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Murky   /mˈərki/   Listen
Murky

adjective
(compar. murkier; superl. murkiest)
1.
(of liquids) clouded as with sediment.  Synonyms: cloudy, mirky, muddy, turbid.  "Muddy coffee" , "Murky waters"
2.
Dark or gloomy.  Synonym: mirky.  "Murky rooms lit by smoke-blackened lamps"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Murky" Quotes from Famous Books



... one roaring wave passed under us than another followed. Above our heads was a dark, murky sky, below and around the foaming sea. Even the best manned life-boat could scarcely have lived amid that foaming ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... proportion of the elements of fertility, because the foreign properties with which it is charged, must continually vary with the condition of the atmosphere through which it falls, whether it be the thick and murky cloud which overhangs the coal-burning city, or the transparent ether of the mountain tops. We may see, too, by the tables, that the quantity of rain that falls, varies much, not only with the varying seasons of the year, and with the different seasons of different years, but ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... when they reached Edinburgh, and a murky night when they rode up Leith Wynd; the tall houses of Edinburgh hung over them; the few lights struggled against the thick, enveloping air. Figures came out of one dark passage, and disappeared into another. A body ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... onward. The sun waned in the gorgeous heaven, and set, surrounded by red and murky clouds. Then came silence and darkness. The Gothic watch-fires flamed one by one into the dusky air. The guards were doubled at the different posts. The populace were driven from the ramparts, and the fortifications of ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... to his youthful enthusiasm for her after her husband's death, he had only since learned that she was a natural conservator of public morals—the cold purity of the snowdrift in so far as the world might see, combined at times with the murky mood of the wanton. And yet, as he had also learned, she was ashamed of the passion that at times swept and dominated her. This irritated Cowperwood, as it would always irritate any strong, acquisitive, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... the subject, let us put on the wings of imagination, and soar to such a height that we shall be able to take in at one eagle glance all the coasts of the United Kingdom—a sweep of about 5000 miles all round! It is a tremendous sight, for a storm is raging! Black clouds are driving across the murky sky; peals of thunder rend the heavens; lightning gleams at intervals, revealing more clearly the crested billows that here roar over the sands, or there churn and seethe among the rocks. The shrieking gale sweeps clouds of spray high over our windward cliffs, and carries flecks ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne

... spewed a gibberish of terror. In one day panic had swept the Earth; on the remaining members of the Five World Federation the same story was repeated. Rioting mobs drowned out the chant of religious fanatics who hailed Judgment Day. Great fires turned the air murky and flame-shot. Machine guns spat regularly in city streets; looting, murder, and fear-crazed crimes were universal. Civilization had completely ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei

... path leads o'er that awful stream, Across a dizzy arch 'mid sulphurous steam That covers all the grimy bridge with slime. He stands perplexed beside the waters grime, Which sluggish move adown the limbo black, With murky waves that writhe demoniac,— As ebon serpents curling through the gloom And hurl their inky crests, that silent come Toward the yawning gulf, a tide of hate; And sweep their dingy waters to ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... corner a horizontal iron bar had been driven, and from the end of this bar hung a saucer-shaped iron lamp filled with bear-oil. Out of this oil stuck the end of a cotton rag for a wick; which, being set on fire, filled the room with a strong smell and a feeble, murky, flickering light. Under the lamp stood a plain oak slab on two pairs of crosslegs; and on the slab were papers and letters, a black ink-horn, some leaves of native tobacco, and a large gray-horn drinking-cup—empty. Under the table was a lately emptied bottle.O'Bannon sat in a ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... Bad Lands—orange, turquoise-green, and murky blue, of outlandish ridges, of streaked rock, of sudden, twisted canons, a country like a dream of the far side of the moon—rode Cosme Hilliard in a choking cloud of alkali dust. He rode down Crazy Woman's Hill toward the sagebrush ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

... his face was as black as a thunder-storm: "Surely thou art altogether shameless and greedy, and, in truth, an ill ruler of men. No quarrel have I with the Trojans. They never harried oxen or sheep of mine in fertile Phthia, for many murky mountains lie between, and a great breadth of roaring sea. But I have been fighting in thy cause, and that of thy brother Menelaus. Naught carest thou for that. Thou leavest me to fight, and sittest in thy tent at ease. But when the spoil is divided, thine is ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... of London has better buildings and cleaner streets than when St. Paul was erected; otherwise it is much the same. Elsewhere in London, however, are spacious parks and imposing palaces, with now and then a fine bit of something to look out upon, as the bridges of the murky Thames, the Parliament houses, the Abbey, Somerset house, and Piccadilly, perhaps. Children may play at the Zoo, while grown-ups sit in hired chairs under ...
— Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam • Hubert Howe Bancroft

... Carrollton, are several miles apart. People know this as well as they know that the latanier is the palmetto palm of the Southern wood, with its comb-like, many-toothed leaves, and that the Old Basin is a great pool of scum-covered, murky water, lying in a thickly-settled part of the French town, where numbers of small sailboats, coming in through the bayou with their cargoes of lumber from the coast of the Sound, lie against one another as they discharge and receive ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... map of the world looked sort of like a mottled sky, with bright places and cloudy patches strewn in disorder across it. A mottled sky, except that the psi-pattern usually does not change. But this house had been in a murky area, if not dead. Now it ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... cluster of trees. I thought it was Luisiana, but Luisiana, they had said, was a populous hamlet, and here were only two or three houses and not a soul. I rode up and found among the trees a tall white church, and a pool of murky water, further back a low, new edifice, which was evidently a monastery, and a posada. Presently a Franciscan monk in his brown cowl came out of the church, and he told me that Luisiana was a full league off, but that food could be obtained at the ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... is muddled and murky, But the course she's resolved to pursue Is true to her mind, which we constantly find A ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various

... blest ones pass their time away in thinking and talking about the past and present in social converse....[909] But the third road is of those who have lived unholy and lawless lives, that thrusts their souls to Erebus and the bottomless pit, where sluggish streams of murky night belch forth endless darkness, which receive those that are to be punished and conceal them in forgetfulness and oblivion. For vultures do not always prey on the liver of wicked persons lying on the ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... heard these lamentations of the king. The whole Earth, with her forests and seas, with all her mobile and immobile creatures, began to tremble violently, and produce a loud noise. All the points of the compass became murky. The messengers, repairing to Drona's son, represented to him all that had happened regarding the conduct of the mace-encounter and the fall of the king. Having represented everything unto Drona's son, O Bharata, all of them remained ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... murky-black night of her stormy mind the forked-lightning inspiration of what the real revenge would be. To take his letter—write him another back, and yet others, fool him to the top of his bent, and presently tell him, tossing at his feet a sheaf of billets. "And serve you glad—and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... the lightning flare and string along the horizon. Some time in the night thunder awakened me. The imminence of a severe storm forced us to roll out and look after the tent. What a pitch black night! Down through the murky, weird blackness shot a wonderful zigzag rope of lightning, blue-white, dazzling; and it disintegrated, leaving segments of fire in the air. All this showed in a swift flash—then we were absolutely blind. I could not ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... Poet, who, like any lark, Dost whet thy beak and trill From misty morn till murky dark, Nor ever pipe thy fill: Hast thou not, in thy cheery note, One poor chirp to confer— One verseful twitter ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley

... in a stone building—one of a small group of mine houses which stood in a cauldron depression above excavations. Rounded domes of rock towered above them. The sun, even at this tri-noon hour, was gone behind the heights above us. The murky shadows of night were gathering, the mists of the Lowlands settling. The tube-lights of the mine, strung between small metal poles, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... or intelligence of church or state. Women might elope, men embezzle, dynasties fall, ministries change, or public faith be broken, and they viewed the result, if indeed they noted it, with absolute composure. But let eggs be unattainable, jellies become murky, the fruit in cake or pudding sink hopelessly to the bottom, and Rachel weeping for her children could not have made ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... In murky London they attracted little notice; but when their hired guide left them at the outskirts, and they got away upon the highway towards the Court, cottagers stood gaping. For, outside the town there was no fog, and the fresh autumn air drew the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... and darkness, as complete as if the silence of the forest had never been disturbed, or the sun had never shone on that retired region, now reigned on the point, and on the gloomy water, the slumbering woods, and even the murky sky. No more could be done, therefore, than to seek a place of safety; and this was only to be found in the centre of the lake. Paddling in silence to that spot, the canoe was suffered to drift northerly, while the girls sought such repose as their ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... contrast of the blue causing the black to assume, if desired, a warm tone in shadows. For like purposes, the black with ultramarine ash affords a very soft hue, and with light red and cobalt in different proportions yields silvery tones most serviceable. To the dark marking of murky and dirty clouds, a compound of lamp black and light red is particularly suited; while a mixture of the black with cobalt and purple madder is adapted for slate-coloured sunset and sunrise clouds. French blue softened with a little lamp black is fitted for mountains ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... almost dark as we re-entered the ruined Legation lines and picked our way slowly though the debris which still stood stacked on the streets. Fatigue parties of many corps were finishing their work of attempting to restore some order and cleanliness, and clouds of murky dust hung heavily in the air. All round these narrow streets there was an atmosphere of exhaustion and disorder, crushed on top of one another, which oppressed one so much after the open streets, that an immense nostalgia suddenly swept over me. We had had too ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... first floor, he unbolted a door which led into the cellar. The stairs and passage were illuminated by lamps that hung from the ceiling and were accustomed to burn during the night. Now, however, we were entering darksome and murky recesses. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... Cyclops round the anvil suspend their ringing hammers, and suffer the iron to grow cool; and the sooty spectre in brown paper cap, labouring at the bellows, leans on the handle for a moment, and permits the asthmatic engine to heave a long-drawn sigh, while he glares through the murky smoke and sulphureous gleams of ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving

... what was the matter, for I had seen a similar case before. Yet for the moment a certain feeling of shyness made me edge away from her a little; and as I did so, she uttered a prolonged moan, and her almost bursting eyeballs vented hot, murky tears which trickled down her ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... "For an adventurous youth there are a thousand doors which lead to romance. Besides, the lives of none of us are quite so simple as they seem. Even youth has its secret chapters. This young man, for instance, might be on his way to Australia, happy in the knowledge that he has escaped from some murky chapter of life which will now never be known. He may write to his friends, giving them a hint. The whole thing will ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... through the surrounding darkness, lighting up the two men and the tender as if all were made of red-hot metal; flooding the smoke and steam-clouds overhead with round masses and curling lines of more subdued light, and sending sharp gleams through the murky atmosphere into dark space beyond, where the ghostly landscape ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... in his impotence, stifled by the unwholesome atmosphere of his thoughts. He dared not even ponder too long on what she was who stood beside him; nor peer too closely through the murky veil that hid her being. To do so might be to risk his soul, to become a partner in her guilt. He might conjecture what dark thoughts and dreadful aptitudes lurked behind the girl's gentle mask, he might strive to learn by what black arts she had been seduced, what power over ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... windless air, but hangs like a pall over the houses. The sun grows chill, coppery and rayless, and soon a fog, creeping along the river, silently encloses each particle of smoke within a watery shroud, and a mantle of murky gloom ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman

... the agent at his station all that day and evening. Trainmen brought news of heavy rains beyond the mountains. In the morning he awoke to find his little world hushed in a murky light and with a tingling apprehension of suspense in the atmosphere. High, gray cloud shapes hurried across the zenith to a conference of the storm powers, gathering at the horizon. Weather-wise from long observation, Banneker guessed that ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... the night, without foreargued cause, Any aggrievance, any allegation, Didst, like a coward traitor, run from me? Thou man of snow! thou art assailed by this— Be sure of it—thou art begrimed as black As if thou hadst been hanged a thousand years Under the murky cope of Pluto's den. Oh agony! but thou shalt know my soul, Which gropes for daggers at the thought of this. Yea, from the day-beams of adoring love, Goes headlong to as vast a reprobation. Thou, Theseus, wast ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... critical tribunals, public and private, recognised or irresponsible, there was much lamentation even in quarters where a manlier humour might have been expected, over the poet's choice of a subject. With facile largeness of censure, it was pronounced a murky subject, sordid, unlovely, morally sterile, an ugly leaf out of some ancient Italian Newgate Calendar. One hinted in vain that wisdom is justified of her children, that the poet must be trusted to judge of the capacity of his own theme, and that ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... imperial sway of dull maroons, sullen Pompeiian reds, and sombre murky olives had never cast encroaching shadows upon the dainty brightness of tender rose and blue, nor toned down the silvery reflection of the great sea of waters that flashed under the sunshine ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... at the beginning of the exposition had reached into the black void of space like a clean bright ray was now cloudy and murky—the result of the puzzling ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell

... drifting down on the land-breeze from the summit of Mount Olia, now hid her white sails, now lifted and revealed them in the late afternoon sunshine. But although blue held the upper heavens—cloudless blue of July—the sunshine that reached the ship was murky, almost copper-coloured; for it pierced through a cloud of denser smoke that rolled continuously along the western horizon from the ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... mark, the wind bore the flames away from our dwelling-house; had it come in the opposite direction, no power on earth could have saved us from being all consumed! It made the work of destroying the Church only that of a few minutes; but it brought with it a heavy and murky cloud, which poured out a perfect torrent of tropical rain. Now, mark again, the flames of the burning Church were thereby cut off from extending to and seizing upon the reeds and the bush; and, besides, it had become almost impossible now ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton

... pillar, leaving Rabesqurat prone, and the waves of the sea bounding toward her where she lay. Now, they descended and ascended flights of slippery steps, and sped together along murky passages, in which light never was, and under arches of caves with hanging crystals, groping and tumbling on hurriedly, till they came to an obstruction, and felt an iron door, frosty to the touch. Then Abarak said to Shibli Bagarag, 'Smite!' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... bedroom, at the front of the house, Hilda looked westwards up toward the slopes of Chatterley Wood, where as a child she used to go with other children to pick the sparse bluebells that thrived on smoke. The bailiwick of Turnhill lay behind her; and all the murky district of the Five Towns, of which Turnhill is the northern outpost, lay to the south. At the foot of Chatterley Wood the canal wound in large curves on its way towards the undefiled plains of Cheshire and the sea. On the canal-side, exactly opposite to Hilda's window, was a flour-mill, that ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... her paper aslant towards the candle-end, which threw a murky yellow light upon the background of the garret, contrasting oddly with the thin, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... of evening was already deepening to darkness, a gloom more noticeable far up in the heavens than among the myriad of lights in the city streets. For not a star was visible in the murky sky, and away in the west huge banks of inky clouds were sweeping up toward the zenith, indicating the rapid approach of a ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter

... blind and helpless, till at last he was allowed to stop and breathe. His arms were released, the bandage was taken from his eyes, the gag from his mouth—he was free! Free—yes! but where? Thick darkness encompassed him; he stretched out his hands in the murky atmosphere ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... fancy, that afterwards I was attracted to him in very repulsion, and could not help wandering in and out every half-hour or so, and taking another look at him. Still, the long, long night seemed heavy and hopeless as ever, and no promise of day was in the murky sky. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... day are red Beyond the murky hill. The kitchen smokes: the bed In the darkling house is spread: The great sky darkens overhead, And the great woods are shrill. So far have I been led, Lord, by Thy will: So far I have followed, Lord, and ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... moment, embarrassed as he was, hardly knowing what he was doing. He seized the oars and rowed out again, towards the island. The evening was wondrously calm. Now, when he was alone, he realised how deep was his despair; another disappointment, another fall, the very worst! And not a star in the murky night! He suddenly remembered Hanka, who probably had looked for him to-day; who perhaps was seeking him even now. No; Hanka was not fair; Hanka was dark; she did not radiate, but she allured. But how ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun

... now no more. Lost to the fields, and torn from you,— Farewell!—a long, a last adieu. Me wrangling courts, and stubborn law, To smoke, and crowds, and cities draw: There selfish faction rules the day, And pride and avarice throng the way; Diseases taint the murky air, And midnight conflagrations glare; Loose Revelry and Riot bold In frighted streets their orgies hold; Or, where in silence all is drowned, Fell Murder walks his lonely round; No room for peace, no room for you, Adieu, celestial ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... divined some sordid horror behind eyes crafty and ignoble. Once before she had had such a fleeting, uncomprehended vision into the murky depths of the man's soul. This was some time ago. In the routine of her secretarial duties she had, one morning, opened and read a letter, not marked "Private" or "Personal," whose tenor she could scarcely understand. When she handed it to her father, he smiled, vouchsafed a specious ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... Pohjola's old Mistress, Answered in the words which follow: "I will only give my daughter, Give the youthful bride you seek for, If the river-swan you shoot me, Shoot the great bird on the river. There on Tuoni's murky river, In the sacred river's whirlpool, 380 Only at a single trial, ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... form." Its geography and history are as perpetually changing as the modes of St. James's, or the features of one of its toasted beauties; and what is written of it to-day may be dry, and its time be out of joint, before it has escaped the murky precincts of the printing-house. It is subtlety itself, and we know not "whence it cometh, and whither it goeth." Its philosophy is concentric, for this Great World consists of thousands of little worlds, usque ad infinitum, and we do well if we become not giddy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various

... figure in the bath of late sunshine that brought out every uncomely item of the picture. Preoccupied and distraught as I was, I saw how the dust from the stable floor floated in golden clouds to the cobwebbed rafters, as the sun struck past the man in the doorway and glorified the murky interior. ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... to raise, What shall I call, Out of hell's murky haze, Heaven's blue pall? Raise my loved long-lost boy To lead me to his joy.— There are no ghosts to raise; Out of death lead no ways; ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various

... visions that the soffins leak That felt the besom of the dead, Just as the Twilight's scarlet urn Is seen from heights unfathomed, strong. There runnels of green waters cold, Toss lepers from their murky breast; There venom-oils and tapers burn To light the way of souls gone wrong,— Blood-stained each idol's crown of gold Where battle-wrecks ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... up with all on board. The blazing fragments drifted about among the other ships, and two more were soon on fire, their guns going off and their magazines exploding. The rock of Gibraltar seemed to reel. To the murky darkness succeeded the intolerable glare of a new and vast conflagration. The scene in that narrow roadstead was now almost infernal. It seemed, said an eye-witness, as if heaven and earth were passing away. A hopeless panic seized the Spaniards. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... itself was of murky material, built in the late nineties; in response to the steadily growing need of small apartments each floor had been thoroughly remodelled and rented individually. Of the four apartments Anthony's, on the second floor, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... from their bodies. The voice of one in sore straits came up, it seemed to him, from the Rue des Voyards, shouting: "Help! murder!" amid the clash of arms. He bent over the terrace to look, then remained aloft there in the murky thickness of the night where there was not a star to cheer him, wrapped in such an ecstasy of terror that the hairs ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... a hospital, and Africa a hell. This could by no means seem sufficient. The crew of the Pinta shouted, "Land! Land!"—peering through the dark at the new shores; the Spanish nation chanted, "Gold! Gold!"—gazing out through murky desires toward the wondrous West; but it is only with the cry of "Man! Man!" as at the sight of new cerebral shores and wealth of more than golden humanities, that the true America is discovered and announced. So whatever reason we have to assert for America a really independent existence and destiny, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... confronted Locke, for the place was well guarded. Several henchmen darted forth from dark corners of the murky place and ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... in Centre Street, and the Tombs was close at hand; and I drew into my lungs full draughts of the open air, murky though it was, reflecting that my opportunities of doing so ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... Once, murky night Shut in my sight: One glance revealed the source of light! Now, to be wise Or gay, I rise, By gazing in my lady's eyes! ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... another proof of the illusion of material sense. On the eye's retina, sky and tree-tops apparently join hands, clouds and ocean meet 122:18 and mingle. The barometer, - that little prophet of storm and sunshine, denying the testimony of the senses, - points to fair weather in the midst of murky 122:21 clouds and drenching rain. Experience is full of instances of similar illusions, which every thinker can ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... the sunset, and hearing the droll frogs croak in the rushes, while the old people told her tales of the time of how in their babyhood they had run out, fearful yet fascinated, to see the beautiful Scots Grays flash by in the murky night, and the endless line of guns and caissons crawl black as a snake through the summer dust and the trampled corn, going out past ...
— Bebee • Ouida

... The trees especially, all frosted with shining filigree, were a wonder to look upon; and Beth would wander about the alleys in Kensington Gardens, and gaze at the glory of the white world under the sombre grey of the murky clouds, piled up in awesome magnificence, until she ached with yearning for some word of human speech, some way to express it, to ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... He released her hands, he swept back his hair with a gesture of impatience. He turned from his wife, and strolled toward a window, where, for a little, he tapped upon the pane, his murky countenance twitching oddly, as he stared into the quiet and sunlit street. "Madame," he began, in a level voice, "I will tell you the meaning of the comedy. To me,—always, as you know, a creature of whims,—there ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... had passed the railroad bridge and the vast calm of the open country enveloped them on all sides. The sun was shining brightly, but a chill dampness arose from the murky waters of the river. The small waves, saturated with light, like serpents with gleaming scales, splashed about in the sunlight. The long sand dunes resembled water giants, basking in the sun with yellow upturned bellies. A string of scows ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... 'The great murky Thames,' he said, 'wearies, but it is very wonderful. Ah, Landor's "Hellenics" in the original Latin: how ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... conduct in the chair of the party, as indeed it governed that of nearly all the rank and file, was his horror of the years which Ireland had gone through since Parnell's fall. He loathed faction and he had struggled through murky whirlpools of it; for the rest of his life he was determined, almost at any cost, to maintain the greatest possible degree of unity among Irish Nationalists. Yet in the end he unhesitatingly made a choice and ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... manner. He left the scene of his daily labours quickly like an unobtrusive shadow. His descent into the street was like the descent into a slimy aquarium from which the water had been run off. A murky, gloomy dampness enveloped him. The walls of the houses were wet, the mud of the roadway glistened with an effect of phosphorescence, and when he emerged into the Strand out of a narrow street by the side ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... so may ever Lights half seen across a murky lea, Child of hope, and courage, and endeavour, Gleam a voiceless benison on thee! Youth be bearer Soon of hardihood; Life be fairer, Loyaller to good; Till the far lamps vanish into light, Rest in the ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... is said to acquire the status of Brahma. There is only one kind of bondage in this world, viz., the bondage of desire, and no other. One that is freed from the bondage of desire attains to the status of Brahma. Freed from desire like the Moon emerged from murky clouds, the man of wisdom, purged of all stains, lives in patient expectation of his time. That person into whose mind all sorts of desire enter like diverse streams falling into the ocean without being able to enhance its limits by their discharge, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... Dasaratha spoke A tempest from the welkin broke, That shook the spacious earth amain And hurled high trees upon the plain. The sun grew dark with murky cloud, And o'er the skies was cast a shroud, While o'er the army, faint with dread, A veil of dust and ashes spread. King, princes, saints their sense retained, Fear-stupefied the rest remained. At length, their wits returning, all Beneath the gloom and ashy pall Saw Jamadagni's ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... July day in a large seaport town of South Wales. There had been refreshing showers in the morning, giving place to a murky haze through which the late afternoon sun shone red and round. The small kitchen of No. 2 Bryn Street was insufferably hot, in spite of the wide-open door and window. A good fire burnt in the grate, however, for it was near tea-time, and Mrs. Parry knew that some of her lodgers would ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... to a truer appreciation of my essentiality to their happiness. My mother had long been haunted by a conviction that I should meet an early death by drowning or an accidental gunshot, and this very morning she had awakened from a dream in which she saw her only child floating on the murky waters of the mill-dam. Rushing to my room and finding me gone, she had had her worst fears confirmed, and at the moment of my reappearance Mr. Pound was endeavoring to console her for her loss and to bring her to a state ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... Jeremy Taylor and the latest Reverend Mr. Orotund, you find a liberal and privileged utterance; but honest John Foster, made of powerful, but ill-composed elements, and replete with an intelligence now gleaming and now murky, could wring statements from his mind only as testimony in cruel ages was obtained from unwilling witnesses, namely, by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... through the open door, had there been any to see, was almost as motionless as a tableau, and it was a starkly grim one, with murky shadows against a fitful light. A ray of the setting sun forced its inquisitive way inward upon the semi-darkness of the interior. A red wavering from the open hearth, where supper preparations had been ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... steadily, though by insensible degrees, assumed a more threatening character, the huge masses of cloud that overspread the entire dome of the visible sky darkening in tint to such an extent that the scene became enwrapped in a murky kind of twilight. That wind, and plenty of it, was brewing, seemed evident from the fact that the clouds, although not drifting across the sky, were working visibly, writhing and twisting into the most extraordinary and fantastic shapes, as though influenced by some powerful impulse ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... the murky dell, But till your harvest hill at morn; Stoop to no words that, rank and fell, Grow faster than the ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... shot. He was careful not to allude to the subject again till, towards eleven o'clock, having, in his poetic phraseology, 'looked upon the drink when it was yellow,' he drew aside the blind, and gazed out into the street. The murky blackness of the fog was but faintly broken by the lamps of the 'Red Pottle,' and no shape of mortal man ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... together and trample on one another; so the heroes grievously scared the arrogant Bebrycians. And as shepherds or beekeepers smoke out a huge swarm of bees in a rock, and they meanwhile, pent up in their hive, murmur with droning hum, till, stupefied by the murky smoke, they fly forth far from the rock; so they stayed steadfast no longer, but scattered themselves inland through Bebrycia, proclaiming the death of Amycus; fools, not to perceive that another woe all unforeseen was hard upon them. For at that hour their vineyards and ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... can remember, nor lunatic, but feeling the dull glow of a wicked and morose Unreason urge in my bosom, while I stoked all blackened at the fire, or saw the vague mass of dead horse or cow, running trees and fields, and dark homestead and deep-slumbering farm, flit ghostly athwart the murky air, as the half-blind saw ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... she breathed—"now do I drink to thy glory in arms, to our future, and to our abiding love!" So the Duchess raised the goblet to her lips. But lo! even as she drank, the thick, black cloud began to engulf the moon, quenching her radiant light in its murky gloom. So the Duchess drank, and handed the goblet ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... that distinguish the Isle of Shepey from other parts along the coast of Kent, the white cliffs of which present an aspect at once so cheerful and so peculiar to the shores of Britain. The quiet sea seemed, in the murky light, like a dense and motionless mass, save when the gathering clouds passed from the brow of the waning moon, and permitted its beams to repose in silver lines on its ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... was added a woollen comforter; there was no money in the transaction. Douglas wrapped the comforter round his neck there and then, and put on the coat; when he stepped out again into the mud and snow and murky atmosphere, his appearance was much more reconcilable ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black

... tremor, now pale and trembling, watched the growing pile of legs and arms. Alone in the darkness beyond the voice or touch of a loved hand they must face this awful thing and hobble through life maimed wrecks. They looked over their shoulders into the murky darkness and envied the silent forms that lay there beyond the reach of pain and despair. All night the grim tragedy of the knife and saw, and the low moans that still came from the darkness of ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... again rebelling at the altitude and the exertion, and she was forced to lie flat for a long time. She lay with her face to the sky watching the roll of the murky clouds. Above her towered the crest of the mountain, below her stretched the abyss. It was a place where one might draw apart from all the world and contemplate the little thing that men call Life. Neither ecstasy nor despair came to her, though some such excesses might have been ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... he did not doubt in his heart that it was there to guide him; so he struck out towards it, with long silent strokes. He swam for a long time, the light shining softly over the water, and seeming to rise higher over his head, while the glimmering of the ship's lights grew fainter and more murky behind him. Then he became aware that he was drawing near to the land; great dark shapes loomed up over his head, and he heard the soft beating of waves before him. Then he could see too, as he looked upon the light, that there was a ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... poor little Dinkie has yet awakened to the fact that his body is a worn river-bed down which must race the freshets of far-off racial instincts. But the thing disturbed me more than I'd be willing to admit. There are murky corridors in the house of life. They stand there, and they must be faced. There are rooms where the air must be kept stirring, corners into which the clear sanity of sunlight must be thrown. Dinkie, ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... one such orator as contrasting 'scientific education, the only true education, which gives man the certainty of his own value and urges him onward to progress and to the Light,' with 'religious education which fatally plunges him into a murky night, and an abyss of deadly superstitions.' Another luminary of the State exclaimed in a burst of eloquence, 'Young citizenesses and young citizens! We have been accused of banishing God from the schools! It is an error! Nothing ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... which abstracts from the matter.] By the way, I have never seen it noticed, that Milton was indebted for the hint of this immortal passage to a superb line-and-a-half, in Lucan's Pharsalia.] and upturn'd His nostril wide into the murky air, Sagacious of his quarry ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... on Marston Moor, 'Midst lightning's flash and thunder's roar; As murky clouds sweep o'er the sky, God's cannonade with man's will vie. The Royalists in phalanx strong, By fiery Rupert led along, From Bolton's cruel massacre Towards York, in hope to keep it free From the Roundheads at any cost. "If York be lost, my crown is lost"— Wrote Charles ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... be, at about five o'clock in the afternoon, full of men and tobacco smoke, but Captain Froud had the smaller room to himself and there he granted private interviews, whose principal motive was to render service. Thus, one murky November afternoon he beckoned me in with a crooked finger and that peculiar glance above his spectacles which is perhaps my strongest physical ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... answering with only unsatisfactory vagueness—answers that he could do nothing, not even when Julia flew tenderly to his rescue, to make any better. Yes, he liked the house, he said gravely. It was a nice old house. And he thought how murky, despite its new coats of cleaning, was that far corner up near the ceiling. No, he wasn't sorry, he responded, that he had left the Ecole des Beaux Arts to devote all his time to painting; it was ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... ages range from twenty-three to forty-five. Some are smoking. Others, with tongue protruding slightly from the corner of the mouth, and head on one side, are slowly and painfully copying the drawing of a pump or a valve-box. Others, again, are in the murky depths of vast arithmetical solutions extracting, with heavy breathings, the cube root from some formidable quantity, and bringing it to the surface exhausted and far from certain as to the ultimate ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... even think of that. In Paris, especially in the quarters where the working class live, the houses are too high, the streets too narrow, the air too murky for heaven ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... which I would permit myself to criticise is your omission to slay the kid. That, however, was due, I take it, to the fact that you were interrupted. We will now proceed to examine the future. I cannot see that it is altogether murky. You have lost a good job, but there are others, equally good, for a man of your calibre. New York is crammed with dyspeptic millionaires who need an efficient physical instructor to look after them. Cheer up, Cuthbert, for the sun is ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... up the river the little party progressed the narrower became the stream, until finally it was little better than a deep creek. Foliage of large trees overhung the water, making it almost as dark as night. The water was black and murky. ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake

... the precursor of a thunder-gust. The breeze, strengthening to a brisk gale, made Arlington hold fast to his hat, and caused the long streamers of Spanish moss to wave like gray banners from the limbs of the cypress-trees. The air grew murky, clouds were flying in dark blotches. A hurricane was sweeping across the country; the loud rush of it came roaring up the stream; it lashed and twisted and tore trees; poured down torrents; thundered around and above Arlington and his terrified horse, without doing either man or beast ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... which torments it with the things to be, Keeps it in dread, and wearies it with cares; And even when evil acts are of the past, Still gnaw the old transgressions bitterly. Add, too, that frenzy, peculiar to the mind, And that oblivion of the things that were; Add its submergence in the murky waves ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... feast—one was 'Absent Friends,' drunk in a wistful silence, and the other, the caterer's health, greeted with vociferous enthusiasm. A few fields off the wood had been collecting all day for the Christmas camp-fire of the 10th Hussars, and by ten o'clock the blaze of it was mounting high into the murky gloom. A right merry and social gathering it was round the bright glow of this Yule log in a far-off land. The flames danced on the wide circle of bearded faces, on the tangled fleeces of the postheens, on the gold braid of the forage caps, on the sombre hoods of beshliks.... The songs ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... summer and autumn of 1779, and even the succeeding winter and spring,—scarcely able to hear the far-off noises of the great struggle in which he had hitherto borne so rugged a part, and of which the victorious issue was then to be seen by him, though dimly, through many a murky rack ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... thunder continued for some minutes, when once more a blinding flash swept across the murky sky, lighting up sea and island for the instant, as if with the glare of the noonday sun. Captain Bergen and Mate Storms were straining their eyes to catch sight of the little schooner and its crew, but it was invisible. In that single searching glance, they could ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis

... scratched fists, Sammy tumbled down the ladder again. There was just enough light around the hatch to make the gloom where the boy and girl stood a sort of murky brown instead of the oppressive blackness of the hold ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill

... we came in gave but a flickering light, which dimly shadowed the outline of the stone stairway, and threw the rest of the corridor into a deep and mysterious gloom. We tramped up the five long flights of stone stairs without a word, the echo of our footsteps sounding louder and louder, and the murky space behind us deepening into the damp darkness of a cavern. At last, after what seemed an interminable climb, we came to the studio entrance. I put the large key in the lock, turned it, and pushed open the door. A strong ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... the Wash—the sun went down—the sea look'd black and grim, For stormy clouds, with murky fleece, were mustering at the brim; Titanic shades! enormous gloom!—as if the solid night Of Erebus rose suddenly to seize upon the light! It was a time for mariners to bear a wary eye With such a dark conspiracy between the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... Swallow's side, she, with untiring pinions, winged her way; she suffered not from noontide heat, she felt not even the pangs of hunger or thirst, for her heart was filled with hope. But towards evening her pitying guide led her over a hot, murky town; the very sky above it was hidden by the thick atmosphere of smoke which seemed completely to envelope it; the two birds could scarcely breathe, the air was ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer

... days' stay at Walloong, the weather was bitterly cold: as heretofore, the nights and mornings were cloudless, but by noon the whole sky became murky, the highest temperature (50 degrees) occurring at 10 a.m. At this season the prospect from this elevation (10,385 feet), was dreary in the extreme; and the quantity of snow on the mountains, which ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... murky cloud thinned quite away; and Little Sword saw what had happened. The pale creature, having reached a rock to which he could anchor himself with a couple of his feelers, had turned savagely upon his rash assailant. Little Sword ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts

... smoke-wreaths fly When fresh breezes clear the sky, Passed away each swelling boast Of the misbelieving host. From the Hebrus rolling far Came the murky cloud of war, And in shower and tempest dread Burst on Austria's fenceless head. But not for vaunt or threat Didst Thou, O Lord, forget The flock so dearly bought, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... house, along the streets which run from the waterside to the suburbs, taking about twenty-four hours to reach the end. Some persons related that for several successive evenings before the fever broke out the atmosphere was thick, and that a body of murky vapour, accompanied by a strong stench, travelled from street to street. This moving vapour was called the "Mai da peste" ("the mother or spirit of the plague"); and it was useless to attempt to reason them out of the ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... and touchy period) to accept what was practically a challenge, and we were actually on tiptoe for a duel. Feeling ran high about it, and there might have been a very disagreeable scandal had not Tip's clear common sense and persuasive oratory burst out at the last possible minute from this murky thunder-cloud and effectively swept the whole business out ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... watched with him, we blessed his miserable sleeps, and met his more wretched awakings. In the presumption of our pity, we would cleanse that white, in the world's eye, which God had, for inscrutable purposes, ordained should seem to the last murky as hell. We would paint visibly upon him the outward and visible sign of sin washed away, and mercy found. That that intended triumph may not have helped to add or to retain one feather's weight in the balance against him, let me humbly hope and trust. That ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... London, fogs of murky yellow or of sheer black, such as have often made all work impossible to me, and held me, a sort of dyspeptic owl, in moping and blinking idleness. On such a day, I remember, I once found myself at an end both of coal and of ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... with his whole army between Casale and Turin on the 26th of the same month. It had rained the whole day; but, as often happens in Italy, toward evening the sky had cleared, changing in a few moments from murky darkness to loveliest azure, and the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... answer. He fell back a pace to the railing, his features working with his deep chagrin. The murky flare of the gas-lamp overhead fell across a face handsome beyond the ordinary but marred by a sullen humor and seamed with indulgence: a face that seemed hauntingly familiar until Kirkwood in a flash of visual memory reconstructed the portrait of a man who lingered over a dining-table, with ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... charms of the peerless Altisidora, not dead as the ignorant world imagines, but living in the voice of fame and in the penance which Sancho Panza, here present, has to undergo to restore her to the long-lost light. Do thou, therefore, O Rhadamanthus, who sittest in judgment with me in the murky caverns of Dis, as thou knowest all that the inscrutable fates have decreed touching the resuscitation of this damsel, announce and declare it at once, that the happiness we look forward to from her ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... of a five hundred-foot cliff, a great glistening white plain stretched into the distance. I seemed to see where it ended in a murky blur. And far higher than our own hilltop level a horizontal streak marked the rope ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... haggard men Forcing their way within,— Some compressed in a steaming-pen, Others soaked to the skin; Smoke and soot in the murky sky, Death in the tainted air, Each aware, were he to die, None ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... swamp changed and chilled to a dull grayness; tall, dull trees started down upon the murky waters; and long pendent streamings of moss-like tears dripped from tree to earth. Slowly and warily they threaded ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... streets, unlighted and murky, the two confederates made their stealthy way, and in five minutes stood in ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... was required to give the ship a slight refit and the crew some relaxation, it afforded an opportunity of visiting York, situated about sixty miles east from Perth, and at that extremity of the colony. Accordingly, one murky afternoon a small party of us were wending our way over the Darling Range. Long after dark the welcome bark of dogs rang through the forest in the still dark night, assuring us that shelter was at hand, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... exaggerate the horrors of the last day of the doomed city. The rumbling of the earth beneath; the dense obscurity and murky shadow of the heaven above; the long, heavy roll of the convulsed sea; the strident noise of the vapors and gases escaping from the mountain-crater; the shifting electric lights, crimson, emerald green, lurid yellow, azure, blood red, which at intervals relieved the blackness, only to ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... counterpart in those of his commander on the winter hunting-grounds of his Huron allies. As we turn the ancient, worm-eaten page which preserves the simple record of his fortunes, a wild and dreary scene rises before the mind,—a chill November air, a murky sky, a cold lake, bare and shivering forests, the earth strewn with crisp brown leaves, and, by the water-side, the bark sheds and smoking camp-fires of a band of Indian hunters. Champlain was of the party. There was ample occupation for his gun, for the morning was vocal with the clamor of wild-fowl, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... a long room where thirty girls are busily sorting the rags for the various grades of papers. That the dusting machine is no more perfect than a human machine is evinced by the murky atmosphere of this room, by the particles that lodge in the throat of the visitor, and by the frequent coughing of the sorters. They protect their hair with turbans of veiling, occasionally decorated with a bit of bright color. These turbans give ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various



Words linked to "Murky" :   murk, mirky, cloudy, turbid, murkiness, shaded, opaque



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