a skirt and a white shirt. She considered her legs to be her finest feature. She was not wrong.
Patience was the sole Sparrow redhead, although her hair had deepened from its childhood ginger and was now closer to the color of a chestnut. It was heavy and glossy as a horse's mane, and she paid absolutely no attention to it or to much else about her appearance, nor did she have to. In the summer her wide-legged linen trousers and cut-off shorts were speckled with dirt and greenery, her camisoles tatty and damp. The broad-brimmed hat she wore to pick was most often dangling from a cord down her back. As a result, the freckles that feathered across her shoulders and chest were the color of caramel and resistant to her own buttermilk lotion (Nettie smoothed it on Patience whenever she could make her stand still). When it was terribly hot, Patience wore the sundresses she'd found packed away in the attic. She knew they were her mother's, an ~ Ellen Herrick

The People is a beast of muddy brain that knows not its own force, and therefore stands loaded with wood and stone. The powerless hands of a mere child guide it with bit and rein. One kick would be enough to break the chain, but the beast fears, and what the child demands it does. Nor its own terror understands, confused and stupefied by bugbears vain. Most Wonderful! With its own hand it ties and gags itself, gives itself death and war for pence doled out by kings from its own store. Its own are ALL THINGS between earth and heaven. But this it knows not. And if one arise to tell this truth, it kills him unforgiven. ~ Tomasso Campanella

The plow is the main cause of muddy streams and rivers in the springtime. And a muddy stream means that we are dissipating our greatest natural resource - our topsoil. ~ Dr. Blake F. Donaldson

Decades would pass. A few short sections would be formed in time into strangely resurrected, trunkless legs-tourist sites, sacred sites, national sites.
For the line was broken, as all lines finally are; it was on longing for meaning and hope, but the annals of the past are a muddy story of chaos only.
And of that colossal ruin, boundless and buried, the lone and level jungle stretched far away. Of imperial dreams and dead men, all that remained was long grass. ~ Richard Flanagan