"Lottery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Scythrop, the effect is certainly this, that one is pretty nearly as good as another, as far as any judgment can be formed of them before marriage. It is only after marriage that they show their true qualities, as I know by bitter experience. Marriage is, therefore, a lottery, and the less choice and selection a man bestows on his ticket the better; for, if he has incurred considerable pains and expense to obtain a lucky number, and his lucky number proves a blank, he experiences not a simple, but a complicated disappointment; the loss of labour and money ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... particular. St. Jerome held that women were naturally weaker, physically and morally, than men.[227] The same saint proves that all evils spring from women[228]; and in another passage he opines that marriage is indeed a lottery and the vices of women are too great to make it worth while.[229] "The sex is practiced in deceiving," observes St. Maximus.[230] St. Augustine disputes subtly whether woman is the image of God as well as man. He says no, and proves it thus[231]: The Apostle commands that a man should ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... are landed unopened and packed upon the beach in squares of a certain dimension. When the fishing is over for the season, these square lots of pearl oysters are put up to auction, and sold to the highest bidder, of course 'contents unknown;' so that it becomes a species of lottery; the purchaser may not find a single pearl in his lot, or he may find two or three, which will realize twenty times the price which he has ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... "Shall I gain if I begin to learn Esperanto?" The true answer certainly is "Yes"; but we must add that one can also lose money through Esperanto. We have just received a notice—printed in Esperanto—of a foreign lottery. The paper is an excellent exercise for a pupil; but we do not trust in lotteries, and hope that our readers will wait till people send notices here of better commercial undertakings than lotteries, before entering into relations with foreigners. ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 1 • Various
... the truth, I thought it was some new-fangled lottery scheme, and I have still to learn ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... unhappy, quite unworthy of all the sacrifice that had been made for him. "Nobody should meddle with fate," thought Tasso, who knew his grandfather had died in San Bonifazio because he had driven himself mad over the dream-book trying to get lucky numbers for the lottery and become a ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the contrary. I have been an exception to the rule that 'The course of true love never did run smooth.' Nothing could run more smooth than mine. I was in love. I proposed. I was accepted. No crossings before. No bickerings after. I drew a prize in the lottery ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... of the miserable sort that dares not mingle with another's. But if he has been more happily gifted he will decide that the magnificent adventure is worth plunging into; the ineradicable and fine gambling instinct in him will urge him to take, at the first chance, a ticket in the only lottery permitted by the British Government. Because, after all, the mutual sense of ownership felt by the normal husband and the normal wife is something unique, something the like of which cannot be obtained without marriage. I saw ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... be there, or anyone else. As they say of marriage, it's a lottery. They might have roulette, or a spiritual seance, or ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... mind, and to render it slow to seize upon salient points of detail. And, even after every precaution has been taken, weather possibilities remain to be reckoned with, so that success is rather a lottery. ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... whether you can go as Cardinal Mazarin, or the Duke of Ripperda, Harry. I know exactly what you all are now thinking of; whether you will draw the prize in the forthcoming lottery, and get exactly the epoch and the character which suit you. Is it not so, Lord Montacute? Would not you like to practise a little with your crusados at the Queen's ball before you go to the ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... suitable term. Cows lowing, sheep bleating, pigs grunting, horses neighing, men shouting, women screaming, fiddlers playing, pipes squeeling, youngsters, dancing, hammering up of standings and tents, thumping of restive or lazy animals, the show-man's drum, the lottery-man's speech, the ballad-singer's squall, all come upon us; and lastly, the unheeded sweep of the death-bell, as it tells with sullen tongues that some poor mortal has for ever departed from the cares and amusements, the trade and traffic, of this ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Genius. Consultation, The. Copy of An Intercepted Despatch. Corn and Catholics. Corrected Report of Some Late Speeches, A. Correspondence between a Lady and Gentleman. Corruption, an Epistle. Cotton and Corn. Country Dance and Quadrille. Crystal-Hunters, The. Cupid and Psyche. Cupid Armed. Cupid's Lottery. Curious Fact, A. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... both continents. Treasures of great value have also been occasionally drawn from these monumental deposits, and have stimulated, speculators to repeated excavations with the hope of similar good-fortune. It was a lottery like that of searching after mines, but where the chances have proved still more ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... cast down. It was well, if it were but on this account, that Tuthill is come home. N.B.—If my little thing don't succeed, I shall easily survive, having, as it were, compared to H.'s venture, but a sixteenth in the lottery. Mary and I are to sit next the orchestra in the pit, next the tweedle-dees. She remembers you. You are more to us than five ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... the eternal's breast In that dim past his Love is bending o'er Healing all shattered hopes and failure sore: Since he had bravely looked on death and pain For what he chose to worship and adore Cast boldly down his life for loss or gain In the eternal lottery: ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... of original thought and soundness of practical judgment, it would be a vain attempt to give an adequate idea]. Surely no one ever before was so fortunate, as, after such a loss as mine, to draw another prize in the lottery of life [—another companion, stimulator, adviser, and instructor of the rarest quality]. Whoever, either now or hereafter, may think of me and of the work I have done, must never forget that it is the product ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... up and slowly turned the pages. It always held the suggestion of a lottery—this dipping into another man's engagements and drawing a prize or a blank. It was a sensation that even ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... "are shackles on the feet of mankind. I have observed you looking persistently at that clock. Its face is that of a tyrant, its numbers are false as those on a lottery ticket; its hands are those of a bunco steerer, who makes an appointment with you to your ruin. Let me entreat you to throw off its humiliating bonds and to cease to order your affairs by that insensate monitor of ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... leathery-lunged men bought and sold the shares of an absolutely fictitious business undertaking which, every five minutes, paid a dividend of ten per cent, and cancelled a certain proportion of its shares by means of a lottery wheel. ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... I'm a Dutchman there will be, after your new book is published. Of course, that is one of the things no fellow can find out. If he could, publishing would be less of a lottery than it is. A book is sometimes a success by the merest fluke; at other times, in spite of everything, a good book is a deplorable failure. I think yours will go; anyhow, I am willing to bet on it up to a certain amount, and if it does go, I want ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... every feature of their bodily appearance. Intuitively the three knew that one of them was to be chosen for a first investigation by the Martian scientists, and that that one would have not even the slender hope of escape open to the other two. A strange lottery of life ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... Filson was scalped by the Indians in the neighborhood of the Big Miami, before a settler had yet been enticed to Losantiville. But the survivors knew how to "boom" a town; lots were given away by lottery to intending actual settlers; and in a few months Symmes was able to write that "It ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... the authors of romances, who reject the warnings of their friends or parents, rather than those who listen to them in such matters. Two inexperienced persons, ignorant of the world and of one another, how can they be said to choose?—they draw lots, whence also the saying, 'marriage is a lottery.' Then he would describe their way of life after marriage; how they monopolize one another's affections to the exclusion of friends and relations: how they pass their days in unmeaning fondness or trivial conversation; how the inferior ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... In the lottery of life there are more prizes drawn than blanks, and to one misfortune there are fifty advantages. Despondency is the most unprofitable feeling a man can indulge ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... the battle, I can say nothing to them but this, that they are a sort of ladies that are to be prayed for among the rest of distempered people, and to me they look like people that venture their whole estates in a lottery where there is a hundred thousand blanks ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... their surviving comrades; but in the other regiments, where no alarm had been sounded, the soldiers took the chances of the epidemic with the same steady courage they would have faced the bullets of the enemy, in the lottery of battle; escaping an attack for the most part altogether, or if seized, recovering from it in a large proportion. From this picture let us take a lesson, in case the impending epidemic should ever come to spread in the populous towns of England, and ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... selected by the parents, couples forced to marry one another by circumstances of one kind or another; and he assures me that if marriages were made by putting all the men's names into one sack and the women's names into another, and having them taken out by a blindfolded child like lottery numbers, there would be just as high a percentage of happy marriages as we have here in England. He said Cupid was nothing but the blindfolded child: pretty idea that, I think! I shall have as good a chance with Patsy as with anyone else. Mind: I'm not bigoted about it. I'm ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... be divided into several classes, all imitations of the English adult literature then in vogue. The alphabets and primers, such as the "Little Lottery Book," "Christmas Box," and "Tom Thumb's Play-thing," are outside the limits of the present subject, since they were written primarily to instruct; and while it is often difficult to draw the line where amusement begins and instruction sinks to the background, the title-pages can usually ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... which involves elaborate preparation and some difficulty in keeping up supplies for the camp and the porters. It is the most promising place, however, for black-maned lion and elephant, and on account of these two capital prizes in the lottery of big game hunting occasional parties are willing to venture the time and expense necessary to reach ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... fantasticating over Scripture and its expositors, and diverting their every expression from its literal, honest, sane meaning. And indeed, are some of the high efforts of mediaeval genius, the calculations of Joachim and the Eternal Gospel, any better than the Book of Dreams and the Key to the Lottery? Most odious, perhaps, in this theology triumphant (sickening enough, in good sooth, even in the timid official theology of later days), is the loss of all sense of what's what, of fitness and decency, which interprets allegorically ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... lustres of the drawing-room were lighted for the same reason as the lamps in the glittering retail stores of Broadway; and the brilliant effect of the taste of the young ladies was intended much like the nightly lustre of the lottery- offices, to tempt adventurers to try their chances. >From this premeditated scheme of conquest we ought, in justice, however, to except Maria herself, who, from constitutional gayety and thoughtlessness, seldom planned for the morrow; and who, perhaps, from her association with Charlotte, ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... variants, a long list of classical names which have and have not been francises, with reasons for and against; 'what I must wear at Dresden'; headings without anything to follow, such as: 'Reflexions on respiration, on the true cause of youth—the crows'; a new method of winning the lottery at Rome; recipes, among which is a long printed list of perfumes sold at Spa; a newspaper cutting, dated Prague, 25th October 1790, on the thirty-seventh balloon ascent of Blanchard; thanks to some 'noble donor' for the gift ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... likely so to run that they may obtain this veritable prize of our high calling? Setting aside such lucky numbers, drawn as it were in the lottery of immortality, which I have referred to casually above, and setting aside also the chances and changes from which even immortality is not exempt, who on the whole are most likely to live anew in the affectionate thoughts of those who never so much ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... fail entirely. They have no license to be fat, flabby double-chinned, flat-footed. It is not seemly, and of course you cannot tell how any of them may turn out. They are all pretty at sixteen. That is what makes marriage such a lottery." ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... drove Mrs. Berry from the rosy to the autumnal view of matrimony, generally heralded by the announcement that it is a lottery. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... this time has a curious history, and illustrates the lottery of book publishing. Mrs. Markham's [Footnote: This lady's real name was Mrs. Penrose.] "History of England" was first published by Constable, but it fell still-born from the press. Mr. Murray, discerning the merit of the work in 1824, bought the remainder of 333 copies ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... politics, Coroner Bullfast rose by it. A judicious distribution of money and liquors, a notoriety for street fights, a singular talent for profanity, and an unstinted adulation of the basest classes of the community, won for him, in succession, some of the best prizes of the Municipal lottery. He has his small, sunken eyes now fixed on one of the highest offices of the State; and it will take a strong combination to defeat a candidate backed by such powerful agencies ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Long Island City. And he'd got a good job at last, and he sent for her to come on and be married to him. And when she landed 'twas the cousin that met her. Mike had drawn a five-thousand-dollar prize in the Mexican lottery a week afore, and hadn't ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sense the United States Government conducted a vast lottery, with land as stakes, and hundreds of thousands of men and women gambling their time and strength and hope on ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... class have been able to rise out of their class and become owners of capital. They were enabled to do this because an undeveloped country with an expanding frontier gave equality of opportunity to all. In the almost lottery-like scramble for the ownership of vast unowned natural resources, and in the exploitation of which there was little or no competition of capital, (the capital itself rising out of the exploitation), the capable, intelligent member of the working class found a field in which to use ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... a day from trap to trap is a hard tramp on snowshoes when the wind sweeps down from the Arctic and the silence can be felt. The whole thing is a Louisiana lottery. The very next trap may hold a silver-fox that spells kudos for a year round the winter camp-fires and a trade valuation of one hundred dollars from the tempting stores of Mr. Harris. As long as the red fox brings forth her cubs to play in the starlight and marten and musquash increase after ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... in this case, was the blankest of blanks in the lottery of their draw for information. Whether this blankness was real or affected men could not make up their minds. The gambler was so unlike his usual self. The hard, rough, autocratic manner of the man seemed to have undergone a subtle change. He went about ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... day, and their aunt promised to make her husband call on Mr. Wickham, and give him an invitation also, if the family from Longbourn would come in the evening. This was agreed to, and Mrs. Phillips protested that they would have a nice comfortable noisy game of lottery tickets, and a little bit of hot supper afterwards. The prospect of such delights was very cheering, and they parted in mutual good spirits. Mr. Collins repeated his apologies in quitting the room, and was assured with unwearying civility ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... at times vehement, but always good humored. Sellers of lottery-tickets, writers of love-letters, jugglers and mountebanks plied their trades. The cries of the water-carrier and vender of sweet-meats mingled with those of the inevitable beggar who asked alms for the love of God; invoking blessings or curses upon the head of him who gave or refused ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... method of obtaining money by lottery has at different times been adopted in several of our American colleges. In 1747, a new building being wanted at Yale College, the "Liberty of a Lottery" was obtained from the General Assembly, "by which," says Clap, "Five Hundred Pounds Sterling was raised, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery. ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... exquisite, and the voices of the boys very sweet. Many of the people seemed in earnest. The priests appeared to me devoid of interest. We went one morning to the Pantheon. This noble church was formerly known as St. Genevieve, and was rebuilt, in 1764, by a lottery under the auspices of Louis XV. The portico is an imitation of the one at Rome on its namesake, and consists of Corinthian columns nearly sixty feet high, and five feet in diameter. The interior form is that of a Greek cross. Every thing ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... will be irreconcilable. If your younger brother should come from sea, he'd never look upon you again. You're undone, sir; you're ruined; you won't have a friend left in the world if you turn poet. Ah, pox confound that Will's coffee-house: it has ruined more young men than the Royal Oak lottery. Nothing thrives that belongs to't. The man of the house would have been an alderman by this time, with half the trade, if he had set up in the city. For my part, I never sit at the door that I don't get double the stomach that I do at a horse race. The air upon Banstead-Downs ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... further engagement, and aspersed me to his brethren as a careless idle fellow. I had, however, by having half worked and half starved myself to death during the time I was in his service, saved a few guineas, with which I bought a lottery-ticket, resolving to throw myself into Fortune's lap, and try if she would make me amends for the injuries she had done me at the gaming-table. This purchase, being made, left me almost pennyless; when, as if I had not been sufficiently miserable, a bailiff in woman's clothes got admittance ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... Chicago, enlisted the sympathies of noble-hearted men in the cause of her husband, prevailing upon a delegation of noble Illinoisans to accompany her to Washington, and, with their assistance, secured the confirmation of the Colonel as a brigadier-general of volunteers. Truly, in the lottery matrimonial, Colonel Turchin had the fortune to draw an ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... the Vera Cruz custom-house in payment of the war indemnity, the only source of supply was cut off, and the stress for money was terrible. The promise of financial relief mysteriously held out by the new cabinet had turned out to be delusive, and, it was soon found, was based upon the hope of a lottery! When the time for action came, the promised millions melted away, and all that the unfortunate monarch could scrape together, on the eve of entering upon a campaign on which hung his life, was a paltry ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... which compose this series were sold at auction during Hogarth's life, they brought the sum of fourteen guineas each! The March of the Guards to Finchley, so admirable in composition, so full of incident and character, so rich in humor, could not be sold by the artist, and he disposed of it in a lottery, in which many tickets were left on his hands. And while this was the fate of works which still stand unsurpassed in their peculiar field, the amateurs were paying enormous prices for worthless pictures of second-rate Italian masters, and talking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... consideration derived from being concerned in the public councils) will ever be a first- rate object of ambition in England. Ambition is no exact calculator. Avarice itself does not calculate strictly when it games. One thing is certain, that in this political game the great lottery of power is that into which men will purchase with millions of chances against them. In Turkey, where the place, where the fortune, where the head itself, are so insecure, that scarcely any have ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... man—and others who know him best acknowledge his claims, we see—that he revolutionized Blackwood and the British periodical press, at a time when they were all against us; that he began the war on titles in this country, that he broke up the lottery system and the militia system, and proposed (through the Westminster Review) the only safe and reasonable plan of emancipation that ever appeared; that with him originated the question of woman's rights; that he introduced gymnasia ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... and melancholy factor entered into the competition. An epidemic of small-pox broke out in the East End, with its haphazard effects upon the varying classes. Red marks, and black marks, medals and prizes, all was luck and lottery. The pride of the fifth standard was laid low; one of its girls was attacked, two others were kept at home through parental panic. A disturbing insecurity as of an earthquake vibrated through the school. In Bloomah's class alone—as ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... crabbed Gitano. He is a good ginete, too; next to myself, there is none like him, only he rides with stirrup leathers too short. Inglesito, if you have need of money, I will lend you my purse. All I have is at your service, and that is not a little; I have just gained four thousand chules by the lottery. Courage, Englishman! Another cup. ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... America prohibits lotteries, while lotteries are flourishing on the European continent. The Austrians, Italians, and Spaniards are slaves to lotteries, and even in sober Germany the state carries on a big lottery enterprise. President Eliot once said in a speech about the moral progress of mankind that a hundred years ago a public lottery was allowed in Boston for the purpose of getting the funds for erecting a new Harvard dormitory, and he added that such a procedure would ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... the drawings of the French lottery (two or three, each month) from 1758 to 1830. It is intended for those who thought they could predict the future drawings from the past: and various sets of sympathetic numbers are given to help them. The principle is, that anything which has not happened for a long time must be soon to ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... Roman etiquette and sociality. Not only were they given at holidays but also at all important domestic events. Even at a dinner-party, besides actual articles of food to be carried home, there were frequently gifts of a kind either expressly adapted to the recipient, or else drawn by a humorous lottery. Among numerous other articles of which one might be the recipient in various seasons and circumstances, there are mentioned books, pictures, tablets of ivory, wood, or parchment, cushions, mufflers, hats, hoods, sponges, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... was Simon's one main chance, the chief prize in his hope's lottery; and it was with a pang, indeed, that he found all his endeavours to compass its possession had been vain. Was that endless cribbage nothing, and the weary Bible-lessons on a Sunday, and the constant ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... 1897, the Government appointed for a given day, the allocation of the Witfontein farm in "claims" (mine concessions of 150 by 400 feet). At the last moment it was announced that the claims would be decided by lottery; several persons having made known that they intended to sue the Government for their claims already pegged out, a measure was passed by the Volksraad declaring all such ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... snap. The new arrangement was violently opposed. What right, asked grumblers, had the Synod to saddle individual congregations with the debts of the whole Church? The local managers of diaconies proved incompetent. At Neuwied one Brother lost 6,000 of Church money in a lottery. The financial pressure became harder than ever. James Skinner, a member of the London congregation, suggested that the needful money should be raised by weekly subscriptions. In England this proposal might have found favour; in Germany ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... merely stated that my father was a man of eminence, and that he had died rich—for although people of good family will sometimes bow to love, taking the risk of high or low birth, they are always mortified when they discover that their ticket in the lottery has turned up ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... people to say this was a mere accident; yes, just the same as the world is an accident and a thing of chance. Perhaps it was an accident, too, that "Little Abe" was able to foretell the issue of that lottery with such confidence, and was so eager to make his bargain for the use of the room before the lots were known. The chance that can show such intelligence, foreknowledge, and power, that can communicate its intentions beforehand, and afterwards verify them in this ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... sorry now you laid the least stress upon it. Every man who goes into a court of law, and especially every man who attacks a newspaper there, does, under our blessed system of newspaper government, expose himself to a lottery, the chances of which no man can foresee, and out of which it would be much more desirable to keep himself. But, then, in this as in other cases, one may be driven to the wall, and obliged to do that which in itself ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... opinions. They declared last year that it was a losing trade at two slaves to a ton, and yet they pursued it when restricted to five slaves to three tons. He believed, however, that it was upon the whole a losing concern; in the same manner as the lottery would be a losing adventure to any company who should buy all the tickets. Here and there an individual gained a large prize, but the majority of adventurers gained nothing. The same merchants, too, had ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... fact is, a fellow I know—that is, I have heard of him—has just drawn a prize of a thousand dollars in a Havana lottery. All he paid for his ticket ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... supply any new expenses. New troops will require more money to raise and to pay them, and more money can only be obtained by new taxes; but what now remains to be taxed, or what tax can be increased? The only resource left us is a lottery, and whether that will succeed is likewise a lottery; but though folly and credulity should once more operate according to our wishes, the nation is, in the meantime, impoverished, and at last lotteries ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... said that the young explorer for the moment felt himself in the position of the man who drew an elephant in a lottery—he didn't know what to do with his prize. It had come to him so unexpectedly ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... or some other, must succeed in their Dealings with the Government. It is called the Multiplication Table, and is so far calculated for the immediate Service of Her Majesty, that the same Person who is fortunate in the Lottery of the State, may receive yet further Advantage in this Table. And I am sure nothing can be more pleasing to Her gracious Temper than to find out additional Methods of increasing their good Fortune who adventure anything in Her Service, or laying Occasions for others ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... half lines, inquiring as to my terms. You probably know my reply. I wish the inhuman creature had sent me the money at once. Good Lord, what Jacks-in-office you all are! None of you can put himself in the place of a poor devil like me who looks upon every source of income as a lucky draw in a lottery. Please, tread ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... share of both; I mean that there are some men whose life on the whole is a failure, and that there are others whose life on the whole is a success. You and I, my reader, know better than to think that life is a lottery; but those who think it a lottery, must see that there are human beings who draw the prizes, and others who draw the blanks. I believe in Luck, and Ill Luck, as facts; of course I do not believe the theory which common consent builds upon these facts. There is, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... the right thing. Say, I bet he was hopping mad when he tore open that package, and saw what he had drawn in the lottery, eh, Thad?" ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... faculties, with the certainty of preventing their opposition. There was no just ground, in his case, for the complaint that he received large fees for services he did not render; for the chances were understood by those who adventured in his lottery; in which after all there were comparatively few blanks. His name was 'a tower of strength,' which it was delightful to know that the adverse faction wanted, and which inspired confidence even on the back ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... anything of the ability which might reasonably entitle him to expect to rise; and without the private means which are necessary for the support of most married men in a profession which, if it is not (as it is sometimes called) a lottery, has very great inequalities of income, and to the vast majority of those who follow it gives very little indeed. Mr. Barton is not a gentleman—a defect which the farmers and tradespeople of his parish are not slow to discover, and for which they despise him. He is without any misgivings ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... regicides and rebels. The adventurers were next provided for. They claimed L960,000. This was divided into three lots, to be paid in lands in Munster, Leinster, and Ulster. All these were to be drawn by lot; and a lottery was held at Grocers' Hall, London, which commenced at eight o'clock in the morning, on the 20th of July, 1653, at which time and place men who professed the advancement of the Christian religion to be the ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... unknown smallness at a crisis of unknown greatness is to our minds simply ludicrous. Mr. Lincoln, it is true, happened to be a man, if not of eminent ability, yet of eminent justness. There was an inner depth of Puritan nature which came out under suffering, and was very attractive. But success in a lottery is no argument for lotteries. What were the chances against a person of Lincoln's antecedents, elected as he was, proving to be what he was? Such an incident is, however, natural to a Presidential government. ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... the Maison Doree in the Plaza Cataluna at Barcelona looks across the brilliantly-lighted square from the south side. On the pavement in front of it and of its neighbour, the Cafe Continental, the vendors of lottery tickets were bawling the lucky numbers they had for sale. Even in this wide space the air was close and stale. Within, a few people left over in the town had strayed in to dine at tables placed against the walls under flamboyant ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... forgets. Then my old mother—my dear young lady, even I, old as I am, have a mother—what does she do but draw a prize in the Austro-Hungarian lottery—a huge prize—enough to demoralize one for life—five thousand florins. More remarkable still, the money is paid. Not so remarkable, my good mother declares she will give half of it to an undutiful son, who has never done very well with money in this world. ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... presumptive proof to my feelings, that the contrary was the dictate of duty. Accordingly, I commenced the work, which was announced in London by long bills in letters larger than had ever been seen before, and which, I have been informed, for I did not see them myself, eclipsed the glories even of the lottery puffs. But alas! the publication of the very first number was delayed beyond the day announced for its appearance. In the second number an essay against fast days, with a most censurable application of a text from Isaiah for its motto, lost me near five hundred of my subscribers at one ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... immense girth, one of which is represented in the accompanying cut. This was formerly the residence of Sir James Branscomb, who, according to Faulkner, "in his early days had been a servant to the Earl of Gainsborough, and afterwards, for upwards of forty years, carried on a lottery office in Holborn. He was a common-councilman of the Ward of Farringdon Without, and received the honour of knighthood during his shrievalty." The house has been a ladies' boarding-school for many years. From ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... when adopted by military tribunals. When adopted by the tribunal of public opinion, it is infinitely more irrational. It is good that a certain portion of disgrace should constantly attend on certain bad actions. But it is not good that the offenders should merely have to stand the risks of a lottery of infamy, that ninety-nine out of every hundred should escape, and that the hundredth, perhaps the most innocent of the hundred, should pay for all. We remember to have seen a mob assembled in Lincoln's Inn to hoot a gentleman ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... life, namely, to diffuse and propagate among my brothers the scientific ideas, which my brain has accumulated, not through any merit of mine, but thanks to the lucky prize inherited from my mother in the lottery of life. And the second ideal which this invitation called up before my mind's vision was this: The ideal of young people of Italy, united in morals and intellectual pursuits, feeling in their social lives the glow of a great aim. ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... pimentoes and fir-apples were shown under the strings of dry tomatoes which festooned the doorways; and the only shops which were at all attractive were those of the pork butchers with their salted provisions and their cheese, whose pungent smell slightly attenuated the pestilential reek of the gutters. Lottery offices, displaying lists of winning numbers, alternated with wine-shops, of which latter there was a fresh one every thirty yards with large inscriptions setting forth that the best wines of Genzano, Marino, and Frascati were to be ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... a little too hasty; you reckon your Chickens before they are hatch'd. I have seen those lose the Game that have had so many for Love. War and Play is a meer Lottery. We have got thirty, now we ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... to a Berlin Journal, has given his consent to a lottery being instituted throughout the Empire 'for combating the slave trade in Africa.' Tickets to the amount of eight millions of marks will be issued, five and a half millions of which will be devoted to prizes."—Daily Telegraph ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... conditions frequency of occurrence implies repetition in the next instance. Contrary evidence may be derived from several so-called phenomena of alternation. E. g., it is a well known fact that a number in the so-called Little Lottery, which has not been drawn for a long time, is sure finally to be drawn. If among 90 numbers the number 27 has not turned up for a long time its appearance becomes more probable with every successive drawing. All the so-called mathematical ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... to your lawful commands, I have implicitly obeyed your orders, in the purchase, this morning, of Messrs. Branscomb and Co. four quarter lottery-tickets— ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... one of our Zillah Courts would decide several legal questions of great importance, questions not involving considerations of religion or of caste, mere questions of commercial law. He told me that it was a mere lottery. He knew how he should himself decide them. But he knew nothing more. I asked a most distinguished civil servant of the Company, with reference to the clause in this Bill on the subject of slavery, whether at present, if a dancing girl ran away from her master, the judge would force her ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bringing it nearer to the model selected for imitation; but I should consider the problem of the best form of government as purely ideal, and as unconnected with practice; and should abstain from taking a ticket in the lottery of revolution, unless there was a well-founded expectation that it ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... Spaniards would attack the settlement, but the Spanish king and his council thought that it would die of its own weakness, and took no hostile measure.[43] In England the company was so discouraged that many withdrew their subscriptions, and in 1615 a lottery was tried as a last resort to ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... unique among the adventures of authoresses. Dr. Mitford, having spent all his wife's fortune, and having brought his family from a comfortable home, with flowers and a Turkey carpet, to a small lodging near Blackfriars Bridge, determined to present his daughter with an expensive lottery ticket on the occasion of her tenth birthday. She had a fancy for No. 2224, of which the added numbers came to 10. This number actually came out the first prize of 20,000 pounds, which money started the family once more in comparative affluence. ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... the money sooner. This month there's the lottery, and next month the rent to pay." Pelle could very well appreciate that, for Carlsen earned eight kroner a week and had nine children. But he felt that he could not well reduce the price. Truly, people weren't rolling in money here! And when for once he actually had ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... is, boys," he said. "Here's my discovery stake. Now you fellows go up or down, anywhere you've a notion to, and put in your stakes. You all know what a lottery it is. Maybe you'll stake a million-dollar claim, maybe a blank. Mining's all a gamble. But go ahead, boys. I ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... believe what they covet, from a lottery-ticket up to a passport to Paradise,—in which, from the description, I see nothing very tempting. My restlessness tells me I have something "within that passeth ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... trapeze, somersaulting over horses placed side by side, grouping with his so-called brother and a small lad, he did his full share of the work, and when the programme was ended he came among the audience to sell photographs while the lottery ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... people be to me? I should enjoy at ease that lucky throw of the dice, which chance had turned up for me, the day of my birth; and, with a secret, savage joy, I should say, 'So much the worse for the losers!—the world is a lottery. Woe to the conquered!'" I cannot, indeed, say this without shame and cruelty,—for, I repeat ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine
... arrangements for the species perfect; the individual is left, as it were, to take his chance amidst the melee of the various laws affecting him. If he be found inferiorly endowed, or ill befalls him, there was at least no partiality against him. The system has the fairness of a lottery, in which every one has the like chance of ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... de), in all likelihood the wife of the foregoing, whom she survived. In 1822 she was manager of a Parisian lottery bureau which employed Madame Agatha Bridau, about the same ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... previous to the hammocks being piped down, that the former might hold themselves in readiness, and that the latter might remain in their hammocks during the night. All was anxiety for the sun to rise again upon those who were about to venture in the lottery, where the prizes would be honour, and the blanks—death. There were but few whose souls were of that decided brute composition that they could sleep through the whole of the tedious night. They woke and "swore a prayer or two, then slept again." The sun had not yet ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the same sentiment was wittily and happily expressed by a friend, who had some lottery puffs, which he had been employed to write, returned on his hands for their too great severity of thought and classical terseness of style, and who observed on that occasion, that ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... and always stood gaily on end, defying brush and comb. Daniel Arker, a sturdy black-haired lad, would have done fuller justice to the passage that fell to Abraham, for the Spiker boy with his gentle lisp never shone in elocution; but our reading class is a lottery, as we go from scholar to scholar down the line. The lot falling to him, Abraham pushed himself up from the bench, grasped his book fiercely with both hands, and fixed his eyes ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... rate, we shall settle that difficulty to your complete satisfaction. I expect Steingall here in less than an hour. Meanwhile, we have lots to tell each other. I want you to know just what sort of husband you have drawn in the lottery." ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... in a good temper when there was a prospect of sport, he promised each of them to do all that he could for them, at the same time pointing out that it was always quite a lottery which way the ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... Colonies the separation of the school from the Church, and the beginnings of state support and control of education, found perhaps their earliest and clearest exemplification. In the other Colonies the lottery was much used (R. 246) to raise funds for schools, while church tithes, subscription lists, and school societies after the English pattern also helped in many places to start and support a ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... the sacred chickens; the appearance of quadrupeds; or casualties of various kinds, as sneezing, stumbling, spilling salt or wine. The last relics of these superstitions are to be found in the little books sold in Rome, in which the fortunate number in a lottery is indicated by such accidents and events of ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... anything of the kind was impending. The courtship, from first to last, must have been somewhat of a piece with that of the late Mr. Barkis. But alas! Gagtooth did not settle his affections so judiciously, nor did he draw such a prize in the matrimonial lottery as Barkis did. Two women more entirely dissimilar, in every respect, than Peggotty and Lucinda Bowlsby can hardly be imagined. Lucinda was nineteen years of age. She was pretty, and, for a girl of her class and station in life, tolerably ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... in the street, should the roadway subside, should a street collision occur, should a gas explosion occur, should he be assaulted. He is initiated into the mysteries of the Dogs Act, the Highways Act, the Vagrancy Act, the Aliens Act, the Lottery Act, the Licensing Act, the Larceny Act, the Motor-Car Acts, the Locomotive Acts, ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... hundred thousand gold dinars, before he drew his foot from the stirrup. At the nuptials of the same prince, a thousand pearls of the largest size were showered on the head of the bride, [46] and a lottery of lands and houses displayed the capricious bounty of fortune. The glories of the court were brightened, rather than impaired, in the decline of the empire, and a Greek ambassador might admire, or pity, the magnificence of the feeble Moctader. "The caliph's whole army," says the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... of avarice. The arts so common at a later day were had recourse to. Project begat project, copper was to be turned into brass. Fortunes were to be realized by lotteries. The sea was to yield the treasures it had engulfed. Pearl-fisheries were to pay impossible percentages. "Lottery on lottery," says a writer of the day, "engine on engine, multiplied wonderfully. If any person got considerably by a happy and useful invention, others followed in spite of the patent, and published printed proposals, filling the daily newspapers therewith, thus going on to jostle one another, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... hundred European inhabitants, of whom only a dozen are women. Girls marry almost as fast as they arrive, and the incoming boats are eagerly scanned by the bachelor population, much in the same spirit as that in which a ticket-holder scans the lists of winning numbers in a lottery, wondering when his turn will come to draw something. If the bulk of the men are confirmed misogynists and confine themselves to the club bar and card-room it is only because there are not enough women to go round. The sacrifice of ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... long since described some of the curious theories and superstitions which prevail among devotees of the lottery and the gaming-table, regarding "lucky numbers." There are traditionally fortunate and unfortunate combinations, and there are also newer favorites, based very often on figures connected with the chronology of famous men. The career of Napoleon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... that the inducements to engage in the herring-fishing under all the disadvantages set forth are very great. It has all the precarious and enticing character of a lottery. Every year a few lucky men fish large hauls, exceeding 200 in value in the brief fishing season. As a rule, fishermen marry young; and how can the young fisherman so easily procure the means or chance of ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... Department of the Interior had not been begun nor had the General Post-Office replaced a large brick structure intended for a hotel, but which the pecuniary necessities of the projector forced him to dispose of in a lottery before it was completed. The fortunate ticket was held by minors, whose guardian could neither sell the building nor finish it, and it remained for many years in ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... corinthian pillars. The side which fronts the Seine is particularly light and graceful, having a circular projection adorned with columns supporting a balustrade with six statues. When the Prince de Salm was beheaded in 1793, the hotel was put up to lottery, and won by a journey man hairdresser, and in 1803 it was appropriated to its present object; strangers are ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... will soon get to be a habit—and give you a heavy heart. If you smile your face will be attractive, no matter how unlucky you were in the lottery of beauty. ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... waiter at the Hibernian Hotel in Dublin, who got a prize in the lottery and retired into private life, but who never could hear a bell ring without crying out, "Coming, sir." The Italians remind me greatly of him: they have had such a terrible time of flunkeyism, that they start at every summons, no matter what hand ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... Once in a book I met with a scornful passage about people with "bodily constitutions like those of horses, and small brains," which made me blush painfully; but in the very next passage the writer makes amends, saying that a man ought to think himself well off if, in the lottery of life, he draws the prize of a healthy stomach without a mind, that it is better than a fine intellect with a crazy stomach. I had drawn the healthy stomach—liver, lungs, and heart to match—and had never felt dissatisfied with ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... Mounted Infantry were evidently moving to take up a new position at the bidding of the Master Player. The sound was like the rub-a-dub of muffled hammers. The thought forced itself on her mind that here were men secretly hastening to take part in the grim lottery of life and death, from which some, and maybe many, would draw the black ticket of doom, and so pass from the game ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... commonly termed Coincidences: in other words, those combinations of chances which present some peculiar and unexpected regularity, assimilating them, in so far, to the results of law. As if, for example, in a lottery of a thousand tickets, the numbers should be drawn in the exact order of what are called the natural numbers, 1, 2, 3, etc. We have still to consider the principles of evidence applicable to this case: whether there is any difference between coincidences ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery. There were a hundred million tickets in HIS lottery, and there was only one prize; the chances had been too decidedly against him. When he thought of Ellen Olenska it was abstractly, serenely, as one might think of some imaginary beloved in a book or a picture: ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... lottery, in which there are a wondrous many blanks, yet there is one inestimable lot, in which the only heaven on earth is written. Would your kind fate but guide your hand to that, though I were wrapt in all that luxury itself could clothe me with, I still ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... told in vain that his adversary, when taking away the desk, knew nothing of the existence of the lottery-ticket and that, in any case, no one could have foreseen that this particular ticket would win the first prize. All ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... studied for some years; but he had Irish blood coursing through his veins, and, under the expectation of obtaining a fortune with a wife, he fell in love and married. He was, however, disappointed in his hopes; but the lady soon dying, gave him an opportunity of again trying the lottery of matrimony. His second wife was Mademoiselle Picard, the daughter of a wine-merchant, or, as some people might have called him, a vintner; but if, as I hope was the case, he sold good wines, why ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... appointments or promotions were made; second, by reference to former rank therein taken away by derangement or disbandment; third, by reference to former rank therein given up by resignation; fourth, by lottery. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... that Addison's advice was bad? And if Addison's advice was bad, does it necessarily follow that it was given from bad motives? If a friend were to ask us whether we would advise him to risk his all in a lottery of which the chances were ten to one against him, we should do our best to dissuade him from running such a risk. Even if he were so lucky as to get the thirty thousand pound prize, we should not admit that we had counselled him ill; and we should certainly think it the height of injustice in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
