"Fencer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rode a charger, while I travel on shanks' mare; He messed on wine and venison; I eat far humbler fare. I'll grant he was some fencer with his doughty snickersnee, But Richard Coeur de Lion didn't have a ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... was a conspicuous character. One of the most romantic of these gentry at one time was a woman named Mary Frith, born in 1585, and known as Moll Cut-Purse. She dressed in male attire, was an adroit fencer, a bold rider, and a staunch royalist; she once took two hundred gold jacobuses from the Parliamentary General Fairfax on Hounslow Heath. She is the chief character in Middleton's play of the "Roaring Girl"; and after a varied ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... cock," replied Sir Ralph; "been after the brush till I am quite done up; such a glorious run. By G—, you should have seen my grey mare, Smith; by G—, she's a glorious fencer." ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... instant of rigid silence, and then Syme in his turn fell furiously on the other, filled with a flaming curiosity. The Marquis was probably, in a general sense, a better fencer than he, as he had surmised at the beginning, but at the moment the Marquis seemed distraught and at a disadvantage. He fought wildly and even weakly, and he constantly looked away at the railway line, almost as if he feared the train more than the pointed steel. Syme, on the other hand, ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... of four great parishes,' says the wit in the comedy, 'and a voice that will drown all the city.' If a gallant stood in the way, she drew upon him in an instant, and he must be a clever swordsman to hold his ground against the tomboy who had laid low the German fencer himself. A good fellow always, she had ever a merry word for the passer-by, and so sharp was her tongue that none ever put a trick upon her. Not to know Moll was to be inglorious, and she 'slipped from one company to another like ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... too, have changed your coat," continues the other, in his laughing way; "I have heard of you at Cambridge and afterwards: we have friends everywhere; and I am told that Mr. Esmond at Cambridge was as good a fencer as he was a bad theologian." (So, thinks Esmond, my old maitre d'armes was a Jesuit ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you lunge, sir," said Doom meaningly; "I ken the carriage of a fencer's head; your eye's fast, your step's light; with the sword I take it Drimdarroch is condemned, and your practice with the pistol, judging from the affair with the Macfarlanes, seems pretty enough. You ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... in Scotland. They never really got on together at all. Cyril thought him a bear, and he thought Cyril effeminate. He was effeminate, I suppose, in some things, though he was a very good rider and a capital fencer. In fact he got the foils before he left Eton. But he was very languid in his manner, and not a little vain of his good looks, and had a strong objection to football. The two things that really gave him pleasure were poetry and acting. At Eton he was always dressing up and reciting ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... respect and admiration for his master became no less. He had the attractiveness of extreme and unscrupulous capability. It gave Ralph the same joy to watch him as he found in looking on at an expert fencer; he was so adroit and strong and ready; mighty and patient in defence, watchful for opportunities of attack and merciless when they came. His admirers scarcely gave a thought to the piteousness of the adversary; they ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... a man is like when he is cut into a thousand pieces, or boiled in oil. That sort of knowledge is of no use to me. I'm afraid we shall never get on with one another, Mrs George. I live like a fencer, always on guard. I like to be confronted with people who are always on guard. I hate sloppy people, slovenly people, people who cant sit ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... fellow; one who never pays a debt, yet to whom it is dangerous to refuse credit. Already nearly a ryo[u] is due to this Echigoya. It has been the bad luck to support him and his family during the past six months." Said Kuma—"Thus maimed, to hold his own in quarrels he must be a notable fencer as well as brawler. Was the wound so received?"—"Iya! That is not known. Some quarrel at the New Year's festivities probably was the cause. Before that time he was sound enough." She laughed. "He has two friends; Kahei ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... him, rapier, scabberd, and all: and he giues me the stucke in with such a mortall motion that it is ineuitable: and on the answer, he payes you as surely, as your feete hits the ground they step on. They say, he has bin Fencer to the Sophy ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... You can retreat till your shoulders touch the mat, but I must stand this side of the line, unable to reach you. And you have the advantage of the mask besides. You are not a fair fencer." ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... indisputably so,—that the day's work of a man like Mantegna or Paul Veronese consists of an unfaltering, uninterrupted succession of movements of the hand more precise than those of the finest fencer: the pencil leaving one point and arriving at another, not only with unerring precision at the extremity of the line, but with an unerring and yet varied course—sometimes over spaces a foot or more in extent—yet a course so determined everywhere, that either of these men ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... sword was held horizontal instead of pointing upward, a fact which at once struck the observant and practised eye of Major John Decies, sometime champion fencer. ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... woman, with a balanced strength that seldom showed. Her eye was as quietly watchful as a fencer's. She maintained a pleasant relation with her charge, but I doubt if many, even in that country, could have ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... moments regarding him, his boyish face stern and troubled. Up to that point, against his will, he had believed him; from it, he believed him no longer. But—he faced the truth however it might gall him—he was pitted against a skilled fencer, and he was powerless. Experience could baffle him at ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... far-reaching importance. He appears to have known very little concerning poisonous reptiles; had never heard of the terrible fer-de-lance, which infests the cane-swamps of Brazil—a snake ten feet in length which strikes without warning and straight as a fencer's thrust. But "Elsie Venner" and Holmes's second novel, "The Guardian Angel," are, to use Lowell's expression on a ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... the Art of catching fish, that is to say, How to make a man that was none to be an Angler by a book, he that undertakes it shall undertake a harder task than Mr. Hales, a most valiant and excellent fencer, who in a printed book called A Private School of Defence undertook to teach that art or science, and was laughed at for his labour. Not but that many useful things might be learned by that book, but he was laughed at because that ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... don't trust him—sometimes, buttons are lost from foils. I try to be very diplomatic by touching him very infrequently. Though I rather think it is pearls before swine; for he is too good a fencer not to see I am sparing him, and too jealously vindictive ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... face, foil in hand, Just out of lunging range they salute, Who anon, swordsman stark, old fencer grand, Must fight their duel out, foot to foot. Mere preliminary flourish, all of this; The punctilio of "form" without a fault; But soon the blades shall counter, clash, and twist, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... finding that he alone, of all her school, seemed thoroughly and instinctively to comprehend her every word, and chilled by the disagreeable suspicion that he was only playing with her, and her mathematics and geometry, and meta-physic and dialectic, like a fencer practising with foils, while he reserved his real strength for some object more worthy of him. More than once some paradox or question of his had shaken her neatest systems into a thousand cracks, and opened up ugly depths of doubt, even on the most seemingly-palpable certainties; ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... the pantoum or the chant royal, Maupassant also desired to write in metrical lines. However, he never liked this collection that he often regretted having published. His encounters with prosody had left him with that monotonous weariness that the horseman and the fencer feel after a period in the riding school, or a bout ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... That fencer explained afterwards to Dave's party that he "seen what you coves was up to," and that's why he called the inspector back. But he told them that after they had told their ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... photograph, but an old miniature of Paul I had seen Janet with—an old miniature which I had painted on ivory myself in the far-distant days. I am sure Paul never had a photograph taken. Of course it was because I had recognised this that I wanted Paul to wait in the library; but he was a better fencer than I, and made me admit more than I intended. I sat down now, a world of old memories whirling through my brain. I mixed this that I had just seen—with something very like it in the long, long past—with the crash of pots, and another figure that had thrown itself into Paul's arms. There ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... came into Piers' face on the instant. He looked at Tudor with the measuring eye of a fencer. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... 19th, 1881.—After the seventeenth sitting of the Treaty Joint Commission I had an interview with Delia Sala, the Italian who is an Egyptian General, and governs the Soudan. He is a great fencer, and has killed his man before now. He declares himself willing to put down insubordination in the Egyptian Army by calling out three of the Colonels in succession. A more practical but hardly less bold suggestion of his is ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... death! how did my sword miss him? These rogues that are most weary of their lives Still 'scape the greatest dangers. A pox upon him; all his reputation, Nay, all the goodness of his family, Is not worth half this earthquake: I learn'd it of no fencer to shake thus: Come, I 'll forget him, and ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... I burn'd, and had a combat in my breast, Glad t' have her company, yet 'twas not best (Methought) to see her lost, but 'tis in vain T' abandon goodness, and of fate complain; Virtue her servants never will forsake, As now 'twas seen, she could resistance make: No fencer ever better warded blow, Nor pilot did to shore more wisely row To shun a shelf, than with undaunted power She waved the stroke of this sharp conqueror. Mine eyes and heart were watchful to attend, In hope the victory ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... kindly. "If you wish to get rid of the masher," said he, "I can show you a way;" and throwing himself into the position of a fencer, he made a lunge with his right arm, ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... bar, he is the despair of his instructors. How will he supply this deficiency? Simply by the power of his will. All physical games do not require physical strength, and he became an excellent shot and fencer. Furious at his own weakness, he outdid the strong, and, like Diomede and Ajax, brought back his trophies laughing. A college courtyard was not sufficient for him: he needed the Bellevue woods, while he waited to have all space, all the sky, at his disposal. So the warlike infancy of a Guynemer ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... well-rounded figure; and though to keep down her conceit he told her that he must be losing, along with his slenderness, some of his youthful agility, he confessed to his wife that teaching Miss Marshall was the best fun he had had in years. The girl was as quick as a cat, and had a natural-born fencer's wrist. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... not speak for some time. The thunder was constant, and the play of the lightning was like the dazzle of a fencer's sword. Mingled with the thunder came the slap of frothing water and the whine of bending trees. The wind was ice ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... "Why, look here," they said to Patsy, "he'd punch you full of holes. Why he's a fencer. You can't fight him with swords. He'd kill you in ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... humour[113] in thy brain. Thy tongue adorn'd with flowing eloquence, And yet I see imprinted in thy brows A fortunate but froward governance. And though thy rival Marius, mated late By backward working of his wretched fate, Is fall'n; yet, Sylla, mark what I have seen Even here in Rome. The fencer Spectacus Hath been as fortunate as thou thyself; But when that Crassus' sword assayed his crest, The fear of death did make him droop ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... again with the same sound like song, and the men went to work again with the same white and watchful faces. Evan, in his impatience, went back a little to his wildness. He made windmills, as the French duellists say, and though he was probably a shade the better fencer of the two, he found the other's point pass his face twice so close as almost to graze his cheek. The second time he realized the actual possibility of defeat and pulled himself together under a shock of the sanity of anger. He narrowed, and, so to speak, tightened his operations: he fenced ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... which are deemed of importance. Practice of this kind should form a part of every naturalist's daily routine. After a certain time, it need not be consciously done. The movements of thought and action will, indeed, become as automatic as those which the trained fencer makes with his foil. ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... might appreciate their vigorous hugeness, the prominent veins, and the strong fingers, all this with the naive satisfaction of a ditch-digger. His conversation always turned on feats of strength and before the two artists he strutted as if he belonged to another race, talking of his prowess as a fencer, of his triumphs in the bouts, of the weights he could lift with the slightest effort, of the number of chairs he could jump over without touching one of them. Often he interrupted the two painters when they were eulogizing the great masters of art, to tell them of the ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... we offer it, either, as an explanation. We prefer to make it, if you will, the leitmotiv which is to accompany all our explanations. We must ever keep it in mind, though without dwelling on it too much, somewhat as a skilful fencer must think of the discontinuous movements of the lesson whilst his body is given up to the continuity of the fencing-match. We will now endeavour to reconstruct the sequence of comic forms, taking up again the thread that leads from ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... conducted by the officers—with the old muzzle-loaders which were the army weapons at the time. I was very delighted one day when Mr. Hagemeister, the fencing-master, one of the many splendid old Holstein non-commissioned officers holding the rank of lieutenant, said I was "A smart fencer." ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... and unscrupulous political writer to crush its opponents and to effect the ruin of the rival paper, "La Republique du Morvan," by fair means or foul. The first stabs dealt by the new pen were directed against notable residents, and being a good fencer and a good shot—in fact, a sort of bravo—M. Tremplier, the wielder of the pen, proclaimed loudly after every libel that he was ready to maintain what he advanced at the point of the sword, and to give a meeting ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... expressions,—as when he dubbed the Blue Book of the Import Duties Committee "the greatest work of imagination that the nineteenth century had produced." Mr. Gladstone was no match for this great parliamentary fencer in irony, in wit, in sarcasm, and in bold attacks; but even in a House so fond of jokes as that of the Commons he commanded equal if not greater attention by his luminous statements of fact and the earnest solemnity of his manner. Benjamin Disraeli entered Parliament ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... duke, a friend of her serene highness, liked everywhere, a fine shot and a great fencer, and rides a horse as if he were sewn to the saddle. And all the ladies admire him ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... frequent visitor, and there encountered all comers successfully. The duke got angry, and one day he took up a foil and defied the Neapolitan marquis to a combat. Dragon accepted and was thoroughly beaten, while the duke went off in triumph, for he might say from henceforth that he was the best fencer in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... some four parishes that way, and I thank him he did; and cried his games under master Morose's window: till he was sent crying away, with his head made a most bleeding spectacle to the multitude. And, another time, a fencer marchng to his prize, had his drum most tragically run through, for taking that street in his way ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... adroit a fencer to yield readily to such a fate. Careful, at first, only to defend himself, he met each thrust and pass with a parry which deepened the frown on Winter's brow, and having retreated to the edge of the duelling ground, he there held his position despite the fierceness ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... to allow a free space for the lesson the two swordsmen came on guard. Lagardere explained while he fenced, naming each feint and lunge and circle of the complicated attack as he made it. With the last word of his steel-illuminated lecture his sword, that had illustrated the words of the fencer, seemed suddenly to leap forward, a glittering ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the proofs of my reply to General Gourgaud, with some cautious balaam from mine honest friend, alarmed by a Highland Colonel, who had described Gourgaud as a mauvais garcon, famous fencer, marksman, and so forth. I wrote in answer, which is true, that I would hope all my friends would trust to my acting with proper caution and advice; but that if I were capable, in a moment of weakness, of doing anything short of what my honour demanded, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... alone, is smiling. LEVER approaches from the towing-path. He is a man like a fencer's wrist, supple and steely. A man whose age is difficult to tell, with a quick, good-looking face, and a line between his brows; his darkish hair is flecked with grey. He gives the feeling that he has always had to spurt to keep pace ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... article concerning this little scene, highly ornamented with phrases that would attract attention; but unfortunately the editor refused to print it. The Duke did not care for notoriety, and was, moreover, a renowned fencer, so the editor exercised his discretion. Count Styvens belonged to the foreign diplomacy and was very particular, and no one had infringed on his privacy since the little affair in the Brussels music hall. ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... in the Spanish West Indies would be a long story. I will only tell you that he turned out a thoroughly good soldier, and a very dashing smart fellow, a first-rate rider and fencer, a great dandy in his dress; but also—and if you go to hot climates, keep this in mind—a particularly sober and temperate man, who drank nothing, and could eat anything. And he had, it is said, the most ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... answered." Lucile watched Frona's open face and the bold running advertisement, and felt as the skilled fencer who fronts a tyro, weak of wrist, each opening naked to his hand. "How do I know?" She laughed harshly. "When a man leaves one's arms suddenly, lips wet with last kisses and mouth areek ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... the final words brought a sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach, and the discomfort of a fencer, dueling in the dark—a swordsman who recognizes that his cleverness is outmatched. His question came with a ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... Paul," the poet was told. "She seems thoroughly smitten with him, only one thing causes her any uneasiness, she is afraid least you should disturb her tranquillity by coming after her, which by the way, would be dangerous for you, for the vicomte worships his mistress and is a good fencer." ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... seated himself, facing the bull, a show banderilla, no more than six inches long, held in his teeth. And so he awaited the charge until the bull was within actual arm's-reach, when with a swift rise from the chair and a turn of his body quick as that of a fencer's supple wrist, he bent and stuck the teeth-held banderilla in the bull's shoulder ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... son to Murmex Frugi, trained since infancy by both. No wonder he is a marvel. I have never faced a swordsman who gave me so much trouble to protect myself or who held off my attacks so easily and completely. He is the only man alive, so far as I know, really in my class as a fencer." ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... pulled trigger, his shot went wild. Before he could shoot again or bring his club into action. Brice was upon him. Gavin smote once and once only with the willowy metal strip. But he struck with all the dazzling speed of a trained saber fencer. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... and she struck savagely. But with the skill of a fencer he met the blow and broke it, seizing ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... Boku-den took a ferry to cross over the Yabase in the province of Omi. There was among the passengers a Samurai, tall and square-shouldered, apparently an experienced fencer. He behaved rudely toward the fellow-passengers, and talked so much of his own dexterity in the art that Boku-den, provoked by his brag, broke silence. 'You seem, my friend, to practise the art in order to conquer the enemy, but I do it in order not to be conquered,' said ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... "Les allusions a la legende de Tristan dans la litterature du moyen age", "Romania", xv. 435 f. Tristan was famed as a hunter, fencer, ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... The fencer who demanded a contest according to the rules of fencing was the French army; his opponent who threw away the rapier and snatched up the cudgel was the Russian people; those who try to explain the matter according to the rules of fencing are the historians who have described ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... ground. They were so close that the tiger could not spring, but he struck savagely with his great forepaws and tried again and again to pass the guard which Miller maintained with the training rod, using it as a fencer uses a foil. It was an unequal contest and the trainer realized that he was beaten; Depew would not be driven from the cage. The useless training whip was discarded and a savage rush from the tiger was met by a pistol shot in the face, blank ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... stumbling back a pace, and M. Etienne, who, with the quick eye of the born fencer, saw ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... handsome beyond all question; accomplished to the last degree; highly educated, and of great literary acquirements; with a gaiety of heart and cheerfulness of mind that spread happiness on all around him. His conversation was brilliant and engaging, as well as instructive. He was, moreover, the best fencer, dancer, swimmer, runner, dresser, the best shot, the best horseman, the best draughtsman, of ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... one man fences well, and another is but an indifferent hand at it, it is clear that the first will run the other through the body; but, if the other knows nothing at all about it, why then, Peter, the case is not quite so clear: because the good fencer is almost as much puzzled by your ignorance as you are by his skill, and you become on more equal terms. Now, Peter, I've made up my mind that I'll run that fellow through the body, and so I will, as sure ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... opinion that Shakespeare was, as Ben Jonson came to be, as much "in Society" as is possible for a mere literary man. I do not, in fancy, see him wooing a Maid of Honour. He was a man's man, a peer might be interested in him as easily as in a jockey, a fencer, a tennis-player, a musician, que scais-je? Southampton, discovering his qualities, may have been more interested, ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... consequences, and leaping from the ground when making a thrust at his opponent's heart, or savagely attempting to rival the hero of Chevy Chase who struck off his enemy's legs, is no mean foe. Donald was a capital fencer; and, well skilled in the tricks of the art, he had a parry for every known thrust. But Fandy's thrusts were unknown. Nothing more original or unexpected could be conceived; and every time Dorry cried "foul!" he redoubled his strokes, taking the word as a sort of applause. ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... knowing it. If it was necessary to walk to a remote spot, he walked, but he had never known himself to "exercise." He had no theory with regard to cold bathing or the use of Indian clubs; he was neither an oarsman, a rifleman, nor a fencer—he had never had time for these amusements—and he was quite unaware that the saddle is recommended for certain forms of indigestion. He was by inclination a temperate man; but he had supped the night before ...
— The American • Henry James
... now, old Lad of War? thou that wert wont to be as hot as a turn-spit, as nimble as a fencer, and as lousy as a school-master; now thou art put to silence like a Sectary.—War sits now like a Justice of peace, and does nothing. Where be your Muskets, Caleiuers and Hotshots? in Long-lane, at Pawn, at Pawn.—Now keys are your only Guns, Key-guns, Key-guns, and Bawds ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... then thrown aside. She looked about her and after some search found another, of similar size, untrimmed. She held out the latter to Anthony. He accepted it with a look of surprise. Then she walked into the path in front of him, stood stiff and straight, her small heels together, and made him the fencer's salute. "On guard!" ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... of the muscles by the mind, take the ceaseless practice by which a musician gains mastery over his instrument, or a fencer gains skill with a rapier. Innumerable small efforts of attention will make a result which seems well-nigh miraculous; which, for the novice, is really miraculous. Then consider that far more wonderful ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... which may possibly do you good. Why, then, should you swallow a vile mess which you are certain must do you harm? Fall upon your sword, as Tully—I mean Brutus—or some of those old Romans, were wont to do when the Game was up! In the first place, I should like to see the man, howsoever expert a fencer, who could so tumble on his own blade and kill himself. 'Tis easier to swallow a sword than to fall upon one, and the first is quite as much a Mountebank's Trick as t'other. Blow your brains out! A mighty ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... fleet, patient of cold, of hunger, and of fatigue. Up steep crags, and over treacherous morasses, he moved as easily as the French household troops paced along the great road from Versailles to Marli. He was accustomed to the use of weapons and to the sight of blood: he was a fencer; he was a marksman; and, before he had ever stood in the ranks, he was already ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... as Aeneas did to his father Anchises, in the time of the conflagration of Troy. When Panurge perceived them, he said to Pantagruel, Sir, yonder are the giants coming forth against you; lay on them with your mast gallantly, like an old fencer; for now is the time that you must show yourself a brave man and an honest. And for our part we will not fail you. I myself will kill to you a good many boldly enough; for why, David killed Goliath very ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... up resembling them in disposition and character; for, by the law of repetition, the organs of the selfish qualities will have acquired proportionally greater aptitude and vigor, just as do the muscles of the fencer or dancer. But suppose the same individual placed, from infancy, in the society of a superiorly endowed moral and intellectual people, the moral faculties will then be habitually excited, and their organs invigorated by repetition, till a greater aptitude ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... at the man. His thin lips had come together in a straight line. His hollow cheeks were flushed. Every sense was as alert as a fencer's. If he had lived long like that, no wonder his eyes had gone bad. Yet last night Monte himself had lived like that, pacing his room hour after hour. Only it was not work that had given a cutting edge to each minute—not ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... laugh at them. Still later on it happened that I took counterfeits for pure gold. The French women, and for the matter of that, my own countrywomen, of whatever class and in spite of all their virtues when young, remind me of my fencing lessons. As the fencer has his hour of practice with the foils so as to keep his hand in, so women practise with sentimental foils. As a mere youth, fairly good looking, I was sometimes invited to a passage of arms, and as I took the matter seriously, received many a scratch. They were not mortal wounds and healed quickly. ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... from our own guns." Analogically, the best defence for one's own shores is to harass and threaten seriously those of the opponent; but this best defence cannot be employed to the utmost, if the inferior, passive defence of fortification has been neglected. The fencer who wears also a breastplate may be looser in his guard. Seaports cannot strike beyond the range of their guns; but if the great commercial ports and naval stations can strike effectively so far, the fleet can launch into the deep rejoicing, knowing that its home interests, ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... practical word was given. The prince did not reply to my salute. He was smoking, and kept his cigar in one corner of his mouth, as if he were a master fencer bidding his pupil to come on. He assumed that he had to do with a bourgeois Briton unused to arms, such as we are generally held to be on the Continent. After feeling my wrist for a while he shook the cigar ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and bemyred, other times sweatie and full of dust, and to drinke being either extreme hot or exceeding cold; and it would trouble them to see him ride a rough-untamed horse, or with his weapon furiously incounter a skilful Fencer, or to handle or shoot-off a musket; against which there is no remedy, if he will make him prove a sufficient, compleat, or honest man: he must not be spared in his youth; and it will come to passe, that he shall many times ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... without promptitude, another promptitude without power. We must all feel the common sense of this, and can readily see how it applies to a general in the field, to a pilot in a storm, to a sportsman, to a fencer, to a debater. It is the same with an operating surgeon at all times, and may be at any time with the practitioner of the art of healing. He must be ready for what are called emergencies—cases which rise up at your ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... to win. He was proud of the confidence of his grandfather in backing him. He had a powerful horse and a firstrate fencer, and he was resolved himself not to flinch. On the night before the race, retiring somewhat earlier than usual to his chamber, he observed on his dressing-table a small packet addressed to his name, and in an unknown handwriting. Opening it, he found a pretty ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... were fifty or seventy-five years younger, by Jove! If you two boys let any rank outsider take her out of the family, you'll have me to reckon with. Yes, by Jove, you will! And you'll find that while I may be a poor fencer, and a worse boxer, I'm ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... for as much as five minutes; for that first encounter, brief though it was, showed him that these men had not the remotest idea of how to handle a sword, while as for himself, he had no sooner gripped the hilt of his weapon than he felt all the keen delight of the practised fencer thrill through him at the prospect of an encounter. Oh yes! he would put up a good fight, such a fight as these people should remember to their dying day; though of course one of them would get him, sooner ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... down the river bank. "Take that—and that—and that," I heard him shout, with a rat-tat-too of sharp thuds from the staff accompanying each word. Then I knew the quarrel on the beach was at its height; and Louis Laplante was still foiling the Sioux's approach to Miriam's wigwam like a deft fencer. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... stage in sheer wantonness or bloodthirstiness. This is a mistake, and is attributable to his father, the elder Booth, who had the madness of confounding himself with the character. Wilkes was too good a fencer to make ugly gashes; his pride was his skill, not ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... Gary. "I have got more than my match. But I know who will plague people worse than a puzzle, if she gets well educated. There's a pair of gloves, you little fencer." ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... after it but faced the skilled fencer, blazing defiance though fully expectant of the unsheathed dirk. But no dirk was unsheathed. Lucian, forgetting his feebleness, sprang for the cane and had dropped to one knee to snatch it up when Hugh ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... gentleman had been plaguing Edward Cannon with a somewhat dry disquisition on the noble art of fencing. Cannon for some time endured it with patience; but at length, on the man remarking that Sir George D—— was a great fencer, Cannon, who disliked him, replied, "I don't know, sir, whether Sir George is a great fencer, but Sir George is a great fool!" A little startled, the other rejoined, "Possibly he is; but then, you know, a man may be both."—"So I see, sir," ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... owed my broken arm to the fact that my horse, a solemn animal originally taken out of a buggy, though a very clever fencer, was too coarse to gallop alongside the blooded beasts against which he was pitted. But he was so easy in his gaits, and so quiet, being ridden with only a snaffle, that there was no difficulty in following to the end of the run. I had divers adventures on this horse. Once ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... runs on, if you've read any of 'em—he slaps the king's Swiss body-guards around like everything whenever they get in his way. He's a great fencer, too. Now, I've known of some Chicago men who were pretty notorious fences, but I never heard of any fencers coming from there. He stands on the first landing of the royal staircase in Castle Schutzenfestenstein with a gleaming ...
— Options • O. Henry |
