Mire Quotes & Sayings

Great theories are expansive; failures mire us in dogmatism and tunnel vision. — Stephen Jay Gould

We must accept the capitalistic stage in social evolution as about on a par with the earlier monkey stage. The human had to pass through those stages in its rise from the mire and slime of low organic life. It was inevitable that much of the mire and slime should cling and be not easily shaken off. — Jack London

When a patient says he feels stuck and confused, and through good intentions he struggles to become loose and clear, he only remains chronically trapped in the mire of his own stubbornness. If instead he will go with where he is, only then is there hope. If he will let himself get deeply into the experience of being stuck, only then will he reclaim that part of himself that is holding him. Only if he will give up trying to control his thinking, and let himself sink into his confusion, only then will things become clear. (64) — Sheldon B. Kopp

I believe that we are all born for greatness yet most of us mire in the mediocrity of life. We become complacent or worse, discouraged and stagnate. We damn ourselves by not progressing. — Toni Sorenson

Many different thoughts rise up in the darkness - like those gossamer plants that grow in the lake, oddly bewitching and pretty as they bob and sway; but enticing and sinister, they exert a dark pull as long as they're growing in the living, trickling mire. ANd yet as long as they're nothing but slimey brown clumps when the children pull them in to the boat. So many strange thoughts, both terrifying and enticing, grow in the night. — Sigrid Undset

The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was 'sublime and beautiful,'the more deeply I sank into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Don't mire up in self despair of your losses, learn from them and move on to other good things in life. Don't stop allowing the sunshine in because of the fear that winter will come and engulf the warmth. Hold it close to you to help you through those cold winter days. — Belinda Taylor On "Loss"

It is always easy to mock 'distress,' but we are its contemporaries; we are at the endpoint of what Nous, ratio, & Logos, still today the framework for what we are, cannot have failed to show: that murder is the first thing to count on, and elimination the surest means of identification. Today, everywhere, against this black but 'enlightened' background, remaining reality is disappearing in the mire of a 'globalized' world. Nothing, not even the most obvious phenomena, not even the purest, most wrenching love, can escape this era's shadow: a cancer of the subject, whether in the ego or in the masses... — Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

But love? Who can say what is just a mire of dark needs and desires, and what is true love? Does such a thing exist? Can't it be that if we say, 'I love you' to another person and know that we mean it, then that is love, regardless of the motive? — John Ajvide Lindqvist

Forget morality tales and all the fury and mire of human complexity, and follow the money. It will lead you through urban legends about sex and revenge and jealousy and the acquisition of power over others, but ultimately, it will lead you to the issue from which all the other motivations derive - money, piles of it, green and lovely and cascading like leaves out of a beneficent sky, money and money and money, the one item that human beings will go to any lengths to acquire. — James Lee Burke

To pull a friend out of the mire, don't hesitate to get dirty. — Baal Shem Tov

It happens over and over again - a group of people come together, fired up with passion to create change. They begin with huge inspiration and enthusiasm - and a year later, it's all foundered in the mire of conflict. We could have changed the world ten times over - if we didn't have to do it together with other people, those irritating, self-righteous, controlling, fluff-brained, clueless idiots who are our friends and allies. — Starhawk

American history is a quagmire, and the more one knows, the quaggier the mire gets. — Sarah Vowell

It often seems easier not to move on; even the muck and mire in which we're stuck seems less fearful and less challenging than the unknown path ahead. Some people use faith as a reason to remain stuck. They often say, "I have faith, so I'm waiting." But faith is not complacent; faith is action. You don't have faith and wait. When you have faith, you move. Complacency actually shows lack of faith. When it's time to move in a new direction in order to progress, the right people will come to us. — Betty Eadie

The elegant and beautiful Lotus flower must toil through the mud and mire of murky swamps and shadowy waters of darkness before it can finally bloom. Above the fray of struggle yet firmly rooted in rugged beginnings, it ultimately lies pristinely above the water, basking in the sun of triumph. So no matter what you've endured or where you come from...you are no different and no less beautiful. There is simply no greater beauty than when a flower blossoms despite its tough and humble beginnings. ~Jason Versey — Jason Versey

Lowly, with a broken neck, The crocus lays her cheek to mire. — George Meredith

When evening has come, I return to my house and go into my study. At the door I take off my clothes of the day, covered with mud and mire, and I put on my regal and courtly garments; and decently reclothed, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them lovingly, I feed on the food that alone is mine and that I was born for. There I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their humanity reply to me. And for the space of four hours I feel no boredom, I forget every pain, I do not fear poverty, death does not frighten me. I deliver myself entirely to them. — Niccolo Machiavelli

It's not good to stare too long at the Mire. It might look back. — Ilona Andrews

At times it is so enjoyable to mire your neighbor into the filth you already got stuck in long ago! — Igor Eliseev

History, lie of our lives, mire of our loins. Our sins, our souls. Hiss-tih-ree: the tip of the pen taking a trip of three steps (with one glide) down the chronicle to trap a slick, sibilant character. Hiss. (Ss.) Tih. Ree.
He was a pig, a plain pig, in the morning, standing five feet ten on one hoof. He was a pig in slacks. He was a pig in school. He was a pig on the dotted line. But in my eyes it's always the ones signing dotted lines that become pigs.
Did this pig have a precursor? He did, indeed he did. In point of fact, dating all the way back to the Biblical Age. Oh where? About everywhere you look there's pigs giving that fancy ol' snake a chase. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can always count on a fuckin' pretentious sarcastican for a fancy prose style. — Brian Celio

It now seems to be quite a thing to pull down the mighty from their seats and roll them in the mire. This practice deserves pronounced condemnation. Hero worship is a tremendous force in uplifting and strengthening. Humanity, let us have our heroes. Let us continue to believe that some have been truly great. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Were you acquainted with me, you would know that my failings are equal to my victories. On my own, I am no more than a pauper. It is the Prince for whom I live and for whom I fight. He raised me from the mire and made me a son. I will aspire to serve Him to the utmost, and perhaps my duty to Him will be fulfilled more as a herald than as a warrior, for if my quill and ink capture your attention and cause you to ponder the chronicles of this great kingdom and the story of the Prince, then I am content. — Chuck Black

At last Fingon stood alone with his guard dead about him; and he fought with Gothmog, until another Balrog came behind and cast a thong of fire about him. Then Gothmog hewed him with his black axe, and a white flame sprang up from the helm of Fingon as it was cloven. Thus fell the High King of the Noldor; and they beat him into the dust with their maces; and his banner, blue and silver, they trod into the mire of his blood. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armor to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place. — Douglas Adams

I like devilish, thorny, dirty, mean roles, muck and mire, unbelievably sad, unbelievably happy, burdened. Inner conflict - that's where drama is. — Amanda Plummer

The books talked about it [the heart] as if it were a sump pump stuck down in the muck and mire of somebody's backyard. Never in all my scientific reading did I encounter anything that talked about a broken heart. Never did I read anything about what the heart felt, how it felt or why it felt. Feeling and knowing weren't important, only understanding — Charles Martin

Without time," the angel said, "you have only the bottomless, shapeless mire of eternity."
"FYI, philosophy bores me."
"Not philosophy. Reality. Time is what gives life significance. — J.R. Ward

What else is God good for other than a distraction from the mire we're all stranded in? — Hannah Kent

Your enemies hate you more than they hate your ideas. Should you want a project to be undone propose it. Even if it were as useful as a bishop's mire it would be rejected. Once you are defeated let the humblest-looking among you sponsor it and your enemies to humble you will approve it. — Jose Rizal

Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes - gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas, in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest. — Charles Dickens

America, like a few other nations, has become characteristic for the depth of the abyss that divide a handful of brutal millionaires who are stagnating in a mire of luxury, and millions of laboring starving men and women who are always staring want in the face. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

what use was it to observe the human species and try to understand it? Their rules were fathomless and no mire fixed than the wind — Sarah Perry

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

Money does not smell of the mire whence it came; it has the glorious scent of what will be. — Catulle Mendes

MIC7.8 Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a light unto me. MIC7.9 I will bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have sinned against him, until he plead my cause, and execute judgment for me: he will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness. MIC7.10 Then she that is mine enemy shall see it, and shame shall cover her which said unto me, Where is the LORD thy God? mine eyes shall behold her: now shall she be trodden down as the mire of the streets. MIC7.11 In the day that thy walls are to be built, in that day shall the decree be far removed. — Anonymous

Dedicating some time to meditation is a meaningful expression of caring for yourself that can help you move through the mire of feeling unworthy of recovery. As your mind grows quieter and more spacious, you can begin to see self-defeating thought patterns for what they are, and open up to other, more positive options. — Sharon Salzberg

I won a noble fame;
But with a sudden frown,
The people snatched my crown,
And, in the mire, trod down
My lofty name. — Theodore Tilton

Seek only light and freedom and do not immerse yourself too deeply in the worldly mire. — Vincent Van Gogh

Never trample on any soul though it may be lying in the veriest mire; for that last spark of self-respect is its only hope, its only chance; the last seed of a new and better life: the voice of God that whispers to it: You are not what you ought to be, and you are not what you can be. You are still God's child, still an immortal soul. You may rise yet. and fight a good fight yet, and be a man once more, after the likeness of God who made you, and Christ who died for you! — Charles Kingsley

So as you are, in whatever conditions you are, in whatever situations you are, whatever may be the surroundings, like a dirty mire full of creatures and filth, you can become like lotuses. When you become like lotuses, all that is filth, all that is horrible can become fragrant. And this is what we have to achieve. — Nirmala Srivastava

Wan February with weeping cheer,
Whose cold hand guides the youngling year
Down misty roads of mire and rime,
Before thy pale and fitful face
The shrill wind shifts the clouds apace
Through skies the morning scarce may climb.
Thine eyes are thick with heavy tears,
But lit with hopes that light the year's. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

TAL HAD TO laugh. Hardly presentable! Wasn't it strange, the way humans looked at themselves with eyes of flesh and not of the Spirit? Certainly that dear woman had been through mire and filth of every degree; she was scarred, exhausted, ragged, and dirty. But to the angels, she appeared as God Himself saw her, just as any other redeemed saint of the living God: pure, shining, clean, dressed in garments as white as snow. — Frank E. Peretti

Some run the cliffs, and set upon an eagle's wings. Others mire in the den, and once within, can never leave again. — Chris Galford

even if a gentleman should lose his whole substance, he must never give way to annoyance. Money must be so subservient to gentility as never to be worth a thought. Of course, the SUPREMELY aristocratic thing is to be entirely oblivious of the mire of rabble, with its setting; but sometimes a reverse course may be aristocratic to remark, to scan, and even to gape at, the mob (for preference, through a lorgnette), even as though one were taking the crowd and its squalor for a sort of raree show which had been organised specially for a gentleman's diversion. Though — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

[The papists] ought to have sympathy with us weak, poor Christians, and not condemn us or make fun of us because we are learning so childishly to toddle along the benches, nay, to creep in the mire, and cannot skip and dance, on such light feet and legs, over and outside of God's commandments, as they do, the strong heroes and giants ... God forbid that we should! — Martin Luther

1I waited patiently for the LORD to help me, and he turned to me and heard my cry. 2He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along. 3He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see what he has done and be amazed. They will put their trust in the LORD. — Anonymous

Looking at death can be life-affirming. It doesn't need to mire us in thoughts of uselessness, nihilism, self-recrimination, and indifference to the future. Just a reminder that our days are numbered invites us to consider our blessings, strengthen our resolve to carry on, and escalate our compassion for all creatures, great and small. — Brent Green

A bird foraging for food in the swamps and marshes sinks rapidly if it doesn't move. It has to keep pulling its feet out of the mire to move on, regardless of whether it has caught something or not. And the same applies to us and to our love. We have to move on, we can't stay where we are, because we'll sink. — Milorad Pavic

We frolic in our emancipation from theology, but have we developed a natural ethic - a moral code independent of religion - strong enough to keep our instincts of acquisition, pugnacity, and sex from debasing our civilization into a mire of greed, crime, and promiscuity? Have we really outgrown intolerance, or merely transferred it from religious to national, ideological, or racial hostilities? — Will Durant

Having been through the muck and mire, I've had my own brush with bad choices. — Michael K. Williams

I cannot tell you how much I love you. But that which of all things I have most at heart, with regard to you, is the real progress of your soul in the divine life. Heaven seems to be awakened in you. It is a tender plant. It requires stillness, meekness, and the unity of the heart, totally given up to the unknown workings of the Spirit of God, which will do all its work in the calm soul, that has no hunger or desire but to escape out of the mire of its earthly life into its lost union and life in God. I mention this, out of a fear of your giving in to an eagerness about many things, which, though seemingly innocent, yet divide and weaken the workings of the divine life within you. — William Law

But the wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud. — Isaiah

I was proud to be in America, not just because here I found my voice but because the country made me the woman I am today, a woman with a fierce voice, a woman without shame. I grew up hearing that I was stubborn, a troublemaker, hard headed, and not good enough. But I had been wise enough to look in the mirror. I liked what I was, and I said to myself, I am worthy, lovable, and good enough. — Soraya Mire

My whole life I'd lived off the one wretched ambition that still possessed me: to be more than I was; to reject and despise everything that was in my reach and to set goals I was incapable of reaching; to chase after emotions I was incapable of feeling; to seek out adventures I couldn't live up to; to have a friendship that was no friendship, a love that was no love; ambitions yoked to a weak will, a will stuck in the mire of unfulfilled desire. — Mela Hartwig

Right you guessed the rising morrow
And scorned to tread the mire you must:
Dust's your wages, son of sorrow,
But men may come to worse than dust.
Souls undone, undoing others,-
Long time since the tale began.
You would not live to wrong your brothers:
Oh lad, you died as fits a man. — A.E. Housman

But love unexplained is clearer. When pen hasted to write, On reaching the subject of love it split in twain. When the discourse touched on the matter of love, Pen was broken and paper torn. In explaining it Reason sticks fast, as an ass in mire; Naught but Love itself can explain love and lovers! None but the sun can display the sun, If you would see it displayed, turn not away from it. Shadows, indeed, may indicate the sun's presence, But only the sun displays the light of life. Shadows induce slumber, like evening talks, But when the sun arises the "moon is split asunder." 3 In the world there is naught so wondrous as the sun, But the Sun of the soul sets not and has no yesterday. Though the material sun is unique and single, We can conceive similar suns like to it. But the Sun of the soul, beyond this firmament, No like thereof is seen in concrete or abstract.4 — Rumi

It's a very American trait, this wanting people to think well of us. It's a young want, and I am ashamed of it in myself. I am not always a good daughter, even though my lacks are in areas different from her complaints. Haven't I learned yet that the desire to be perfect is always disastrous and, at the least, loses me in the mire of false guilt? — Madeleine L'Engle

Lift up yourselves, men, take yourselves out of the mire and hitch your hopes to the very stars themselves. Let no man pull you down, let no man destroy your ambition, because man is but your companion, your equal; man is your brother; he is not your Lord, he is not your sovereign master. — Marcus Garvey

Struck in the wet mire
Four thousand leagues from the ninth buried city
I thought of Troy, what we had built her for. — Allen Tate

We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technical complexity. We would call forth in our minds the image of Paul Revere, riding through the American night, petitioning the people to wake up, to take up arms. We too would take up arms, the arms of our generation, the electric guitar and the microphone. — Patti Smith

When I saw her... my heart skipped a beat. Her expression was as open and trusting as that of a young child. Such purity is something never, ever seen at the court. Hieraglion is a mire of intrigue and deceit... yet there she was-- a simple, beautiful wildflower blooming in its midst. I wanted to protect her. Myself. With my own two hands. — Noriko Ogiwara

A quibble is to Shakespeare what luminous vapours are to the traveller: he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way and sure to engulf him in the mire. — Samuel Johnson

I do not think the long-range bullets I fire provide the mark of a man; I am only dimly aware that they are dehumanising me.
They are my opium tto see me through my time here. But with each hit they give, they only provide a feeling respite from the past I cannot escape from and thre present I have chosen to mire myself in. And, grounded as I am in the reality of this hill, I do not yet fully appreciate how this addiction is infecting my future with malediction.
With this clinical, psychopathically detached behaviour considered as normal, proper and expected on this hall, I cannot yet stop to think - because I cannot allow myself to here - of how hese respites may be blackening my soul in all the time I will have left on my own back Home - should I even live through the remainder of my months here, in some other corner of this Hell of a country. — Jake Wood

Here's that which is too weak to be a sinner, honest water, which ne'er left man i' the mire. — William Shakespeare

Politics is a foggy mire full of snakes. — Robert Jordan

I'm especially interested in projects from authors who were always wonderful writers but who got stuck in the midlist mire due to the challenges of traditional publishing. — Teresa Medeiros

One of our most important tasks will be to save future generations from a similar political fate and to maintain for ever watchful in them a knowledge of the menace of Jewry. For this reason alone it is vital that the Passion play be continued at Oberammergau; for never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation of what happened in the times of the Romans. There one sees in Pontius Pilate a Roman racially and intellectually so superior, that he stands like a firm, clean rock in the middle of the whole muck and mire of Jewry. — Adolf Hitler

Recall the cold
Of Towton on Palm Sunday before dawn,
Wakefield, Tewkesbury : fastidious trumpets
Shrilling into the ruck ; some trampled
Acres, parched, sodden or blanched by sleet,
Stuck with strange-postured dead. Recall the wind's
Flurrying, darkness over the human mire. — Geoffrey Hill

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man-
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:-
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins"
From "The Gods of the Copybook Headings — Rudyard Kipling

That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me. — Charlotte Bronte

ennui - that dreaded mire of the human emotions. — Amor Towles

Did God make man in a breath of holy fire, or did he crawl on up out of the muck and mire? — Bruce Springsteen

What is the right time [to discuss theology]? Whenever we are free from the mire and noise without, and our commanding faculty is not confused by illusory, wandering images, leading us, as it were, to mix fine script with ugly scrawling, or sweet-smelling scent with slime. We need actually 'to be still' (Ps. 46:10) in order to know God, and when we receive the opportunity, 'to judge uprightly' (Ps. 75:2) in theology. — Gregory Of Nazianzus

Life was a sorrowful throb of this Matter teaching it anguish, Teaching it hope and desire trod out too soon in the mire, Life the frail joy that regrets its briefness, life the long sorrow. — Sri Aurobindo

Comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the drawing-room of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent crashes, to make the correctness of the representation convincing. — George Meredith

The U.S. will never be a free and happy nation while they continue to exploit and marginalize the Third World. The Third World will never be happy or free so long as there is a First World stuck in the mire of consumerism, alienation, indifference. (Clodovis Boff, p. 161) — Mev Puleo

Christ, as the ultimate Imago Dei is alluded to in scripture as being without external beauty in the Classical sense, and should better be thought of as one who passed through all the slime and mire of a fallen and sinful creation in order to redeem it. His own body is to be remembered for the marks it bears-even in resurrection-of the scars of his sacrificial death. For the Christian, a theory of beauty might better begin at this point. — John Walford

We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a mission to preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll. We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technical complexity. — Patti Smith

spills of mire I swallowed inside the tower — Paul Celan

If America is to succeed in responding to these 21st Century challenges, our political system cannot continue to bog down in the mire of partisan gamesmanship. — Chuck Hagel

Yes; even if a gentleman should lose his whole substance, he must never give way to annoyance. Money must be so subservient to gentility as never to be worth a thought. Of course, the SUPREMELY aristocratic thing is to be entirely oblivious of the mire of rabble, with its setting; but sometimes a reverse course may be aristocratic to remark, to scan, and even to gape at, the mob (for preference, through a lorgnette), even as though one were taking the crowd and its squalor for a sort of raree show which had been organised specially for a gentleman's diversion. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

My mother's family is passionate about visiting and cleaning the graves of their deceased. Once a year, the Peeks and the Nolens would gather to clean the tombstones and plant flowers at the grave sites of their people. Once, in Piedmont, when I was a little boy, I was helping to clean a grave of an ancestor of my grandfather named Jerry Mire Peek. When I asked my cousin Clyde whom this unknown relation was named after, he said, He was named after the prophet Jerry Mire. — Pat Conroy

Human history is one prolonged and painful limping. We invariably step with one foot on the rock of justice, and with the other, we sink into the mire of deceit and self-delusion. — Danail Hristov

When i was a little boy i had a red bike, every night when I went to bed I begged God to give my bike wings so that in the morning, I could fly away. Every morning I'd crawl out of bed and run straight to the garage to see if he answered my prayers. I still have the bike. It's mire rusted than red now. But I still check. Everyday. — Tarryn Fisher

She wanted never again to have to fill another man's bed, telling falsehoods with her body until her mind could no longer track her own desires. She wanted to rid herself of the murk and the mire that had filled her. This life had bound her as effectively as if she were a falcon tied by a leather shackle, and she wanted to be free. — Courtney Milan

Tut, dun's the mouse, the constable's own word:
If thou art dun, we'll draw thee from the mire
Of this sir-reverence love, wherein thou stick'st
Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho! — William Shakespeare

It is an old custom of the servants of God to have some little prayer ready and to be frequently darting them up to heaven during the day, lifting their minds to God out of the mire of this world. — Philip Neri

You'll do well, if you don't mire in self-pity. Self-pity only gets you more of the same. Don't waste time on it. — Robin Hobb

When evening comes, I return to my home, and I go into my study; and on the thresh-hold, I take off my everyday clothes, which are covered in mud and mire,and I put on regal and curial robes; and dressed in a more appropriate manner I enter into the ancient courts of ancient men and am welcomed by them kindly, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born; and there I am not ashamed to speak to them, to ask them the reasons for their actions; and they, in their humanity, answer me; and for four hours I feel no boredom,I dismiss every affliction, I no longer fear poverty nor do I tremble at the thought of death; I become completely part of them. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Love one another, Jesus said. Sometimes it took a lifetime to learn how. Sometimes it took someone to hit rock bottom to make someone reach up and grasp hold and be lifted from the mire to stand on a firm foundation. — Francine Rivers

It's a shame you prefer to wallow in a mire of ignorance when knowledge floats by within reach," Books said. "Isn't it? — Lindsay Buroker

As with companions so with books. We may choose those which will make us better, more intelligent, more appreciative of the good and the beautiful in the world, or we may choose the trashy, the vulgar, the obscene, which will make us feel as though we've been 'wallowing in the mire. — David O. McKay

Love is a flame to burn out human wills,
Love is a flame to set the will on fire,
Love is a flame to cheat men into mire. — John Masefield

The time to hesitate is through no time to wallowin the mire Try now we can only lose and our love become a funeral pyre — Jim Morrison

The least step forward in the domain of free thought and individual life has been achieved in all ages to the accompaniment of physical and intellectual tortures: and not only the mere step forward, no! but every form of movement and change has rendered necessary innumerable martyrs, throughout the entire course of thousands of years which sought their paths and laid down their foundation-stones, years, however, which we do not think of when we speak about "world-history," that ridiculously small division of mankind's existence. And even in this so-called world-history, which in the main is merely a great deal of noise about the latest novelties, there is no more important theme than the old, old tragedy of the martyrs who tried to move the mire. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Let him into the mire and muck of our world. For only if we let him in can he pull us out. — Max Lucado

The one quality which sets one man apart from another- the key which lifts one to every aspiration while others are caught up in the mire of mediocrity- is not talent, formal education, nor intellectual brightness - it is self-discipline. With self-discipline all things are possible. Without it, even the simplest goal can seem like the impossible dream. — Theodore Roosevelt

In another place, their sons were killed between the barbs of their own guard wire, killed with misfired bombs while squirming in the mire like animals, killed with friendly fire, killed sometimes without knowing that they were about to die - a bullet through the head while joking with a comrade, laughing — Jonathan Safran Foer

The pastor should always be pure in thought ... no impurity ought to pollute him who has undertaken the office of wiping away the stains in the hearts of others ... for the hand that would cleanse from dirt must be clean, lest, being itself sordid with clinging mire, it soil whatever it touches all the more. — Pope Gregory I

So he was finished with Dorin. He was not the lad he'd been when he'd entered the city. Not that he'd been some green farmhand, but he'd been untested, unbloodied . . . unready.
Not so now. Dorin was done.
Hard lessons luckily survived had put an end to that lad and his dreams. A transition from which a good few do not emerge alive. But necessary, if hard. The city had cut away the untried Dorin and trampled his dreams into the mud and the mire.
He was Dancer now, and Dancer from now on. — Ian C. Esslemont