"Fair game" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my bills with it,—according to the very, very old story. The fact is, I live in that detestable no-man's land, between respectability and insolvency, which has none of the pleasure of either. I am fair game for every creditor, as I am supposed to pay my way,—and yet I never can pay ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... therefore it was impossible for me to take a flying column and give the Baris a severe lesson; but I made up my mind that when the work should be finished, I would take the fight out of them most thoroughly. They now considered us fair game, that they might insult as they thought proper; and I heard from our two faithful allies, Sherroom and Morgian, that they imagined we should become afraid of them, and then return ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... ever happened in Algiers. A nice compliment to my age. I am not so old as that! But," she added, with a frank smile, "all the hotels and guides expect commissions when they send people to me. I suppose they thought this pretty girl fair game, and that once in my place she would buy. So she did. She bought a string of amber beads. She liked the gold light in them, and said it seemed as if she might see a vision of something or some one she wanted to find, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sententiousness in the verses of the poets, particularly the tragedians, and most particularly in Euripides—the pet aversion and constant butt of Aristophanes' satire—are parodied. All is fish that comes to the Comic dramatists net, anything that will raise a laugh is fair game. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... She did not try to "get the better of" her fellow-hosts by snatching little advantages or cleverly evading her just contributions; she was not inclined to be boring or snobbish in the way of personal reminiscence. She played a fair game of bridge, and her card-room manners were irreproachable. But wherever she came in contact with her own sex the light of battle kindled at once; her talent of arousing animosity seemed ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... spoke with grim force. "Why, you must be got off the island somehow. If not, you're fair game for every venomous tongue in ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... more fearful transaction with the guard—how the excitement of the approaching conflict had defeated his capacities of thought, and led him on to the commission of so great a part of the general offence. Touching the initial affair with the squatters, he had no compunctious scruples. That was all fair game in his mode of thinking, and even had blood been spilled more freely than it was, he seemed to think he should have had no remorse. But on the subject of the murder of the guard, for so he himself called his crime, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... a number of butts on hand—men whom he attacked for their delinquencies, real or imaginary, or whom on account of idiosyncrasies he thought to be fair game, just for the fun of it. One of the first of these was Lord William Lennox, a nobleman of literary pretensions, whose efforts, however, were said to be more pretentious than literary. His novel of "The ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... apartment and they all produced a similar impression. I subsequently learned that the superabundance of sofas, chests of drawers, chairs, or bric—brac-stands was due to Shiphrah's passion for bargains, a weakness which made her the fair game of tradespeople and artisans. Several of her wardrobes and bureaus were packed full of all sorts of things for which she had no earthly use and many of which she had smuggled in when her husband ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... seemed to be no more than fair game, in Sturm's understanding, and a source of supercilious amusement but thinly veiled or not at all. Alone with the girl, Sturm put on the airs of a Prussianized pasha condescending to a ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... his peace was broken by the Peasants' Revolt, which swept like a hurricane over South Germany. Hostility to religion was not one of its moving causes, but the monks were vulnerable, and had always been considered fair game, especially by local nobles whom in the plenitude of their power they had not troubled to conciliate. The peasants of the Rhine valley had not forgotten the burning of Limburg, near Spires, by William of Hesse in 1504. The abbey church had scarcely ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... Chief, promptly; "and if I were in your place I'd be on my guard. He might try to steal your new biplane I've heard them talking about; or even burn down your whole outfit. Better get a gun, and keep watch. He's fair game, you know, if so be you catch him prowling around after dark. An escaped convict hasn't any rights in the eye ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... each of them, in the course of time, he seems to have succeeded in quarrelling. Throughout life, evidently, he has had capital fingers for plucking off parasites. Rich, lonely, and vain, he must have been fair game for the race of social sycophants and cormorants; and it's much to the credit of his sharpness and that instinct of self-defence which nature bestows even on the weak, that he has not been despoiled and exploite. Apparently they have all been bunglers. I maintain ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... Good looks without the surroundings and clothes to put them in are not much of a gift. Beauty in a third-class carriage and shabby clothes looks cheap and is fair game for any ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... that his side won. He has not seen her for months, nor talked with her for years, and yet as he sits there winding his watch after his great strategic victory in national politics, he hopes fondly that perhaps Molly will know that he played a clean hand and won a fair game. ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... impudence of the whole transaction, appealing insidiously to the folly and credulity of man kind, the brazen, shameless patter, proclaiming the fraud openly while insisting on the fairness of the game, give one a feeling of sickening disgust. The honest violence of a plain man playing a fair game fairly—even if he means to knock you over—may appear shocking, but it remains within the pale of decency. Damaging as it may be, it is in no sense offensive. One may well feel some regard for honesty, even if practised ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... on the basement, and the opportunities in the basement are endless. It is a curious thing that brain-workers who do much decorating in their spare time do most of it in the basement and not in the rooms they have to occupy themselves. The basement is fair game. Another curious thing is that the people who do have to occupy the basement never seem to appreciate what you are doing for them. They appear to think you are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... him about the toast; and though this is perhaps done with good humour, his feelings are wounded by it. At other times when the company are of a less liberal complexion, there is a determination, soon understood among one another, to hunt him down, as if he were fair game. A toast is pressed upon him, though all know that it is not his custom to drink it. On refusing, they begin to teaze him. One jokes with him. Another banters him. Toasts both illiberal and indelicate, are at length introduced; and he ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... Spaniards even as there are canny Scots, who grow rich and prosper; but there is never a Spaniard who does not regard the political fabric, and the laws, as fair game, the rule being always "devil take the hindmost," community of interests nowhere. "The good old vices of Spain," that is, the robbing of the lesser rogue by the greater in regulated gradations all the way from the King to the beggar, are as prevalent ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... Chief who had sufficient force of character to bring himself to the front. The pagan tribes of the interior owned allegiance to neither Sultan, and were left to govern themselves, the Muhammadan coast people considering them fair game for plunder and oppression whenever opportunity occurred, and using all their endeavours to prevent Chinese and other foreign traders from reaching them, acting themselves as middlemen, buying (bartering) at very cheap rates from the aborigines ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... I cannot help thinking that we haven't played a very fair game," said the man. "Remember, she's only ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... refuse a fair game at the cards," he said. "I never wanted to play, nor would have played for money had not my cousin William forced me. As for the chaplain, it went to my heart to win from him, but he was as eager as ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... And yet, hateful as she is, I blush to say I have sometimes been amused by her ill-nature when it was directed against people I hated still more. Lady Matilda Sufton, for example,—there she certainly shone, for hypocrisy is always fair game; and yet the people who love to hunt it are never amiable. You smile, as much as to say, Here is Satan preaching a sermon on holiness. But however satirical and intolerant you may think me, you must own that I take ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... strong passion, but conceived that a married life was more pleasant than one of single bliss. She had no doubt that he had promised to make Lily Dale his wife, but so had he previously promised her, or nearly so. It was a fair game, and she would win it if she could. If she failed, she would show her anger; but she would show it in a mild, weak manner, turning up her nose at Lily before Crosbie's face, and saying little things against himself behind ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... a quiet and restful afternoon. Mr. Muldoon had a pack of cards with him and we played whist. He played a very fair game, but he was on the alert all the time. At every sound he started, and once or twice he slipped out into the thicket and searched the glen in every direction with ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Sadie; go 'way right now!" Charnock interrupted. "You gotta put up a fair game, and I can't stop when I've all the boys' ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... that pleases him, and scores pitilessly—to other automobilists—everything in the nature of a swindle that he meets with, and they are not few, for in many places the automobilist is still considered fair game for robbery. ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... Steele only chuckles easy. "What an engagingly frank person you are!" says he. "As though rich widows weren't fair game! But with the practice of philanthropy so liberally compensated I'm not troubling them. Your friend, the late Mr. Gordon, has banished the wolf from my door; for the immediate present, at least. I wonder if he anticipated just how much I ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... season over, the female encountering a male in the open must evidently regard him as fair game, and devour him as the termination of the matrimonial rites. I have turned over many stones, but have never chanced upon this spectacle, but what has occurred in my menagerie is sufficient to convince ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... pool," returned Mr. Bayard, "has made himself fair game. A pool is like a declaration of war against the world; the pool itself would tell you so. And speaking of the pool, you understand that the eight are bound together like a fagot. You can't break one without breaking all; if Storri fall, Mr. Harley, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... ain't it? We say, 'Thou shalt not steal,' and then when we steal the Indian's land or the Frenchman's ships, we say, 'Oh, that don't mean not steal from our enemies; they are fair game.'" ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... passion of rebellion was curiously similar in its nature to his young fury. Now, as then, there was naught to be done to help what seemed like Fate. In a world made up of men all more or less hunters of the weak, ready to accept the theory that all things defenceless and lovely are fair game for the stronger, a man whose view was fairer ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... James, not averse from disparaging an old rival, "Oh, poor chap, he hasn't many party tricks. I'd back him at cat's-cradle, and I dare say he plays a very fair game at noughts-and-crosses. Besides, he'll do what he's told, and fetch things for you. You'll find him a handy and obliging ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... Sabbath are the regular targets taken out by our moral riflemen and archers, though so seldom to hit fair in the centre, that we may find ourselves, like spectators at the match, respecting the old targets more than we do the shots. Yet homilies and exporters are thought fair game. I have even heard splendid lecturers whose wit ran so low or who were so pushed for matter as to talk of what divinity-students wear round their necks, which seems a superficial consideration. The anciently ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Donald. And to me he shall answer. I am going to kill him. But it will not be murder. Since you have come into this room I have made my final plan, and I shall follow it to the end coolly and deliberately. It will be a great game, Mac—and it will be a fair game; and I shall play it happily, because Joanne will not know, and I will be strengthened ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... and girls not to stare at others, nor to take any apparent notice of personal peculiarities, deformities, or oddities of dress or demeanor. Teach the children always to play a fair game upon the playground, and not to lose their tempers over any little difference of opinion that ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... their superior height. There was no mistaking her, no hope whatever that the scouts might think her anything but the outlaw plane she was, flying in the face of international law, trafficking in treason, fair game if she once ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, their scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be learned. And he who approaches this subject should carefully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule which has already misled ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... but also by conduct, must we keep in the light. The fugitive found outside the city of refuge was fair game for the avenger, and if he strayed beyond its bounds there was a sword in his back before he knew where he was. Every Christian, by each sin, whether it be acted or only thought, casts himself out of the light into the darkness that rings it round, and out there he is a victim to the beasts ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... reserved for women. His was the code of "not being found out." Men are more suspicious—they find out sooner: ergo the morals to be observed vis a vis to them are of a stricter order. Railway companies and women are by many looked upon as fair game for deception. Consciences tender in many other respects have a subtle contempt for these two exceptions. Many a so-called honest man travels gaily in a first-class carriage with a second-class ticket, and lies to a woman at ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... whom fate has given dames already," said Crevecoeur, "to be bystanders at this fair game? It does not consist with my honour to be so, for I have myself a vow to be paid at the expense of that tusked and bristled brute, De ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... fair game and the Mouse was chief under the agreement. He looked quite small among the rest but he walked right out to the centre ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... because she was beautiful, fascinating, and as—as bad as I. I knew the poor creature had never had half a show. She was born in evil and exploited from the cradle up. Martin knew it, too, and took advantage. She was fair game for him and his money. When he came down to hell to play, he played with her and defied me. But on my plane it was man against man, you see, and when he flung his plaything aside, she came to me; that's all! She told ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... readjust my views of you, George," his friend said with mild satire. "I always looked upon you as fair game for the Norfolk dowagers with their broods of daughters, but I never contemplated your fixing your affections upon ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "It was fair game," he cried, as he saw his friends. "Piggy here was masterless, roaming around the woods feeding on nuts until he was fat and juicy! My, how good he will taste! At first I thought he was a bear, but bear or hog he was bound to fall to ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... police force has always been fair game for the students, a position "he" (to use the long-standing quip) did not always appreciate. Gatherings of students in the streets were at one time looked upon with great disfavor, while the daily "rushes" at the old post-office, before the days of carrier delivery, ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... in the world be on their guard against those who are not. With them it is the success that disgusts, not the attempt. But Eleanor had not yet learnt to look on her money as a source of danger; she had not begun to regard herself as fair game to be hunted down by hungry gentlemen. She had enjoyed the society of the Stanhopes, she had greatly liked the cordiality of Charlotte, and had been happy in her new friends. Now she saw the cause of all that kindness, and her mind ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Gillian allowed that she was ever so much nicer when there was no one to tease her. It was true that Jasper certainly, and perhaps Wilfred, would not have molested her if she had not offended the latter, and offered herself as fair game; but Gillian, who had to forestall and prevent their pranks, could not feel their absence quite the privation her sisterly spirit ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... like this men look on a girl as fair game. I ain't saying it's right, but it's so. You want to look out for ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... hamper outside the leads with some valerian in it, and a bit of cord tied to the lid. If you keep watch, you may bag half-a-dozen in no time; and strange cats are fair game for everybody,—only some of them are rum ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... it, my boy, I don't like it! It isn't playing a fair game," declared the rigid old gentleman, coloring resentfully. "I'm not going to return the invitation and ask that sharper, Cadby, to my house—and I ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... more shall hold me slave to him. Henceforth we be rovers, this star of my life and I. Come thou with us, friend! If thou stay here, thou'lt be held no better than erro, a landless, masterless wanderer, who is fair game for the law and for all men. Had my lord stayed, thou knowest that I too should have remained faithful. He being gone, we must fend for ourselves as best ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... they inhabit, but they never invade the actual premises; it is exactly there where the leopard is to be feared. Nothing is too small or too large for its attack; from a fowl upon the roost to a cow in the pasturage, all that belongs to the domestic stock is fair game for the ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... wrong a laborer of his hire. We have men who go in debt to tradesmen perhaps without a thought of paying them; but when we speak of such a one who has descended into the lowest mire of insolvency, we say that he has not paid his washerwoman. Out there in the West the washerwoman is as fair game as the tailor, the domestic servant as the wine merchant. If a man be honest he will not willingly take either goods or labor without payment; and it may be hard to prove that he who takes the latter ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... admonished, "you leave Roger alone. He's as Nature made him and not fair game for such as you. Leave him to some simple country maiden—Edna Langdon, for instance, who rides straight to hounds and whose broad acres—or what will be her broad acres when Papa Langdon is ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... him away through the forest, Noreen faded from his mind, for he had graver, sterner thoughts to fill it. Love can never be a fair game between the sexes, for the man and the woman do not play with equal stakes. The latter risks everything, her soul, her mind, her whole being. The former wagers only a fragment of his heart, a part of his thoughts. Yet he is not to blame; it is Nature's ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... play a game of billiards. It was the only time I ever played with him. His style with the cue was spacious and splendid; The balls went flying about the board, and I chaffed him on his flukes. He had not the temperament of a billiard-player. Still, I have heard that he played a fair game at St. Stephen's; but I can hardly believe it without first-hand testimony. I am willing to believe, however, that he was a good chess-player. Certainly he had a head for it But chess is a vile game for a brain-worker, whose recreations should never ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... that the cap fitted. Mrs. Yorke, looking at her as she sat with troubled, downcast eyes, and cheek burning painfully, and figure expressing in its bent attitude and unconscious tremor all the humiliation and chagrin she experienced, felt the sufferer was fair game. The strange woman had a natural antipathy to a shrinking, sensitive character—a nervous temperament; nor was a pretty, delicate, and youthful face a passport to her affections. It was seldom she met with all these obnoxious qualities combined in one individual; still more seldom she ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... instance, groundless, for Eleanor played a perfectly fair game from start to finish, and proved herself a powerful antagonist. Her serves were as straight and accurate as a boy's, and she played with great spirit and agility. Indeed, the sides were so evenly matched that junior excitement rose high and numerous ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... would still be with mothers wearing the Three Bar mark," she said. "After they leave the cows they're slicks, fair game for the first man that puts his rope on them—and Slade wouldn't risk running one of his own brands on them ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... them that it would be unsafe to attack another Christian settlement for some time to come; that in the interval they might find some pleasure, if no great credit, by turning their attention to the Indians. The infidels, he said, were God's natural enemies and fair game to the Christian. To make a long story short, Nuflo's Christian band, after some successful adventures, met with a reverse which reduced their number from nine to five. Flying from their enemies, they sought safety at Riolama, an uninhabited ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... the intent eagerness of a twelve-year-old lad at a country circus. Everything that happened down at Jackson Park that memorable season, especially the social rivalries of the different managing bodies, was fair game for his roguish wit. The liberties which he took with the names and reputations of public men showed that the old spirit of waggery was not dead within him. This is illustrated in such verses ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... made yourself fair game for ev'ry schemin', lazy sport or counter-jumper along the road from this to Sacramento!" ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte |
