"Thoroughbred" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... concurred, "I know you don't. But we have the very thing for her, a two-year-old filly, unbroken, all but thoroughbred, with the makings of a splendid horse in her. If you care to ride down to the vley I will show her to you; it won't take us much more than a mile out of our way, and I should like Nell ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... represented on horseback, with a long flowing cloak, and a sombrero casting a strong shadow over one of his eyes, which was afflicted with a weakness of the eyelid, which kept dropping down so frequently that the pupil was seldom seen for any time; the horse was a thoroughbred; two magnificent greyhounds (the originals we could admire, at rest upon a raised platform of carved oak and red cushions) ran alongside of him, and this tall-looking, dignified, romantic rider was—little, spare, merry M. Rajon. Gossip whispered that he had been somewhat intoxicated by his sudden ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... my mate Howie has his obvious limitations. I've long wanted a drop of new blood. Barmaid's thoroughbred and strong as an elephant; we're neither of us heavyweights; by the powers, I'll trust you, ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... compressed into a word. Even the trivial salutation which the telephone has lately created and claimed for its peculiar use—"Hello, hello"—seems to me to have a kind of fitness and fascination. It is like a thoroughbred bulldog, ugly enough to be attractive. There is a lively, concentrated, electric air about it. It makes courtesy wait upon dispatch, and reminds us that we live in an age when it is necessary to ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... had his failures; there are geniuses on both sides of the law; and the pariah-dog is always just a bit quicker mentally than the thoroughbred hound who hunts him; indeed, to save his ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... precisely like our sailors. In addition to these Islanders, the Loriotte had two English sailors, who acted as boatswains over the Islanders, and took care of the rigging. One of them I shall always remember as the best specimen of the thoroughbred English sailor that I ever saw. He had been to sea from a boy, having served a regular apprenticeship of seven years, as English sailors are obliged to do, and was then about four or five and twenty. He was tall; but you only perceived it when ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... into the room. Rose-Marie saw with her first swift glance that the red upon the girl's cheeks was too high to be quite natural—that the scarlet of her lips was over-vivid. And yet, despite the patently artificial colouring, she realized that the girl was beautiful with a high strung, almost thoroughbred beauty. She wondered how this beauty had been born of the dim woman who seemed so colourless and the sodden brute who lay snoring ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... of it. But, for all the thoroughbred self-control of the city lady, Mrs. Kinzer knew perfectly well there was something odd and unexpected about it all. If Samantha had noticed this fact, there might have been some questions asked; but one of the widow's most rigid rules in life was ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... pitch, and Michael cursed his horse roundly as the willing animal, jumping under the spur, grazed the great gate as he sprang through it. Soon they were all out on the main road, where the thoroughbred that carried a double burden settled down into a long swinging stride that fairly devoured the distance, league ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... are up, and find it is not over: a small thoroughbred, white bull-terrier, is busy throttling a large shepherd's dog, unaccustomed to war, but not to be trifled with. They are hard at it; the scientific little fellow doing his work in great style, his pastoral enemy fighting wildly, but with the ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... superintendent of the Western Division, hired upwards of sixty riders, cool-headed nervy men, hardened by years of life in the open. Horses were purchased throughout the West. They were the best that money could buy and ranged from tough California cayuses or mustangs to thoroughbred stock from Iowa. They were bought at an average figure of $200.00 each, a high price in those days. The men were the pick of the frontier; no more expressive description of their qualities can be given. They were hired at salaries varying from $50.00 to $150.00 ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... no thoroughbred neither!" cries the Master. "He's 'Unknown,' ain't he? Kid can't help it, of course, ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... he might have been justly termed, for his thoroughbred steed was as black as coal, but we have not seen fit to call him such—his name is Deadwood Dick, and let that ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... was a beautiful creature, sir, the finest dog I ever set eyes on. Like a setter in the make of him, but no setter that ever I saw could match him for size or looks. His coat was jet-black, as glossy as the skin of a thoroughbred, with just one streak of white showing down the breast, and his eyes—well, they were the very humanest, sir, that ever I see looking out of a ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... have come here very young," I said. "A thoroughbred Persian does not learn to speak English like a university man, and to quote German proverbs, in a residence of a few years; unless, indeed, he possess the secret by which the initiated absorb knowledge without effort, and assimilate ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... from Al Hammond? Gene, your skull is as thick as an old cow's. Al will never know anything about what you did to his sister unless you tell him. And if you do that he'll shoot you. She won't give you away. She's a thoroughbred. Why, she was so white last night I thought she'd drop at my feet, but she never blinked an eyelash. I'm a woman, Gene Stewart and if I couldn't feel like Miss Hammond I know how awful an ordeal she must have had. Why, she's one of the most beautiful, the ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... time it became evident that a thief or thieves were helping themselves at night to thoroughbred fowls and fruit at Harmony, and Mrs. van Warmelo asked the sergeant-major of the Military Mounted Police to consult with her about catching ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... baggage-camels and riding dromedaries or "hygeens;" the latter he had brought for approval, as we had suffered much from the extreme roughness of our late camels. There is the same difference between a good hygeen or dromedary and a baggage-camel as between the thoroughbred and the cart-horse; and it appears absurd in the eyes of the Arabs that a man of any position should ride a baggage-camel. Apart from all ideas of etiquette, the motion of the latter animal is quite sufficient warning. Of all species of fatigue, the back-breaking monotonous swing of a heavy camel ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... for, I almost believe, the first time in her life, and therein, I fear, showing a drop of bad blood from somewhere, probably her father's side of the creation; for not even the sense of having hurt the feelings of an inferior can make the thoroughbred woman of the world aware of the least discomfort; and here was Hesper, not only feeling like a woman of God's making, but actually showing it!—"How cruel of me!" she went on. "But, you see, I never think of you—when I am talking to ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... knew; but I dare say, now, that Jack knew it also, for I don't think Sara could have helped telling him. If he did know, however, he did not let me see that he did, and never insulted me by any implied sympathy; on the contrary, he asked me to be his best man. Jack was always a thoroughbred. ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... goes straight to business—enquires, examines, pronounces, prescribes—and then, if any time is left for light discourse, discusses the rival merits of "Rugger" and "Soccer," speculates on the result of the Hospital Cup Tie, or observes that the British Thoroughbred is not deteriorating when he can win with so much on his back; pronounces that the Opera last night was ripping, or that some much-praised play is undiluted rot. Not thus did Dr. Parker Peps regale Mrs. Dombey, or Sir Tumley Snuffim ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... the window, Roger, remembering to shut the airlock after you?" the Golden Glacier said in tones not unkind. "When are your high-strung, thoroughbred nerves going to accept the fact that I would never consider marriage with a business inferior? You have about as much chance as a starving Ukrainian kulak now that ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... with a range mare for dam, and roped wild only two weeks before. I never have seen so beautiful a horse. He had the round, deep-chested, big-hearted, well-coupled body of the ideal mountain pony, and his head and neck were true thoroughbred, slender, yet full, with lovely alert ears not too small to be vicious nor too large to be stubborn mulish. And his legs and feet were lovely too, unblemished, sure and firm, with long springy pasterns that made him a wonder of ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... the general term "horse." You speak of a mare, a gelding, a horse, a four-year-old, a weanling or a sucker. To refer to a trotter as a thoroughbred is to suffer social ostracism, and to obfuscate a side-wheeler with a single-footer is proof of degeneracy. This applies equally to the ethics of the ballroom or the livery-stable. In Kentucky they read Richard's famous lines thus: "A saddler! a saddler! my kingdom ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... can prove his age as certainly as my own. He is the son of an Arab mare and an English thoroughbred.—Come here, Memnon!" ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... elsewhere. She lost steadily, winning but one bet in every ten. She gave no sign, however, that her forces were in full retreat from the enemy. She played on, and the hand which placed the bets was steady. She was a thoroughbred. And when the gold was all gone, she opened her empty hands expressively and shrugged. She was beaten. Behind the chair of the banker, opposite, stood the Italian. The scowl still marred his forehead. When the woman in the veil spread out her hands, he started. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... profit to a well-known English lord, for whom he had already won seven hundred thousand francs on the race-course. The aforesaid nobleman set no small store on Toby. His tiger was a curiosity, the very smallest tiger in town. Perched aloft on the back of a thoroughbred, Joby looked like a hawk. Yet—the great man dismissed him. Not for greediness, not for dishonesty, nor murder, nor rudeness to my lady, nor for cutting holes in my lady's own woman's pockets, nor because he had been 'got at' by some of his master's rivals on the turf, nor ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... than the nests and burrows of the creatures that live round them, and they seem, in a certain sense, to approach more nearly to the finer types of our aristocracies—who are bred artificially to a natural ideal—than to the labourer or citizen, as the wild horse resembles the thoroughbred rather than the hack or cart-horse. Tribes of the same natural development are, perhaps, frequent in half-civilized countries, but here a touch of the refinement of old societies is blended, with singular effect, among the ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... of that heroic achievement! That wonderful, wonderful ride—that amazing, glorious tour de force which caused her name to be revered and hallowed in every sleepy hamlet and hovel of Old England—her ride to Norwich on Piebald Polly, her thoroughbred mare! On, on through the night—a fitful moon scrambling aslant the cloud-blown heavens, the wind whistling past her ears, and the tune of "God Save the King" ringing in her brain, the rhythm set by the convulsive movements of Piebald Polly. On, on, through towns and villages, and then once ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... General repeated, with unshaken conviction: "a thoroughbred gentleman." And he scanned Philip up and down with his keen grey eye as if internally reflecting that Philip's own right to criticise and classify that particular species of humanity was a trifle doubtful. ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... girl I ever saw," he declared, "and she's a thoroughbred too!" he added, "or she wouldn't have stuck it out in this country when she had a clean yacht to fall back on. She's been riding around on a mule, so they tell me, along with her father and the engineering experts, and just as though she enjoyed it. The men up at the mines ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... know," he said to himself. "Am I a right-minded man and a thoroughbred, or a mush-head, or merely a prudent, sensible sort of chap that values his skin and bones? I'd be glad to put a name to myself." Then, more earnestly he added: "Do I love her too much, or not enough, or love ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... said, "a clean shot, a thoroughbred. I ask no better comrade than you. I never again shall have such ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... him. He was as near a thoroughbred as I ever saw, Bobby, and he was nailed down, as you put ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... comment: "It is like tying together the legs of a thoroughbred, so that it is unable to gallop." One would naturally think of "the ruler" in this passage as being at home, and trying to direct the movements of his army from a distance. But the commentators understand just the reverse, and quote the saying of T'ai ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... Mary, who wished to see him. Rizzio, full of confidence in himself, and seeing in the queen's desire a road to success, hastened to obey her command, sang before her, and pleased her. She begged him then of Moreto, making no more of it than if she had asked of him a thoroughbred dog or a well-trained falcon. Moreta presented him to her, delighted at finding such an opportunity to pay his court; but scarcely was Rizzio in her service than Mary discovered that music was the least of his gifts, that he possessed, besides that, education if not profound at least ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... at first glance he should have recognized in her look, her poise, her voice the quality he called thoroughbred. Ragged and stained apparel did not prove her of a common sort. Jean had known a number of fine and wholesome girls of good family; and he remembered his sister. This Ellen Jorth was that kind of a girl irrespective of her present environment. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... a place of recovery, or at least of arrested mischief, for lung patients. Thither he and his wife and stepson travelled accordingly at the end of October. Nor must another member of the party be forgotten, a black thoroughbred Skye terrier, the gift of Sir Walter Simpson. This creature was named, after his giver, Walter—a name subsequently corrupted into Wattie, Woggie, Wogg, Woggin, Bogie, Bogue, and a number of other affectionate diminutives which will be found occurring often ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the clear light, her great beauty was not to be denied. She was tall and not too slender; and at this moment, the set of her head was like that of a thoroughbred horse, when it pricks its ears to listen. She had soft brown eyes, with long lashes and heavy eyebrows—eyes, reflecting the lances of light that darted in and out of the shifting clouds—an open air complexion, dazzling, even ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... object, but I had not expected such an outburst of profane rage as followed my announcement. The poor boy was dreadfully tired, and for months, like the thoroughbred he was, he had repressed his true feelings under a ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... Pascal Dubois' Men Half-breeds all of us . . . I, a scamp, The best long-shot in the Touchwood Camp; Muscle and nerve like strings of steel, Sound in the game of bit and heel— There's your guide-book. . . . But, Jeanne Amray, Telegraph-clerk at Sturgeon Bay, French and thoroughbred, proud and sweet, Sunshine down to her glancing feet, Sang one song 'neath the northern moon That changed God's world to a tropic noon; And Love burned up on its golden floor Years of passion for Nell Latore— Nell Latore with her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... perhaps had their influence on his mode of living. He had his chariot and four, with black postilions in livery, for the use of Mrs. Washington and her lady visitors. As for himself, he always appeared on horseback. His stable was well filled and admirably regulated. His stud was thoroughbred and in excellent order. His household books contain registers of the names, ages, and marks of his various horses; such as Ajax, Blueskin, Valiant, Magnolia (an Arab), &c. Also his dogs, chiefly fox-hounds, Vulcan, Singer, Ringwood, Sweetlips, Forrester, Music, Rockwood, Truelove, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... wield the sceptre of imperial power over this magnificent world, it becomes a gross impropriety to divert it from the path of destiny into so futile an effort as hooking up a mere bit of fuss, feathers and fallals. You might just as well hitch up a pair of thoroughbred elephants to a milk wagon. It will do, as Adam says, for the Mollycoddle and the meticulous weakling, but never for a real man worthy of the name. But after all that is no reason why woman should be shorn of one of her chief glories, and I totally disagree with ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... ball. The old habit was so strong upon her that unconsciously she gave a little swing of the hips to throw her skirt out—to show herself to the greatest advantage in the perfect dress. There was a tiny suggestion of the thoroughbred horse in the paddock—as there always is in the attitude of some young persons, though they would not be grateful were one to tell them of it—a certain bridling, a sleek step, and a lamentably obvious search for the eye of admiration. Fitz opened the door for her, ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... Custer's thoroughbred horse was still in fine fettle, but the mule had got the second of its three or four winds, and was ready for ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... strikingly different from that of the whites. It is always black and straight, hangs loose and looks as if it were [27] oiled. There is a considerable resemblance in appearance, between it and the glossy black mane of a thoroughbred horse; though its ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... yards of the castle, behold an unmistakable enemy barred his way!—an ugly, hoggish, obese man, with bare legs most grotesquely like pillars of granite, and a protuberant paunch; but the devil must have been in his legs to carry him more swiftly than thoroughbred limbs had borne Count Victor. He stood sneering in the path, turning up the right sleeve of a soiled and ragged saffron shirt with his left hand, the right being engaged most ominously with a sword of a fashion that might ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... one says to him, but he can't talk; however, his eyes tell you what he wishes to say! Now, if any stranger should raid the stables and spy Imp, they would certainly try to steal him first, for he is the finest thoroughbred that ever stepped over Tennessee soil! But, he will bite, and kick, and bolt with anyone who dares to trifle with him. Then do you know what will happen? They'll either put a bullet through his heart, or hitch him to an army ambulance, which will ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Sam. 'These here ones as is below, though, ain't reg'lar thoroughbred sawbones; they're only in trainin'.' 'In other words they're medical students, I suppose?' ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... nothing if not thoroughbred, and the voice of his master was, despite all considerations of sleep and sunshine, to him as the voice of the commanding officer to a subaltern. He was off like a shot at a tearing pace, nose down and tail erect, and in less than ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... amateurs in the sale of her specimens! Nor is the man called antiquaro in Italy, a whit a better representative of him whom we so designate, than is the soi-disant professor of taxidermy and seller of embalmed pole-cats of our own naturalist. Not that our thoroughbred antiquary at home stands high in our classification of English citizens. It was not as a reward for tracing sites, by following the vestiges of dry rubbish near a place ending in chester, that the mural crown (probably a chaplet of wallflowers) was devised ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... as you would pay more for a badly-trained thoroughbred than for a well-trained mongrel. It's breed they pay for. The Guayaquil breed is peculiar; there is nothing else like it in the world. You might think the tree had been grafted on to a spice tree. It has a fine characteristic ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... dreamers, mysterious priests of the beautiful who silently confront everything with perfection, would have caught a glimpse in this little working-woman, through the transparency of her Parisian grace, of the ancient sacred euphony. This daughter of the shadows was thoroughbred. She was beautiful in the two ways—style and rhythm. Style is the form of the ideal; ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... was an old woman who lived at first in the kitchen of "the other house" and afterward on the home farm. Tall and thin, with big, thoroughbred eyes, and long, straight hair, like a witch, turning gray, she was rather terrifying, but more than ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... houses, they present a favourable contrast to most of the other Slavic populations; and their personal appearance is also advantageous. "They are a remarkably tall and robust race of men; in form and feature they bespeak strength of body and energy of mind; but one seldom sees that thoroughbred look, so frequently found in the poorest peasants of Italy and Greece. The women I think very pretty. They are not so well-shaped as the Greeks; but their complexions are fine, their hair generally black and glossy, and their head-dress particularly graceful; and not being ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... grimly: "What a thoroughbred Parisian you are, my dear Frederic! I believe if the tramp of the last angel were sounding, the Parisians would be divided into two sets: one would be singing the Marseillaise, and parading the red flag; the other ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... English thoroughbred horses, when once acclimatized and bred in the open air on the dry pastures of Australia and South Africa, are found, if not put to work too early, as enduring as the Arab. Experiments in the Indian artillery have proved that the Australian horse and the Cape[27-*] horse, which ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... moving here and there over the ground, his head bent and his attention fixed. Scanlon chuckled as he watched him, and marveled at the similarity between the movements of his friend and those of a thoroughbred hound. ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... the horsemen there, we might have the pleasure of beholding Mr. Newcome in Rotten Row, riding side by side with other dandies who had mustachios blonde or jet, who wore flowers in their buttons (themselves being flowers of spring), who rode magnificent thoroughbred horses, scarcely touching their stirrups with the tips of their varnished boots, and who kissed the most beautiful primrose-coloured kid gloves to lovely ladies passing them in the Ride. Clive drew ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... people of the Province. Timidity, laziness, lack of affection and judgment, sulkiness and great stubbornness under training of any kind were its qualities. This was due chiefly, I think, to its inferior intelligence when compared with thoroughbred horses of other nations. The Goyaz horse was small, fairly agile, and when well cared for had a handsome shiny coat with luxuriant mane and tail. It was capable of short, noteworthy efforts, but did not possess ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the principles of breeding them. Today, there are as handsome, well-bred animals in the United States as can be found abroad. The demand for high-bred animals with a pedigree is greatly increasing, and society people are beginning to understand the fine points of the thoroughbred. ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... of the ferry-house were inexorably shut against them when at last Maitland brought the big machine to a tremulous and panting halt, like that of an over-driven thoroughbred. And though they perforce endured a wait of fully fifteen minutes, neither found aught worth saying; or else the words wherewith fitly to clothe their thoughts were denied them. The girl seemed very weary, and sat with head drooping and hands clasped idly in her lap. To Maitland's ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... a fellow performer[A]. In the course of two or three years Farquhar will make a desperate attempt to be mercenary by marrying a girl whom he supposes to be wealthy; he will find out his mistake, and then, like the thoroughbred that he is, will go on cherishing her as though she had brought him a ton of rent-rolls. When he is dead and gone, Chetwood, the veteran prompter of Drury Lane, will tell us, quaintly enough, how "it was affirm'd, by some of his near ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... exhibit the following classes are provided: Percheron, Belgian, Clydesdale, Shire, Suffolk-Punch, Standard Trotter, Thoroughbred, Saddle Horses, Morgan, Hackney, Arabian, Shetland Pony, Welch Pony, Roadsters, Carriage Horses, Ponies in Harness, Draft Horses, Hunters, Jumpers, and Gaited Saddle Horses. Among special events in this section are the following: trot under saddle, one-mile track, one-mile military officer's ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... camp and make prize of his offspring, and cut off his traces." Said Al-Abbas, "And what hath Al-Akil done with King Zuhayr?" They replied. "He engaged for himself that he would bring the King every year a thousand dinars and a thousand she-camels, besides a thousand head of thoroughbred steeds and two hundred black slaves and fifty hand-maids; but it hath reached the king that Al-Akil purposeth to give naught of this; wherefore he is minded to go to him. So hasten thou with us, ere the King be wroth with thee and with us." Then said Al-Abbas to them, "O ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... father had chosen. That Marcus Aurelius adored her is certain. His notebook shows it. A more tender-hearted and perfect lover romance may show, but history cannot. He must have been the quintessence of refinement, a thoroughbred to his finger-tips; one for whom that purple mantle was too gaudy, and yet who bore it, as he bore everything else, in that self-abnegatory spirit which the higher reaches ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... breath while the Judges looked Diddy over. Then the head man said, "That's a very fine pig, and young. She is a thoroughbred. Wherever did you get her, ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... than Vina or Beth; indeed, she had been considered of rather rich promise in Paris; but she had less developed energies and balance to use them, less physique. She lacked the spirit of that little thoroughbred, Vina Nettleton, and the pride and courage of Beth Truba. The Grey One had been badly hurt in that sadly sensitive period which follows the putting away of girlish things—when womanhood is new and wonderful. She was slow to heal. Few ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... the modern Lisbon. This tradition about the mares of the region is repeated by Virgil (Geo. III, 272) by Columella (VI, 27) and by Pliny (VIII, 67). Professor Ridgeway in The Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse describes it as "an aetiological myth to explain the swiftness of horses" for the fleetest horses came out of the West; thus Pegasus was born at the springs of the ocean, and there is the passage in Homer (Iliad, XVI, 149) about ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... and the house of lords, with a dull gravity, began its business. The proceedings were important, from the announcement made and the explanation given by the Duke of Newcastle, the minister of war. His bearing was gentlemanly, and there was an air of conciliation about it which bespoke the thoroughbred gentleman. His voice was low, and his manner in speaking ungainly; an awkward and finicking gesture with the right hand below the table, to which he advanced when speaking, gave an idea of pettiness of thought, which his manner in other respects aided. The Earls of Winchelsea and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... from the Embassy followed Theydon from Waterloo to Forbes's place on Tuesday night, and again to Innesmore Mansions, he didn't recognize him today. Or perhaps he did. I don't know. Talk about the impassive Red Indian! A thoroughbred Chink would give a Pawnee chief one glass eye and a coat of paint, and then beat him hollow ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... men in these boats prosecute the fishing as vigorously and successfully as those in the Shetland boats, who are paid on a different principle?-They prosecute it with great rigour. Generally they are thoroughbred fishermen. They have all been apprenticed to the fishing when they were boys of 8 ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... became a Maitre d' Armes." As horseman, swordsman, and marksman, no soldier of his day surpassed him, and very few equalled him. But of fencing, flirting and book-writing, he soon got heartily tired. Like his putative ancestors, the gipsies, he could never be happy long in one place. He says, "The thoroughbred wanderer's idiosyncrasy, I presume to be a composition of what phrenologists call inhabitiveness and locality equally and largely developed. After a long and toilsome march, weary of the way, he ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... a time, until we were actually making appreciable headway against it. I never thought any ship could stand the bludgeoning she got. It seemed as if every rivet must shear, every frame and stanchion crush, under the impact of the Juggernaut seas that hurtled into her. As a thoroughbred horse starts and trembles under the touch of the whip, so she reared and trembled, only to bury herself again in the roaring Niagara of water. Oh, you thoroughbred high-tensile steel! blue-blooded aristocrat among metals; Bethlehem ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... what it has so well to the preservation of life. The same thing is doubtless true of other animals and likewise of plant life. The Jersey cow would not survive in a natural state. She gives too much milk and for too long a time. Man has made of her a milk-machine. Turn all thoroughbred horses out on the plains to shift for themselves, and they would either die or gradually be modified until they were adapted to the free and wild life of the plains. This would not be so good for man, but would be better for the horses. In plants and animals, man can by selection ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... its pace at the head of the squadron with the lithe bounds of a thoroughbred, and this horse was proud as a chief at the roaring trample of his fellows behind him. The captain's glance was calmly upon the grove of maples whence the sharpshooters of the enemy had been picking at the ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... their thoughts, and although they well knew that ere the dawning each one of them might be claiming the hospitality of six feet of English sod, their hearts were light. To them a message that the fray was up was like the sound of the huntsman's horn in the ears of a thoroughbred hunter. ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... think 'er a thoroughbred clinker, There's never a judge that would; Each leg be'ind 'as a splint, you'll find, And the fore are none too good. She roars a bit, and she don't look fit, She's moulted 'alf 'er 'air; But—' He smiled in a way that seemed ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Diablo. How the great white thoroughbred had loved this spring! Belding straightened up and looked with tear-blurred eyes out over the waste of desert to the west. Never a day passed that he had not thought of the splendid horse; but this moment, with its significant memory, was doubly keen, ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... man so delicate in manner, when among people of fair class, and so judicious in his choice of victims, that in the strictly masculine part of the town's life he had come to be explicitly trusted and admired. People called him a thoroughbred. The fear and contempt with which his craft was regarded was undoubtedly the reason that his quiet dignity shone conspicuous above the quiet dignity of men who might be merely hatters, billiard markers, or grocery-clerks. ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... moving like the wind, perspiring not at all, a thoroughbred, a mount for a prince! At his present rate he should catch up with the Mongolian rear by nightfall; otherwise the pursuit was certainly lost. And then Peter fell to wondering what tactics he would pursue when he reached ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... nose, Magnet, may do well enough for an Indian, but your thoroughbred knows the virtue of the needle," said the uncle, as he trudged at the heels of the light-stepping Tuscarora. "America would never have been discovered, take my word for it, if Columbus had been nothing but ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... clean-limbed steers. Here has stood, for a dozen years past, the renowned Black Hawk, considered by many superior to his sire, the Morgan stallion of the same name. As I before said, he realized my idea of a thoroughbred weight carrier, better than anything I saw in Maryland; though if one of his stock—a brown two-year-old colt—"furnishes" according to present promise, he will probably be surpassed in his turn. There was a large number of colts and fillies well adapted for ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... house and gardens delighted her host and hostess. She could not be too much astonished at its wonders to please them, and, both being thoroughbred, they liked her the better for saying frankly that she was unused to beautiful houses. "You can't think what this is like after school in Potterston and cheap boarding-houses in New York and London," she said, laughing when the ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and slender by the side of the grand animal that was taking easy, swinging strides, apparently without effort and without speed, his tongue lolling at one side. But we could see that the pace was really terrific—that Lieutenant Baldwin was freely using the spur, and that his swift thoroughbred was stretched out like a greyhound, straining every muscle in his effort to keep up. He was riding close to the buffalo on his left, with revolver in his right hand, and I wondered why he did not shoot, but Faye said it would be useless to fire then—that Lieutenant ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... want," said Wild Bill, pointing to a black horse, full sixteen hands high, and evidently a thoroughbred. "Name your price, and he ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... doing: I'll be marking, branding, and vaccinating the calves, I'll be classing and turning out the strong cattle on the range. I'll be having the colts rid, breaking mules for haying, oiling and mending the team harness, cutting and hauling posts, tattooing the ears and registering the thoroughbred calves, putting in dams, cleaning ditches, irrigating the flats, setting out the vegetable garden, building fence, swinging new gates, overhauling the haying tools, receiving, marking, and branding the new two—year—old bulls, plowing and seeding grain for our work stock and hogs, ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... a thoroughbred son of the country, as far removed from what is known as the provincial, as the latter is from the out-and-out gentleman of culture. His trousers and waistcoat were of fustian, almost white, but he wore ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... a good many miles out of his way and had argued for a good while, and had finally paid a good many dollars to get the dog that sniffed and wagged at Helen May. The dog was a thoroughbred Airedale and had been taught from its puppyhood to herd goats and fight all intruders upon his flock and to hate Mexicans wherever he met them. He had learned to do both very thoroughly, hence the argument and the dollars necessary ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... Discipline was inflexible, but the Boss was always kind. His habits were simple. He shared camp life with his gangs. The only visible signs of wealth consisted of a big, shimmering diamond stone of ice and fire that glittered and burned on one of his fingers, and the dainty, beautiful thoroughbred mare he rode between camps and across the country ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... to ride a tall, holler-backed thoroughbred with a body and limbs like a kangaroo dog, and it would circle around you and sidle away as if it was frightened you was goin' to jab a ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... sarsaparilla, and one or two other patent medicines: they have a saw and a grist mill; the women make small fancy articles and baskets. But their most profitable business is the growth of fine stock—thoroughbred Durham cattle chiefly. They have, of course, shops in which they make and mend what they need for themselves—tailor's, shoemaker's, blacksmith's, wagon-maker's, etc. Formerly they manufactured more than at present—having made at one time, ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... by collecting and collating the mutilated editions of his works. Moreover, he rummaged a great number of libraries, under the express order of Henry VIII.; and seems in every respect (if we may credit the apparently frank testimony of his son[320]), to have been a thoroughbred bibliomaniac. Secure Mr. Todd's Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer, and set your heart at ease ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... girthed side-saddle, and for themselves without the side-seat strain. Almost as if it were a carefully permitted luxury, he saw the wide, wind-swept moors, heard the cheery shouts and the excited hounds, felt his thoroughbred sweeping gloriously along, as if its soul and his soul were both one in feeling the joy and exhilaration of the chase. What glories there were in those wind-swept, sun-bathed mornings in Devon! What joy of life! What lust of manhood! What splendid, whole-hearted young inconsequence! ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... to face the black brute, which stood looking at him with wicked eyes, its ears flattened like those of a panther. In spite of its evil temper Ted admired it for its lithe beauty. It was as clean of limb as a thoroughbred, and its black skin shone like polished ebony. While he was looking at it thus it suddenly sprang at him, reared on its hind legs, striking at him like a boxer. Had he not wheeled on the instant it would have killed him. Ted was thoroughly angry, and went to ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... clamorously into the presence of the Lioness and demanded of her the settlement of the dispute. "And you," they said, "how many sons have you at a birth?" The Lioness laughed at them, and said: "Why! I have only one; but that one is altogether a thoroughbred Lion." ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... that matter, he reflected with pride, there was not a woman in the room who was smarter. She had a poise and grace of movement that were a delight to the eye, and she was soignee to the finger-tips. A thoroughbred, he summed her up, and felt pleased ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... the hand-writing compensated for the hands; and as she attached great importance to blood and race, that she did not live to read Byron's "thoroughbred and tapering fingers," or to be shocked by his theory that "the hand is almost the only sign of blood which aristocracy can generate." Her Bath friend appeals to a miniature (engraved for this work) by Roche, of Bath, taken when she was in her seventy-seventh year. Like Cromwell, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... has been famous in literature and in song for more than two thousand years. The district of Nejd has been the chief breeding locality for these horses for many centuries. Contrary to tradition, however, even the finest animals are neither so large nor so swift as American thoroughbred horses. The qualities that have made the Arabian horse famous are its beautiful proportions, endurance, and intelligence. Young colts mingle freely with their owners and attendants, and they need, therefore, only the training to make them saddle-wise; they require ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... car started forward, passed out of the lighted zone of the town's main street—and in the darkness, headed toward New York, Jimmie Dale, his nonchalance gone now, leaned forward over the wheel, and the big sixty horse-power car leaped into its stride like a thoroughbred at the touch of the spur, and tore onward at ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... seat by her side; the mechanic cranked and jumped to his place. The motor snorted, trembling like a thoroughbred about to run a race, then subsiding with a sonorous purr swept sedately out into the deserted street, swung round a corner into Broadway, settled its tires into the grooves of the car-tracks and ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... acquiring them. Finally he had lost one foot in a mowing machine, and the accident destroyed his further usefulness to the extent of inducing him to abandon the farm and move into town. Here he endeavored to find something to do to eke out his meagre income; so he raised "thoroughbred Plymouth Rocks," selling eggs for hatching to the farmers; doctored sick horses and pastured them in the lot back of his barn, the rear end of which was devoted to "watermelons in season"; sold subscription books to farmers who came to the mill or the village ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... of the prettiest figures in Paris. Imagine a pair of great dark eyes, a magnificently moulded hand, a shapely foot. There was a fiery energy in her movements; the Marquis de Ronquerolles had called her "a thoroughbred," "a pure pedigree," these figures of speech have replaced the "heavenly angel" and Ossianic nomenclature; the old mythology of love is extinct, doomed to perish by modern dandyism. But for Rastignac, Mme. Anastasie de Restaud ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... young Monkey saw thoroughbred horses. They were a revelation to the lad. He stood ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... prosperity of the republic. As for beauty, the world, surely, in this later time, had flowered here —flowered with something of Aspasia's grace and something of the haughty coldness of Agrippina. And yet it was American. Here and there in the boxes was a thoroughbred portrait by Copley—the long shapely neck, the sloping shoulders, the drooping eyelids, even to the gown in which the great-grandmother danced ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of that eventful period. Yet the style of the author can make but moderate pretensions to the praise of elegance or exactness; while the sentences run into that tedious, interminable length which belongs to the garrulous compositions of the regular thoroughbred chronicler of the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... I know any number of fellows who are doing the same thing. We can't all be officers; a few of us must take orders. Out in the hunting field, we say it is the thoroughbred dog who answers ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... the flesh air played in Micheline's veil, and the tawny leather of the saddles creaked. Those were happy days for Micheline, who was delighted at having Serge near her, attentive to her every want, and controlling his thoroughbred English horse to her gentle pace. Every now and then his mount would wheel about and rear in revolt, she following him with fond looks, proud of the elegant cavalier who could subdue without apparent effort, by the mere pressure of his thighs, that ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... across country after a rattling pack of English hounds on a thoroughbred hunter with a field of red-coated squires is an experience which few hunters on this side of the water have ever enjoyed, but with the incidents of which every reader of English novels is familiar. The chase of the red fox in Maryland ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... sincere alienation from Christianity by keeping a couple of wives. The strangest feature in Osman's character was his inextinguishable nationality. In his house he had three shelves of books, and the books were thoroughbred Scotch! He afterwards died of the plague, of which visitation one-half of the whole people of the city, 200,000 in number, were carried off. I took it into my pleasant head that the plague might be providential or epidemic, but was not contagious, and therefore I determined that it ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... ridgy with swelling sinews, suggested the perfection of stride and power. Her knees across the pan were wide, the cannon-bone below them short and thin; the pasterns long and sloping; her hoofs round, dark, shiny, and well set on. Her mane was a shade darker than her coat, fine and thin, as a thoroughbred's always is whose blood is without taint or cross. Her ear was thin, sharply pointed, delicately curved, nearly black around the borders, and as tremulous as the leaves of an aspen. Her neck rose from the withers ...
— A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car - 1898 • W. H. H. Murray
... rest in his own quarters he himself went in to the Merchant and told him all that had befallen him and gave him the book containing the story of Sayf al-Muluk and Badi'a al-Jamal, when Hasan joyed with exceeding joy at the sight and bestowed on him all the clothes he had on and gave him ten thoroughbred horses and the like number of camels and mules and three negro chattels and two white slaves. Then Hasan took the book and copied out the story plainly in his own hand; after which he presented himself before the King and said to him, "O thou auspicious King, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... cavalcade swept forward. There was a massing of horses, the white girth flashing in the midst of the melee, a great crash and much turning, twisting, and sawing of bits, and then all dashed the other way, the white girth in the lead, and the boy's lips fell apart in wonder. A black thoroughbred was making a wide sweep, an iron-gray was cutting in behind, and all were sweeping toward him. Far ahead of them he saw a frightened rabbit streaking through the weeds. As it passed him the lad gave a yell, dug his heels ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... if he wa'n't a dandy you needn't pay me a cent. Crowbait wa'n't no name fer him. He was stun blind on the off side, an' couldn't see anythin' in pertic'ler on the nigh side—couldn't get nigh 'nough, I reckon—an' had most ev'rythin' wrong with him that c'd ail a hoss; but I thought he was a thoroughbred. I was 'bout seventeen year old then, an' was helpin' lock-tender on the Erie Canal, an' when the' wa'n't no boat goin' through I put in most o' my time cleanin' that hoss. If he got through 'th less 'n six times a day he got off cheap, an' once I got up an' give him a little ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... hundred miles every night to get this supper ready, and it's never ready. I have to bob up for a fork or a spoon, or I put on four plates of butter and none of bread. Oh there is witch work about it, and none but thoroughbred witches can get every thing, every little insignificant, indispensable thing on a table. I ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... six months over one of them, I'm always afraid. I remember a pony I had once." (I judged the man to be a small farmer; he talked in a wurzelly tone. I don't know if you understand what I mean, but an atmosphere of wurzels was the thing that somehow he suggested.) "It was a thoroughbred Welsh pony, as sound a little beast as ever stepped. I'd had him out to grass all the winter, and one day in the early spring I thought I'd take him for a run. I had to go to Amersham on business. I put him ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... of a fix. I don't know why it was, but directly I saw her—things seemed so different over in England—I mean." He swallowed ice-water in gulps. "I suppose it was seeing her with Lucille. Old Lu is such a thoroughbred. Seemed to kind of show her up. Like seeing imitation pearls by the side of real pearls. And that crimson hair! It sort of put the lid on it." Bill brooded morosely. "It ought to be a criminal offence for women to dye their hair. Especially red. What the devil do ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... is," Arthur declared, "there's one thing jolly certain, and that is she's thoroughbred. She has the most marvellous nerve I ever knew. We got in a tight corner this morning. I took her down to Guildford in a trailer, and I had to jump the pavement to avoid a runaway. She never flinched for a moment. Half the girls I know would have squealed like mad. ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gobbling under the window whenever emotion forced the Colonel to seek a vent in stern commands. Uncle Noah crossed to the window and commanded Job to be silent. Mrs. Fairfax, southern gentlewoman and thoroughbred from tip to toe, quivered proudly, and, as Uncle Noah returned, bade him serve the supper in tones as well controlled as ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple |
