"Quoits" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of course it is a game of skill, just as much as bowls or quoits; but there are also elements of luck about "pitch and toss" which ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... to which he was very partial, and on the Serapis when traversing the route to India he played deck-tennis until everyone else was exhausted. The bowling-alley at Sandringham was one of the best in England and the Prince was always fond of a game of bowls. Quoits he played well, and billiards he played with frequency and skill—his daughters being also able to handle the cue with success. Hockey was a favourite game, especially on the lakes at Sandringham, and of this sport the other members of his family were equally ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... to good beef. While the quarrel of round, rump, and sirloin goes on, this let us buy and eat and reinforce ourselves. In it are poems, powers, and possessions ineffable. Twenty-five cents a pound, and the strength of the gods in one's veins! Broil it carefully and rare, then go and toss quoits with Hercules. In this, ye disconsolate, behold lands, lovers, and virtues in plenty. It fills and steadies the pulse, and plants the planet plump under one's feet. "My friend, is he who makes me do what I can," says the sage. Only beefsteak can come to the rescue. If one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... they would play at quoits, struggling sternly against each other; or Chamberlain would examine Melanie in nautical lore; or together, in the evening, they would trace the constellations in the heavens. During their first week they were in the edge of a storm for a night and a day; but they put into harbor ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... A judicious investment of the company fund in baseballs, bats, dumb bells, Indian clubs, boxing gloves and other athletic goods, and the encouragement of baseball, basketball, quoits, etc., are in the interest ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... time at which Stokebridge was generally lively. The men, (dinner over, and the great weekly wash done,) usually crowded the public-houses, or played bowls and quoits on a piece of waste land known as "the common," or set off upon a spree to Birmingham or Wolverhampton, or sat on low walls or other handy seats, and smoked and talked. But upon this special Saturday ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... into the deep is immediately required, by the rules of ship's etiquette, to buy another from the sailors who make them, so an unaccustomed batsman may be landed in much expense. Everybody found it great fun, however, and when they had lost the day's supply of balls, would take to ring quoits ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... the sister of Laertes say to the King, in Hamlet, when wishing to prick the royal conscience, "There's Fennel for you." And Falstaff commends Poins thus, in Henry the Fourth, "He plays at quoits well, and ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... the country, was a great, round-faced, coarse-featured, prize-fighting sort of fellow, who lived chiefly by his wits, which he exercised in all the legitimate lines of industry—poaching, betting, boxing, horse-dealing, cards, quoits—anything that came uppermost. That he was a man of enterprise, we need hardly add, when he had formed a scheme for doing our Sponge—a man that we do not think any of our readers would trouble themselves to ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... canyon or on hillside where woodman's axe is heard, one may find men wearily, sadly, often faithfully performing their daily labor who were born heirs to leagues of land where ranged mighty herds of cattle and horses—men who as boys, perhaps, played their games of quoits with golden slugs from the Indian baskets sitting about the courtyard of ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... living grass: on the edge of the grass there was a handcart laden with gingerbread and peppermint lozenges, and a woman selling hot cocoa on a table in the furrow. A strange country, where everything was mingled—the smoke from the frying-pan and the evening vapor, the noise of quoits on the head of a cask and the silence shed from the sky, the city barrier and the idyllic rural scene, the odor of manure and the fresh smell of green wheat, the great human Fair and Nature! Germinie enjoyed it, however; and, urging Jupillon to go farther, walking ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... was Leung Kai Chu on the list—did not change his melancholy black. The deck sports were organized, ship tennis, quoits, and golf, and the disks rattled about his feet; but though he often moved his chair to aid those seeking a lost quoit or ring, and bowed ceremoniously to those who begged his pardon for bothering him, he kept his position. I felt a somber sense of gathering ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... accompanied him in his sports, carried the nets when he went fishing, led the dogs when he went to hunt, followed him in his excursions in the mountains, and neglected for him his lyre and his arrows. One day they played a game of quoits together, and Apollo, heaving aloft the discus, with strength mingled with skill, sent it high and far. Hyacinthus watched it as it flew, and excited with the sport ran forward to seize it, eager to make his throw, when the quoit bounded from the earth and struck him in the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... scarcely interest the reader to be told how we beguiled the long tedious days at sea with ship's quoits, "Bull," and other mild amusements of a similar nature, or the still longer evenings with whist; how we went ashore at dirty glary Port Said, and drank bad coffee, while a brass band of German girls discoursed anything but "sweet music"; ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... sailors too. Then leaving the Stoechades they passed on to the island Aethalia, where after their toil they wiped away with pebbles sweat in abundance; and pebbles like skin in colour are strewn on the beach[2]; and there are their quoits and their wondrous armour; and there is the Argoan harbour called ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... more gayly, And our guests be more contented!" Then the handsome Pau-Puk-Keewis, 55 He the idle Yenadizze, He the merry mischief-maker, Whom the people called the Storm-Fool, Rose among the guests assembled. Skilled was he in sports and pastimes, 60 In the merry dance of snow-shoes, In the play of quoits and ball-play; Skilled was he in games of hazard, In all games of skill and hazard, Pugasaing, the Bowl and Counters, 65 Kuntassoo, the Game of Plum-stones, Though the warriors called him Faint-heart, Called him coward, Shaugodaya, Idler, gambler, Yenadizze, Little heeded he ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... ere the populace is out to crowd about me. Tifticjeeoghlou Effendi's better half has kindly risen at an unusually early hour, to see me off, and provides me with a dozen circular rolls of hard bread-rings the size of rope quoits aboard an Atlantic steamer, which I string on Igali's cerulean waist-scarf, and sling over one shoulder. The good lady lets me out of the gate, and says, "Bin bacalem, Effendi." She hasn't seen me ride yet. She is a motherly ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... in the leisurely, almost indolent manner in which it does move on board a passenger ship. The younger members played quoits, cricket on the lower deck, and inaugurated concerts, supported by a gramaphone, the property of the chief officer, and banjo solos by the captain. The older members read magazines, played bridge, or knitted woollen ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... that required the whole of his mind and the best of his energies; but, like the moth and the candle, he still continued to hover round Miss Leigh—and Miss Leigh was not averse to his society. Together they talked and argued, played quoits and danced. A stern, inward voice assured Shafto that, luckily for him, there was a fixed date for the terminating of his enchantment—the day when the Blankshire entered the Irrawaddy river and was moored to her berth. Then Miss Leigh would go her way to be the ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... of the settlement greatly outnumbered his own, Winslow set his followers to surrounding the camp with a stockade. Card-playing was forbidden, because it encouraged idleness, and pitching quoits in camp, because it spoiled the grass. Presently there came a letter from Lawrence expressing a fear that the fortifying of the camp might alarm the inhabitants. To which Winslow replied that the making of the stockade had not alarmed them in the least, since they took ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... a self-disciplinarian in physical as well as mental matters, and practised himself in all kinds of athletic exercises, such as running, leaping, wrestling, pitching quoits and tossing bars. His frame even in infancy had been large and powerful, and he now excelled most of his playmates in contests of agility and strength. As a proof of his muscular power, a place is still pointed out at Fredericksburg, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... planters visited each other on the Sabbath, gave dinner parties, made excursions to the neighboring towns to supply their wants at the stores, attended militia musters and shooting matches, indulged in games of quoits and other sports. But religious services and religious instruction were almost entirely unknown. Young men often came to the island who were educated in the strictest Presbyterian faith; lineal descendants ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... subaltern imp, for example, a sort of sucking devil, whom your friend Glena——Glenamuck there, has sometimes in his train. To look at him, he is about fifteen years; but he is a century old in mischief and villainy. He was playing at quoits the other day in the court; a gentleman, a decent-looking person enough, came past, and as a quoit hit his shin, he lifted his cane; but my young bravo whips out his pistol, like Beau Clincher in the "Trip to the Jubilee," and had not a scream ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... shooting, which Ascam recommends in a just volume, and hath in former times been enjoined by statute, as a defensive exercise, and an [3242]honour to our land, as well may witness our victories in France. Keelpins, tronks, quoits, pitching bars, hurling, wrestling, leaping, running, fencing, mustering, swimming, wasters, foils, football, balloon, quintain, &c., and many such, which are the common recreations of the country folks. Riding of great horses, running at ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... and dog-carts, and altogether there was a very vast assemblage. It was arranged that, having walked about a little, and seen some of the views which the wood afforded, and some old ruins within its borders, the party should dine, and then that various sports should take place, pony races, archery, quoits, nine-pins, skittles, throw-sticks or batons, single-stick; indeed, more than I can well remember; while swings were hung up between the trees, and two or three long planks had been placed on some felled trees, to serve as see-saws, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... harbours more kings and rulers upon its seamed and furrowed body than all the oceans of the world together. "What we have divided we have divided; and if no rest and peace in this world have fallen to my share, leave me alone. Let me play at quoits with cyclonic gales, flinging the discs of spinning cloud and whirling air from one end of my dismal kingdom to the other: over the Great Banks or along the edges of pack-ice—this one with true aim right into ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... been relieved, besieged, reduced, and finally remodelled by the grand Roads and Demolitions Scheme of his friend Napier, the latter came down to Allahabad, and he and Yule sought diversion in playing quoits and skittles, the only occasion on which either of them is known to have ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a seven-fourteen train for London. He took it. Meantime he wrote out a cable to his New York bank for a hundred and fifty dollars. To keep from thinking in the train he talked gravely and gently to an old man about the brave days of England, when men threw quoits. He kept thinking over and over, to the tune set by the rattling of the train trucks: "Friends... I got to make friends, now I know what they are.... Funny some guys don't make friends. Mustn't forget. Got to make lots of 'em ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... animal, very much better than he looked, his master, for reasons of his own, being as anxious to disguise his merits as most proprietors of the noble animal are to enhance them as much as possible. There were possibilities of recreation here, though they were somewhat of a low order. Quoits hung up on several large nails driven into a wall, and there was a covered skittle alley. For there were a good many small farmers of the class just above that of the a labourer in the neighbourhood, and some of ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... gone, Nan Blythe uncurled herself from the hammock where she had been studying her lessons and slipped away to Rainbow Valley. The others were already there. Jem and Jerry were playing quoits with old horseshoes borrowed from the Glen blacksmith. Carl was stalking ants on a sunny hillock. Walter, lying on his stomach among the fern, was reading aloud to Mary and Di and Faith and Una from a wonderful book of myths wherein were fascinating accounts of Prester John and the ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... had set his heart on his friends making a day of it. Accordingly, he had made elaborate preparations for enjoyment. With that practical sagacity which frequently distinguishes the nautical mind, he had provided bowls and quoits for the men; battledore and shuttlecock for the younger women; football and cricket and hoops, with some incomprehensible Eastern games for the children, and a large field at the side of the cottage afforded room for all without ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... giuing vs thanks for our good wils, demanding if M. Ienkinson were in good-health, and whether he would returne into these parts againe. He willed vs also himselfe to sit downe before him the distance of a quoits cast from his tent, where he sate with diuers of his counsaile and nobilitie, sending vs from his table such meate as was before him: [Sidenote: A house giuen our men in Shamaki by the king.] And after certaine talke had with vs, he sayd, if he might perceiue or know any maner ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... able to call the majority of them by their Christian names. With one or two exceptions, all the generals were farmers before the war started, and consequently they were unable to assume any great degree of superiority over their farmer-burghers if they had wished to do so. General Meyer pitched quoits with his men, General Botha swapped tobacco with any one of his burghers, and General Smuts and one of his officers held the whist championship of their laager. Rarely a burgher touched his hat before ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... situation here, I quite made up my mind that it was the dullest little out-of-the-way corner in England, and that there would be some credit in being jolly under such circumstances. But, Lord, there's no dullness at the Dragon! Skittles, cricket, quoits, nine-pins, comic songs, choruses, company round the chimney corner every winter's evening. Any man could be jolly at the Dragon. There's no credit ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... listener, and about the middle of any voyage that is a quality supplying a felt want. Mankind in general finds his own doings very interesting, and takes great pleasure in recounting the same. Even the most energetic young passenger cannot play deck-quoits all day, and mixed cricket matches are too heating to last long once Aden is left behind. A great many people found it pleasant to drop into a chair beside the quiet lady, who was always politely interested in their remarks. She looked so cool and restful in her ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... were playing a species of quoits with crown-pieces and louis, left off their game to hear the news. Having heard it they returned to ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... woman I marry a home and not a residence to live in, and to provide the father of my kiddies with enough leisure for them to know what real fatherhood means. I bet you I can make enough myself to cover every one of those necessities; as for the millions, I'd like to chuck them for quoits off the Battery.'" ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... in many instances are supplied the means and appliances of farming on condition of their making return of one half of the products in kind. Nor is the lot of these laborers a hard one; for oftener will they be seen racing, wrestling, pitching quoits, and sleeping under the hedges and wattled fences than bending over the short-tailed ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... for a while from the bustle and turmoil of life on shore, it is at all events bound to be somewhat monotonous, in spite of the many amusements which are daily arranged, including cricket, tennis, quoits, concerts, dances, etc., of which I experienced a fair share. On many occasions I was called upon to preside at concerts, lectures, etc., not only amongst the saloon passengers, but also in the third class cabin. A rough voyage across the Bay of Biscay, a ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... He threw quoits on a table, and won for her two large, pale-blue hat-pins. And then, hearing the noise of the cinemas, announcing another performance, they climbed ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... company of these ever-young Maruts, who drive violently along with quick horses; aye, the sovereigns are lords of Amrita the immortal. The terrible company, the powerful, adorned with quoits on their hands, given to roaring, potent, dispensing treasures, they who are beneficent, infinite in greatness, praise, O poet, these men of great wealth! May your water-carriers come here to-day, all the Maruts who stir up the rain. That fire which has been lighted ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... ten, having quite outgrown the delicacy of my childhood. I was high up in the school, on good terms with the masters, though my Latin and Greek was never considerable: on better terms with the boys, for, I must own, my inclinations were rather towards baseball and quoits than towards the nice discrimination of longs and shorts. I had developed in particular an amazing strength of arm, which stood me in good stead in wrestling bouts, and led to my being counted two in our tugs of war. It was this same ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... doth the Prince loue him so then? Fal. Because their Legges are both of a bignesse: and hee playes at Quoits well, and eates Conger and Fennell, and drinkes off Candles ends for Flap-dragons, and rides the wilde-Mare with the Boyes, and iumpes vpon Ioyn'dstooles, and sweares with a good grace, and weares his Boot very smooth, like vnto the Signe of the ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... than the boats, which is supported by pillars about six feet high: Upon this stage stand the fighting men, whose missile weapons are slings and spears; for, among other singularities in the manners of these people, their bows and arrows are used only for diversion, as we throw quoits: Below these stages sit the rowers, who receive from them those that are wounded, and furnish fresh men to ascend in their room. Some of these have a platform of bamboos or other light wood, through their whole length, and considerably broader, by means of which they will carry a great number ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... of all the loafing I could do, the season was telling on my horses. Their hoofs were worn to the similitude of quoits; you could count their ribs a quarter of a mile off; and they had acquired that crease down the hip pathetically known as 'the poor man's stripe.' Cleopatra's bucking had become feeble and mechanical, and so transparently stagey that I used to be ashamed of it. Still, my aversion ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... come up, an' brought His wit to help their dizzy thought, An' looken on an' off the ea'th, He cried, a-drawen a vull breath, Why, I do know; what, can't ye zee 't? I'll bet a shillen 'twer a deer Broke out o' park, an' sprung on here, Wi' quoits upon ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... boy inhabited this bothy, and the rain had driven them all indoors. In better weather they spend the leisure of the evening at the game of quoits, which is the standard pastime among Scottish ploughmen. They fish the neighboring streams, too, and have burn-trout for supper several times a week. When I entered, two of them were sitting by the fire playing draughts, or, as they called it, "the dam-brod." The dam-brod is ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... in noblemen's families, but even among tradesmen, among the farmers themselves, and among all ranks of persons. You have also many infamous houses, and, besides those that are known, the taverns and ale-houses are no better; add to these dice, cards, tables, football, tennis, and quoits, in which money runs fast away; and those that are initiated into them must, in the conclusion, betake themselves to robbing for a supply. Banish these plagues, and give orders that those who have dispeopled so much soil may either rebuild the villages they have pulled down or let out their ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... John Hardy told one of his men to fetch some rope quoits, to amuse Axel, and cleared part of the deck for the purpose. Helga, however, joined in the game with the zest of a child; her clear voice and laughter and natural grace made conquests of the ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... the Spanish travellers between Cuzco and Lima. His court became a place of refuge for all Spaniards who fell out with their fellows. One of these refugees, Gomez Perez, either killed Manco himself in a brawl over a game of quoits or helped to kill him as the result of a plot. The Inca, at all events, was murdered by Spaniards whom he had befriended. That was in 1544. In 1911 Professor Hiram Bingham visited Vitcos the situation of which is clearly shown on the map, dated 1907, that accompanies Sir ...
— An Account of the Conquest of Peru • Pedro Sancho
... weren't for QUAIFE," said Q, "I should be in despair and play nothing but a quiet game of quoits ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... bright-eyed, handsome boy, with a love for the sea and the games on deck and the view over the ocean—and he did not get any of them. One day, as he put me out of his lift and saw through the vestibule windows a game of deck quoits in progress, he said, in a wistful tone, "My! I wish I could go out there sometimes!" I wished he could, too, and made a jesting offer to take charge of his lift for an hour while he went out to watch the game; but he smilingly shook his head and dropped down in answer to an imperative ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... finding a ferry, by which I might cross the river; but my course was soon interrupted by the wall, and I turned up a lane that led me straight back again to the Porta del Popolo. I stopped a moment, however, to see some young men pitching quoits, which they appeared to do with a ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "poor little gypsy," but when he mounted the stairs to her room for the last time he heard her singing, and mingled with her voice was a strange metallic sound, dzinn, dzinn! as of coins ringing on the floor. Is she amusing herself with quoits, or the jeu du crapaud, or pitch and toss? He creeps in, and there, dressed for the departure to her mother's, sitting on the floor is Chrysantheme; and spread out around her all the fine silver dollars he had given her according to agreement the night before. "With the competent ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Jack and surrounded herself with the callow youth of the vessel. She appeared in high spirits, played deck quoits, and did not give him a minute's chance to get a word with her, till the idea in his mind, of attempted suicide, took root and developed after serious and profound thinking. Something would have to be done. He could not exist ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... the engine-yard to play horseshoe quoits, and Sanford pulled the mare to a walk on the fringes of this half-circle as old friends hailed him and shy lads with hair already sun-bleached wriggled out of the crowd to shake hands, Camerons, Jansens, Nattiers, Keenans, sons of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... being played. In other directions the fiddle and clarionet were hard at work, keeping pace with heels which seemed likely never to cease dancing, evincing more activity than grace. Here a sober few were heaving quoits, there a knot of Solomons talked of the past, and argued as to the future, whilst in the distance the sentimental ones strolled about, thinking no doubt of some one's goodness and beauty, in honour of whom, like ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... "where," to quote from Mr. Forster, "the extensive garden grounds admitted of much athletic competition, in which Dickens, for the most part, held his own against even such accomplished athletes as Maclise and Mr. Beard. Bar leaping, bowling and quoits were among the games carried on with the greatest ardor, and in sustained energy Dickens certainly distanced every competitor. Even the lighter recreations of battledore and bagatelle were pursued with relentless activity. At such amusements as the Petersham races, in those days rather celebrated, ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... in the grate as Nellie busied herself with washing the dishes; while outside the loud cries of the children, playing on the green, mingled occasionally with a clink, as the steel quoits fell upon each other, telling of some enthusiastic players, who were practicing for the local games. Loud cries of encouragement broke from the supporters, and Geordie and Nellie heard all these—even the plaintive wail of a child crying in a ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... ground the corn, a common oven baked the bread, a common smith worked at a common forge.' His existence, moreover, was enlivened by a considerable number of sports. A statute at the end of the fourteenth century (12 Ric. II, c. 6) says he was fond of playing at tennis(!), football, quoits, dice, casting the stone, and other games, which this statute forbad him, and enacted that he should use his bow and arrows on Sundays and holidays instead of such idle sport. This is a foretaste of the modern sentiment that ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... battle on the right progressed, and there seemed to be indications of work for them. Groups might be seen at any time, when we were not standing in line of battle, telling yarns, singing songs, playing ball and pitching quoits, while they momentarily looked for the order to advance upon the heights, into ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... magazine was wisely placed at a distance, in case a spark from the kitchen or a tobacco-pipe might chance to find its way to the gunpowder. Everyone was in high spirits and supremely happy. As soon as the work of the day was over, the men took to playing leap-frog, diversified by bowls and quoits, which had been brought on shore. The officers had not forgotten foils and boxing-gloves, as well as books and writing-desks and drawing materials. All was not play, however; the arms had to be cleaned every morning, the men inspected, and ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... rose-flowered oleander, the scarlet-flowered pomegranate; also aviaries and cages full of odd and harmless creatures, ferrets, guinea pigs, porcupines, squirrels, and monkeys; arbours where wife, daughters, and daughters-in-law may sew and make music; and neat lawns where the young men may play at quoits, football, or swordsticks and bucklers; and then, sweeping all round the house and gardens and terraces an undulating expanse of field and orchard, smoke-tinted with olive, bright green in spring with budding ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... reins "Coaster" or "Scooter" Velocipede (and other adaptations of the bicycle for beginners) Football (small size Association ball) Indoor baseball Rubber balls (various sizes) Bean bags Steamer quoits ...
— A Catalogue of Play Equipment • Jean Lee Hunt
... licensed fool, commands like law. Frighted, I quit the room, but leave it so As men from jails to execution go; For hung with deadly sins I see the wall, And lined with giants deadlier than 'em all: Each man an Askapart, of strength to toss For quoits, both Temple Bar and Charing Cross. Scared at the grizzly forms, I sweat, I fly, And shake all o'er, like a discovered spy. Courts are too much for wits so weak as mine: Charge them with Heaven's artillery, bold divine! ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... crowded with the common people gaily dressed (it is a festa or saint's day); the women sitting in groups upon the fallen columns, nursing or amusing their children. The men were playing at mora, or at a game like quoits. Under the vast side of the Palatine Hill, on the side of the Circus Maximus, I met a woman mounted on an ass, habited in a most beautiful and singular holiday costume, a man walked by her side, leading ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... Testament, you may be sure. The New Testament for them! and then too for Coll, my dog. This is the old proverb—to cast pearls to an hog. Give them that which is meet for them, a racket and a ball, Or some other trifle to busy their heads withal, Playing at quoits or nine-holes, or shooting at butts: There let them be, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... together, and sat and talked together a great deal; these being the normal daily occupations of people so situated, if not indeed the only available occupations for those not given over to such delights as deck quoits. ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... melon-shaped dome. He remembered her vividly: she was one of his soul's intimates. Her body was long and elegant, her face was crushed tiny like a beetle's, she had rows of round heavy collars, like a column of quoits, on her neck. He remembered her: her astonishing cultured elegance, her diminished, beetle face, the astounding long elegant body, on short, ugly legs, with such protuberant buttocks, so weighty and unexpected below her slim long loins. She knew what he himself did ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... were true. It's very odd how almost all English boys love danger. You can get ten to join a game, or climb a tree, or swim a stream, when there's a chance of breaking their limbs or getting drowned, for one who'll stay on level ground, or in his depth, or play quoits ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... many admirable actions of Scipio the grandfather, a person worthy to be reputed of a heavenly extraction, there is nothing that gives him a greater grace than to see him carelessly and childishly trifling at gathering and selecting cockle shells, and playing at quoits, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... killed three ordinary men. And how well did his youth prepare him for a life of protracted toil. Hear his biographer Irving. "He was a self-disciplinarian in physical as well as mental matters, and practised himself in all kinds of athletic exercises, such as running, leaping, pitching quoits, and tossing bars. His frame even in infancy had been large and powerful, and he now excelled most of his playmates in contests of agility and strength. As a proof of his muscular power, a place ...
— A Lecture on Physical Development, and its Relations to Mental and Spiritual Development, delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at their Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting, in Norwich, Conn • S.R. Calthrop
... years the young Greeks from all parts of the country met at Olympia and contended for prizes in athletic games. There was running, jumping, wrestling, boxing, the throwing of javelins and quoits (the "discus"), and races of horses and chariots. For one month, during this great festival, wars were suspended ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... yellow perch: and as he had a fishing-line of Eiulo's manufacture, in his pocket he amused himself by angling, using wood-beetles for bait. Morton and Browne hunted up four flat stones, and commenced pitching quoits. ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... would become men with contests of running, and pitching quoits, and wrestling, the girls would play wives and have a quilting in a house of green alder-bushes, or be capped and wrinkled grandmothers sitting beside imaginary spinning-wheels ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... nothing but palings. But in the centre are some little sheds where a packet of round cakes, a stout woman in a red dress, a bar of soap, some pounds of bitter almonds, some lead, some cotton, and two shopmen playing at "svaika," a game resembling quoits, are ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... his neighbors were the happiest possible. Every week, when his judicial duties permitted or the more "laborious relaxation" of directing his farm did not call him away, he attended the meetings of the Barbecue Club in a fine grove just outside the city, to indulge in his favorite diversion of quoits. The Club consisted of thirty of the most prominent men of Richmond, judges, lawyers, doctors, clergymen, and merchants. To quoits was added the inducement of an excellent repast of which roast pig was the piece de resistance. Then followed a dessert ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... the boxes of curious games, With all sorts of objects and all sorts of names,— Lotto and Ludo, the Fox and the Geese, Halma and Solitaire—all of a piece; Go-bang and Ringolette, Hook-it and Quoits, For junior endeavours and senior exploits; And Skittles and Spellicans, Tiddle-de-winks— But one mustn't mention the half that one thinks; Chessmen and draughtsmen, and hoards upon hoards Of chess and backgammon and bagatelle boards; And boxes ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... constant association of human intellectual qualities engenders an anthropic concept, when the sun becomes an anthropomorphic deity (perhaps bearing a dazzling mask, as among the Zuni), and thunder is the rumbling of quoits pitched by the shades of old-time giants, as among different American tribes. Eventually all the leading agencies of nature are personified in anthropic form, and retain the human attributes of caprice, love, and hate which are found in ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... Campus Martius, where young Hebrus with his noble horsemanship is witching the blushing Neobule, already too much enamoured of the handsome Liparian; and the men of the old school are getting up an appetite by games of tennis, bowls, or quoits; while the young Grecianised fops—lisping feeble jokes—saunter by with a listless contempt for such vulgar gymnastics. We are in the Via Appia. Barine sweeps along in her chariot in superb toilette, shooting ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... irreproachable son of Peleus surpassed those of Eumelus. But he on his part lay in his dark sea-traversing ships, breathing wrath against the son of Atreus, Agamemnon, the shepherd of the people. But his forces meantime amused themselves with quoits and javelins, hurling [them,] and with their bows; and their steeds stood, each near his chariot, feeding on lotus and lake-fed parsley. And the well-fastened chariots lay in the tents of their lords. But they, longing for their warlike chief, wandered hither and thither ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... walking round them. They have four leaders, and four elders, the first to direct them, the second to teach them, and these are men approved beyond all others. After some time they exercise themselves with gymnastics, running, quoits, and other games, by means of which all their muscles are strengthened alike. Their feet are always bare, and so are their heads as far as the seventh ring. Afterward they lead them to the offices of the trades, such as shoemaking, cooking, metal-working, carpentry, painting, etc. In order to find ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... she was sewing—she did all her sewing by hand, made all shirts and children's clothing—he would read to her from the newspaper, slowly pronouncing and delivering the words like a man pitching quoits. Often she hurried him on, giving him a phrase in anticipation. And then he took ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... indulge in 'trips,' or day excursions, in small steamboats, to the neighbouring bays surrounding small townships, and villages on the coast. Others again, take the train for a day's outing and play quoits, rounders, lawn tennis, and the like; the sportsman, perhaps, preferring his gun and his dog; families, again, are picnic-mad, for your colonist can rival the Cockney any day for making his holiday in the country. It may be to 'the rocks' he goes ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... adversary, and gave rise to a great amount of amusement among the players and lookers-on. The games played by girls were, of course, different from those in use among boys. The latter played at marbles, luettes, peg or humming tops, quoits, fouquet, merelles, and a number of other games, many of which are now unknown. The girls, it is almost needless to say, from the earliest times played with dolls. Briche, a game in which a ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... of the frequent expeditions of their husbands, during which they were left sole mistresses at home, and so gained an undue deference and improper titles; but notwithstanding this he took all possible care of them. He ordered the virgins to exercise themselves in running, wrestling, and throwing quoits and darts; that their bodies being strong and vigorous, the children afterwards produced from them might be the same; and that, thus fortified by exercise, they might the better support the pangs of child-birth, and be delivered with safety. In order to take away the excessive tenderness ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... contrary, he began to speak of his experience of the various lines; of the delight of the voyage to any one not abnormally sensitive to sea-sickness; of the humors of the bagmen; of the occupations and amusements on board; of dolphins, fog-horns, icebergs, rope-quoits, grass-widows, and the chances of poker. It was all a holiday excursion, then? The two friends lit their cigars and went back to their arm-chairs. The tired and haggard look on George Brand's face had for the ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... hamlet had its pair of butts; and on Sundays and holidays[66] all able-bodied men were required to appear in the field, to employ their leisure hours "as valyant Englishmen ought to do," "utterly leaving the play at the bowls, quoits, dice, kails, and other unthrifty games;" magistrates, mayors, and bailiffs being responsible for their obedience, under penalty, if these officers neglected their duty, of a fine of twenty shillings for each offence. On the same days, the tilt-yard at the Hall or Castle was ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude |
