The foreign policy of the noble Earl,Lord Russell, may be summed up in two truly expressive words: meddle and muddle.

-Derby, Edward Geoffrey Smith Stanley, 14th Earl of
  Speech in the House of Lords, Feb, referring to the Prime Minister's policy on the  American Civil War.

   Ah, Rachel, aw a muddle! Fro'first to last, a muddle!

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
  Stephen Blackpool. Hard Times, bk.3, ch.6.

Far too many relied on the classic formula of a beginning, a muddle, and an end. Larwood

-Larkin, Philip Arthur
  On judging the Booker Prize entries for1977, in New Fiction, no.15,  Jan.

He was a sociologist; he had gotten into an intellectual muddle early on in life and never managed to get out.

-Murray, Les(lie Allan)
  The Philosopher's Pupil,'The Events in Our Town'.

All are deceptions, substitutes for the hard job of using reason and industry and intuition and compassion to solve even a little bit of the muddle with humaneness and awe for the natural world and the complexity of human beings.

-Wilson, SirAngus FrankJohnstone
  Letter to David Farrer, his publisher, Jul. Quoted in Margaret Drabble AngusWilsonöA Biography (1995).