"Racecourse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been suggested that, in order to avoid the assembling of frivolous crowds in war-time, races might be run in private. But that is quite impracticable. Only on the public racecourse can the lofty virtues of our British Bloodstock be displayed. The exciting presence of the crowd is absolutely essential to tune up its nerve and temper. Already our Bloodstock has suffered cruelly from gaps in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... his handsome offer of remuneration for my time and labour. It was with this idea in his mind that he chose and insisted upon the Sicilian Campaign as a subject for my muse, and thus started me heavily handicapped on the racecourse of Parnassus. ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... has gone and blown herself for one of these racecourse hats. You know these big things that have a half-mile track around the outside. While I do not wish to injure the poor dear, still I will say that she certainly looks one of these long-handled Jap umbrellas. ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... magnificence of its arches, and the lofty niches rising one above another like stairs, adorned with the images of former emperors; and the temple of the city, and the forum of peace, and the theatre of Pompey, and the odeum, and the racecourse, and the other ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... anecdote of her has been preserved which proves how very general was the impression the grace and beauty of the Duchess of Devonshire made upon men in every station of society. On one occasion of her being present on the racecourse at Newmarket, a burly farmer who stood near her carriage, after having for some time gazed at her in a species of ecstasy, exclaimed aloud, "Ah! why am I not God Almighty?—she should then be Queen of Heaven!" The Duchess preserved her personal charms far beyond ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... The water from the baths was carried to the grove of Poseidon, and by aqueducts over the bridges to the outer circles. And there were temples in the zones, and in the larger of the two there was a racecourse for horses, which ran all round the island. The guards were distributed in the zones according to the trust reposed in them; the most trusted of them were stationed in the citadel. The docks were full of triremes and stores. ...
— Critias • Plato
... hospitality. Dinners, dances, and theatricals were the order of the day; and fashionable officers, issuing from their quarters in the citadel, found distractions in St. Louis Street and the Grande Allee, due compensation for all they had left at home. For the exiled sportsman, too, there was the racecourse on the Plains of Abraham, riding to the hounds on the uplands of Lorette, snipe at Sillery Cove, and ducks on ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... the pleasures considered suitable to a Prince. One day it was told of him that, having given a cup to be raced for on the Bob-run, he was wroth to find on the notice-board of entries the names of a team of highly respectable little Englishmen who are familiar on the racecourse; and, taking out his pencil-case, he scored them off, saying, "My cup is for gentlemen, not jockeys," whereupon a young English soldier standing by had said: "We're not jockeys here, sir, and we're not ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... even the Puritan Oliver Wendell Holmes. Yes, there is something in the Bohemian tradition that touches the sternest of us—not the roystering, dissolute, dishonourable, shady Bohemia that is always with us, bounded by the greenroom, the racecourse, the gambling club, and the Bankruptcy Court, but the Bohemia that is as unreal as Shakespeare's "desert country near the sea," the land of light purses and light loves, set against the spiritual blight that sometimes follows on ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... community, a branch of the Bank of British West Africa, telegraph offices and the establishments of the principal trading firms. In Victoriaborg, a suburb of Ussher Town, are the residences of the principal officials, and here a racecourse has been laid out. (Accra is almost the only point along the Gold Coast where horses thrive.) Behind the town is rolling grass land, which gives place to the highlands of Aquapim and Akim. At Aburi in the Aquapim ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... all on tenterhooks. The drilling and exercising of the newly recruited troops were the excitements of the day. Soon Colonel Plumer[16] arrived, and assumed command of one of the regiments, which was encamped on the racecourse just outside the town; the other regiment had its headquarters at Mafeking. Colonel Baden-Powell and his Staff used to dash up and down between the two towns. Nearly all the business men in Bulawayo enlisted, and amongst the officers were some ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... the Chedputter racecourse, just before the turn into the straight, the track passes close to a couple of old brick-mounds enclosing a funnel-shaped hollow. The big end of the funnel is not six feet from the railings on the off-side. The astounding peculiarity of the course is that, if you stand ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... not forget that vehicle of torture. But it may be necessary to tell what is a calesa. Procure a broken-down hansom, knock off the driver's seat, paint the body and wheels the colour of a roulette-table at a racecourse, stud the hood with brass nails of the pattern of those employed to beautify genteel coffins, remove the cushions, and replace them with a wisp of straw, smash the springs, and put swing-leathers underneath instead, cover the whole article with a coating of liquid mud, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... doesn't know him. His name's Woolley—that's one of his names, anyhow. He was a kind of jockey once, and since then he's been the lowest, meanest little sharper in all the dirty little turf swindles that was ever kicked off a racecourse. If I wasn't sure I wouldn't say so; but you ought to know whom you ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... Carmichael's Creek. Mountains to the north. Ponds of water. A green plain. Clay-pan water. Fine herbage. Kangaroos and emus numerous. A new tree. Agreeable encampment. Peculiar mountains. High peak. Start to ascend it. Game plentiful. Racecourse plain. Surrounded by scrubs. A bare slope. A yawning chasm. Appearance of the peak. Gleaming pools. Cypress pines. The tropic clime of youth. Proceed westwards. Thick scrubs. Native method of procuring water. A pine-clad hill. A watercourse to the south. A ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... on New Year's day, because the racecourse is two miles this side of the township," Jim said. "But Norah said I was to tell you some of us could easily go in the car if ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... celebrated with great pomp and splendour in the second year of the peace. And the degradation of the proud Dorian city seemed to be complete, when a Spartan named Lichas, who had entered for the chariot-race under another name, was driven with blows from the racecourse. So deep was the abasement to which the great name of Sparta had ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... be replaced by classical concerts, the gin-shops by popular reading-rooms, the gaming-hells by edifying lectures, highway robberies by gymnastic exercises, detective novels by Gottfried Keller, bazaar-trifles and comic vulgarities by works of refined handicraft; and that out of boxing contests, racecourse betting, bomb exercises, and profiteering in butter, we shall see the rise of an era of ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... peasants of Europe, whose taste for bread they do not share. It is more keenly exciting to bet upon the future crop of wheat than upon the speed of a horse; and far larger sums may be hazarded in the Pit than on a racecourse. And so the livelong day the Bulls and Bears confront one another, gesticulating fiercely, and shouting at the top of their raucous voices. If on the one hand they ruin the farmer, or on the other starve the peasant, it matters not to them. ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... tearing round the hospital calling for one of the medical officers, L—— and his companions, now emulating the frenzied language and manners of racecourse frequenters, and forming field glasses with their hands, were bawling at the tops ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... seen its peculiar games and entertainments. Sometimes the Queen's slaves, trained to their respective feats, have wrestled, or fought, or run, for our amusement. At other times, we ourselves have been the performers. Upon the racecourse, fleet Arabians have contended for the prize, or they, who have esteemed themselves skilful, have tried for the mastery in two or four horse chariots. Elephants have been put to their strength, and dromedaries to ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... to her in almost her lowest state: nay, it doth not abandon her when she is driven from her home, when she is wandering and insane. The mad often retain it; the liar has it; the cheat has it: we find it on the racecourse and at the card-table: education does not give it, and reflection ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... prisoners at this depot, principally officers of the army and navy, and a few masters of merchant ships, as well as some people detained in a most unjust manner by a decree of Bonaparte when the war broke out. About two miles from the town was a racecourse, made by the officers and kept up by subscription, where, I was informed, there was as much jockeyship practised as at Newmarket. It made a variety, and the ladies say variety is charming. After residing in this town, where ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... as she had been accustomed to bestow on her old pony at home. The effect was magical. Seaside hacks are not generally prone to run away, but this one had a little spirit left in him; he resented his rider's liberties, and, feeling the soft grass under his feet, fled as if he were on a racecourse. ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... idleness must be atoned for by two months' double labour. The opera-dancer realises the fable of Sisyphus and his rock. She resembles the horse, who pays with his repose, his flesh and his liberty, the rapid victories of the racecourse. I have seen Mademoiselle Taglioni, after receiving a two hours' lesson from her father, fall helpless upon the floor, and allow herself to be undressed, spunged, and again attired, without the least consciousness of what passed. The agility and wonderful bounds with which she, that same evening, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... Bobby was unnerved. At first singly, then by twos, by threes, by dozens, those with whom his life had been spent—frequenters of the restaurant, the racecourse, the tavern, and the theatre—followed one another in a headlong race to the unknown. His brain reeled under successive shocks. He was awestruck by the appalling suddenness of death and destruction. Daring no inquiry, ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... the scene was hideous enough in its dull way. The gas flared with drowsy refulgence through the reek, and the low masks of the roaring crew somehow left on me an impression that I was gazing on one bestial, distorted face. A man who is a racecourse thief and "ramper" hailed me affably. A beast of prey he is, if ever there was one. His hatchet face with its piggish eyes, his thin, cruel lips, his square jaw, are all murderous, and, indeed, I cannot help thinking that he will commit a murder some day. When he is in his affable mood he is ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... Club in Bombay, and a wondrous fine claret that spread a ruby haze of charm o'er my lunch at the Yacht Club of the same fair city. A 'Mouton Rothschild something,' which was cheap at nine rupees a small bottle on the morrow of a good day on the Mahaluxmi Racecourse." (It was strongly suspected that Trooper Burke had worn a star on his shoulder-strap in those ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... where was that blind man? They found out the wayside inn in which he had taken a lodging for the night; and there it was ascertained that he had paid for his room beforehand, stating that he should start for the race-course early in the morning. Rugge himself set out to the racecourse to kill two birds with one stone,—catch Mr. Losely, examine the blind ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from Sanskrit and put it into Romany; declaring that it would be very important if shaster were Romany. I mention in my book that English gypsies call the New Testament (also any MS.) a shaster, and that a betting-book on a racecourse is called a shaster 'because it is written.' I do not pretend in my book to such deep Romany as you have achieved—all that I claim is to have collected certain words, facts, phrases, etc., out of the Romany ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... twenty each on the north and south sides, and triple rows of eight each at the ends. Its size was three hundred and fifty-three by one hundred and thirty-four feet, which was exceeded only by the Temple of Diana. To its left is the Arch of Hadrian. Looking east is seen the Stadium or racecourse. Here the Pan-Athenian games were held in olden times. It was laid out in 330 B.C., and has been restored in solid white marble by a rich Greek. It cost a large sum of money and will accommodate a multitude of spectators. The first year in which the revival of the games took place the Greek youths ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... day before yesterday Washington's Birthday was made the occasion of another grand display and illumination, in honor of the birth of a new nation and the breaking of that Union which he labored to cement. We drove to the racecourse to see the review of troops. A flag was presented to the Washington Artillery by ladies. Senator Judah Benjamin made an impassioned speech. The banner was orange satin on one side, crimson silk on the other, the pelican and brood embroidered in pale ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... botanic garden with hothouses, alake with islands inhabited by aquatic birds, and a dairy farm, whose produce is sent every morning into town for sale. Adjoining the park are the rifle-butts and the racecourse. In the Boulevard du Nord is the Guimet Museum, containing a collection of objects from the extreme east, to facilitate the study of the history, religions, and customs of the inhabitants of that part of the world. The institution publishes essays ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... announcement was made in the town that a racecourse for women was opened between the castle of Sant' Angelo and the Piazza of St. Peter's; that on every third day there would be a bull-fight in the Spanish fashion; and that from the end of the present month, which was October, until the first day ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Charlottetown, His Royal Highness had a real Canadian welcome, tinged not a little with excitement. While he was on the racecourse one of the stands took fire, and there was the beginning of a panic, men and women starting to clamber wildly out of it and dropping from its sides. The Prince, however, kept his place and continued to watch the races. His presence ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... hubbub and excitement among the birds when the coming race was announced. The racecourse was so constructed that the larger birds stood upon one side, and the smaller birds and animals upon the other. This was so arranged, chiefly at the request of a deputy of frogs, because, at a mass meeting once, an albatross had eaten twenty-seven of these animals in a fit of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various |
