"Brawl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and scrivener's work of some sort; probably drafting petitions and drawing up statements of claims to be presented to the Council, and the like. So, at least, we gather from the depositions taken on the occasion of the death of a gentleman, the victim of a street brawl, who had been carried into the house in which he lived. In these he himself is described as a man who wrote and transacted business, and it appears that his household then consisted of his wife, the natural daughter Isabel de Saavedra already mentioned, his sister Andrea, now a widow, her ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... out of regard for the father, and who had disgraced himself beyond forgiveness. Paul recalled vaguely that the young fellow had gone West somewhere, and had been shot in a mining-camp after a drunken brawl in a gambling-house. ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... glow she stood rigid and resentful, one small fist clenched, the other fast to the barrel of the rifle she carried. The evils of the trade came close to her. Fergus McRae still carried the gash from a knife thrust earned in a drunken brawl. It was likely that to-morrow he would cut the trail of the wagon wheels and again make a bee-line for liquor and trouble. The swift blaze of revolt found expression in the stamp ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... great popularity among the Spaniards easily credible to us. He did not know what fear was; he was always ready for a fight of any kind; a quarrel in the streets of Madrid, a duel, a fight with a man or a wild beast, a brawl in a tavern or a military expedition, were all the same to him, if only they gave him an opportunity for fighting. He had a little picture of the Virgin hung round his neck, by which he swore, and to which he prayed; he had never ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... over! Zanoni rose from the corpse, and, taking, with great composure, the sword from my hand, said calmly, 'Ye are witnesses, gentlemen, that the prince brought his fate upon himself. The last of that illustrious house has perished in a brawl.' ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... with admiration Was gazed upon by every nation, And, master of the situation, Vow'd Britons ne'er would yield. For I am here, you may depend on't, This Eastern brawl to make an end on't, To show both plaintiff and defendant I'm Earl ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... that the Caithness folk met near his house at Halkirk, and demanded that the earl should protect them against the bishop's rapacity, and, either at the earl's suggestion or without any opposition on his part, they attacked the bishop in his house, which was close to Breithivellir (now Brawl) Castle, where John lived. The Saga gives the following ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... to the province. Penn finally sent the boy to Pennsbury, hoping that the quiet, the absence of temptation, and the wholesome joys of a country life, might amend him. But William went from bad to worse, was arrested in Philadelphia in a tavern brawl, was formally excommunicated by the Quakers, and came home to England to give ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... passed in without observation. As if on purpose, at the very same moment a load of hay was going in, and it completely screened him. On the other side of the load, a dispute or brawl was evidently taking place, and he gained the old woman's staircase in a second. Recovering his breath and pressing his hand to his beating heart, he commenced the ascent, though first feeling for the hatchet ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... and children like it better than the men. It is no doubt very thrilling and picturesque and wildly beautiful: the children crow and laugh, the women shout forth their delight, as the boat enters the seething current; great foaming waves strike her bows, and brawl away to the stern, while she dips, and rolls, and shoots onward, light as a bird blown by the wind; the wild shores and islands whirl out of sight; you feel in every fibre the career of the vessel. But the captain sits in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Seriphian(4) dog on any pretext and had sold it, would you have endured it quietly? Far from it, you would at once have sent three hundred vessels to sea, and what an uproar there would have been through all the city! there 'tis a band of noisy soldiery, here a brawl about the election of a Trierarch; elsewhere pay is being distributed, the Pallas figure-heads are being regilded, crowds are surging under the market porticos, encumbered with wheat that is being measured, wine-skins, oar-leathers, garlic, olives, onions ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... Latterly he had been profuse in his compliments to Mehetabel, which she had put aside, much as she brushed empty tankards, and tobacco ash off the table. He was no welcome guest. His bitter tongue was the occasion of strife, and a brawl was no infrequent result of the appearance of the Broom-Squire in the public house. Sometimes he himself became the object of attack, but usually he succeeded in setting others by the ears and in himself escaping unmolested. But on one ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... rough it on ranches in the wilds of Nebraska or Dakota, or to consign them to a living death in the sage-brush of the Black Hills. These young men did not always return to the ways of civilized life. But Wyllis Elliot had not married a half-breed, nor been shot in a cow-punchers' brawl, nor wrecked by bad whisky, nor appropriated by a smirched adventuress. He had been saved from these things by a girl, his sister, who had been very near to his life ever since the days when they read fairy tales together and dreamed ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... beg of you to let the matter drop," he continued in a tone that was now entirely conciliatory. "One would think that it actually PLEASED you to have scenes! Indeed, it is a brawl rather than genuine satisfaction that you are seeking. I have said that the affair may prove to be diverting, and even clever, and that possibly you may attain something by it; yet none the less I tell you" (he said this only because he saw me rise and reach for my ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... footmen has gone to that last journey from which none return: he was a tall, presuming sort of fellow, remarkable for nothing but his impertinence, and the continual scrapes he was forever getting into amongst the soubrettes. However, he met with his death in some sudden brawl. My people sought to conceal this piece of intelligence from me; but having once heard of it, I despatched Flamarens to ascertain in what corner of the cemetery he has been interred. "The duc de Tresmes talks much of you, and boasts greatly ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... father ran a saloon out on Second Avenue, and every few days the Chippewa paper would come out with a story of a brawl, a knifing, or a free-for-all fight following a Saturday night in Kearney's. The Kearney girl herself was forever running up and down Grand Avenue, which was the main business street. She would trail up and down ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... Krishna feels free to leave the earth. Such Yadavas who have been left behind in Dwarka have been spared, but the greater part of the race is dead. He therefore makes ready for his own departure. Balarama, who has helped Krishna in the brawl, goes to the sea-shore, performs yoga and, leaving his body, joins the Supreme Spirit. Sesha, the white serpent of eternity, issues from his mouth and hymned by snakes and other serpents proceeds to the ocean. 'Bringing an offering of respect, Ocean ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... Shakespeare himself. He studied at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and took the degree of Master of Arts in 1587. After leaving the university, he came up to London and wrote for the stage. He seems to have led a wild and reckless life, and was stabbed in a tavern brawl on the 1st of June 1593. "As he may be said to have invented and made the verse of the drama, so he created the English drama." His chief plays are Dr Faustus and Edward the Second. His style is one of the greatest vigour and power: ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... created a great excitement in the town. Besides that he was well known and much esteemed as a faithful, active soldier, the mystery that attended his fate aroused the most painful feelings. Was it due simply to a moonlight brawl, were any of the disaffected men of the garrison concerned in it, or had some of the American prisoners, in attempting to effect their escape, committed the deed? A thorough investigation took place, but no clue to the tragedy could be found. ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... this young bully and effectually quieted him. Fright is a most beneficial thing for bullies, but a sadly harmful one for a little boy. How fervently I vowed to "lick" that Tom Reddiford, if I ever grew half as big as he! Very likely he has died in a brawl or a poor-house by this time. But his outrages burnt into my mind scars so deep that they are part of its structure. I will pay him off yet, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... he says—or rather said, for I've not seen him since my first visit there—that George Gordon did not sail in the Morning Star. He was killed in a drunken brawl the night before he ought to have sailed: this man was present and ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Accordingly as indeed he ought, When that the clerk will have a self-will, And always in service-time must be sought? Notwithstanding at this present there is no remedy, But to take time, as it doth fall, Wherefore I will go hence and make me ready, For it helpeth not to chafe or brawl. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... time had aching desire for a brawl, he was at least no coward: here the events he had suffered well sufficed to whip his blood to action. He sprang to his feet, was upon them as George, sideways to him, came round the arm of the seat; lunged furiously and landed a ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... Duchy of Cornwall, in the reign of James I. It is just possible that it was the house originally built by Sir Amyas Paulet, at Wolsey's command, in resentment for Sir Amyas having set Wolsey, when a mere parish priest, in the stocks for a brawl. Wolsey, at the time of the ignominious punishment, was schoolmaster to the children of the Marquis of Dorset. Paulet was confined to this house for five or six years, to appease the proud cardinal, who lived in Chancery Lane. Sir Amyas rebuilt his prison, covering the front with badges ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... cheer up! my dear Frank," said the young poet, feigning a confidence of hope which his heart belied. "Whitaker may still recover; he is too gallant a fellow to be lost to us in a drunken brawl; and even if the worst should happen, it must still keep you from despair to reflect that you were forced into this rencontre, and that it was an unhappy accident, resulting from his own violence and not your intention, which deprived him of his life." Elliot stopped suddenly, and gazing down from ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... me out of this weary world, And put me on a tree, For life is all noughts And crosses, or thoughts That are busy for brawl and spree! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... regiments, would show to the slums its blank surface, bleached bonewhite by the winds that raced above the city smoke. Now the Cowgate and the Canongate would be given over to the drama of the disorderly night, the slumdwellers would foregather about the rotting doors of dead men's mansions and brawl among the not less brawling ghosts of a past that here never speaks of peace, but only of blood and argument. And Holyrood, under a black bank surmounted by a low bitten cliff, would lie like the camp of an invading ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... white, made a step forward, but the speaker did not alter his easy attitude or his flow of words. "Again we urged that this duel was not to be admired, that it was a mere brawl, but the people were ignorant and romantic. There were signs of treating this alleged Highlander and his alleged opponent as heroes. We tried all other means of arresting this reactionary hero worship. Working men who betted on the duel were imprisoned for gambling. Working men who drank the health ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... It cost her as little to dispose of him as of the mother. He was killed in some brawl with the Huguenots; so that the poor child is altogether an orphan, beholden to our care, for which she thanked me with tears in her eyes, that were more true than mayhap the poor ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... began to ask himself, if he had not acted very much like a fool. He didn't regret striking the fellow—he hoped he had left a mark on him. But, after all, was that the best way? Here was he, Philip Sterling, calling himself a gentleman, in a brawl with a vulgar conductor, about a woman he had never seen before. Why should he have put himself in such a ridiculous position? Wasn't it enough to have offered the lady his seat, to have rescued her from an accident, perhaps from death? Suppose he had simply said to the conductor, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... this particular morning, the meal was nearly over. Mr. Jackson had disappeared, taking his correspondence with him; Mrs. Jackson had gone into the kitchen, and when Mike appeared the thing had resolved itself into a mere vulgar brawl between Phyllis and Ella for the jam, while Marjory, who had put her hair up a fortnight before, looked on in a detached sort of way, as if ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... Kwan Palace in which the Japanese Minister and his staff, protected by two companies of Japanese infantry, had taken refuge owing to the threatening state of affairs in the capital. Apparently there was no particular plan—it was the action of a mob of soldiery tumbling into a political brawl and assisted by their officers for reasons which appear to-day nonsensical. The sequel was, however, extraordinary. The Japanese held the Palace gates as long as possible, and then being desperate exploded a mine which killed numbers of Koreans and Chinese soldiery ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... all," said the man. "It's an honest brawl among friends, and I could settle the account with them at the next market-day, when ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... not my intention," Tallente remarked thoughtfully, "to kill the young man. A brawl in front of the windows was impossible, so I took him with me to the lookout. I suppose he was tactless and I lost my temper. I struck him on the chin and he went backwards, through that piece of rotten paling, you ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... driving herds of swine from the glades of Epping. The churls we picture as grim but hearty folk, stolid, pugnacious, yet honest and promise-keeping, over-inclined to strong ale, and not disinclined for a brawl; men who had fought with Danes and wolves, and who were ready to fight them again. The shops must have been mere stalls, and much of the trade itinerant. There would be, no doubt, rudimentary market-places about Cheapside (Chepe is ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... had a brawl with a steamer with a yellow funnel, blue top and black band, lying at a pier among dhows. The shore took a hand in the game with small guns and rifles, and, as E14 manoeuvred about the roadstead "as requisite" there was a sudden unaccountable explosion which strained ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... John the chief man was Will Scarlet, who in reality was Robin's own cousin or nephew, young Gamwel of Gamwel Hall. Having slain his father's steward either by accident or in some brawl, young Will fled to his kinsman, Robin Hood, in Sherwood Forest, where, as in the case of Little John, he first made his acquaintance by fighting with him. As young Will on this occasion happened to be dressed very smartly in silken doublet and scarlet stockings Robin Hood dubbed him ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... streets, elbowing its quiet inhabitants, trafficking their rich outlandish plunder at half or quarter price to the wary merchant; and then squandering their prize-money in taverns, drinking, gambling, singing, carousing and astounding the neighborhood with midnight brawl and revelry. At length these excesses rose to such a height as to become a scandal to the provinces, and to call loudly for the interposition of government. Measures were accordingly taken to put a stop to this widely extended ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... thee what politer France receives From Nature's bounty—that humane address And sweetness, without which no pleasure is In converse, either starved by cold reserve, Or flushed with fierce dispute, a senseless brawl; Yet, being free, I love thee; for the sake Of that one feature, can be well content, Disgraced as thou hast been, poor as thou art, To seek no sublunary rest beside. But once enslaved, farewell! I could endure Chains nowhere patiently; and chains at home, Where I am free by birthright, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... that Peter Brome, having paid a sum of fifty angels to the relatives of Andrew Pherson, a servant of the Spanish ambassador, which Andrew the said Peter had killed in a brawl, the said ambassador undertook not to prosecute or otherwise molest the said Peter on account of the manslaughter which he ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... an idea that he murmured something about my being "a stupid young idiot," but I decided not to hear it. What would be the use, I asked myself, of my hearing it? That we should brawl like a couple of manants over less than nothing? (I was very fond of the word manants, and often used it for meeting awkward junctures.) Perhaps I should have said something more had not, at that moment, a door slammed and the professor (dressed ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... At difference? fie! Is this a time for quarrels? Thieves and rogues Fall out and brawl: should men of your high calling, Men, separated by the choice of Providence From the gross heap of mankind, and set here In this assembly, as in one great jewel, T' adorn the bravest purpose it e'er smiled on; Should you, like boys, ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... shorts protruding from the chimney, when his benighted intellect prompted him, at the imminent hazard of strangulation, to pay a visit to the object of his affections via that unusually circuitous route. Look at the fatal brawl between Sir Mulberry Hawk and his hopeful pupil; and rejoice at the final retributive justice which overtakes Mrs. Squeers, when she falls into the hands of her late victims, and is drenched in her turn with the loathsome brew she had ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... liquor than of sleep, they had been invigorating themselves with deep potations. Another company of soldiers in their neighborhood, awakened by the noisy mirth of the hussars, came forward to claim their share of the brandy. It was refused, and a brawl ensued, in which ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... gate 40 They, wrangling, chafed each other, whose dispute The high-born youth Antinoues mark'd; he laugh'd Delighted, and the suitors thus address'd. Oh friends! no pastime ever yet occurr'd Pleasant as this which, now, the Gods themselves Afford us. Irus and the stranger brawl As they would box. Haste—let us urge them on. He said; at once loud-laughing all arose; The ill-clad disputants they round about Encompass'd, and Antinoues thus began. 50 Attend ye noble suitors to my voice. Two paunches lie of goats here on the fire, Which fill'd with fat and blood we ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... yourself—disgracing me, disgracing the house, making yourself and myself the laughing-stock of the servants, the neighborhood, the city? This is a fine showing you've made to-day. Good God! A fine showing, indeed! A brawl in this house, a fight! I thought you had better sense—more self-respect—really I did. You have seriously jeopardized my chances here in Chicago. You have seriously injured and possibly killed a woman. You could even be hanged for ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... commercial—for a time even the political—fabric of Europe, the free action of her statesmen and people was clogged by no uneasy sense that the national genius was in conflict with artificial, self-imposed restrictions. She plunged into the brawl of nations that followed the discovery of a new world, of an unoccupied if not unclaimed inheritance, with a vigor and an initiative which gained ever-accelerated momentum and power as the years rolled by. Far and wide, ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... Drink at a draught a pint of rum, And then be neither sick nor dumb; Can tune a song, and make a verse, And deeds of northern kings rehearse; Who never will forsake his friend, While he his bony fist can bend; And, though averse to brawl and strife, Will fight a Dutchman with a knife. O that is just the lad for me, And such is honest ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... Don Michelotto, his chief bravo, to seize the pope's treasures before the demise was publicly announced. When the body was exhibited to the people the next day it was in a shocking state of decomposition, which of course strengthened the suspicion of poison. At the funeral a brawl occurred between the soldiers and the priests, and the coffin having been made too short the body without the mitre was driven into it by main force and covered with an oil-cloth. Alexander's successor on the chair of St Peter was Francesco Todeschini-Piccolomini, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... uncompromising Snooks. Now a writ is not a matter to grin at and to treat with contempt or levity. Mr. Snooks could not return that document to Mr. Prigg, so he had to consider. And first he consulted his wife: this consultation led to a domestic brawl and then to his kicking one of his horses in the stomach. Then he threw a shovel at his dog, and next the thought occurred to him that he had better go and see Mr. Locust. This gentleman was a solicitor who practised at petty sessions. He did not practise much, but that was, perhaps, ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... upon her and she winced. But she clearly was enjoying the quarrel. It stimulated her taut nerves. The house behind her was empty. She felt free to brawl. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... man was insensible. And then the danger of his position came upon Montgomery, and he turned as white as his antagonist. A Sunday, the immaculate Dr. Oldacre with his pious connection, a savage brawl with a patient; he would irretrievably lose his situation if the facts came out. It was not much of a situation, but he could not get another without a reference, and Oldacre might refuse him one. Without money for his classes, and without a situation—what ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... men—apparently even by the duke himself—as an intellectual king, by no means of the constitutional kind—as an intellectual emperor, rather, who took upon himself to rule all questions of mind without the assistance of any ministers whatever. And Baron Brawl was of the party, one of Her Majesty's puisne Judges, as jovial a guest as ever entered a country house; but given to be rather sharp withal in his jovialities. And there was Mr. Green Walker, a young but rising man, the same who lectured not long since on a popular subject to ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... into a pot-house brawl with a braggart boy," he cried. "The blackguard, dastard knave! Drag me away, Hal, lest I rush back like a fool and run him through! I have lost my wits. 'Tis the fashion for dandies to pour forth their bestial braggings, but ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... statesmen. The letter of the law was doubtless with you; but not the noble spirit of the law. The jury de medietate linguae is of immemorial antiquity among us. Suppose that a Dutch sailor at Wapping is accused of stabbing an Englishman in a brawl. The fate of the culprit is decided by a mixed body, by six Englishmen and six Dutchmen. Such were the securities which the wisdom and justice of our ancestors gave to aliens. You are ready enough to call Mr O'Connell an ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Sometimes there crossed the court some great noble followed by two or three of his servants on his way to a Council: or a bishop with his chaplain, to have speech with the King: or a group of townsmen after a brawl, who had been brought here with ropes about their necks, uncertain whether all would be pardoned or half a dozen hanged, the uncertainty lending a very repentant and anxious look to their faces. Or it would be the Queen's most Excellent Highness herself with her ladies ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... brawl with one Francis Archer, at Deptford, on the first day of June, 1593. The only dramas that can be certainly called his are the "Two Parts of Tamburlaine," "The Massacre of Paris," "Faustus," the "Jew of Malta" and "Edward II." His merits and his faults have been discussed by many ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... on the whole the opportunities for such enjoyment are far too rare. This is odd, too, with such convincing examples at hand. There is, for instance, the close of the second act of Die Meistersinger, when the watchman passes through the sleepy town after the street brawl is over, and then the empty, moon-bathed street lies quiet for a time, before the curtain closes. Of course, here there is music to aid in creating the poetic charm and soothing repose of that moment. But at the end ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... highlanders. Success has crowned Mr. Worcester's efforts; in witness whereof this very concourse of Banawe may be cited, where over 10,000 persons, mostly unarmed, mingled freely with one another without so much as a brawl to ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... perfectly understood by the pages and armourbearers, who watched every turn of his eye. "Is none of my lads so clever as to send this judge packing? I have seen them get up a quarrel when there was less need of one." In a moment a brawl began in the crowd, none could say how or where. Hundreds of dirks were out: cries of "Help" and "Murder" were raised on all sides: many wounds were inflicted: two men were killed: the sitting broke up in tumult; and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... He is knight, dubb'd with unhatch'd rapier and on carpet consideration; but he is a devil in private brawl: souls and bodies hath he divorc'd three; and his incensement at this moment is so implacable that satisfaction can be none but by pangs of death and sepulchre. Hob, nob, is his word; give 't or ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... can I forget him? He will be here to-morrow. Once my father and he have found me, what am I to do? Die, I suppose! . . . I would rather die than marry Count Vassilan, and again I would rather die than figure in a vulgar brawl, such as the newspapers would take a delight in. My father is well aware of that, and will play on my weakness. . . . B-but—I may—be able—to defeat ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... very effective. But imagine a speaker taking that kind of position to discourse on the development of road-making machinery. If you have a fiery, aggressive message, and will let yourself go, nature will naturally pull your weight to your forward foot. A man in a hot political argument or a street brawl never has to stop to think upon which foot he should throw his weight. You may sometimes place your weight on your back foot if you have a restful and calm message—but don't worry about it: just stand like a man who genuinely feels what he is saying. Do not stand with your heels ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... and outcry put the crier nearly at his wits' end to record the wagers that pelted him, and which testified how much confidence the numerous Athenians had in their unproved champion. The brawl of voices drew newcomers from far and near. The chariot race had just ended in the adjoining hippodrome; and the idle crowd, intent on a new excitement, came surging up like waves. In such a whirlpool of tossing arms ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... to the daylight—and then fell, crashing and plunging, into a mighty chasm, the birchwoods around reverberating with its angry roar. Far away is the lonely sea. This friendly river may laugh or brawl as it will, but there is peace for it at last; its varying voices must eventually disappear in the dull, slow tumult of the distant world. And yet it seemed to him to complain as it went by—to appeal to him; and yet why ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... the Serjeant-at-Arms was bidden to remove him. Strange was the scene as little Captain Cosset walked up to the member of Herculean proportions, and men wondered how the order would be enforced; but Charles Bradlaugh was not the man to make a vulgar brawl, and the light touch on his shoulder was to him the touch of an authority he admitted and to which he bowed. So he gravely accompanied his small captor, and was lodged in the Clock Tower of the House as prisoner until the ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... years, has met upon the arena every shape of man or beast that the broad empire of Rome could furnish, and yet never has lowered his arm. And if there be one among you who can say that, ever, in public fight or private brawl, my actions did belie my tongue, let him step forth and say it. If there, be three in all your throng dare face me on the bloody ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... should do that in private. You have no right to brawl in the streets, even though your ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... who combined with his salient artistic talents a quarrelsome, volcanic humour had the mischance to kill a man in a brawl in a Southwark tavern. As a result he fled the town, nor paused in his headlong flight from the consequences of that murderous deed until he had all but reached the very ends of England. Under what circumstances he became ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... Pritchard's own hands. There is no one who has received so many warnings as he. Bramley was cautioned twice; Mallison was warned three times and burned to death; Forsith had word from us only once, and he was shot in a drunken brawl. This man Pritchard has been warned a dozen times, he has escaped death twice. The time has come to show him that we are in earnest. Threats are useless; the time has come for deeds. I say that if Pritchard refuses this trifling request of ours, let us see that he leaves this ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... distant light, And heard a chorus brawl; Wherever drunkards stopp'd at night, Why ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... our descent till our only guide, the spring run, became quite a trout brook, and its tiny murmur a loud brawl, we began to peer anxiously through the trees for a glimpse of the lake, or for some conformation of the land that would indicate its proximity. An object which we vaguely discerned in looking under the near trees and over the ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... foremost there is the Lord St. Leger, who was killed in a Dublin street brawl a hundred years ago, who will come driving home at midnight headless in his coach, and the coachman driving him also headless, carrying his head under his arm. That is not a very pleasant thing to see enter as the gates swing open of themselves ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... foreign captain who was yielding to his liquor like a fool or a half-grown boy. I conceived a contempt for that shaven, scrawny skipper—I remember it well. That he should drink himself drunk like a boy unused to liquor! Faugh! 'Twas a sickening sight. He would involve himself in some drunken brawl, I made sure, when even I, a child, knew better than to misuse the black bottle in this unkind way. 'Twas the passage from Spain—and the rocks of this and the rocks of that—and 'twas the virtues of a fore-and-after and the vices of an English square rig for ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... again, of magistrate, increased his offence and pointed its moral: he, a conservator of the laws—he, a dispenser of equity, sitting even at the very moment on the judgment seat—he to have commenced a brawl, nay to have fastened a quarrel upon a man even then of some consideration and of high promise; a quarrel which finally tended to this result—shoot or be shot. That commissioner's situation and state of mind, for the succeeding night, were certainly ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Mr. Cayenne, a man of crusty temper but good heart, and his family, American loyalists, settled among us. In the year 1788, a proposal came from Glasgow to build a cotton mill on the banks of the Brawl burn, a rapid stream which ran through the parish. Mr. Cayenne took a part in the profit or loss of the concern, and the cotton mill and a new town was built, and the whole called Cayenneville. Weavers of muslin were brought to the mill, and women to teach the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Agency from this little town. It was a case of record hunting. Well, the man went out last night all O. K.; he was a little on the sport when off duty, but a tip-top chap when at work. Well, he got into a gambling brawl, and this morning they brought him ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... published with Basterga's,—as must happen if the watch were summoned and the girl spoke out—and no one could say where the matter might end, or what suspicions might not be awakened. Nay, the matter was worse, more perilous and more lightly balanced; for, setting himself aside, none the less was a brawl that brought up Basterga's name, a thing to be shunned. The least thing might precipitate the scholar's arrest; his arrest must lead to the loss of the remedium, if it existed; and the loss of the remedium ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... your thanks till the combative instinct dies With the taint of the olden leaven; Yes, the times are changed, for better or worse, The prayer that no harm befall Has given its place to a drunken curse, And the manly game to a brawl. ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... the matter, Janet. In prison he is, and in prison he has to remain until he is let out, and I see no chance of that. If it had only been a brawl with the watch it could have been got over easily enough; but this is an affair of high treason — aiding and abetting the king's enemies, and the rest of it. If it were in the old times they would put the thumb screws on him to find out all he knew about it, for they ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... before its bearer was fairly out of college. The publicity it then attained (partly due to young Harman's conspicuous wealth) attached to some youthful exploits not without a certain wild humour. But frolic degenerated into brawl and debauch: what had been scrapes for the boy became scandals for the man; and he gathered a more and more unsavoury reputation until its like was not to be found outside a penitentiary. The crux ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... of men, Are Tyrants when, Their thirsty Souls are fill'd: They scold sore hot Like Peep in th' Pot And never can be still'd. They talk and prate At such a rate, And think of nought but evil; They fight and brawl, And Wives do mawl, Though all run for the Divel. But at their draugh, They quaff and laugh Amongst their fellow creatures. They swear and tear And never fear Old Nick in his worst features. Who would but say Then, by the way That Woman ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... at him. He parried the thrust of the first, but the shock of collision hurled his horse against the side of the coach. "Sacred swine!" he cried bitterly. "To endanger a lady, to make this brawl in a lady's ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... the guard that night, with a charge from Othello to keep the soldiers from excess in drinking, that no brawl might arise, to fright the inhabitants, or disgust them with the new-landed forces. That night Iago began his deep-laid plans of mischief: under colour of loyalty and love to the general, he enticed Cassio ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... point, for the domestic brawl in the small hut seemed to be waxing furious. Thorward's voice was not heard so often, but when it did sound there was an unusually stern tone in it, and Freydissa's became so loud that her ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... to end the grand old forest of Arden is astir overhead; from beginning to end the brooks brawl in your ear; from beginning to end you smell the bruised ferns and the delicate-scented wood-flowers. It is Theocritus again, with the civilization of the added centuries contributing its spangles of reason, philosophy, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... fellow!" exclaimed Vautrin. "How can people brawl when they have a certain income of thirty thousand livres? Young people have bad manners, ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... "making incessant grimaces and gesticulations, in a manner which induced the crowd to call him 'Punch,' and to ask him why he had not brought 'Judy' with him." In fact, the whole proceeding was a disgraceful brawl. ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... close, his red hair, the fiery filaments of which, when under the reflection of certain lights, might have given the impression as though his face had been rubbed with phosphorus. Two teeth lost in a night orgy and brawl, he did not exactly remember now, caused him to spit out indistinct words which one could not always understand. He was bald only on the top of his head, like a tonsured monk, with a crop of short, curly hair, golden and shiny, around this circle ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... day the strikers walked out. Mob rule threatened Sterling. Women dared no longer send their children to school or to the grocery stores for food. They hardly dared go themselves. A striker was shot by a companion in a saloon brawl. The killing was immediately charged to a corporation detective, and our noble press made much of the incident before it ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... captain declaring he would do for every cur's son of the whelps. 'Diomedes,' says I, waking up, 'what's this damnable racket on the landing? Is Mr. Richard home?' For I had some notion it was you, sir, after an over-night brawl. And I profess I would have caned you soundly. The fellow answered that Captain Clapsaddle's honour was killing Mr. Allen, and went out; and came back presently to say that some tall gentleman had the captain by the neck, and that Mr. Allen was picking his way down the ice ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... had been dim at the best, and he had apparently left Scotland before even Queen Anne was on the throne. When he understood Arthur's story, he communicated his own. He had been engaged in a serious brawl with some English fishers, and in fear of the consequences had fled from Eyemouth, and after casting about as a common sailor in various merchant ships, had been captured by a Moorish vessel, and had found it expedient to purchase his freedom by conversion to Islam, after which his ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to become exhausting. Help against too much talk can be found in one direction. But it must be made use of before the evil begins, and is in any event of use only in the description of a long chain of events,—e. g., a great brawl. There, if one has been put in complete possession of the whole truth, through one or more witnesses, the next witness may be told: "Begin where X entered the room.'' If that is not done, one may be compelled to hear all the witness did the day before ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... hat. I'll have to go home without one, and the Pater will think I've been in a drunken brawl, and there'll ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... fancies, and bright hopes, Children of wine, go off like dreams. This sick vertigo here Preacheth of temperance, no sermon better. These black thoughts, and dull melancholy, That stick like burrs to the brain, will they ne'er leave me? Some men are full of choler, when they are drunk; Some brawl of matter foreign to themselves; And some, the most resolved fools of all, Have told their ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... fjord-valleys of Norway with the voice and the strength of a giant. The glaciers totter and groan, as if in anger at their own weakness, and send huge avalanches of stones and ice down into the valleys. The rivers swell and rush with vociferous brawl out over the mountainsides, and a thousand tiny brooks join in the general clamor, and dance with noisy chatter over the moss-grown birch-roots. But later, when the struggle is at an end, and June has victoriously seated herself upon her throne, her voice becomes more ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... he, "you have attained your end and have certainly chosen a particularly delicate moment for your intrusion. I would not brawl in the presence of death, but I can assure you that if I were a younger man your monstrous conduct would not pass ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... felt some dread but for the fact that, rather strangely, these men showed little disposition to engage in any brawl, and no one ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... environment in which other men of about his own age, but of greater education and larger opportunities, had found penury, disgrace, and death. Marlowe, his confrere, at the age of thirty, in 1593, was killed in a tavern brawl. A year earlier, Greene, also a university man, would have died a beggar on the street but for the charity of a cobbler's wife who housed him in his dying hours. Spenser, breathing a purer atmosphere, but lacking the business ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... Rue to give up this most valuable chattel was out of the question. What he did, therefore, was to fly into a rage, refuse the Kid's offer in language which would have precipitated a brawl had the young man been less earnest in his wooing, and consign Minnie to the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... up that night with the start one has at a sudden call. But there had been no call. A profound silence spread itself through the sleeping house. Outdoors the wind had died down. Only the loud brawl of the river broke the stillness under the stars. But all through the silence and this vibrant song there rang a soundless menace which brought me out of bed and to my feet before I was awake. I heard Paul say, "What's ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... tawny beard concealed a jaw underhung, a chin jutting and dangerous. His mouth had a cruel twist; but his laughing hid that too. The bridge of his nose had been broken; few observed it, or guessed at the brawl which must have given it to him. Frankness was his great charm, careless ease in ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... not,—nor yet the time, place, cause, Of their rebellion. I would throttle it, Were it a riot, or a drunken brawl! ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... luck that that is what we called him last time. He is that one of my friends and fellow sinners who was plugging along nicely at the Bar in 1914, and was just about to take silk, when he changed his mind, came to France and got mixed up in what he calls "this vulgar brawl on the Continent." After nearly three years of systematic warfare in the second line he has at last achieved the rank of full lieutenant, which is not so bad for a growing lad of forty-five; and is running one of those complicated but fascinating side-shows which, to oblige Their Exigencies, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... twenty years of age, found a devoted friend in Monsignore Querro, a cousin of the family well placed at court, who assisted him in the burglary of the Cenci palace. Rocco was killed by Amilcare Orsini, a bastard of the Count of Pitigliano, in a brawl at night. The young men met, Cenci attended by three armed servants, Orsini by two. A single pass of rapiers, in which Rocco was pierced through the right ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... few feet away. The man might be a louse, but he was also a fighting machine of first order, still. He'd already captured one of the pikes. Now he grinned tightly at Gordon and began moving toward him. Gordon nodded—in a brawl such as this, two working together had ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... noise and curses and threats Kishimoto San's voice rang out. "Stop! you crawling vipers of the swamp! How dare you brawl before this sacred place? How dare you touch one of my blood! My granddaughter accounts to me, not to the spawn of the earth—such as you! Disperse your dishonorable bodies to your dishonored ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... justice of men!—one drunken wretch smites another in a midnight brawl, and sends a soul to its account with one sharp shudder of passion and despair, and the maddened creature that remains on earth suffers the penalty of the law. Every sense sobered from its reeling fury, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... social life requires, And thou hast need of discipline and art, To give thee what politer France receives From nature's bounty—that humane address And sweetness, without which no pleasure is In converse, either starv'd by cold reserve, Or flush'd with fierce dispute, a senseless brawl— Yet being free, I love thee; for the sake Of that one feature can be well content, Disgrac'd as thou hast been, poor as thou art, To seek no sublunary rest beside. But, once enslav'd, farewell! I could endure Chains nowhere patiently; and chains at home, Where I am free by birthright, not at all. ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... imagination was touched by the blank space of white paper the Bulletin left where King's editorials had usually been printed, but Thomas King's subsequent violence had repelled her. The Herald, after rashly treating the "affray" as a street brawl, lost hundreds of subscribers and most of its advertising. It shrunk to a sheet a quarter of its usual size. Naturally, its editor, John Nugent, was the more solidly and bitterly aligned with the Law and Order party. The true importance of the revolt, either as an ethical movement ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... in venomous hate, unstable as water, as shallow as a pool of glass—could have joined issue in a hair-pulling, face-scratching brawl. She was of ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... Shakespeare's plays are very numerous. There is little need to remind the reader, for instance, of the hand-to-hand encounters of Macbeth and Macduff, Posthumus and Iachimo, Hotspur and the Prince of Wales, Richard and Richmond. Romeo has his fierce brawl with Tybalt, Hamlet his famous fencing scene, and there is serious crossing of swords both in "Lear" and "Othello." English audiences, from an inherent pugnacity, or a natural inclination for physical feats, were wont to esteem highly the combats of the stage. The players were skilled in the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... St. Peter's for 139,000,000 of Roman Catholics; his second is to make a dignified appearance, to receive company, to wear a crown, and to take care it does not fall off his head. But it is a matter of perfect indifference to him that his subjects brawl, rob, or murder one another, so long as they don't attack either his Church or ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... to the little river Brawl, and on the other side were the plantations and woods of Clavering Park. The park was let out in pasture when the Pendennises came first to live at Fair-Oaks. Shutters were up in the house; a splendid free stone palace, with great stairs, ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the unruly ones laughed in derision and straightway began to shout forth such a volley of oaths as I had never heard during a drunken brawl in the streets ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... heavy stick and struck me, and before the bystanders knew what had happened there was a street brawl; for I struck Richard Tresidder a heavy blow on the chin which sent him reeling backward, and when his son Nick sprang upon me I threw him from me with great force, so that he fell to the ground, and I saw the blood gush from his nose. After that I remember nothing distinctly. I have ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... rust and ready for instant use. Some wore tarnished, sea-stained finery looted from hapless prizes, a brocaded waistcoat, a pair of tasseled jack-boots, a plumed hat, a ruffled cape. The heads of several were bound around with knotted kerchiefs on which dark stains showed,—marks of a brawl aboard the brig or a fight ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine |
