Literary notes about Quagmire (AI summary)
Writers employ "quagmire" both as a literal description of a muddied, intractable landscape and as a potent metaphor for entrapment and complex personal or political dilemmas. In some works, it vividly evokes physical terrain—a marsh or a road transformed by relentless rain ([1], [2])—while in others, it symbolizes a state of being mired in difficulties, whether through mounting debt ([3]), overwhelming doubt ([4]), or the mire of bureaucratic evasion ([5]). This dual usage enriches the word with a versatile imagery that speaks to both natural and existential challenges.
- Mr. Hardcastle's, of Quagmire Marsh, you understand me.
— from She Stoops to Conquer; Or, The Mistakes of a Night: A Comedy by Oliver Goldsmith - The atmosphere was then clear, and the sun rose pleasantly; but the roads were a perfect quagmire.
— from Scenes and Adventures in the Semi-Alpine Region of the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and Arkansas by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft - “I'm lost in a quagmire of debts—I'm helpless now,” he murmured.
— from The Valley of the Giants by Peter B. (Peter Bernard) Kyne - "She's a dear girl," he thought; "a generous-hearted, bouncing, noble English lassie; and yet—" He lost himself in a quagmire of doubt and difficulty.
— from Lady Audley's Secret by M. E. Braddon - Now, all this is a quagmire of evasion under which the real issue of fact has been entirely smothered.
— from The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James
