"Game of chance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... teller, Paris, rue Vielle-du-Temple, time of Louis Philippe. At one time a cook. Born in 1767. Earned a considerable amount of money, but previously had lost heavily in a lottery. After the suppression of this game of chance she saved up for the benefit of a nephew. In her divinations Mme. Fontaine made use of a giant toad named Astaroth, and of a black hen with bristling feathers, called Cleopatra or Bilouche. These two animals caught Gazonal's eye in 1845, when in company with ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... no right to discuss my orders. And there were two sides to the question, besides. Above Napoleon, the enemy of my house, the murderer of the Duc d'Enghien, who at his fall had left that dangerous game of chance wherein the ignorant herd is so often the dupe of the political croupier—universal suffrage- -as his legacy to ruined and dismembered France,—there was the matchless warrior whose genius, even in defeat, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... should remember that on many occasions it is not even a game of chance with these potentates of Wall Street. They play, as it were, with marked cards, and can predict to a certainty, having such mighty capital at their disposal, just how and when particular stocks will rise or fall. Spreading abroad deceitful rumors through their little subservient throngs of henchmen ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... meantime, Allan Lyster, by his successful trading on a woman's secret, was leading a life of complete and perfect luxury. He spared no expense; he gambled, betted, played at every game of chance; he was well known at Tattersall's in all the green rooms; he played to perfection the part of a fast man about town, while the woman he had pretended to love was wearing her life away in mortification ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... violent fluctuations of value to which it is subject.(935) The consequence of these fluctuations is, that every commercial transaction, every credit-transaction, and even every act of saving, in which money plays any part, is made to bear the impress of a game of chance;(936) a consequence of far and deep reaching influence, especially in the higher stages of civilization, where the importance of commerce, of the credit-system, and of money-economy as contradistinguished from barter-economy is so great; ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... immunity from malaria, or of the hydraulico-atmospheric method of "overlaying." The moment that it is known that this cultivation has frequently been advantageous, there comes forward a crowd of social reasons which induce us to attempt it, even though we be persuaded that we are about to engage in a game of chance. But to dare to attempt it is not all that is necessary; we need also the possibility of so doing, and just here we find ourselves in a vicious circle from which it is not easy to emerge. Forced cultivation cannot be accomplished without the presence of agriculturists in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... looked grave. "You are speaking, sir, under a strange misapprehension," he said. "Our game is lansquenet—essentially a game of chance. With luck, the poorest player is a match for ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... desperate, driven to his last straits. He had lost his all, the all of a young man sent up to Paris to make his fortune, with a horse, his sword, and a bag of crowns—the latter saved for him by a father's stern frugality, a mother's tender self-denial. A week ago he had never seen a game of chance. Then he had seen; the dice had fallen in his way, the devil of play, cursed legacy of some long-forgotten ancestor, had awoke within him, and this was the end. "I ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... for a large number of players, and may also be engaged in by smaller parties; its practice, with even only two competing, being both interesting and exciting. It is purely a game of chance, and little or no skill is required in playing it, although a little judgment may often prove of advantage to ...
— Round Games with Cards • W. H. Peel
... unbridled from wall to wall had scoured the deep gorge for hundreds of feet, was a moving spectacle. The activity of the swarming laborers, preparing their one tremendous answer to the insolence of the river, had behind it the excitement of a game of chance. The stake, indeed, was eight solid trains of perishable freight, and the gambler that had staked their value and his reputation on one throw of the dice was ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... and so sinning in the very eye of the law, two swarthy, shifty-looking gentlemen were operating (with some greasy walnut shells and a pea) what the fanciful or unsophisticated might have been pleased to call a game of chance; and the most intent spectator of the group around them was Mr. James Bardlock, the Town Marshal. He was simply and unofficially and earnestly interested. Thus the eye of Justice may not be said to have winked upon ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... before the president of the Seccion de Industria de la Real Sociedad Economica, by whom he is articled out to a master of the trade he wishes to learn. No place of education can be opened without the teacher thereof has been duly licensed. No game of chance is allowed in any shop or tavern, except in billiard-saloons and coffee-houses, where draughts and dominoes, chess and backgammon are tolerated. After a certain fixed hour of the night, no person is allowed to drive ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... proof that superstition is still deep-rooted in the minds of sailors. Of this we had afterwards many other instances. The captain, for example, was always very averse to the passengers amusing themselves with cards or any other game of chance; in another vessel, as I was informed, no one was allowed to write on Sunday, etc. Empty casks or logs of wood were also very frequently thrown overboard during a calm—probably as sacrifices to the deities ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... the law of cause and effect was the moral development. Out of the inflation of prices grew a speculating class; and, in the complete uncertainty as to the future, all business became a game of chance, and all business men, gamblers. In city centers came a quick growth of stock-jobbers and speculators; and these set a debasing fashion in business which spread to the remotest parts of the country. Instead of satisfaction ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... hand, Montigny and Thevenin Pensete played a game of chance. About the first there clung some flavour of good birth and training, as about a fallen angel; something long, lithe, and courtly in the person; something aquiline and darkling in the face. Thevenin, poor soul, was in great feather: he had done a good ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Then the dispute died down. Arkhipov proposed a game of chance. They uncovered a green table, set lighted candles at its corners and commenced to play leisurely and silently as in winter. Arkhipov sat erect, resting his elbows at ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... it?' I asked. In my heart there was no craven panic, but neither was there sacrifice. Some vague idea was in my mind, of deciding who should get the place by some game of chance, tossing ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... am here supposing a state of things in which gold and silver mining are a permanent branch of industry, carried on under known conditions; and not the present state of uncertainty, in which gold-gathering is a game of chance, prosecuted (for the present) in the spirit of an adventure, not in that of a regular industrial pursuit.—MILL. It is, however, worth recalling that gold and silver mining have not been—for large effects on the value of the metals—anything like a permanent branch of industry, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... large number of minute quartz pebbles, probably used in a rattle or in playing some game of chance. Found with the ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes
... be found in Australia as well as the "struggling farmer". The Australian squatter is not always the mighty wool king that English and American authors and other uninformed people apparently imagine him to be. Squatting, at the best, is but a game of chance. It depends mainly on the weather, and that, in New South Wales at least, ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... '0' and '00' the bank sweeps the board every so often. It is only a question of time when, after paying our money back and forth among ourselves, it has all filtered through the 'O' and 'OO' into the bank. It is not a game of chance for the bank—ah, it is exact, mathematical—c'est une question d'arithmetique seulement, n'est-ce ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... would be fewer divorces; for many engaged people would thus discover they were mismated before the marriage ceremony. To reach a complete understanding is the main purpose of the engagement period. Marriage is not a lottery nor a game of chance to the man and woman entering it with a knowledge of sex relations and with absolute ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... and took out of her every man she possessed at the cost of a mere hour's work, ignorant of the fact that when pressing eight of those men the commander of the Betsey had been "eight hours about it." It was all a game of chance, and when you played it the only thing you could count upon was the certainty of having both the sailor and the ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... a cluster of such abodes standing without any order and enclosed by a stockade, was, at times, the scene of almost {40} endless merry-making. Now it was a big feast; now a game of chance played by two large parties matched against each other, while the lodge was crowded almost to suffocation by eager spectators; now a dance, of the peculiar Indian kind; now some solemn ceremony to propitiate ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... Sturgis was retained to defend them when the case came up, of course. The more he studied over the matter, and looked into the evidence, the plainer it was that he must lose a case at last—there was no getting around that painful fact. Those boys had certainly been betting money on a game of chance. Even public sympathy was roused in behalf of Sturgis. People said it was a pity to see him mar his successful career with a big prominent case like this, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... chief of his fellow-crafts-men. And if the descent from the sublime is not too sudden, attention might here be called to the similar method of measuring the skill of the individual performer which we perceive in a later and more scientific development of what was once almost a game of chance. In "duplicate whist," as it is called, identical hands are played in turn by a succession of players, who are thus put to the test sharply, each withstanding comparison with every one ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... gem-buyers, speculators, money-lenders, petty merchants, and persons of devious occupations, make speedy arrangements for attending. Indian and Ceylon coolies flock by the thousand to the coast of the Northern province, longing to play even humble roles in the great game of chance. The "tindals" and divers provide boats and all essential gear for the work afloat; while ashore the government supplies buildings and various forms of labor for dealing with the ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... of attractive airs. Making our way, not without difficulty, through the crowd, we saw before us several long, green-covered tables, surrounded by people, who appeared to be engaged in playing, on a grand scale, every conceivable game of chance. Never did I see countenances so palpably expressive of the worst passions of our evil nature. The keepers of the banks were evidently villains of the darkest dye. They sat with their revolvers ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... quarter, where a crisis was brought on which has astonished every one. How this mighty duel is to end between Great Britain and France, is a momentous question. The sea which divides them makes it a game of chance; but it is narrow, and all the chances are not on one side. Should they make peace, still our fate ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... sort of excitement seems awfully stupid to YOU; but—no use denying it—I do like a bit of a flutter, just occasionally, you know. And one has to be in trim for it. Suppose a man sat down dead-drunk to a game of chance, what fun would it be for him? None. And it's only a question of degree. Soothe yourself ever so little with alcohol, and you don't get QUITE the full sensation of gambling. You do lose just a little something of the proper tremors ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm
... desertions. Mr. Seddon and Mr. Stanton at Washington are engaged in a singular game of chance. The harsh orders of both cause mutual abandonments, and now we have the spectacle of men deserting our regiments, and quite as many coming over from the enemy's regiments near ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... the risk of committing a crime; a bold woman, my lady, who thought to play her comedy out to the end without fear of detection; a wicked woman, who did not care what misery she might inflict upon the honest heart of the man she betrayed; but a foolish woman, who looked at life as a game of chance, in which the best player was likely to hold the winning cards, forgetting that there is a Providence above the pitiful speculators, and that wicked secrets are never permitted to remain long hidden. If this woman of whom I speak had ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... wholesale merchant of Komorn, Athanasius Brazovics, who made large advances to him every spring for grain which he was to deliver in autumn at the price settled in advance, on board ship. This was a lucrative affair for Krisstyan; but I have often thought since that it was not so much trade as a game of chance, when one sells what does not yet exist. Brazovics advanced large sums to Krisstyan, and as the latter had no real property, security was required of him. My husband went surety for him gladly—was he not a landowner and Krisstyan's friend? Krisstyan ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... off at Gembloux. And, unencumbered by even a sandwich, and too wise to carry a field-glass or a camera, each would depart upon his separate errand, at night returning to a perfectly served dinner and a luxurious bed. For the news-gatherers it was a game of chance. The wisest veterans would cast their nets south and see only harvesters in the fields, the amateurs would lose their way to the north and find themselves facing an army corps or running a gauntlet ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... had been a game of skill, now it was a game of chance; and every morning he wished it was evening, every evening he ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... hostile Indians, who carried them off a distance of three leagues, where they determined to kill them. Some dispute arose about the division of the spoils taken from the Spaniards, whereupon the savages agreed to settle it by a game of chance. While they were thus engaged, Diego Mendez escaped, found his way to his canoe, embarked in it, and returned alone to the harbor after fifteen days' absence. What became of his companions he does not mention, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... a game of chance, they say: The saw's more sad than witty, The public gathers 'round to play, The trust ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey |
