"Mare's nest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the best of terms with one another, to keep the peace for a reasonable period. The sole evidence against this view of the case, he argued, was police evidence; and the police were naturally reluctant to admit that they had found a mare's nest. In proof that the fight had been premeditated, and was a prize-fight, they alleged that it had taken place within an enclosure formed with ropes and stakes. But where were those ropes and stakes? They ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... least, or without any, provocation—a rather idiotic state—which he is quite conscious of but cannot stop. Presently some one will ask, "Have you found a wicker's nest?" which is a biting sarcasm, though the precise meaning seems uncertain, unless it bears some relation to mare's nest. Mares wicker, so do goats; giggling is wickering. The first work a boy does is to go out with a clapper, or his own strong voice, to scare birds from the corn all day; this we call bird-keeping, but the lads themselves, with an appreciation of the other side of the case, call ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... Those who play with edge tools must expect to be cut. Three removes are as bad as a fire. Through thick and thin. Time and tide wait for no man. To beat about the bush. To break the ice. To buy a pig in a poke. To find a mare's nest. ...
— Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading - Selected from English and American Literature • Horace Elisha Scudder, editor
... rechristened itself Britannia, dropped the War Baby agitation, and, after an interlude of self-control, broke out into denunciations, first of this public servant and then of that, as traitors and German spies. Finally, it discovered a mare's nest in the case of Sir Edward Grey that led to its suppression, and the last I have from this misleading and unrepresentative feminist faction is the periodic appearance of a little ill-printed sheet of abuse about ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... talk," said Hastings. "You can't scare me again, Dick, as you did with that Populist mare's nest ten years ago." ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
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