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Brier   Listen
noun
Brier  n.  
1.
The white heath Erica arborea.
2.
A smoking pipe made of the root of the brier (1). Note: Brierroot seems to have been used formerly as a term meaning root of the Smilax laurifolia and is now defined as root of the Erica arborea. Not clear when this changed. PJC.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Brier" Quotes from Famous Books



... brow of Mr. Thomas Cadge was darkened with disapproval, he shifted his stubby brier pipe to the other corner of his mouth, edged a little from his seat on the sunny front stoop and, craning his neck around the corner of his house, revealed an unwashed area extending ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... an awkward guest at a great dumb dinner-party. A cold suck of wind just proved its existence, by toothaches on the north side of all faces. The spiders, having been weather-be-witched the night before, had unanimously agreed to cover every brake and brier with gossamer-cradles, and never a fly to be caught in them; like Manchester cotton-spinners madly glutting the markets in the teeth of 'no demand.' The steam crawled out of the dank turf, and reeked off the flanks and nostrils ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... her to bend over very low. Then, taking her hand, he guided her along an ascending gulley, knee-deep in fern and brake and brier, to a sort ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... insisted on giving me his coat to put around my dripping shoulders. The paddling would serve instead of a coat for him, he said; it would keep him warm to his bones. As I slipped the garment over my back, something hard fell from one of the pockets into the bottom of the canoe. It was a brier-wood pipe. ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke

... peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. 13. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.'—ISAIAH ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... thoroughly disapprove of her. I always avoid her company as much as I can without violating the laws of hospitality; but when we do speak or converse together, it is with the utmost civility, even apparent cordiality on her part; but preserve me from such cordiality! It is like handling brier-roses and may-blossoms, bright enough to the eye, and outwardly soft to the touch, but you know there are thorns beneath, and every now and then you feel them too; and perhaps resent the injury by crushing them in till ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... an old gray Pussy Cat, and she went away down by a brookside. There she saw a wee Robin Redbreast hopping on a brier bush. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various

... are manzanita and ceanothus, several species of each, azalea, Rubus nutkanus, brier rose, choke-cherry ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... massive, moss-covered gateposts that marked the entrance to the mansion. A chain was stretched across the entrance and we crawled under. The driveway was partly overgrown with grass, and the place seemed to be taking care of itself. Half a dozen long-horned Bonnie Brier Bush cows were grazing on the lawn, their calves with them; and evidently these cows and calves were the only mowing-machines employed. On this wide-stretching meadow were various old trees; one elm I saw had fallen split through the center—each part prostrate, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... typical of the whole paratime belt I was working in." Verkan Vall handed it over for inspection. "The bowl's natural brier-root; the stem's a sort of plastic made from the sap of certain tropical trees. The little white dot is the maker's trademark; it's made ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper

... poverty, returned from a journey, and, finding him in such an exalted state, said: "Praised be the God of excellence and glory, that your high fortune has aided you and prosperity been your guide, so that a rose has issued from the brier, and the thorn has been extracted from your foot, and you have arrived at this dignity. Of a truth, joy succeeds sorrow; the bud does sometimes blossom and sometimes wither; the tree is sometimes naked and sometimes ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... it." Obedient, he looked hard at it, and the cactus and rocks thrust through the watery image of the lake like two photographs on the same plate. He shouted with strangling triumph, and continued shouting until brier-roses along a brook and a farm-house unrolled to his left, and he ran half-way there, calling his mother's name. "Why, you fool, she's dead!" He looked slowly at his cut hands, for he had fallen among ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... scribbling letters of form, with heads clear or heads aching, with hearts burning or cold; full of ambition and hope, or vaguely remembering country hill-sides and summer rambles—a day's fishing—a night's frolic—Sunday-school—singing-school, and the girl with the chip hat garlanded with sweet-brier; hearts longing and loving, regretting, hoping, and remembering, and all the while the faces above them calm and smooth, and the hands below them busily doing their part of the great work ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... Dinky-Dunk's birthday. He's always thought, of course, that I'm a pauper, and never dreamed of my poor little residuary nest-egg. I'd ordered a box of Okanagan Valley apples, and a gramophone and a dozen opera records, and a brier-wood pipe and two pounds of English "Honey-Dew," and a smoking-jacket, and some new ties and socks and shirts, and a brand new Stetson, for Dinky-Dunk's old hat is almost a rag-bag. And I ordered half a dozen of the newer novels and a set of Herbert Spencer which ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer

... (syn R. Eglanteria).—The Austrian Brier, or Yellow Eglantine. South Europe, 1596. This belongs to the Sweet Brier section, and is a bush of from 3 feet to 6 feet high, with shining dark-green leaves, and large, cup-shaped flowers that are ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster

... brown ring, plucked a honeysuckle bough and brought it back to the silver column of the beech; and lastly, glancing up from the rosy sprig within her hand, she saw a man coming toward her, down the path that she had thought hidden, holding his arm before him for shield against brier and branch, and looking curiously about him as for a thing which he had ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... from the shade of saintly palms, Or silver reach of river calms, Do those large eyes behold me still? With me one little year ago:— The chill weight of the winter snow For months upon her grave has lain; And now, when summer south-winds blow And brier and harebell bloom again, I tread the pleasant paths we trod, I see the violet-sprinkled sod, Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak The hillside flowers she loved to seek, Yet following me where'er I went With dark eyes full of love's content. The birds ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... knoweth not that from high Heaven first came Our light, from God Himself the rushing fire? For Moses erst, amid the prickly brier, Saw God made ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius

... he, in a triumphant tone, "they druv ashore on Brier Island; an ef that thar ain't pooty tall driftin, then I'm ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille

... much air, and this August sun is apt to get a little warm on the clapboards. And I don't suppose it smells very well in there; but the coon can't help that; it's the way nature scented him; she hadn't any sweet brier handy at the time. And be careful not to step on him. He's not very good-tempered, but I reckon he won't bite you if you don't ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells

... the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sun-flower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... Bonnie Brier Bush." Illustrated from drawings made by Frederic C. Gordon. With a new portrait, and an introduction by the author. ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... was ready. The boys were nothing loath to fall to on the sea banquet the old salt spread before them, and so busy were they despatching the sailor's cooking, that it was not till after they concluded the meal and Bluewater Bill had his old brier pipe going that they came down to the discussion of what each of the boys had uppermost in his mind—namely, the history of Bluewater Bill's discovery of the lost treasure ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... attention to an alluring picture behind her. Under the shelter of a blossoming white hydrangea lay Genevieve Maud fast asleep. It was a dirty and an exhausted Genevieve Maud, worn with the heat and toil of the day, scratched by bush and brier, but wonderfully appealing in her helplessness—so appealing, that Helen Adeline's heart yearned over her. ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... piece of brush or brier sticks to the dress, name it. If it drops, the lover is false; if it sticks, ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various

... a vacation, but run down for over Sunday. It must be lovely there, and the change will make you as keen as a brier for business. It always does me. Stay over Monday if the weather is good. I have to be away myself the week after." As Jack hesitated and did not reply, Mr. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... bane, curse; evil &c. 619; hurtfulness &c. (badness) 649[obs3]; painfulness &c. (cause of pain) 830; scourge &c. (punishment) 975; damnosa hereditas[Lat]; white elephant. sting, fang, thorn, tang, bramble, brier, nettle. poison, toxin; teratogen; leaven, virus venom; arsenic; antimony, tartar emetic; strychnine, nicotine; miasma, miasm[obs3], mephitis[obs3], malaria, azote[obs3], sewer gas; pest. [poisonous substances, examples] ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... "lain low," saunters out, and complains of Brer Rabbit that he is too stuck up. In the sequel Brer Rabbits begs Brer Fox that he may "drown me as deep ez you please, skin me, scratch out my eyeballs, t'ar out my years by the roots, en cut off my legs, but do don't fling me in dat brier patch;" which, of course, Brer Fox does, only to be informed by the cunning Brer Rabbit that he had been "bred en bawn in a brier patch." The story is a favourite one with the negroes: it occurs in ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs

... judges to be the cleverest setter in the country. My master himself was a capital sportsman, and I was as proud of him as he was of me. When I had become sufficiently perfect to be his companion, we used to range together untired "over hill, over dale, through bush, through brier," he doing his part and I mine, and bringing home between us such quantities of game as no one else could boast. This was my real business, but it was no less my pleasure. I entered into it thoroughly. To point at ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland

... There must be courage to reject no less than to gather. A man is at liberty to neglect things that are repugnant to his disposition. He may, if he please, have nothing to do with thistle or thorn, with bramble or brier.... Nevertheless sharp and severe things are yet dear to some souls. Nor should I understand the taste that would reject the wildness of the thorn and holly, or the child-loving labyrinths of the bramble, or wholesome ranges of the downs and warrens ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various

... now knew both confidence and ambition. There was already a well-worn little footpath between the old Gale house and Sunday Cove; it wound in and out among the ledges and thickets, and over the short sheep-turf of the knolls; and there was a scent of sweet-brier here, and of raspberries there, and of the salt water and the pines, and the juniper and ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett

... seen numbers of them feeding upon the seeds of various weedy growths in a large market-garden well into town.) "Pressing on, the walk became exhilarating. Followed a little brook, the eastern branch of the Tiber, lined with bushes and a rank growth of green-brier. Sparrows started out here and there, and flew across the little bends and points. Among some pines just beyond the boundary, saw a number of American goldfinches, in their gray winter dress, pecking the pinecones. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... mek' him run erbout as fast as he can. An' byme-by somefin' grab' li'l' Mose by de aidge of he coat, an' he fight' an' struggle' an' cry out: "Dey ain't no ghosts. Dey ain't no ghosts." An' dat ain't nuffin' but de wild brier whut grab' him, an' dat ain't nuffin' but de leaf ob a tree whut brush' he cheek, an' dat ain't nuffin' but de branch ob a hazel-bush whut brush' he arm. But he downright scared jes de same, an' he ain't lose no time, 'ca'se de wind an' de owls an' de rain-doves dey signerfy whut ain't ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... "She must have clothes!" thought I, "and that's flat!" Perhaps not such as befitted her, but something immediate, and not in tatters—something stout that threatened not to part and leave her naked. For the brier-torn rags she wore scarce seemed to hold together; and her small, shy feet peeped through her ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... mullioned windows and twinkling lattices are all ablaze with the red glory; the fading light flickers upon the leaves of the limes in the long avenue, and changes the still fish-pond into a sheet of burnished copper; even into those dim recesses of brier and brushwood, amidst which the old well is hidden, the crimson brightness penetrates in fitful flashes till the dank weeds and the rusty iron wheel and broken woodwork seem as if they ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... house give glimmering light; By the dead and drowsy fire, Every elf and fairy sprite, Hop as light as bird from brier; And this ditty after me, Sing and dance it trippingly. First rehearse this song by rote, To each word a warbling note, Hand in hand, with fairy grace, We will sing, ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... were. His experience with the flies had been similar to mine, but he had too much regard for his fine fly-rod, he said, to use it for "slinging round a bait as big as a herring." He had taken it to pieces and put it away. He was sitting with his elbows on his knees and a brier-root pipe in his mouth, content in every feature, a perfect picture of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... Adam's needle^, bear grass [U.S.], tine, yucca. nib, tooth, tusk; spoke, cog, ratchet. crag, crest, arete [Fr.], cone peak, sugar loaf, pike, aiguille^; spire, pyramid, steeple. beard, chevaux de frise [Fr.], porcupine, hedgehog, brier, bramble, thistle; comb; awn, beggar's lice, bur, burr, catchweed^, cleavers, clivers^, goose, grass, hairif^, hariff, flax comb, hackle, hatchel^, heckle. wedge; knife edge, cutting edge; blade, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... had put faith in failed me basely and rolled: one foot went in, a dead twig caught my hair, part of my dress remained with the sharp end of a broken branch, I came to one knee (but not in a devotional spirit); I struck the ground with one hand and a brier-bush with the other, but I did not drop my glass, and I reached ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... agreed, and they cut down two willow wands of a summer's growth that grew beneath a brier, and set them up at a distance of ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... blaze In the low September sun, When the flowers of summer days Droop and wither, one by one, Reaching up through bush and brier, 5 Sumptuous brow and heart of fire, Flaunting high its wind-rocked plume, Brave with wealth of ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... a condescending nod, and putting away the cigar, took out a brier pipe and began to fill it from his tobacco-pouch. "The Captain is a man of few words and extremely modest about himself," Clay continued, lightly; "so I must tell you who he is myself. He is a promoter of ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... reflections concerning the over-carefulness of women. It is a theory of mine—wrong possibly; indeed I have so been informed—that we pick our way through life with too much care. We are for ever looking down upon the ground. Maybe, we do avoid a stumble or two over a stone or a brier, but also we miss the blue of the sky, the glory of the hills. These books that good men write, telling us that what they call "success" in life depends on our flinging aside our youth and wasting our manhood in order that we may have the means when we ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... reared her head. She was like the wild sweet-brier roses which crowded alluvial strips of the island, fragrant and pink and bristling. "Yes, monsieur, that black feather—regard it. Me, I am sick of that black feather. You say I have concealments. I have. All winter ...
— The Black Feather - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... was acutely curious regarding it; she almost smelled it, with that quivering sharp-pointed nose of hers that could tell for hours afterward whether Father had been smoking "those nasty, undignified little cigarettes—why don't you smoke the handsome brier pipe that Harris gave you?" She brightly commented that the letter was from Boston. But Father didn't follow her lead. He defensively tucked the letter in his inside coat pocket and trotted up-stairs to read it ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis

... on the hottest days the garden was in sufficient shadow by the time the morning's work was done. There was a little grass-plot, large enough for a basket-chair and a rug. There was a hedge of Penzance sweet-brier opposite the backdoor and the window at which Langholm wrote, and yet this hedge broke down in the very nick and place to give the lucky writer a long glimpse across a green valley, with dim woods upon the opposite hill. And then there were the roses, planted by the last ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... the fire, close over it, as he had done in the backwoods many a night, smoking the old brier pipe that had cheered him in his hours of solitary watching, and thinking with a grim bitterness that it would have been better for him if he had been knocked on the head the night of the raid at Salisbury Plain. To be married ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... cheering of her aunt, her dinner, her work; then when evening came, budding her roses, or tying her carnations, or weeding, or raking the ground between them (where Philetus could do nothing), or training her multiflora and sweet-brier branches; and then often, after all, walking up to the mill to give Hugh a little earlier a home smile, and make his way down pleasant. No wonder if the energies which owed much of their strength to love's nerving, should at last give ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... Apple seed and apple thorn; Wire, brier, limber-lock, Five geese in a flock, Sit and sing by a ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)

... of dead leaves will be noticed, swung amid a tangle of brier. No accident lodged these, nor did any insect have aught to do with their position. Examine carefully the mass of leaves and you will find a replica of the gray squirrel's nest, only, of course, much smaller. This handiwork of the white-footed or deer mouse can be found in almost every field ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... road to the water, and, after a careful lookout for enemies, the mother gathered the little things under the shadow of her spread fantail and kept off all danger of sunstroke until they reached the brier thicket ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... great abundance of Bombasin cotton, and very fine: this groweth on a certaine litle tree or brier, not past the height of a mans waste or litle more: the tree hath a slender stalke like vnto a brier, or to a carnation gillifloure, with very many branches, bearing on euery branch a fruit or rather a cod, growing in round forme, containing in it ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt

... facts I put before my friends while they listened in glum silence—indeed, with hardly a move except the pipes carried mechanically to their lips or down. Tommy's brier was empty, but his teeth were tight upon the stem and I saw the muscles of his jaws working, as ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... of resentment or of injured feelings in his face as he lit the gas in his own room. On the contrary, he grinned cheerfully at his reflection in the glass, and, pulling open his top drawer, took from the remote corner an unmistakably sophisticated brier and a package of Yale Mixture, and proceeded to light up. He grinned again as his teeth clamped on the stem, and jerked it into the corner of his mouth with a practiced twist of his tongue. Then he picked up a small and well-thumbed book lying ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... with April's laughter on your lips; The bees among the flowers, the birds that mate, The widowed year, grown gaunt with memory And yearning toward the summer's fruits, will come With lotus comfort, feeding all your veins. The vining brier will crawl across my grave, And you will woo another in my stead. Those tender, foolish names you called me by, Your passionate kiss that clung unsatisfied, The pressure of your hand, when dark night hushed Life's busy stir, and left ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill

... dale, Through brush, through brier, Over park, over vale, Through flood, through fire, I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moon's sphere; And I serve the fairy queen, To dew ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb

... Rose, she was as fresh and innocent and dewy, in the hot whirl and glitter and glare of New York, as a waving spray of sweet-brier, brought in fresh with all the dew ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... look! The woods are all afire! See! see! see! Aflame are bush and brier! The trees are all unhurt, I know— Oak, maple, elm and all— But, oh, they all seem burning up In red ...
— A Jolly Jingle-Book • Various

... the resemblance begins and ends, Mr. Gregory. I assure you I am a veritable Scotch brier. But here we are at our destination. I wonder if you will see many ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... brittle sticks of thorn or brier Make me a fire Close by whose living coal I sit, And glow like it. Lord, I confess too, when I dine, The pulse is thine, And all those other bits that be ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... O lambs, the dripping sedges, quit the bramble and the brier, Leave the fields of barley stubble, for we light the watching fire; Twinkling fires across the twilight, and a bitter watch to keep, Lest the prowlers come a-thieving ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various

... come. He would travel upstream and mail his letter when he found the village. Kenny conversely had found the village first. Therefore he must travel downstream to find the wood; downstream through a disheartening tangle of bush and tree and brier and maybe ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... The sweet-brier blooms on Kittery-side, And green are Elliot's bowers; Her garden is the pebbled beach, The mosses are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... of the infantry division of General Baird, and moved back for Waynesboro' on the 2d of December, the remainder of the left wing continuing its march on toward Millers. Near Waynesboro' Wheeler was again encountered, and driven through the town and beyond Brier Creek, toward Augusta, thus keeping up the delusion that the main army was moving toward Augusta. General Kilpatrick's fighting and movements about Waynesboro' and Brier Creek were spirited, and produced a good effect by relieving the infantry ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... I worry over an imprisoned woodchuck; but then I should never again try to destroy a woodchuck by walling up his hole, any more than Br'er Fox would try to punish the rabbit by slinging him a second time into the brier-patch. ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... uncertain. He could not remember her going. Of her coming he knew nothing at all. She had appeared and, he supposed, disappeared. Of Winchester's attack upon him, and the subsequent chase, his memory was clearer. How he had escaped, however, at the foot of the brier-clad slope, he could not conceive. He could have sworn that for the last thirty paces the man was not three ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... foresay the berry, On spray of haw and tuft of brier, Then, wandering incendiary, You ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... the three stories in the volume entitled "Three Hundred Dollars" are first studied because of their simplicity, and these are followed by parts of "The Bonnie Brier Bush," and then by the stories from Bret Harte. Mrs. Phelps Ward's "Loveliness" is especially valuable for illustrating methods and devices for making a simple theme dramatically interesting. Students ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith

... match the sky, Columbine with horn of honey, Scented fern and agrimony, Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongue, And brier-roses, dwelt among." ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... fatigue of moving about in search of it. Even in these 'bottoms' the piping sea-winds, following the current of the stream, stunted and cut low any trees; but still there was rich thick underwood, tangled and tied together with brambles, and brier-rose, [sic] and honeysuckle; and if the farmer in these comparatively happy valleys had had wife or daughter who cared for gardening, many a flower would have grown on the western or southern side of the rough stone house. But at that time gardening ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... tender, wounded arm Bends back the brier that edges life's long way, That no hurt comes to heart, to soul no harm, I do not feel the thorns ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... yet show a rift at this end which their wagons could traverse. But the Jayhawkers turned to the north, seeking some outlet through the Panamints at that end of the range. One family followed them. J. W Brier, a minister from a little frontier community in the Middle West, left the other section with his wife and three children in the hope that the young men might find ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... and with enormous strides, Rebellious mutterings and oaths besides, O'er clover-field and fallow, bank and brier, Pursu'd the nearest cut, and fann'd the fire That burnt within him.—Soon the Hall he spied, And the grey willows by the water side; Nature cried "halt!" nor could he well refuse; Stop, Gilbert, breathe awhile, and ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield

... appeared upon each of the nine swarthy faces, whose simultaneous concurrence in the expression of every emotion suggested the idea of some huge monster with nine heads and but one consciousness. Acting upon Dodd's suggestion that we try and smoke them out, I took my brier-wood pipe from my pocket and proceeded to light it with one of those peculiar snapping lucifers which were among our most cherished relics of civilisation. As the match, with a miniature fusillade of sharp reports, burst suddenly into flame, the nine startled ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... now the brier and thorn, The barley and the wheat shall spring, And valleys standing thick with corn (Praise God, my heart!), ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... watch the slow flakes, as they fall On bank and brier and broken wall; Over the orchard, waste and brown, All noiselessly they settle down, Tipping the apple-boughs, and each Light quivering twig of plum ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... looking vainly for some road to lead them out of the bushy trap. They could not go back; the fence was too solid to ride down, too high to leap; the carbineers faced about, trying to make a stand, firing from their saddles; Colonel Arran, confused but cool, turned his brier-torn horse and rode forward, swinging his heavy sabre, just as Hallam and Berkley galloped up through the bushes, followed by forty or more bewildered troopers, and halted fo'r orders. But ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... down and questioned as before: but still asserted his ignorance. The same inhuman part was acted on him a third time, but with no better success; for the brave fellow still continued faithful to his master, who squatted and trembled in his place of torment, his brier bush, and saw and ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... slow and painful. Dangling brier vines drew blood from arms and face, and sharp thorns repeatedly lacerated hands and knees. At each move forward he had to pause and remove the dead branches and twigs from his path lest their cracking should betray him to the campers. At last, however, he could catch the sound of voices, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... buried in Marie's kirk, The tither in Marie's quire, And out o' the tane there grew a birk, And out o' the tither a brier. ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)

... is no 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 brier, which prick and scratch, because they can do ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... intentions to have a ruler, so they thought proper to make the offer of that honor to the vine; but when the vine was chosen, it made use of the same words which the fig-tree had used before, and excused itself from accepting the government: and when the olive-tree had done the same, the brier, whom the trees had desired to take the kingdom, [it is a sort of wood good for firing,] it promised to take the government, and to be zealous in the exercise of it; but that then they must sit down under its shadow, and if they should plot against it to destroy it, the principle ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... whole day, Mrs. Levice said was a liberal education,—so bright, so uncomplaining, so ambitious for her children was she, and such a help and inspiration to her hard-worked husband. Mr. Levice tramped about the woods with Tyrrell and brier-wood pipes, and appreciated the moral bravery of a man who struggled on with a happy face and small hope for any earthly rest. But the children!—Floy with her dreamy face and busy sketch-book, Will with his halo of golden hair, his manly figure and broad, open ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... prospect we have partially described. It was white as snow, and had about it all those traits of neatness and good taste which are, we regret! to say, so rare among, and so badly understood by, our humbler countrymen. The front walls were covered by honeysuckles, rose trees, and wild brier, and the flower plot in front was so well stocked, that its summer bloom would have done credit to the skill of an ordinary florist. The inside of this cottage was equally neat, clean, and cheerful. The floor, an unusual thing ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... my boy outen the hickory withes and carried him to the Creek Nation. At a place where there was a standin' stone I broke loose from three of 'em and come here over the mountains, and I ain't had nothin', stranger, but berries and chainey brier-root for ten days. God damn 'em!" he cried, standing up and tottering with the pain in his feet, "if I can get ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... slight, or smiles of scorn; Teased into wrath, what patience bears The noisy fool who perseveres? The morning wakes, the huntsman sounds, At once rush forth the joyful hounds. They seek the wood with eager pace, Through bush, through brier, explore the chase. Now scattered wide, they try the plain, And snuff the dewy turf in vain. 10 What care, what industry, what pains! What universal silence reigns. Ringwood, a dog of little fame, Young, pert, and ignorant of game, At once ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net. That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the prince and the judge ask for a reward: and the great man uttereth his mischievous desire; so they wrap it up. The best of them is a brier; the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge. The world looked upon a continent of inexhaustible fertility, (whose harvest had glutted the markets, and rotted in disuse,) filled with lamentation, and its inhabitants wandering like bereaved ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher

... what had become of Colonel Gaylord, but as I did not respond very freely to their bantering, they finally fell silent with only an occasional imprecation as someone stubbed his toe or caught his clothing on a brier. After a half hour or so of plodding we came to a clear path through the woods and in a few minutes reached ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster

... scrambled up the pathless steep, through oaks and ashes of mushroom growth to a height of perhaps two hundred feet. It was troublesome climbing, for there was an undergrowth of brier and bramble which tore my clothes, and the sharp crags which jutted in all directions out of the ground cut my feet; nevertheless, I progressed rapidly, outstripping Spira and Mr Popham, and keeping alongside ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston

... Singletree was a dark-eyed, sharp-eyed, wiry, briery boy. Elsie, of the same name, was much like him, being a dark-eyed, sharp-eyed, wiry, briery girl. Her father used to call her Sweet-brier and Sweet-pickle, because, he said, she was sweet but sharp. Puss Leek had long, heavy, blonde hair, that hung almost to her knees when it was free, which it seldom was, for Puss braided it every morning, the first thing,—not loosely, to give it a fat look, hinting of its luxuriance, but just ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... sorrows of royal favour. How did my foolish eyes fill with tears when I watched thee, all rose and gold in thy cheeks and hair, the light falling on thee through the chapel window, putting thy pure palm into my prince's, swearing thy life away, selling the very blossoms of earth's orchards for the brier beauty of a hidden vineyard! I saw the flying glories of thy cheeks, the halcyon weather of thy smile, the delicate lifting of thy bosom, the dear gaiety of thy step, and, at that moment, I mourned for thy sake that thou wert not the dullest ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... unto thy heart is given, In mystic fold do they entwine, So bound in one that, were they riven, Apart my soul would life resign. Thou art my song and I the lyre; Thou art the breeze and I the brier; The altar I, and thou the fire; Mine the deep love, the beauty thine! As fleets away the rapid hour While weeping—may My sorrowing ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... and stuck bad," says the hired man compassionately when he sees the suit. A boy who is as keen as a brier and smart as a whip cannot be expected to wear "humbly" clothes forever. A neat suit made by the village tailor, and a necktie, hat and boots that put him into positively ethereal spirits, are articles that he finally attains. In these clothes he joins the debating ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... to his wife, 'Where is my funny pipe?' and she hands him a long-handled affair with a weichsel-wood bowl and a cherry stem that has a kind of rakish, good-natured curve to it. Then he sits down and grinds out copy that will make an Englishman laugh at first sight. A big, dumpy brier, with a shorter stem and a celluloid end, is responsible for general descriptive work, sporting news, etc., while a trim little meerschaum with a carved bowl engenders excellent criticisms of music and drama. Occasionally, too, this bright fellow, who does ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman

... Dr. Brier considered himself the principal of Blackrock School, but the boys in that establishment often used to say to each other that Mrs. ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various

... glades, And gaze, as one who is not satisfied With gazing, at the large, bright, breathing sea, The forest glooms, and shifting gleams between The fine dark fringes of the fadeless trees, On gold-green turf, sweet-brier, and wild pink rose! How rich that buoyant air with changing scent Of pungent pine, fresh flowers, and salt cool seas! And when all echoes of the chase had died, Of horn and halloo, bells and baying ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... the bushes like a tether-stick; for some way or other I never let go the grip I had o' the stock. I was that stupefied I hae nae recollection what happened after this, till I found mysel' sticking in the middle o' a brier-bush, wi' my breeks rived the way you see, and poor old 'Meg' smashed in bits—de'el be in her ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... as we say, setting too. But if, in the interests of true sportsmanship, they must have those annual massacres I certainly should admire to see what execution a picked half dozen of American quail hunters, used to snap-shooting in the cane jungles and brier patches of Georgia and Arkansas, could accomplish among English pheasants, until such time as their consciences mastered them ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... night, that seems so final, is inhabited, if one keeps still enough. A lamb is bleating out there on the dim moor; a bird somewhere, a little one, about three fields away, makes the sweetest kind of chirruping; some cows are still cropping. There is a scent, too, underneath the freshness-sweet-brier, I think, and our Dutch honeysuckle; nothing else could so delicately twine itself with air. And even in this darkness the roses have colour, more beautiful perhaps than ever. If colour be, as they say, but the effect of light on various fibre, one may think ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... angel on the nearest tombstone. The loss of the nose had distorted the marble smile into a grimace, which gave a leer to the remaining features. As the boy looked at it he laughed suddenly, and his voice startled him amid the droning of bees. Then he sat up and glanced at his brier-scratched feet stretched upon the slab, and laughed again for ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... pleased with this thing, or struck with that, which on minds of a different cast makes no extraordinary impression. I have some favourite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain-daisy, the harebell, the fox-glove, the wild-brier rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud, solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... so suddenly that she almost lost her balance, she gave him a cut with the switch that sent him flying back over the road he had come, at the top of his speed. Now every bush and every tree and every brier-tangled fence corner seemed to hold some nameless terror for her, and even her lips were cold and ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston

... Over hill, over dale, Through bush, through brier, Over park, over pale, Through flood, through fire, I do wander every where, Swifter than the moon's sphere; And I serve the Fairy Queen, To dew her orbs upon the green: I must go seek some dew-drops here, And hang a pearl in every ...
— A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare (1763) • William Shakespeare

... as well as Elmvale, Whistler was familiar with this stretch of untamed ground and plunged into it with full knowledge of its tangled brier patches and rough quarries. He started diagonally for the dam, and in a brief time came to the edge of the shallow channel, which now carried the overflow of the huge reservoir behind the ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson

... with gold, and sweet With the keen perfume of the ripening grass, Where wings of birds and filmy shadows pass, Spread thick as stars with shining marguerite; To haunt old fences overgrown with brier, Muffled in vines, and hawthorns, and wild cherries, Rank poisonous ivies, red-bunched elderberries, And pied blossoms to the heart's desire, Gray mullein towering into yellow bloom, Pink-tasseled milkweed, breathing dense perfume, And swarthy ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman

... bury me by the bracken bush, Beneath the bloomin' brier; Let never a living mortal ken That ever a ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry

... choke-cherry, sumach, and rabbit-brier, warned me that I was within rifle-hail of the Rangers' post at Broadalbin. I swung to the west, then south, then west again, passing the ruins of the little settlement—a charred beam here, an ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... this rivulet is treated as the main branch of Owl Creek, and called by that name. From the same rising ground, ravines, wet only after a rain, extend east and southeast to Lick Creek. From the same position extend the head ravines of Brier Creek,[1] a deep ravine with little water, which flows almost due north and empties into Snake Creek a little below the mouth of Owl Creek. The three principal creeks, Lick, Snake, and Owl, flow through swampy valleys, bordered by abrupt ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force

... forefinger across his forehead, brushing the sweat away from above his quiet eyes. He moistened the tip of his thumb and slid it along the blade of his hemp hook—he was using that for lack of a scythe. Turning, he walked back to the edge of the brier thicket, sat down in the shade of a black walnut, threw off his tattered head-gear, and, reaching for his bucket of water covered with poke leaves, lifted it to his lips and drank deeply, gratefully. Then he drew a whetstone from his pocket, spat ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... deep in the glen's bosom Summer slept in the fire Of the odorous gorse-blossom And the hot scent of the brier. ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... you may soon find within a few rods of the fine highway primitive woodland that will give you an impression of what it must have been three hundred years ago. Here you will see heavy forest growths consisting of oaks, for the most part, with maple and elm, and here and there a tangle of green brier and barberry, interspersed with several varieties ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... see the dew-bedabbled wretch Turn, and return, indenting with the way; Each envious brier his weary legs doth scratch, Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay: For misery is trodden on by many, And being low never ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... a bright lily grow Before rude hands have touched it? Have you marked but the fall of the snow Before the soil hath smutched it? Have you felt the wool of the beaver Or swan's-down ever? Or have smelled of the bud of the brier, Or the nard in the fire? Or have tasted the bag of the bee? Oh so white, oh so soft, oh so sweet ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... direction of a distant cabin. When it came night and the hemlocks began to sob they had not returned. The little man sat close to his companion, the campfire, and encouraged it with logs. He puffed fiercely at a heavy built brier, and regarded a thousand shadows which were about to assault him. Suddenly he heard the approach of the unknown, crackling the twigs and rustling the dead leaves. The little man arose slowly to his feet, his clothes refused to fit his back, ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... around the family altar. The chapter has been read, and we are singing a favorite hymn of the one who reads and prays. It is spring time, and the fresh air comes in through the opened window, perfumed with the rose and the sweet-brier. But ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless

... that they have spent more in seeking than the thing is worth, or they shall get by the recovery." So that he that goes to law, as the proverb is, [516]holds a wolf by the ears, or as a sheep in a storm runs for shelter to a brier, if he prosecute his cause he is consumed, if he surcease his suit he loseth all; [517]what difference? They had wont heretofore, saith Austin, to end matters, per communes arbitros; and so in Switzerland (we are informed by [518]Simlerus), "they had some common ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... the families of plants, and all the stars of the firmament. There, at a single glance, the eye surveys majestic palms, humid forests of bambusa, and the varied species of Musaceae, while above these forms of tropical vegetation appear oaks, medlars, the sweet-brier, and umbelliferous plants, as in our European homes. There as the traveler turns his eyes to the vault of heaven, a single glance embraces the constellation of the Southern Cross, the Magellanic clouds, and the guiding stars of the ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... her father, wondering at her silence, "how are the roses getting on? And I hope you have not forgotten the sweet-brier that you promised to grow ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... imagine a prettier picture than that presented to my vision as I looked in from the porch of the doctor's residence upon the doctor's family gathered together in the library after dinner. The doctor himself, snuggled down in a vast easy-chair, was dividing his attention between a brier pipe and the odes of Propertius; his wife, beside him in her rocker, smiled and smiled again over the quaint humor of Mrs. Gaskell's "Cranford"; upon yonder settee, Francis Mahony Methuen, the oldest son, was deep in the perusal of Wilson's "Tales of the ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... winds that bend the brier! A star in heaven, a star within the mere! Ay, ay, O ay—a star was my desire, And one was far apart, and one was near: Ay, ay, O ay—the winds that bow the grass! And one was water and one star was fire, And one will ever shine and one will pass. Ay, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... last, when he could speak at all—'Dolly, what do you think? Just listen. Arthur is going to Europe, to stay forever, perhaps, and has left us Tracy Park. We are going there to live, and you will be as grand a lady as Mrs. Atherton, of Brier Hill; or that young girl ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... again to see me; the front door of my room was open, and we seated ourselves on the piazza outside. The roof of bark thatch had fallen away, leaving the bare beams overhead twined with brier-roses; the floor and house side were frescoed with those lichen colored spots which show that the gray planks have lacked paint for many long years; the windows had wooden shutters fastened back with irons shaped like the letter S, and on the central door was a brass knocker, and a plate ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... lithe-armed, dainty-fingered brier, That in the woods, so dim and drear, Lights up betimes her tender fire To soothe the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... Dick Neeland, ruddy, white-haired, straight as a pine, stood up in his old slippers and quilted smoking coat, his brier pipe poised in ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... my head that I would kiss one handsome young girl before I died, and now was my chance. She never would know it, and I should carry the remembrance of it with me into the grave, and a rose perhaps grow out of my dust, as a brier did out of Lord Lovers, in memory of that immortal moment! Would it wake her from her trance? and would she see me in the flush of my stolen triumph, and hate and despise me ever after? Or should I carry off my trophy undetected, and ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... upon the bench they found a little old man, his legs extended, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, and a look of calm meditation upon his round and placid face. Between his teeth was a black brier pipe, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne

... the right way, and when he got to the Castle it was full of folk and horses; so full it made one giddy to look at them. But Halvor was so ragged and torn from having followed the West Wind through bush and brier and bog, that he kept on one side, and wouldn't show himself till the last day when the bridal ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen

... his steamer to sail for home, Bok visited "Ian Maclaren," whose Bonnie Brier Bush stories were then in great vogue, and not only contracted for Doctor Watson's stories of the immediate future, but arranged with him for a series of articles which, for two years thereafter, ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... Oak-bud wound the wormy galls, With pigmy spears, or crush the venom'd balls; Fright the green Locust from his foamy bed, Unweave the Caterpillar's gluey thread; 495 Chase the fierce Earwig, scare the bloated Toad, Arrest the snail upon his slimy road; Arm with sharp thorns the Sweet-brier's tender wood, And dash the Cynips from her damask bud; Steep in ambrosial dews the Woodbine's bells, 500 And drive the Night-moth from her honey'd cells. So where the Humming-bird in Chili's bowers On murmuring pinions robs the pendent flowers; Seeks, where fine pores ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... his queer green eye over his shoulder he sauntered by a devious path out of the dell. Forgetful of thorn and brier, trickery and wantonness, we clambered down after him, out of the moonlight, into a dark, clear alley, soundless and solitary amid ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... Paradise. Oh, looking from some heavenly hill, Or from the shade of saintly palms, Or silver reach of river calms, Do those large eyes behold me still? With me one little year ago:— The chill weight of the winter snow For months upon her grave has lain; And now, when summer south-winds blow, And brier and harebell bloom again, I tread the pleasant paths we trod, I see the violet-sprinkled sod, Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak, The hillside flowers she loved to seek, Yet following me where'er I went With dark eyes full of love's content. The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills The ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... evidence was taken: it was declared that Tom was too unwell from the effects of the assault to attend in person, and Mr. Chanticleer was fined five pounds. For this amount he immediately wrote an order on his bankers,—Brier, Primrose, and Whitethorn; and then, greatly to old Leverett's chagrin, the prisoner was discharged, and all ...
— Comical People • Unknown

... muscles stood out like brass, and whose eyes burned like fire. He sprang upon the boy king and stabbed him in the back. The affrighted horse dashed away, dragging the bleeding body by the stirrup,—on, on, on, over rut and rock, bush and brier. ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... of marshy ground with an abundance of skunk cabbage and a fairly dense growth of saplings, and near by a tangle of green brier and blackberry, and you will be pretty sure to have it tenanted by a pair of yellowthroats," says Dr. Abbott, who found several of their nests in skunk-cabbage plants, which he says are favorite cradles. No animal cares to touch this plant if it can be avoided; but have the birds ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... The Bonnie Brier Bush, by Mr. Ian Maclaren—a work too popular to excite suspicion; and arranged the method of secret correspondence with great rapidity. Logan then rushed up to Merton's room, hastily communicated the scheme to him, and overcame his objections, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... from me exempt, But wrong not that wrong with a more contempt. Come I will fasten on this sleeue of thine: Thou art an Elme my husband, I a Vine: Whose weaknesse married to thy stranger state, Makes me with thy strength to communicate: If ought possesse thee from me, it is drosse, Vsurping Iuie, Brier, or idle Mosse, Who all for want of pruning, with intrusion, Infect thy sap, and liue ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... de Fox off one side, he did, an' he say, 'Le's give 'im his chice, wheder he'd er ruther be tho'd in de fire or de brier-patch; an' ef he say de fire, den we'll fling 'im in de briers; an' ef he say de briers, den we'll fling 'im in de fire.' So dey went back ter de Rabbit, an' ax 'im wheder he'd er ruther be tho'd in ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... child, I trod thy sands, The sands unbuilded, rank with brush and brier And blossom—chased the sea-foam on thy strands, Young city of my love and my desire! I saw thy barren hills against the skies, I saw them topped with minaret and spire, On plain and slope thy myriad ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... sea-smell a-comin' in through the winders, and the poor fellers groanin' overhead, I get clear away back to that night, so cool and sweet; the air full of treely smells, dead leaves like, and white-blows in the ma'sh below; and wood-robins singin' clear fine whistles in the woods; and the big sweet-brier by the winder all a-flowered out; and the drippin' little beads of dew on the clover-heads; and the tinklin' sound of the mill-dam ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... Satan shall be bound."—See Johnson's Dict. "Millennial, [like septennial, decennial, &c.,] pertaining to the millennium, or to a thousand years."—See Worcester's Dict. "Thralldom; slavery, bondage, a state of servitude."—Webster's Dict. "Brier, a prickly bush; Briery, rough, prickly, full of briers; Sweetbrier, a fragrant shrub."—See Ainsworth's Dict., Scott's, Gobb's, and others. "Will, in the second and third persons, barely foretells."—Brit. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... a little patch of garden ground with a brier hedge all round it, in that byway which lies between Laeken and Brussels, in the heart of flat, green Brabant, where there are beautiful meadows and tall, flowering hedges, and forest trees, and fern-filled ditches, and a little ...
— Bebee • Ouida

... DOGS' did the work! They were well trained, swift, fresh, keen-scented, 'excellent' men-hunters, and though the poor fugitive in his frenzied rush for liberty, strained every muscle, yet they gained upon him, and after dashing through fens, brier-beds, and the tangled undergrowth till faint and torn, he sinks, and the blood-hounds are upon him. What blood-vessels the poor struggler burst in his desperate push for life—how much he was bruised and lacerated in his plunge through the forest, or how much the dogs tore him, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... busy over a sturdy stock of eglantine. Guy, little changed in these two years,—not much taller, and more agile than robust,—was lopping vigorously with his great pruning-knife, Amabel nursing a bundle of drooping rose branches, Charlotte, her bonnet in a garland of wild sweet-brier, holding the matting and continually getting entangled in the ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... this same hot evening the sergeant in charge of the little signal-party at the Picacho came strolling forth from his tent puffing at a battered brier-root pipe. Southward and a few hundred feet below his perch the Yuma road came twisting through the pass, and then disappeared in the gathering darkness across the desert plain that stretched between them and the distant Santa Maria. Over to the east the ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... woodpecker devours many of the above fruits, as well as those of spicebush, sour gum, cherries, grapes, blackberries. The flicker devours most of the fruits listed for the two woodpeckers named above, also hackberry, black alder, green brier, bayberries. A number of other woodpeckers possess habits much the same as the three above named. The cedar bird devours many ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal

... of new golden thatch let into the old gray, and the plum-trees behind it bursting into new-born foam of flowers. Just outside it, above the low cliff, stood two men looking down into the water, seen dark green below through a tangle of brier and blackthorn and emerald foliage of budding elder. The sea served base uses here, for the dust and dirt of many a cottage was daily cast into the lap of the great scavenger who carried all away. The low cliffs were indeed spattered with filth, and the coltsfoot, already opening ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire, I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moony sphere; And I serve the fairy queen, To dew ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards

... of the sluggard; I hear him complain, You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again. I passed by his garden, I saw the wild brier, The thorn, and the thistle, grow broader and higher; The clothes that hang on him are turning to rags; And his money he wastes, till he ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... sat there until he had bitten clean through the amber mouthpiece, so that the brier bowl fell clattering to the floor. By that time it was full daylight; but Gerald was still asleep. He slept late into the afternoon; but that evening, when Selwyn and Lansing came in to persuade him to go with them ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers



Words linked to "Brier" :   Smilax rotundifolia, botany, sweetbriar, vine, briar, Rosa eglanteria, bullbrier, Erica arborea, eglantine, twig, sweetbrier, erica, rose, briarroot, vegetation, sprig, horse-brier, smilax, true heath, genus Smilax, horse brier, greenbrier, flora, tree heath, rosebush



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