"Gamester" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pledges. He understood and accepted without a sentiment of anger against any one, and perhaps without self-reproach, the situation to which the events of his past life had reduced him. It was that of a desperate gamester, who, though completely ruined, still plays on, alone, against a host of combined adversaries, a desperate game, with no other chance of success than one of those unforeseen strokes that the most consummate talent could never achieve, ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... "Who, Sir? Mr. Garrick! Companion of your Youth! your acknowledged Friend!" "Why, Sir, I love my little David better than any, or all of his Flatterers love him; but surely we ought to sit in a Society like ours, 'unelbow'd by a Gamester, Pimp, or PLAYER." See Supplement to Dr. Johnson's Letters, published by Mrs. Piozzi. The blended hypocrisy and malice of this sally show the man. Johnson knew, at times, how to coax without sincerity as well as to abuse without justice. ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... a gilder that hath his brains perished with quicksilver is not more cold in the liver. The great barriers moulted not more feathers, than he hath shed hairs, by the confession of his doctor. An Irish gamester that will play himself naked, and then wage all downward, at hazard, is not more venturous. So unable to please a woman, that, like a Dutch doublet, all his back is shrunk into his breaches. Shroud you ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... have a notion that gamblers are as happy as many people, being always excited. Women, wine, fame, the table,—even ambition, sate now and then; but every turn of the card and cast of the dice keeps the gamester alive: besides, one can game ten times longer than one can do any thing else. I was very fond of it when young, that is to say, of hazard, for I hate all card games,—even faro. When macco (or whatever they spell it) was introduced, I gave ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... morning the Duke hunts,"—mark that Duke, and two Sons he has. "But my malicious stars have so contrived it, that I am no more a sportsman than a gamester. There are no men of learning in the whole Country; on the contrary, it is a character they despise. A man of quality caught me, the other day, reading a Latin Author; and asked me, with an air of contempt, Whether I was ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... poppenoddles," cries the bullet-headed gentleman. And presently the rustic young gamester is ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... others are easily perceived, but those of oneself are difficult to perceive; a man winnows his neighbour's faults like chaff, but his own fault he hides as a cheat hides the false dice from the gamester. ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... Etheredge and Rochester, played in silence, with lips tight-set and brooding eyes. She had lost, it is true, some L1500 that night; yet, a prodigal gamester, and one who came easily by money, she had been known to lose ten times that sum and yet preserve her smile. The source of her ill-humour was not the game. She played recklessly, her attention wandering; those handsome, brooding eyes of hers were intent upon watching what ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... with me. On our arrival Atkinson played, but finding that he was not fortunate, he very soon left off. As I had followed his game, I also had lost considerably, and he entreated me not to play any more—but I was a gamester it appeared, and I would not pay attention to him, and did not quit the table until I had lost every shilling in my pocket. I left the house in no very good humour, and Atkinson, who had waited ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... shall want a drop of water to cool your tongue hereafter! You may guttle, while righteous Lazarus is lying at your gate. But wait a little! He shall soon lie in Abraham's bosom, while you shall roast on the devil's great gridiron, and be seasoned just to his tooth!—Will the prophets say, "Come here gamester, and teach us the long odds?"—'Tis odds if they do!—Will the martyrs rant, and swear, and shuffle, and cut with you? No! The martyrs are no shufflers! You will be cut so as you little expect: you are a field of tares, and Lucifer is your head farmer. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... fondness for drink and play. But it is a notable instance of the way in which preconceived attributes are gradually attached to certain characters, that there is in reality little or nothing to show that he was either sot or gamester. With one exception, when, in the joy of his heart at his benefactor's recovery, he takes too much wine (and it may be noted that on the same occasion the Catonic Thwackum drinks considerably more), there ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... orchestras floating over the woods, and filling the void darkness with sounds of unseen festivities. In such a scene all are in good-humor—all wear their best looks. Each finds his appropriate amusement. The elegant gamester discovers his cards and his companions; the garrulous find listeners; the gossip retails, and imbibes, from a hundred sources, all the current scandal; vanity finds incense—beauty adoration; the young make love, or dance, or ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... The boat moved on. The slim figure bent and rose again, the blades moved through the water. Well then, the card should be played, the trick of a wily gamester, but my ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... I, "I could maintain a wife, but not a gamester, though you had brought me L1500 a year; no estate is big enough for a ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... receive his guests. The riders were among the trees; coming on more slowly. Now they stopped, and Reid turned to light a fresh cigarette. The flash of the match showed his face white, hat pulled down on his brows, his thin, long gamester's fingers cupped ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... ketlers under the plain frieze of simplicity, thou mayest finely couch the wrought velvet of knavery;" and in his Father Hubburd's Tales, we find "like an old cunning bowler to fetch in a young ketling gamester:" see Middleton's Works, v. 543, 589, ed. Dyce. Keistrels are hawks of ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp
... with the Advantages of Birth, and Fortune, and Power, seems to labour to be remembred, Living and Dead, only for being given up to the basest and most brutal Vices, or at best for his senseless Splendour, by living like an Epicure, or acting the Gamester, or for his great Stables or well-cover'd Table, his well-fill'd Cellar, or to heighten his Character still higher, his Debts and his Drabs. Such Men ruin and corrupt the World, by their Examples; they sneer at Virtue and Sobriety, they make a Jest of loving or serving this poor Island, ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... eight hundred a year could suffice for it all. In a moment when I was considering this, a truly frightful suspicion crossed my mind. Did these mysterious absences, taken in connection with the unbridled luxury that surrounded us, mean that my son-in-law was a gamester? a shameless shuffler of cards, or a debauched bettor on horses? While I was still completely overcome by my own previsions of evil, my daughter put her arm in mine to take me to the top of ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... bye-corner, groupes are to be found playing at cards or throwing dice. They are accused even of frequently staking their wives and children on the hazard of a die. It may easily be conceived that where a man can sell his children into slavery, there can be little remorse, in the breast of a gamester reduced to his last stake, to risk the loss of what the law has sanctioned him to dispose of. Yet we are very gravely assured by some of the reverend missionaries, that "the Chinese are entirely ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... sleeping Fever, and how caused Bradley returns A doctor wanted A doctor's fee at the mines Medicine scarce A hot air bath and a cold water bath Indians engaged to work Indian thimble-rigging An Indian gamester, and the stake he plays for More sickness Mormons move off A drunken dance by Indians An Indian song about the yellow earth and the fleet rifle An ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... so bad an education from his father as did Charles James Fox. The result was that Charles grew up into a most confirmed gamester, losing immense sums at cards and on ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... Sirrah young gamester, your father were a fool To give thee all, and in his waning age Set foot under thy table. Tut! a toy! An old Italian fox is ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... could not fail," answered the gamester, at bay; "it must have been my manner of play. I think that, upon one run of luck, I gave up ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... a shot, there lay a guard, And here beside him lie, man; Now let him feel a gamester's hand, Now in his bosom die, man; Then fill the port, and block the ice, We sit upon the tee, man; Now tak' this in-ring, sharp and neat, And ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... one present has paid the least regard to the unfortunate gamester, for until the past fortnight Don Vicente had been ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... half, boned the turkey, and went on her way quite elated with the brilliancy of her talents in financiering! There's one merit in meanness, if it disgusts the looker-on, it never fails to carry a pleasing sensation to the bosom of the gamester. ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... called—which was daily frequented by nobles, gentry, perfumed gallants, and ladies, from ten to twelve and three to six o'clock, to talk on business, politics, or pleasure. Hither came, to acquire the fashions, make assignations, arrange for the night's gaming, or shun the bailiff, the gallant, the gamester, the ladies whose dresses were better than their manners, the stale knight, the captain out of service. Here Falstaff purchased Bardolph. "I bought him," say's the knight, "at Paul's." The tailors went there to get the fashions of dress, as the gallants ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... precocious. He had the cool eye and steady hand of an experienced gamester, and in a few days he won, of course, all Fred's little earnings. But then he was quite liberal and free with his money. He added to their prison fare such various improvements as his abundance of money enabled him to buy. He had brought with ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Alike a gamester and a wit, At night he was seen with Crockford's crew, At morn with learned dames would sit— So past his time 'twixt ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... them, whether something unusual, funny and alluring might not happen, whether a guest would not astonish with his generosity, whether there would not be some miracle which would overturn the whole life...In these presentiments and hopes was something akin to those emotions which the accustomed gamester experiences when counting his ready money before starting out for his club. Besides that, despite their asexuality, they still had not lost the chiefest instinctive aspiration ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... has not come within the category of the professional gamester, and respectability does not repel him. His dissipated habits are far from exceptional, and his father's good name still continues to throw its aegis over him. Under it he is eligible to Californian society of the most select kind, and has ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... splendid physique, a man of blood and passion, he was not only a model of domestic virtue, but he avoided the lewd talk to which many prominent men are addicted. A fine sportsman and rider, a splendid shot, he was nothing of the racer or gamester. After all, he was more of a model than a warning." Among his faults, the one which exaggerated all the others, was his use of ardent liquors. This habit grew upon him, especially after the failure of the war. A proud, imperious nature, accustomed to great labors and great ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... or passage—you that have been student at post and pair, saint and loadam —you that have spent all your quarter's revenues in riding post one night in Christmas, bear with the weak memory of a gamester. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... simple, honest, country gentlemen will be easier prey for your gamester's snares than are the men you meet at public resorts. And you mean to swindle and fleece them," ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... "He's a great gamester and thinks that he's a master of chance," said Talbot, "but as a matter of fact he always loses. See how fast his pile of money is diminishing. It will soon be gone, but he will find another ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... orator, but, with the recklessness of a gamester, he threw his life away. He said profound and beautiful things, but he lacked application. He was uneven, disproportioned, saying ordinary things on great occasions, and now and then, without the slightest provocation, uttering the sublimest and ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... principal companion in arms, or rather his camp-favorite, Charles de Gontaut, Baron de Biron, whom he had made admiral, duke, and marshal of France, was, all the while continuing to serve him in the field, becoming day by day a determined conspirator against him. He had begun by being a reckless gamester; and in that way he lost fifteen hundred thousand crowns, about six millions (of francs) of our day. "I don't know," said he, "whether I shall die on the scaffold or not; but I will never come to the poorhouse." He added, "When peace is concluded, the king's love-affairs, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... next night he was to play Dawson, an important part in Moore's tragedy of "The Gamester." He had bought a new dress to wear on this night, and made abundant preparation to do himself honor. He therefore invited a lady whom he knew to visit the theater, and witness his triumph. But at the instant of his appearance on the stage, the audience, remembering ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... grim enough, must ever be sorrowfully patent to such erring and passionate spirits. The third of Heathcliff's victims then, or rather the first, was Hindley Earnshaw. But if Hindley had not already been a gamester and a drunkard, a violent and soulless man, Heathcliff could have gained no power over him. Hindley welcomed Heathcliff, as Faustus the Devil, because he could gratify his evil desires; because, in his presence, there was no need to remember shame, nor high purposes, nor forsaken ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... are a poor gamester. When you squeezed out the three small groceries here in Berkeley by virtue of your superior combination, you swelled out your chest, talked about efficiency and enterprise, and sent your wife to Europe on the profits you had ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... receive anything from another without returning him an equivalent therefor. The gamester who wins the money of another is dishonest. There should be no such thing as bets and gaming among Masons: for no honest man should desire that for nothing which belongs to another. The merchant who sells an inferior article for a sound price, the speculator who makes the distresses ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Lee in place with one of his wings while he thrust the other behind Lee's left, between the Confederate army and Richmond. But he had started a game at which two could play and had challenged a more deft and daring gamester than himself. Early divining his purpose, Lee, leaving a small part of his force to engage Hooker's left, with the rest vigorously assumed the counter-offensive, sending Jackson, as usual, around Hooker's extreme right. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... people really desired peace, and that he Clay and Holcombe, although not regularly authorized by the Rebel government, still could speak for and influence the Southern people. While in reality the whole conference was nothing on the part of Sanders & Co., but the last act of a desperate political gamester, who ventured his all upon one last throw of dice, to win or lose it all. If Sanders, Holcombe, Clay and others, could have made the people of the North believe the South really desired peace, and that the only obstacle in the way was the ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... have imparted more exquisite delight to a collector of autographs. Were his long views, his complicated objects, and doubtful results to be put in competition a moment with so decided, so simple, and so certain a benefit? certainly not, by a gamester. He rose from the table, and with strange elation wrote ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... with his cousins and their revered pastor. His grandfather loved the game, and had over from Europe one of the very few tables which existed in his Majesty's province of Virginia. Nor, though Mr. Will could beat him at the commencement, could he get undue odds out of the young gamester. After their first bet, Harry was on his guard with Mr. Will, and cousin William owned, not without respect, that the American was his match in most things, and his better in many. But though Harry played so ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bravely, and would kick a rogue through the world; he believes in and loves his friends; and he plays charmingly with his children. But, deprive him of the good genius of his life, and Captain Booth would very speedily have sunk into the ruin and despair of any other profligate young gamester about the Town; and for this his adoration the culprit wins our forgiveness, even as Amelia not only forgave but forgot, when by virtue of her own unconscious goodness the Captain retrieved himself, at last, from the folly of his ways. Undoubtedly ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... lost Atene I take the dice and cast them, not knowing how they shall fall. Not knowing how they shall fall, for good or ill I cast," and she made a wild motion as of some desperate gamester throwing his ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... that she might be presented to the king; and, truth to tell, they would not have had to ask her twice had she been governed only by her own inclination. For she was mad to go,—that audacious spirit of adventure still working very strong in her,—and she, like a winning gamester, must for ever be playing for higher and higher stakes. But we, who had heard enough of his excellent but lawless Majesty's court to fear the fate of any impulsive, beauteous young woman that came within his sway, were quite against this. Even Don Sanchez, who was no innocent, did persuade ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... cockfights and horse races on holidays and Sundays. They are also greatly addicted to the sport of gambling. The Bontoc Igorot has none of the common pastimes or games of chance. This fact is remarkable, because the modern Malayan is such a gamester. ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... shot at a frog; B was a Butcher, who had a great dog; C was a Captain, all covered with lace; D was a Drunkard, and had a red face; E was an Esquire, with pride on his brow; F was a Farmer, and followed the plow; G was a Gamester, who had but ill luck; H was a Hunter, who hunted a buck; I was an Innkeeper, who loved to bouse; J was a Joiner, who built up a house; K was a King, so mighty and grand; L was a Lady, who had a white hand; M was a Miser, and hoarded his gold; N was a Nobleman, gallant ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... and in the retiring rooms of mercantile establishments. Not only are cards, dice, and dominos common, but sticks, straws, brass rings, etc., are thrown in heaps upon the table, and the fate of the gamester hangs literally upon ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... peered covertly at the gamester. He did not seem to be enjoying his luck. His mouth was a little to a side; one nostril nearly shut, and the other much inflated. The black dog was on his back, as people say, in terrifying nursery metaphor; and he breathed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... did not perceive that anything extraordinary was the matter. What happened to Garrick on that occasion has happened to others of his profession. And our ears do not catch much of what is uttered on the stage. Young, the actor, used to relate that on one occasion, when playing the hero of "The Gamester" to the Mrs. Beverley of Sarah Siddons, he was so overcome by the passion of her acting as to be quite unable to proceed with his part. There was a long pause, during which the prompter several times repeated the words which Beverley should speak. Then "Mrs. Siddons coming up to her fellow-actor, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... openly. Edward Pendleton's resort, a luxurious establishment down town, was regarded as quite a la mode, and I have heard it said that he had able assistance from social ranks. I have often wondered why a man who indulged in this sport was called a gambler, as the term "gamester," used many years ago, seems decidedly more appropriate. I own two volumes of a very old book, published in the eighteenth century, entitled "The Gamesters," in which the heroes are professional gamblers. I have seen Mrs. Pendleton's costly equipage, drawn by horses with brilliant trappings ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... the first gamester, in hot haste. "I'll say it three times. I'll whistle it. Are you deaf? You light-fingered gent! ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... contentment is repentance), but knowing the circle of all courses, of all intents, of all things, to have but one centre or period, without all distraction, he hasteth thither and ends there, as his true and natural element. He doth not contemn Fortune, but not confess her. He is no gamester of the world (which only complain and praise her), but being only sensible of the honesty of actions, contemns a particular profit as the excrement of scum. Unto the society of men he is a sun, whose clearness directs their steps in a regular motion. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... on vice or folly Joy to see their quarry fly: There the gamester light and jolly, There the ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... Call him gamester, liar, cheat—what you will! He had his faults, which dogged him down to poverty and ruin; but deeds are proof of the inner man. And look you that judge Pierre Radisson whether your own deeds ring as ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... statesmen and wits of the age—who fell victims to the prevailing fascination of the gaming-table. What destroyed Charles James Fox, as a statesman? Gambling! What brought the brilliant Sheridan to the grave? Intoxication, brought on by the ill-starred luck of the ruined gamester? "Holland-house!" immortalized as the resort of genius, as well as for its orgies of dissipation, is not less renowned to infamy, as having been the ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... destructive to toys and clothes, tyrannical to brothers and sister, but very social, and a great favorite with other children. Imitation was a prevailing trait." The first play she ever saw was "Coriolanus," with Macready in the leading part; her second play was "The Gamester." She became noted in her school for her skill in reading aloud. Her competitors grumbled: "No wonder she can read; she goes to the theatre!" Until then she had been shy and reserved, not to say stupid, about reading aloud in school, afraid of the sound of her own voice, and unwilling to trust ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... that labouring sigh, The peevish offspring of a sickly hour! Nor meanly thus complain of Fortune's power, When the blind Gamester ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the cliff of Meru. Standing by the side of the ruler of the Sindhus and headed by Aswatthaman, were, O king, thy thirty sons, resembling the very gods. There also on Jayadratha's flank, were those mighty car-warriors, viz., the ruler of Gandhara, i.e., the gamester (Sakuni), and Salya, and Bhurisrava. Then commenced, the battle, fierce, and making the hairs stand on their ends, between thy warriors and those of the foe. And both sides fought, making death itself ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... indifferent. The bust which gives us the most lively notion of him shows us a great, vivid, intellectual face, full of fiery energy and calm resource, the face of a thinker and a fighter in one. A scholar, an adventurer, perhaps a Cabalist, a busy stirrer in politics, a gamester, one 'born for the fairer sex,' as he tells us, and born also to be a vagabond; this man, who is remembered now for his written account of his own life, was that rarest kind of autobiographer, one who did not live to ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... prelude to the beneficent functions of peace. The conflict was not of our seeking. Be the consequences what they may, the Sikhs will have themselves to blame, should it so happen, for the illustration of the maxim, that "when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... head of mine, lord, how it swims! And such a pain in all my limbs!" "Dear madam, try to take a nap"— But now they hear a footman's rap: "Go, run, and light the ladies up: It must be one before we sup." The table, cards, and counters, set, And all the gamester ladies met, Her spleen and fits recover'd quite, Our madam can sit up all night; "Whoever comes, I'm not within." Quadrille's the word, and so begin. How can the Muse her aid impart, Unskill'd in all the terms of art? Or in harmonious numbers put The deal, the shuffle, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Why let him find me out a villain, settled in possession of a fair estate, and full fruition of my love, I'll bear the railings of a losing gamester. But should he find me out before! 'Tis dangerous to delay. Let me think. Should my lord proceed to treat openly of my marriage with Cynthia, all must be discovered, and Mellefont can be no longer blinded. It must not be; nay, should my lady know it—ay, then were fine work indeed! ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... of the trees, he saw them. An hour before he had hated Hagar and had wished that they were in some remote spot alone with pistols in their hands. Now he could watch the two together without anger, almost without bitterness. He had lost in the game, and he was so much the true gamester that he could take his defeat when he knew it was defeat quietly. Yet the new defeat was even harder on him than the old. All through the years since he had seen her there had been the vague conviction, under all his ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... yield. As with the greater dead he dares not strive, He would not match his verse with those who live: Let him retire, betwixt two ages cast, The first of this, and hindmost of the last. A losing gamester, let him sneak away; He bears no ready money from the play. The fate, which governs poets, thought it fit He should not raise his fortunes by his wit. The clergy thrive, and the litigious bar; Dull heroes fatten with the spoils of war: All southern vices, heaven be praised, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... said Mr. Clark, "I do not see but you and I have something ahead of us. I am afraid we shall be of very little help, Sandy. Why, one ought to be an expert to catch such a gamester as a coyote!" ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... "No gamester," said L'Isle, "is more a slave to the dice. That at this time a soldier should be so little 'lost in the world's debate' as to be eager, above all things, to ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... my complaints," returned the valet: "next to your being a gamester, what I most deprecate is, your military profession, and the fame which you have acquired ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... gamester exclaimed, turning on him wrathfully. "Is there any man whom the loss of two thousand crowns would ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... the Game of Ombre is added, which is founded upon the description of the game in a little book—"The Court Gamester"— which instructed card-players in the reigns of the first Georges. In the "Rape of the Lock" there is a game of ombre played through to the last trick. That note will enable any reader to follow Belinda's ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... himself, though, for his sister's sake, it was unsafe to trust Mr. Edmonstone, with whom what was not an absolute secret was not a secret at all. 'My uncle knows that a thirty pound cheque of his, in your name, was paid by you to a notorious gamester.' ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was severe, why was he not so to every one? If he was merciful, why was he not merciful to his own relations? But I say nothing of the rest. He restored Licinius Lenticula, a man who had been condemned for gambling, and who was a fellow-gamester of his own. As if he could not play with a condemned man; but in reality, in order to pay by a straining of the law in his favour, what he had lost by the dice. What reason did you allege to the Roman people why ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... defect is nearer allied to moderation than excess: the other is a much more ruffling gamester; for whosoever shall take upon him to choose and alter, usurps the authority of judging, and should look well about him, and make it his business to discern clearly the defect of what he would abolish, and the virtue of what he is about ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... is that the lady is not a gamester, has never played before, and is said to have declared that she shall never play again. It is certain that, with such a face, figure, and voice as hers, she need never seek for wealth at the gambling-table. Mademoiselle Klosking is now in negotiation with all the principal cities of the Continent. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... I maintain, that an individual of any society, who practises what is allowed, is not a dishonest man.' BOSWELL. 'So then, Sir, you do not think ill of a man who wins perhaps forty thousand pounds in a winter?' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsocial man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good. Trade gives employment to numbers, and ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... stake my head on it! I have not a clod's perception, I have not a spark of sense to distinguish me from a flat-headed Lapp, if she refuses:—call me a mountebank who has gained his position by clever tumbling; a lucky gamester; whatever plays blind ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... answered, in his thin, incisive voice. 'You mentioned the fact before. On the other hand, you have taken six to my knowledge, M. de Berault. You have lived the life of a bully, a common bravo, a gamester. You, a man of family! For shame! Do you wonder that it has brought you to this! Yet on that one point I am willing to hear more,' ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... might not be so difficult, if they would be content with those vices and follies only which nature has entitled them to. I am not in the least provoked at the sight of a lawyer, a pickpocket, a colonel, a fool, a lord, a gamester, a politician, a whoremonger, a physician, an evidence, a suborner, an attorney, a traitor, or the like; this is all according to the due course of things: but when I behold a lump of deformity and diseases, both in body and mind, smitten with pride, it immediately ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... his readiness in the pinch of emergency that he knew where to apply for what he needed, for I was at that time a most inveterate gamester, and loved to stake my all, which for the most part was truly little enough, upon the toss of a die; and for my greater ease in this exercise, I ever carried the bones with me in a little inner pocket at my breast. Now, then, for Dante's pleasure, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... sorely needed. His impecuniosity was easily explained. Instead of proceeding at once to sell his second pony, he turned his attention first to gambling, and in less than an hour his last dollar had gone. Then, with the gamester's desperation, he had put up his second pony as a final stake, with the result that he lost his money and his stock in trade as well. He took the situation philosophically and stoically, but when he found it impossible in ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... other like the Northern Lights; public commotions, and those in the bosom of the individual; the long calenture to which the Lover is subject; the blast, like the blast of the desart, which sweeps perennially through a frightful solitude of its own making in the mind of the Gamester; the slowly quickening but ever quickening descent of appetite down which the Miser is propelled; the agony and cleaving oppression of grief; the ghost-like hauntings of shame; the incubus of revenge; ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... gathered, calm, determined, so desperate to have done with this thing, to at once and forever gain his own and master fate, that his stillness was that of deepest waters, his cool equanimity that of the gamester who knows how will fall the loaded dice. Dressed with his accustomed care, very pale, composed and quiet, he faced her whose spirit yet lingered in a far city, who in the dreamy exaltation of this midnight hour was ever half Audrey of the garden, half ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... A Gamester, after he had bene often times bitten by Cheators, and after much losse, grew very suspitious in his play, so that he would not suffer any of the sitters by to be priuy to his game, for this the Cheators deuised a new shift, that a woman should sit close by him, and by the swift and ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... Doolittle has also told me that monsieur is reckless, that he has the temperament of the gamester, that he is bored; in a word, that he would, as the Americans say, 'take a chance.' Is he wrong in ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... no part angel but her form,'twas not expected she should want her sex's frailties. Now he could consider how he had won her, how by importunity and opportunity she had at last yielded to him, and therefore might to some new gamester, when he was not by to keep her heart in continual play: then it was that all the despair of jealous love, the throbs and piercing of a violent passion seized his timorous and tender heart, he fancied her already in some new lover's arms, and ran over all these soft enjoyments he had with ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... the very same," said the major-domo, "a man who as far exceeds all others in generosity as a gamester who has just won a fortune. But let me return to the expedition; about how many men composed ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... Hickman, and yet at the same time let the lively Strokes that fall from her Pen have their full force against the abused worthy Man. Yet Miss Howe herself owns, as early as the second Volume, that Mr. Hickman is humane, benevolent, generous,—No Fox-hunter—No Gamester—That he is sober, modest, and virtuous; and has Qualities that Mothers would be fond of in a Husband for their Daughters; and for which, perhaps, their Daughters would be the happier, could they judge as well for ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... time a most profitable article of commerce. All this took place in a poor and very neglected country. England for a long time knew little of what as going on in the north; perhaps her eyes were then riveted, with more than the anxiety of a gamester's, upon the great stakes for which she was contending on the red battle-fields of Europe. This much she knew, that Scotland could produce in time of need—ay, and did produce—levies of men, whose high heroic courage, steady discipline, and daring intrepidity, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... himself one of the most inveterate gamblers; he wrote this work to convince himself of this folly. But in spite of all his solemn vows, the prayers of his friends, and his own book perpetually quoted before his face, he was a great gamester to his last hour! The same circumstance happened to Sir John Denham, who also published a tract against gaming, and to the last remained a gamester. They had not the good sense of old Montaigne, who gives the reason ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... steeds; and last, the royal robes: For, cast by cast, the dice against him fell, Bewitched by Kali; and, cast after cast, The passion of the dice kept hold on him, Until not one of all his faithfullest Could stay the madman's hand and gamester's heart Of who was named "Subduer of his Foes." The townsmen gathered with the ministers: Into that palace gate they thronged (my King!) To see their lord, if so they might abate This sickness of his soul. The charioteer, Forth ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... tossing, waving, unbroken. Did I not know the bearskins of the Guard? And did I not also know, did not my soldier's instinct tell me, that it was the last reserve of France; that the Emperor, like a desperate gamester, was staking all upon his last card? Up they went and up—grand, solid, unbreakable, scourged with musketry, riddled with grape, flowing onward in a black, heavy tide, which lapped over the British batteries. With my glass I could see the English gunners throw themselves ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... most men, life offers a problem to be solved by standards that are eternally right; to others life is a game, the object is to win, and the rules may be manipulated to one's own advantage. Bacon's moral philosophy was that of the gamester; his leading motive was self-interest; so when he wrote of love or friendship or any other noble sentiment he was dealing with matters of which he had no knowledge. The best he could offer was a "counsel of prudence," and many will sympathize with John Wesley, who declared that worldly prudence ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... if Romeo and Juliet, the Clandestine Marriage, the West Indian, the Gamester, Every one has his fault, and other dramatic works of this order, fail to afford attractions equal to Mother Goose, Cinderilla, the Forty thieves, an elephant, or a band of Indians, can it be a subject of surprise if the managers furnish those bills of fare, which ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... had been accustomed from his youth to dissipation and applause. Caligula was pleased with his skill in driving a chariot; Claudius loved him because he was a great gamester; and he gained the favour of Nero by wishing him to sing publicly in the theatre. Upon his arrival at Rome, he entered the city, not as a place he came to govern with justice, but as a town that was become his own by ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... when I point the pen, Brand the bold front of shameless guilty men; Dash the proud gamester in his gilded car; Bare the mean heart that lurks beneath a star; Can there be wanting to defend her cause, Lights of the Church, or guardians of the laws? 110 Could pension'd Boileau lash, in honest strain, Flatterers and bigots even in Louis' ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... than Christian warfare thus to throw away their lives rather than to retreat and wait for God's time to come again. To stake all on one throw, which if lost loses a whole people, seems to me the act of a gamester. I trust that, should the time ever come, as it is too much to be feared it will ere long, that the Danes invade my brother's kingdom of Wessex, I shall not be found wanting in courage; but assuredly when defeated in battle I would not throw away my life, for that ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... him at piquet, he said, and refused him the chance of an honorable gamester to win back some part of his losses. His antagonist had left the Palace like a sneak, and he was riding round the city to find him, and horsewhip him if he would not fight ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... still in Expectation. Seem always about to give, but never part with a Shilling: For in this Manner doth a barren Soil often deceive its Owner. Thus, that he may not be a Loser, the Gamester pushes on his ill Luck, and one flattering Throw makes him eager to have the Box again ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... false rings for to sell, [17] When a mob, he has bit his cole he will tell; The fourteenth a gamester, if he sees the cull sweet [18] He presently drops down a cog in the street; [19] The fifteenth a prancer, whose courage is small, [20] If they catch him horse-coursing, he's nooz'd once for all. ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... passion for hazard, which exists, I am inclined to think, in a greater or less degree in every human breast, were here employed to beguile the young and unsuspecting mind into indulgence. The establishment into which I had fallen, seemed to presuppose an acquaintance, already formed, of the gamester with his fascinating vice. It was evidently no place to seduce the uninitiate. The passion must have been already awakened—the guardianship of the good angel lulled into indifference or slumber—before the young mind could be ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... repays the gamester's nightly toil, Can hell itself more hideous woes impart? Can glitt'ring heaps of ill-begotten spoil, Appease the cravings of his callous heart? For this alone he severs every tie, For this he marks unmov'd ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... a man's will, and not a college of heralds, makes him what he is," said Ferne. "I have known churls in honorable houses and true knights in the common camp. And I submit not my destinies to that gamester Luck: as I deserve and as God wills, ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... clear, At last He woke to find his foolish dreaming past, Beheld his best-of-life the easy prey Of quacks and scamps, and all the vile array That line the way, From thieving statesman down to petty knave; Yea, saw himself, for all his bragging brave, A gamester's catspaw and a banker's slave. Then, worn and gray, and sick with deep unrest, He fled away into ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... will take his sandal and go away; and if thou say, 'I am not content,' he will take his sandal and beat thee therewith over the face and neck." So the cobbler owned himself worsted. Then came forward the gamester and said, "O Shaykh, I played at forfeits with a man to-day and beat him and quoth I to hime, 'If thou drink the sea I will give thee all my wealth; and if not I will take all that is thine.'" Replied the Chief, "An he will ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... heavily this evening he saw at once. The dangerous and impalpable flush of the gamester was on her face, and behind it burned a glow and radiance. She looked as if, having defeated men by the coolness of her wits and the favor of luck, she had begun to think that she could now outguess the world. Two men trailed behind her, stirring uneasily about when she paused ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... this cannot be meant as a parting blowis not of weight and importance sufficient; he will probably let us win this hand also, as sharpers manage a raw gamester.Sir Arthur, I hope you believe I would ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... apprehended was gradually involving his circumstances by bad management. JOHNSON. 'Wasting a fortune is evaporation by a thousand imperceptible means. If it were a stream, they'd stop it. You must speak to him. It is really miserable. Were he a gamester, it could be said he had hopes of winning. Were he a bankrupt in trade, he might have grown rich; but he has neither spirit to spend nor resolution to spare. He does not spend fast enough to have pleasure from ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... the town an hour's walk lives the mother of Basilio and Crispin. The wife of a heartless man, she struggles to live for her sons, while her husband is a vagrant gamester with whom her interviews are rare but always painful. He has gradually stripped her of her few jewels to pay the cost of his vices, and when the suffering Sisa no longer had anything that he might take to satisfy his whims, he had begun ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... is an unworthy—reckless—unprincipled young man," exclaimed the count, fixing a stern, searching gaze upon Giulia's countenance, as if with the iron of his words he would probe the depths of her soul. "He is a confirmed gamester—overwhelmed with debts—and has tarnished, by his profligacy, the proud name that he bears. Even the friendship which existed for many, many years between his deceased father and myself, shall no longer induce ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... troth-plight wife of Valere, "the gamester." She gives him a picture, and enjoins him not to part with it on pain of forfeiting her hand. However, he loses it in play, and Angelica in disguise is the winner of it. After much tribulation, Valere is cured of his vice, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... have no inkling, was the late Colonel Beauvais? For my part, I wish it was the late Beauvais in the sense in which we refer to the departed ones. But let us give him his true name—Prince Konrad, the last of the Walmodens, a cashiered gamester." ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... a certain termagant and scold was married to a gamester, replied, "that cards and brimstone ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... at the bar of justice, while the evidences that ensure condemnation are thickening round them, with the persuasion of acquittal or escape. Hope is thus alike the sublime inspirer or the arch corrupter; it is the foe of terror, the defier of consequences, the buoyant gamester which at every loss doubles the stakes, with a firm hand rattles the dice, and, invoking ruin, cries within itself, "How shall I expend ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... ridiculed in the scene betwixt Prince Prettyman and Tom Thimble in the Rehearsal; the facetious Mr Bibber being the original of the latter personage. The character of Trice, at least his whimsical humour of drinking, playing at dice by himself, and quarrelling as if engaged with a successful gamester, is imitated from the character of Carlo, in Jonson's "Every Man out of his Humour," who drinks with a supposed companion, quarrels about the pledge, and tosses about the cups and flasks in the imaginary brawl. We have heard similar frolics related ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... was no less successful on that account, and his sister, who did not approve at all of this scandalous scene, had the good sense to condemn her most ridiculous gamester, and to make excuses for him to my brother ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... I was a Beast, a very Villain! That stak'd a wretched Fortune to all my Joys of Life, And like a prodigal Gamester lost ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn |
