"Stalking-horse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that this was their "favourite subject." "This is Sunday," writes the lady, "and not a word on our favourite subject. O fy! 'divine Clarinda!'" I suspect, although quite unconsciously on the part of the lady, who was bent on his redemption, they but used the favourite subject as a stalking-horse. In the meantime, the sportive acquaintance was ripening steadily into a genuine passion. Visits took place, and then became frequent. Clarinda's friends were hurt and suspicious; her clergyman interfered; she herself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... its concealment, he tied to its curved front a thin slab of snowy ice, and laying his gun behind it, approached the flock as near as possible, under cover of the hummocks. About three hundred yards of level ice still intervened, and lying down behind his snow-screen, he slowly moved his ingenious stalking-horse towards the flock. Had he understood the nature of the birds thoroughly, it is probable that his device would have succeeded splendidly; but when he was still about a hundred yards distant, the wary leader became ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... exhibits itself unveiled. This is precisely why passion, when it speaks, always carries conviction, whatever the passion may be; and rightly so. For the same reason, the passions are the principal theme of poets and the stalking-horse of actors. And it is because the will is most striking in the lower class of animals that we may account for our delight in dogs, apes, cats, etc.; it is the absolute naivete of all their expressions which ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Noailles, whose instructions were that he should play upon the popular discontent in regard to the queen's proposed marriage to Philip of Spain, in the interest of France, encouraged Elizabeth to associate herself with the factious, and to become, as it were, the stalking-horse of the disaffected. She was far too clever to commit herself to any direct act of rebellion, but de Noailles was prodigal of her name in all the intrigues that he fostered, and the plot organised by means of Sir Peter ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... enough, to be sure! To Italians at home, for whom the great arenas of political and religious speculation were closed, the temptation to find a subtler meaning than the real one was irresistible. Italians in exile, on the other hand, made Dante the stalking-horse from behind which they could take a long shot at Church and State, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell |
