"Briar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plastered over with a rich coat of mud; some, of old, narrow, bottomless tubs; and others, with a greater appearance of taste, ornamented with thick, circular ropes of straw, sewed together like bees' skeps, with a peel of a briar; and many having nothing but the open vent above. But the smoke by no means escaped by its legitimate aperture, for you might observe little clouds of it bursting out of the doors and windows; the panes of the latter being ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... woods; And the buds that break Out of the briar's boughs, When March winds wake, So old with their beauty are— Oh, no man knows Through what wild ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... cottage, in whose odorous old garden a whey-faced, wistful-eyed laddie dreamed so many brave and laughing dreams. It was only a farm-house then, fallen from a more romantic history, and it had no attraction for Bobby. He merely sniffed at dead vines of clematis, sleeping briar bushes, and very live, bright hedges of holly, rounded a corner of its wall, and ran into a group of lusty children romping on the brae, below the very prettiest, thatch roofed and hill-sheltered hamlet within many ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... reel, and reel, O hear me; Change us both upon the instant: I'll become a wild rose-briar, And my love ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... with haggard eyes And hands that fence away the skies, On rock and briar stumbling, Is it fear of the storm's rumbling, Of the hissing cold rain, Or lightning's tragic pain Drives you so madly? See, see the patient moon; How she her course keeps Through cloudy shallows and across ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... good idea. I'm very busy, as you can see, but I'm never too busy to teach those who really want to learn. We'll have a lesson here every morning just at sun-up. I can't be bothered any more to-day, because it is late. Run along home to the dear Old Briar-patch and think up some questions to ask me to-morrow morning. And, by the way, Peter, I will ask YOU some questions. For one thing I shall ask you to tell me all you know about your own family. Now scamper along and be here to-morrow ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... said Charles pleasantly, refilling his foul old briar—"the great day when Fleet Street ran with blood and the pipe-smokers put up barricades in the Strand, and Piccadilly became a reeking shambles. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... Louisa more than they had puzzled Archie in the morning; for she wanted to keep her way, which he did not. She lost it, however, continually. Her eyes were scratched by boughs and brambles, the tree roots tripped her up, her dress caught in a briar and was torn. "Archie! Archie!" she cried, as she went along. Her voice came back from the forest in strange echoing tones which made her start. At last, after winding and turning for a long time, she found herself again upon the main path, not far from the place ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... delighting and sanctifying the heart of man. "As far as possible;" that is, as far as is consistent with the fulfilment of the sentence of condemnation on the whole earth. Death must be upon the hills; and the cruelty of the tempests smite them, and the briar and thorn spring up upon them: but they so smite, as to bring their rocks into the fairest forms; and so spring, as to make the very desert blossom as the rose. Even among our own hills of Scotland and Cumberland, though often too barren to be perfectly ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... the pagoda, I did the same, and also took my gun in case of a wet place and snipe. They saw a procession to a priest's funeral—one of the regular shows of Burmah, I only saw jungle, and brakes of white roses with rather larger blossoms than our sweet briar, growing to about twenty feet high. These grew many feet below the level of the river in the wet season, so I gather they spend several months in the rains under water: I also saw vultures, eagles, hawks, and a big kind of lapwing and snipe; ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... ten o'clock on a bright spring night, and Abercrombie Smith lay back in his arm-chair, his feet upon the fender, and his briar-root pipe between his lips. In a similar chair, and equally at his ease, there lounged on the other side of the fireplace his old school friend Jephro Hastie. Both men were in flannels, for they had spent their evening upon the river, but apart from their dress no ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... delightful odour which this plant diffuses; and as it is most readily cultivated in pots, its fragrance may be conveyed to the parlour of the recluse, or the chamber of the valetudinarian; its perfume, though not so refreshing perhaps as that of the Sweet-Briar, is not apt to offend on continuance the most ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. I - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... sir. I saw what a shabby old clay pipe Mr Gunson had got, and I thought a good noo clean briar-root one would be a nice present for him, and I ran off to get it, and bought a big strong one as wouldn't break. And then, as I was out, I thought I'd look in at some of the stores, and see if there wasn't something ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... the Poocah seems to be to obtain a rider, and then he is in all his most malignant glory. Headlong he dashes through briar and brake, through flood and fall, over mountain, valley, moor, and river indiscriminately; up and down precipice is alike to him, provided he gratifies the malevolence that seems to inspire him. He bounds and flies over and beyond ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... little meadow which was once the Piazza of the city, and there, stayed by a few grey stones which present some semblance of a quay, forms its boundary at one extremity. Hardly larger than an ordinary English farmyard, and roughly enclosed on each side by broken palings and hedges of honeysuckle and briar, the narrow field retires from the water's edge, traversed by a scarcely traceable footpath, for some forty or fifty paces, and then expanding into the form of a small square, with buildings on three sides of it, the fourth being that which opens to ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... provinces. In November Clinton sent a small force by sea under Colonel Campbell to invade Georgia. Campbell routed the Americans and took Savannah; and General Prevost, who joined him from Florida, easily obtained possession of the province. Lincoln's attempt to regain it was defeated at Briar creek on March 3, 1779, and Prevost penetrated into South Carolina. He finally retired to Georgia, leaving a garrison at Port Royal, which secured his access to the sea and gave him a footing in South Carolina, as well as a base for covering Georgia. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... gladden the heart of one who viewed it that morning from the summit of the gently-curving Tamfield Hill Robert McIntyre stood with his elbows upon a gate-rail, his Tam-o'-Shanter hat over his eyes, and a short briar-root pipe in his mouth, looking slowly about him, with the absorbed air of one who breathes his fill of Nature. Beneath him to the north lay the village of Tamfield, red walls, grey roofs, and a scattered bristle of dark trees, ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... through the lapse of years since 1861, over some of the great battlefields of the Civil War, we see striking contrasts. On some, where once went carnage and death hand in hand, we now see blooming fields of growing grain, broad acres of briar and brush, while others, a magnificent "city of the dead." Under the shadow of the Round Top at Gettysburg, where the earth trembled beneath the shock of six hundred belching cannon, where trampling legions spread themselves along the base, over crest and through the gorges ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... got to see the end of this," said Tom, and led the way by a side path to the Widow Taylor's cottage. This was a short cut, but Aleck would not take it, because of the briar bushes and the dust. As the boys were in their knockaround suits they ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... small branches of the elder tree, or sometimes the stem of the briar and bramble, are what I have seen used, but even the stem of the hemlock and keckse are sometimes brought into requisition ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... hot sun and the hurry of her heart. Then she looked about a moment confusedly, for she called to mind that in her nakedness she had neither knife, nor scissors, nor bodkin to let her blood withal. But even therewith close to hand she saw hanging down a stem of half-dead briar-rose with big thorns upon it; she hastily tore off a length thereof and scratched her left arm till the blood flowed, and stepped lightly first to stem and then to stern, and besmeared them therewith. Then she sat down on ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... He lit his heavy briar and proceeded to envelop himself in a cloud of smoke. He gasped out a great sigh of satisfaction, and his leathery eyelids half closed. Presently a gentle tap came at the glass door, which partitioned ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... them. "Quick, quick," called out the giant's daughter, "take my comb from my hair and throw it down." Nix Nought Nothing took her comb from her hair and threw it down, and out of every one of its prongs there sprung up a fine thick briar in the way of the giant. You may be sure it took him a long time to work his way through the briar bush and by the time he was well through Nix Nought Nothing and his sweetheart had run on a tidy step away from him. But he soon came ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... to the next-door building and opened the front door with his key. Inside, a night watchman lounged behind a desk, smoking a blackened briar. He looked up, ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... there," said Miss Ainslie, "and all that corner of the garden will be full of roses in June. They're old-fashioned roses, that I expect you wouldn't care for-blush and cinnamon and sweet briar—but I love them all. That long row is half peonies and half bleeding-hearts, and I have a bed of columbines under a window on the other side of the house. The mignonette and forget-me-nots have a place to themselves, for I think they ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... beans, and Cousin Sophia was helping her. Peace and tranquility brooded over the Glen; the sky was fleeced over with silvery, shining clouds. Rainbow Valley lay in a soft, autumnal haze of fairy purple. The maple grove was a burning bush of colour and the hedge of sweet-briar around the kitchen yard was a thing of wonder in its subtle tintings. It did not seem that strife could be in the world, and Susan's faithful heart was lulled into a brief forgetfulness, although ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Nicholas from head to foot, and his gaze was returned with stolid defiance. Nicholas did not flinch, but for the first time he felt ashamed of his ugliness, of his coarse clothes, of his briar-scratched legs, of his freckles, and of the unalterable colour of his hair. He wished with all his heart that he were safely in the field with his father, driving the one-horse harrow across upturned furrows. He didn't ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... fastened on the breast with a small brooch like a wheel of silver. The hues upon that silk were never the same. His tunic of fine linen was girt at the waist with a leathern zone, stained to the resemblance of the wild-briar rose. It descended to but did not pass his beautiful knees, falling into many plaits. The tunic was cut low at the neck, exposing his throat and the knot in the throat and the cup-shaped indentation above the breast. On his feet were comely shoes ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... sweet-briar, we would remember thee And the cinnamon rose that evermore enthralls each passing bee, You old, old-fashioned roses, ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... broke on him like some rare flower That was not yesterday. Ev'n so the Spring Unclasps the girdle of its loveliness Abruptly, in the North here: long the drifts Linger in hollows, long on bough and briar No slight leaf ventures, lest the frost's keen tooth Nip it, and then all suddenly the earth Is nought but scent and bloom. So unto him Griselda's grace unclosed. Where lagged his wit That guessed not of the bud that slept in stem, Nor hint had of the flower within the bud? ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... singing on briar and reed, Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountain-side or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling his name: 'Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link! Spink, spank, spink! Snug and safe is that nest of ours, Hidden among the summer ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... savage lands, ye barbarous climes, Where angry England sends her outcast sons— I hail your joyless shores! my weary bark Long tempest-tost on Life's inclement sea, Here hails her haven! welcomes the drear scene, The marshy plain, the briar-entangled wood, And all the perils of a world unknown. For Elinor has nothing new to fear From fickle Fortune! all her rankling shafts Barb'd with disgrace, and venom'd with disease. Have pierced my bosom, and the dart of death Has lost its terrors ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... very sweet. And here is the dearest little bud I ever saw. I took it from the sweet-briar bush in the lane. Put that, too, ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... highway to the Dominion's source of revenue. But out of the direct rays of the sun the traveller found refreshment, and the mosquitoes were blown away by the keen breeze that seemed to come from off some glacier. And the birds sang loud, and the wild-flowers starred the birch-grove, and the briar-roses wove a tangle on ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... gaunt, soldierly old man with the fierce moustache, and the trim, military young man with one that was close cropped and smart. Each wore a blue serge suit and affected a short visored cap of the same material, and each lazily puffed at a very commonplace briar pipe. They in turn were watching the sprightly parade with an interest that was calmly impersonal. They saw no one person who deserved more than a casual glance, and yet the motley crowd passed before them, apparently without end, as ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... and down the nut bushes; but Nutkin gathered robin's pin-cushions off a briar bush, and ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... man doth a wrong, for the wrong's sake; but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honor, or the like. Therefore why should I be angry with a man, for loving himself better than me? And if any man should do wrong, merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but like the thorn or briar, which prick and scratch, because they can do no other. The most tolerable sort of revenge, is for those wrongs which there is no law to remedy; but then let a man take heed, the revenge be such as there is no law to punish; else a man's enemy is still before hand, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... again with quite unnecessary violence. We had all got into a first-class smoker, and he had already lit the short and charred old briar pipe which seemed to singe the end of his long, ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and cottages had sprung up where fields of barley and flax had grown, and a new church stood where once a barn had been. He sought out the little cottage that once he had known so well. Alas! it was strangely changed. A stone wall supplied the place of the old briar-hedge, and shrubs had grown up into trees, shadowing the door and window, whilst moss and ivy covered the walls and roof. With a trembling hand he knocked at the lowly door. The lattice was opened, and a strange face ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... as if something within her were moving her in a kind of dream. She felt herself going on through the forest, she did not know where. Deeper into the wood she went, and now it grew so dark that she saw scarce anything; only she felt the fragrance of briar roses, and it seemed to her that she was guided towards these roses. Then she knew there was a hand in her hand, though she saw nobody, and the hand seemed to lead her on. And she came to an open place in the forest, ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang
... begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night, From his watch-towre in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise; Then to com in spight of sorrow, And at my window bid good morrow, Through the Sweet-Briar, or the Vine, Or the twisted Eglantine. While the Cock with lively din, Scatters the rear of darknes thin, And to the stack, or the Barn dore, Stoutly struts his Dames before, Oft list'ning how the Hounds and horn Chearly rouse the slumbring morn, From the side of som Hoar Hill, Through the high ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... dismounted with his usual agility, inhaled the fresh perfumed air with the delight a Parisian feels at the sight of green fields and fresh foliage, plucked a piece of honeysuckle with one hand, and of sweet-briar with the other. Porthos had laid hold of some peas which were twined round poles stuck into the ground, and ate, or rather browsed upon them, shells and all; and Planchet was busily engaged trying to wake up an old and infirm ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... the making of Christ the Beloved the centre round which it moves, and from which it draws radiance and light and motion. By all these methods, and many more that I cannot dwell upon now, the problem is triumphantly solved by Christianity. The tree is made good, and 'instead of the briar shall ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... spoke about the scrub Ashmead-Bartlett calls furze. I now find it is almost certainly the plant from which our briar pipes are made. The stem is slender, but the root expands to a considerable extent, and I have seen parts of these, which our men have dug up when clearing the ground, about 4 to 6 inches thick. The fibres are twisted in all directions, ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... Forgive the past! Henceforth flowers shall bloom upon the surface Of your dwellings. The lilac in the spring Shall blossom, and the sweet briar shall exhale Its fragrant smell. E'en the drooping fuchsia Shall not be wanting to adorn your tombs; While the weeping willow, pointing downwards, Speaks significantly to the living, That ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... day!—I'll go to sleep again, to put it off as long as I can. If I was only a little countess in her own feudal keep, I would get up in the dawn, and gather flowers in the May dew—primroses and eglantine!—Charlie says it is affected to call sweet-briar eglantine.—Sylvia! Sylvia! that thorn has got hold of me; and there's Aunt Barbara coming down the lane in the baker's jiggeting cart.—Oh dear! was it only dreaming? I thought I was gathering dog-roses with Charlie and Sylvia in the lane; and now it is only Thursday, ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a coat buttoned clear to the neck, and a countenance like a funeral sermon, with no more expression than a wooden decoy duck, who was smoking a briar-wood pipe that he had picked up on a what-not that belonged to the host, knocked the ashes out ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... field-flowers that gem the earth with beauty! And then in sickness! What, what is so refreshing as the perfume of sweet plants? We speak not of the glazed and costly things that come from foreign lands, but of the English nosegay—(how we love the homely word!)—the sweet briar, lavender, cowslip, violet, lily of the valley, or a sprig of meadow sweet, a branch of myrtle, a tuft of primroses, or handful of wild thyme! Such near the couch of sickness are worth a host of powdered doctors! Again we say, a blessing on sweet flowers! And now for one who loved ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... fashion, "fads" we should call them nowadays. A school-bag—they didn't call them satchels then—was made of a piece of blue and white bed-ticking, folded at the bottom. Every white stripe you worked with zephyr worsted in briar stitch or herring-bone or feather stitch. You could use one color or several. And now the old work and the bed-ticking has come back again and ladies make the old-fashioned bags ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... his orders, Dick Rendal felt in his pockets for a cigar-case; was annoyed and amused (in a sub-conscious sort of way) to find only a briar pipe and a pocketful of coarse-cut tobacco; filled and lit his ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Hapley called upon the Vicar, and argued with him upon theological questions. They sat in the little arbour covered with briar, and smoked as they wrangled. "Look at that moth!" said Hapley, suddenly, pointing to the edge of the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Kilhuch, the son of King Kilyth, his mother died. Before her death she charged the king that he should not take a wife again until he saw a briar with two blossoms upon her grave, and the king sent every morning to see if anything were growing thereon. After many years the briar appeared, and he took to wife the widow of King Doged. She foretold to her stepson, Kilhuch, that it ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... their backs in goodly packs. And as they passed, their voices rose above the general din, calling "Fair lemons and oranges, oranges and citrons!" "Cherries, sweet cherries, ripe and red!" "New flounders and great plaice; buy my dish of great eels!" "Rosemary and sweet briar; who'll buy my lavender?" "Fresh cheese and cream!" "Lily-white vinegar!" "Dainty sausages!" which calls, being frequently intoned to staves of melody, fell with pleasant sounds upon the ear. [These hawkers so seriously interfered ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... is coming!" said Uncle Wiggily. "I must get out of the way!" So he hopped on ahead, going down the road quite fast, until he got to a place where there were prickly briar bushes on ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis
... was buryed in the lower chancel, And William in the higher: Out of her brest there sprang a rose, And out of his a briar. ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... by the edge of the firs, in a coppice of heath and vine, Is an old moss-grown altar, shaded by briar and bloom, Denys, the priest, hath told me 'twas the lord Apollo's shrine In the days ere Christ came down from God to the Virgin's womb. I never go past but I doff my cap and avert ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... into bed, and, putting out her candle, lay down. The firelight played on the pale blue walls and lit up the bold design of the briar-roses which ran round the frieze at ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... which I used to watch the tramps, as they came into the town on those wet evenings, at dusk, and limped past, with their bundles drooping over their shoulders at the ends of sticks, came freshly back to me; fraught, as then, with the smell of damp earth, and wet leaves and briar, and the sensation of the very airs that blew upon me ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... desperation on finding that his father was too fleet for him. Passing through a five-barred gate into the next field, he skirted the base of a high, precipitous crag, on which grew a thicket of dwarf-trees and shrubs, and at the foot of which the burn warbled. Here, on his left, stood the briar bush out of which had whirred the first live grouse he ever set eyes on. It was at this bird, that, in the madness of his excitement, he had flung first his stick, then his hat, and lastly his shout of disappointment and defiance. A little further on was that ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... and heightened faces Like wine-red winter buds; Their frolic bodies gentle as Flakes in the air that pass, Frail as the twirling petal From the briar of the woods. ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... went up to her room, and presently Jeff, moodily puffing at his briar in the porch, heard the notes of her piano overhead. She played softly for some little time, and Jeff's pipe went out before it was finished—a ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... third species, C. echinatum, with curves more graceful and continuous, is to be found now and then with the two former. In it, each point, instead of degenerating into a knot, as in tuberculatum, or developing from delicate flat briar- prickles into long straight thorns, as in aculeatum, is close-set to its fellow, and curved at the point transversely to the shell, the whole being thus horrid with hundreds of strong tenterhooks, making his castle impregnable ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... which cannot be too highly extolled, especially as this War is, as everyone knows, being waged very largely on the beneficent Indian weed. The equipment consists of four delightful gold-mounted pipes, each guaranteed to be made of briar over eighty years old; a gold-mounted pencil; a gold cigar-case and fifty cigars; a gold cigarette-case and 1,000 cigarettes; a gold cigar-cutter; a gold mechanical lighter; a gold and amber cigar-holder; a gold and amber cigarette-holder; a smoker's knife and two gold ash-trays—the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 23, 1914 • Various
... the sandal, the cord, and the cope, The dread of the devil and trust of the Pope; For to gather life's roses, unscathed by the briar, Is granted alone ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... rebate of all taxes, and all clamoured against law and government." The disorder spread to Virginia. "In several counties the prisons and court houses and clerks' offices have been wilfully burnt. In Green Briar, the course of justice has been mutinously stopped and associations are entered into against the payment of taxes," wrote Madison to Jefferson ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... cloud of smoke as he removed the briar from his mouth. "Malone," he asked gently, "how did you know ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... 139. ROSA rubiginosa. SWEET-BRIAR.—Is a very fragrant shrub, for which it has long been cultivated in the gardens. There are several varieties in the nurseries; as the Double-flowering, Evergreen, &c. which are ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... word Mr. Chichester turned, and coming to the path followed it, walking neither fast nor slow, never once looking to where Barnabas strode behind, and heedless of briar or bramble that dragged at him as he passed. On they went, until the path lost itself in a grassy lane, until the lane ended in a five-barred gate. Now, having opened the gate, Mr. Chichester passed through into the high road, and then, for one moment he looked at Barnabas, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... going to Tibet again?" She asked him the question point blank, as they were drinking their coffee, and Mackenzie was smoking a big briar ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... jamming tobacco fiercely into the bowl of his briar. He growled, "Look, you seem to think that the only thing that restricts man is the fear of being punished. There are ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... swords at fish-nets and bedding, thrusting their torches into every nook and corner. She would have stumbled up the ladder again out of their sight, but a shout told her that she was seen. A great fellow seized her, dragging her from the ladder; in his grasp she fluttered like a rag caught in a briar. Another pulled her from him; she was in the midst of mail-clad forms that towered over her, drink-flushed faces, brutal with greed, that leered down upon her, hairy hands that grasped at her. Her captor she eluded, and another, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... merely grasped his recovered treasure, feasting his soul upon the knowledge that here, within the space of one small cube, lay the promise of sleep, peace of mind, oblivion. Then, with unsteady hands, he opened the tin: took from his pocket a briar of great age and greater virtue; filled it; lighted it; and drew in the first mouthful of aromatic fragrance, with such rapture of refreshment as a man, parched with fever, drains a ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... a tor, but the warmth kept rising from the ground, and the sweet-briar on a cottage bathed them with its spicy perfume. From the converging lanes figures passed now and then, lounged by, staring at the strangers, gossiping amongst themselves, and vanished into the cottages that headed the incline. A clock struck seven, and round the shady lime-tree ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... clearing a plant; Sordid his tunic was, with many a patch Mended unseemly; leathern were his greaves, Thong-tied and also patch'd, a frail defence Against sharp thorns, while gloves secured his hands From briar-points, and on his head he bore A goat-skin casque, nourishing hopeless woe. No sooner then the Hero toil-inured 280 Saw him age-worn and wretched, than he paused Beneath a lofty pear-tree's shade ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... is," grunted Colonel Crutcher, "pretty and good and sharp as a briar and quick as greased lightning. There isn't a girl like her anywhere around these parts. I don't see what the young folks of the county are thinking about, leaving her out of ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... looking just as it did three years since; it is possible that one or two of the bull's-eye panes of glass may have been broken, and changed, and the grey shingles are a little more moss-grown; but its general aspect is precisely what it was when we were last there. The snow-ball and the sweet-briar are in their old places, each side of the humble porch; the white blossoms have fallen from the scraggy branches of the snow-ball, this first week in June; the fresh pink buds are opening on the fragrant young shoots of the sweet-briar. There is our friend, Miss Patsey, wearing a sun-bonnet, at ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... and "thorough" are originally the same word, and in Shakespeare's time both forms were used for the preposition. Cf. Puck's song in "Midsummer Night's Dream," "Thorough bush, thorough briar." ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... "as I had begun to fear. I owe you an apology, Sir Thomas," he went on with manly dignity, producing the briar, "I am entirely to blame. How the mistake arose I cannot imagine, but I find it isn't a ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... Pettit's plays. Impossible that an audience that could sit out Edward II. could find any pleasure in such sinks of literary infamies as In the Ranks and Harbour Lights. Artistic atrophy is benumbing us, we are losing our finer feeling for beauty, the rose is going back to the briar. I will not speak of the fine old crusted stories, ever the same, on which every drama is based, nor yet of the musty characters with which they are peopled—the miser in the old castle counting his gold by night, the ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... dare say he thought the gift horse was something of a white elephant. No wonder if he did, for words could not exaggerate the wretched condition of the island and its people. The houses of the poor were hovels built of sod, with floors of clay, and sooty rafters of briar and straw and dried gorse. The people were hardly better fed than their beasts. So Stanley left the island alone. It will be interesting to mark how different was the mood of his children, and his ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... church in the valley there: A gentle knight and a lady fair, They loved each other well. That very day on her bier she lay He on his sword-point fell. They buried her by the northward spire, And him by the south kirk wall; And theretofore grew neither bush nor briar In the hallowed ground at all. But next spring from their coffins twain Two lilies fair upgrew— And by and by, o'er the roof-tree high, They twined and they bloomed the whole year through. How read you ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... crew, To live with her, and live with thee, In unreproved pleasures free: To hear the lark begin his flight, And, singing, startle the dull night, From his watch-tower in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise; Then to come, in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good-morrow, Through the sweet-briar or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine; While the cock, with lively din, Scatters the rear of darkness thin, And to the stack, or the barn-door, Stoutly struts his dames before: Oft listening how the hounds and horn Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn, From the side ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... Nelly was out on the sea-braes, where the sprays of the briar-roses were swept in circles, streaming far and wide. She lingered in the hollow, and strayed to the utmost limit of her path. As she was returning, her eye fell on the folds of an object fluttering among the tedded grass. It was Staneholme's plaid. This was the first time he had intruded ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... hill," Nance chuckled on that last evening. "Looking down over a culture, a history—maybe arguments, lawsuits, jokes, parties; gossip too, for all we know—disguised as a huge briar ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... that if he tried to get over the wall I should catch him, and that there was no other way out, as I had locked the gate. It was heavy running, and we both began to get weary. Then I caught my foot in a briar and fell. Immediately the young man rushed to the wall and began scrambling up it, but just as he was drawing his leg over the top I caught him by the heel. For a moment he struggled and kicked, then by sheer weight I brought him down at my feet, ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... put away farming implements, odd cart-wheels, performed for us the same service as the classic grotto which sheltered Eneas and Dido under similar circumstances. The wild branches of the hawthorn and sweet-briar added to the ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... raising his hand. "Let not the groping man thank the lamp, nor the briar the brook. Thank the sun whence the lamp hath his light, and the ocean to whom the brook oweth his waters. Thank that incomparable paragon, that consummate swan, that pearl of all perfection, my mistress, of whose brightness I am but the mirror ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... struck by the heather than any other form of vegetation. The mountains and hills were covered with it, and whatever else we saw, heather was always in the picture on the hills and mimosa along the roadside. From the roots of transplanted Mediterranean heather—and not from briar—are made what we call briarwood pipes. When a salesman assures you that the pipe he offers is "genuine briar," if it really was briar, you would think it wasn't. When names have become trademarks, we have to ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... have never at any time since relinquished. I smoked several cigarettes that evening, with steadily increasing satisfaction. And, on the following day, acting on the advice of my room-mate, Mr. Smith, I bought a shilling briar pipe and a sixpenny plug of black tobacco as a week's allowance. From that point my current outgoings were increased by just sixpence per week, no less, and for ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... afterwards reproduced in oils by the painter. This silent period was, however, one of unremitting production. Hitherto Burne-Jones had worked almost entirely in water-colours. He now began a number of large pictures in oils, working at them in turn, and having always several on hand. The "Briar Rose" series, "Laus Veneris," the "Golden Stairs," the "Pygmalion" series, and "The Mirror of Venus" are among the works planned and completed, or carried far towards completion, during these years. At last, in May 1877, the day of recognition came, with the opening of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... not see her, but at length he caught sight of her some way off struggling with the undergrowth, her dainty head just peeping out over the tops of the ferns. So back he went once more and brought her out from the tangled mass of briar and brake into an open space where blue butterflies fluttered among the ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... bites her thread off with a snap, with some terse remark offsetting the other, or with a bit of cynicism, which, with a quick glance of her black eyes and curl of the lip, is well calculated to settle forever the offender; for the captain's wife is as keen as a briar, and reads human nature quickly. I should say she is gifted with wonderful intuitive powers, and these have been sharpened by her constant effort to understand the words and lives of those around her, these ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... Frequently she had to sit by the kitchen stove all day as not a bedroom would have a fire and the only sitting-room contained the bar and was black with tobacco smoke. The path of the lecturer is uphill, over stony roads, with briar hedges on both sides. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... approbation. Oh! pleasant is the riding, highly-seated on the rail, And worthy of the wooden horse, the rascal that we ride; Let us see the mighty shoulders that will never, never fail. To lift him high, and plant him, on the crooked rail astride. The seven-sided pine rail, the pleasant bed of briar, The little touch of hickory law, with ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... SEPT. 2, Sweet Briar Farm.-Ernest spent Sunday with us, and I have just driven him to the station and seen him safely off. Things have prospered with us to such a degree that he has been extravagant enough to give me the use, for the summer, of a bonnie little nag and an antiquated ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... even a silent one. Briarmains stood near the highway. It was rather an old place, and had been built ere that highway was cut, and when a lane winding up through fields was the only path conducting to it. Briarfield lay scarce a mile off; its hum was heard, its glare distinctly seen. Briar Chapel, a large, new, raw Wesleyan place of worship, rose but a hundred yards distant; and as there was even now a prayer-meeting being held within its walls, the illumination of its windows cast a bright reflection on the road, while a hymn of a most extraordinary description, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air; the flower, which above all others yields the sweetest smell in the air, is the violet;[18] next to that is the musk rose, then the strawberry-leaves, dying with a most-excellent cordial smell; then sweet briar, then wall-flowers, which are very delightful to be set under a parlour, or lower chamber window; but those which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three—that is, burnet, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... and with his usual serene disregard for the respectabilities proceeded to fill and light a huge briar pipe. ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... think o' the briar pattern around the edge? I know it's some worruk, but it's a bonnie border to lie under, an' it's not so tedious whan there's plenty o' folks ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... it fills the showers With music; and when sweeter air Than common breathes from briar-rose bowers, Methinks, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... brook, now having to descend at a considerable angle where the path was just wide enough for his feet, now having to make his way through tangled bushes, now scrambling over rough stones and occasionally being turned aside by great thickets of briar but still keeping the water in sight he at length came to a point whence he could see ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... his right hand from behind him, and in the glare of the firelight showed them, lying across its palm, a briar tobacco-pipe, silver-mounted. ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... aye, thrice daily—well, call it six, then—do I make burnt offering. Now some use censers of clay, others employ censers of rare white earth finely carved and decked with silver and gold. My particular censer, as you see, is a plain, honest briar, a root dug from the banks of the blue Garonne, whose only glory is its grain and color. The original tint, if you remember, was like that of new-cut cedar, but use—I've been smoking this one only two years now—has given it gloss and depth of tone which put the finest mahogany ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... worry through to-day any the quicker. Poor, brave, noble, drawling, manly, pipe-smoking fellows! On this particular occasion FOOTLES uttered only one word. It was short, and began with the fourth letter of the alphabet. But he may be pardoned, for some of the glowing embers from his magnificent briar-wood pipe had dropped on to his regulation overalls. The result was painful—to FOOTLES. All the others laughed as well as they could, with clays, meerschaums, briars, and asbestos pipes in their mouths. And through the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... at our desire, The little clamorous owl shall sit Through her still time; and we aspire To make a law (and know not it) Unto the life of a wild briar. ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... a briar—I die where I grow; only, instead of your finding me, as you did the first time, on the first or second floor, you will have to look for me on the fifth or sixth, seeing that, by a very natural see-saw movement, as my funds ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... his men, to help me in writing their story; and I heard many tales and long poems about fair-haired Finn, who 'had all the wisdom of a little child'; and Conan of the sharp tongue, who was 'some way cross in himself,' and who had a briar on his shield; and their adventures beyond sea, and their hunting after deer that were 'as joyful as the leaves of a tree in summer time.' But some of the people repeated verses by Raftery and ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... Yseult; another that Tristram died of grief because his scorned though wedded wife told him that the white-sailed ship, bearing his mistress to meet him, bore the black sail which meant that she was not on board; but all versions, I think, agree in ending with the fact, that the briar-rose growing on the tomb of the one, slowly trailed its flowers and thorns along till it had reached also the grave of the other, and knit together, as love had knit together with its sweet blossoms and sharp spines, the two fated lovers. The Middle Ages ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... wonders! exceeded expectation, went beyond belief, and soared above all the natural powers of description! she was nature itself! she was the most exquisite work of art! she was the very daisy, primrose, tube rose, sweet-briar, furze blossom, gilliflower, wall-flower, cauliflower and rosemary! in short she was a bouquet of Parnassus. Where expectation was raised so high, it was thought she would be injured by her appearance; but it was the audience who were ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... clambered up into the engineer's seat. Hemenway gave McLeod his longest and strongest cigar, and filled his own briar-wood pipe. The rain was now pattering gently on the roof of the cab. The engine hissed and sizzled patiently in the darkness. The fragrant smoke curled steadily from the glowing tip of the cigar; but the pipe went out half a dozen times while Hemenway was telling the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... around Washington had been stripped of their garrisons, and most of their guns, to furnish them; but the generalship which cut our army off from its base of supplies, and blundered into the battle of the Wilderness, like a blind horse into a briar patch, without shelling or burning the dry chapperal in which our dead and wounded were consumed together, after the battle, had made no arrangements for the safe arrival of its reinforcements. So they were ambushed soon after passing through Fredericksburg; and that ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... sloth of the size of an ox, described by Mr. Jefferson, I know not a single instance of the skeleton of an animal buried in a cavern of the New World. (* The megalonyx was found in the caverns of Green Briar, in Virginia, at the distance of 1500 leagues from the megatherium, which resembles it very much, and is of the size of the rhinoceros.) The extreme scarcity of this geological phenomenon will appear the less surprising ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... said Dan, knocking the fire from his pipe and stuffing the briar-wood into his pocket, at the same time glancing quickly toward the wheel where the mate and the quartermaster were busy over a slight alteration ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... arranged the flowers in a small glass, and put them on the box near her mother's bed. The sweet-briar and cabbage-roses and southernwood filled the caravan with their fragrance. Then Rosalie took up her usual position at the door, to watch Toby driving, and to see all that was to be seen ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... pieces.[181] The group is allied, on the one hand, to that of Fearless Johnny who, passing the night in a haunted house, expelled the ghosts, or goblins, which had taken possession of it; on the other hand, to that of the Briar Rose, illustrated by Mr. Burne Jones' series ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... dew was still on the grass Millie went out to milk. "Bossy had roamed away off ferninst the thicket," she told Robert, "and ginst I got there to where she was usin' I scratched the calf of my leg on a briar." ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... whither. So did Sabellius, and Arius,[9] and those fools who were as swords unto the Scriptures in making their straight faces crooked. Let not the people still be too secure in judgment, like him who reckons up the blades in the field ere they are ripe. For I have seen the briar first show itself stiff and wild all winter long, then bear the rose upon its top. And I have seen a bark ere now ran straight and swift across the sea through all its course, to perish at last at entrance of the harbor. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... pine | in my grove | is there seen, But with ten | -drils of wood | -bine is bound; Not a beech | 's more beau | -tiful green, But a sweet | -briar twines | it around, Not my fields | in the prime | of the year More charms | than my cat | -tle unfold; Not a brook | that is lim | -pid and clear, But it glit | -ters with fish ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... lines of it, making it if not handsome pleasant and friendly. He would talk to himself in English, ruffling his hands through his hair: "And then, at three o'clock I must go with Andrey Vassilievitch ..." or "I wonder whether she'll mind if I ask—" He had a large briar pipe at which he puffed furiously, but could not smoke without an endless procession of matches that afterwards littered the floor around him. "The tobacco's damp," he explained to us a hundred times. ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... cut or two, a tug and a stifled groan; another squeeze more violent by far than the former one, and the portly baron rolled panting through the jagged briar-covered little crevice, just as the light of the searchers illuminated the place from which he had only ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... he got there," continued the other, bowing his head as he filled an old briar pipe with tobacco, "he found some one else. It's strange—and you may wonder how I know it all. But it's true. Back in England he had worshipped a young girl. Like the others, she detested him; and yet ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... spring evening was chill a fire glittered and sparkled and the deep blue curtains were drawn. Ronder was wearing brown kid slippers and a dark velvet smoking-jacket. As he lay back in the deep arm-chair, smoking an old and familiar briar, his chubby face was deeply contented. His eyes were almost closed; he was the very symbol of satisfied happy and ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... CAPTAIN GADSBY, in his shirt-sleeves, is bending over a complete set of Hussar's equipment, from saddle to picketing-rope, which is neatly spread over the floor of his study. He is smoking an unclean briar, and his forehead ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... smoking my faithful briar pipe, indulging in the fragrance of my tobacco as I look out on the campus from my many-paned window, and things are different with me from the way they were way back in Freshman year. I can see now how boyish in many ways I was then. I believe what has changed me as ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... England. Mount Wellington, which rises 4,000 feet above Hobart, is often covered with a wreath of mist, and in the winter with snow. Many English fruits and trees have been introduced, and flourish well. The sweet briar was brought in some years ago, and now in many parts the hedges are of nothing else. The native foliage is, however, the same as that of Australia. Everywhere the eucalyptus predominates, and in Tasmania grows to a great height. Some of the ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... of the language keeps for us the freshness of the imagery—the sweet-briar and the hawthorn, the mavis and the oriole—which has so long become publica materies. It is not withered and hackneyed by time and tongues as, save when genius touches it, it is now. The dew is still on all of it; and, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... and dykes filled, and now their places are marked by a long dimple in the land's face. The well in the midst of one has been filled up, despite the warning of an old mountain farmer that ill-luck would surely follow whosoever demolished the fairy well. Over it grew a clump of briar and thorn-trees, where one found the largest, juiciest blackberries; that too is gone, but, practically, the fields remain the same. There is the Ten Acre field, stretching so far as to be weirdly lonely at ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... gang to the brig-side That's past the briar tree, Alang the road when the licht is wide ...
— Songs of Angus and More Songs of Angus • Violet Jacob
... and attempting to recover the upper parts of Georgia. Before he was able to execute this plan, General Prevost withdrew his troops from Augusta to Hudson's Ferry. Ash was then ordered to cross the Savannah, and take post near the confluence of Briar Creek with that river. This camp was thought unassailable. Its left was covered by a deep swamp, and by the Savannah. The front was secured by Briar Creek, which is unfordable several miles, and makes an acute ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... by nature itself upon the well-dressed wearer. Be like him—be like her—so runs the third head of the etiquette-card. Be not slovenly and disorderly and unseemly in your livery. Let not your livery be always falling off, and catching on every bush and briar, and dropping into every pool and ditch. Hold yourselves in hand, the instruction goes on. Brace yourselves up. Have your temper, your tongue, your eyes, your ears, and all your members in control. And then you will escape many ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... more a pure lucid blue above me—all around me, in fact, since I am standing high on the top of the ancient stupendous earthwork, grown over with oak wood and underwood of holly and thorn and hazel with tangle of ivy and bramble and briar. It is marvellously still; no sound from the village reaches me; I only hear the faint rustle of the dead leaves as they fall, and the robin, for one spied me here and has come to keep me company. At intervals he spurts out his brilliant ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... stirring of a joy as profound as it was delicate, not the fanciful enchantress of the day before, but his wife that was to be. And yet she held him to his bargain. All that his lips touched as he said good-bye was the little bunch of yellow briar roses she gave him ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... flowers. It was a scented night, the air heavy with the burden of midsummer. The fireflies spread a jewelled web before their faces, great white moths flapped and droned about them. On they pushed, their hands locked through all hazards of brake or briar: neither would let go for a whole world, but Silvestro was always in front, leading Castracane for this once. One knew the way as well as another; but Silvestro led it. They ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... five years child— He is my youngest boy: To look on eyes so fair and wild, It is a very joy:— He hath conversed with sun and shower And dwelt with every idle flower, As fresh and gay as them. He loiters with the briar rose,— The blue-belles are his play-fellows, That dance upon ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... flash by me. She must flash to me, and stop there, burning. Oh, look, it is the month of the briar-rose. See how the hedges foam with pink blossom. And the fields, look, knee-deep in long grasses and daisies and buttercups. I am home again, thank Heaven. I am home. Home met me on the pier, my darling—the heart of home met ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... bear on our evils will be powerless to smite them, unless these motives are made sovereign in us by many an hour of patient meditation and of submission to their sweet and strong constraint. One sometimes sees on a wild briar a graft which has been carefully inserted and bandaged up, but which has failed to strike, and so the strain of the briar goes on and no rosebuds come. Are there not some of us who profess to have received the engrafted word and whose daily ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... his wretchedness by watching them through the briar hedge. He saw the tinker stroking a white cat, and appealing to her, every now and then, as his missus, for an opinion or a confirmation; and he thought that a curious sight. Speed-the-Plough was stretched at full length, with his boots in the rain, and his head ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... quite believe you," said the other, a stolid Englishman with a briar pipe, "he struck me as an exceptionally ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... which they were to go was a narrow path, with a rough place now and then, and now and then a briar or sharp stone upon it, but for the most part it was a pleasant way. The travelers hastened joyfully along it and all went well with them until, one day, they met a man whose face was turned toward the land from ...
— The Story-teller • Maud Lindsay |
