"Arena" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the forest, studying the early morning along the eastern fringe and moving deeper in as the day advanced. For the stillness and warmth of noon I went to the very woodland heart, and in the late afternoon moved westward to a glade—a chance arena open to the sky, the scene of my most audacious endeavours, for here I was trying to paint foliage luminous under those long shafts of sunshine which grow thinner but ruddier toward sunset. A path closely bordered by underbrush wound its way to the glade, crossed ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... hearts are tender, and a joke like this cuts deeply. But just as he was about to yield, and drop the tell-tale tear of a sensitive, mortified boy, he caught the eye of Abel Newt. It was calmly studying him as a Roman surgeon may have watched the gladiator in the arena, while his life-blood ebbed away. Gabriel remembered Abel's words in the play-ground—"There's more than one ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... last, and took in the first sniff of that intoxicating circus smell that will stay by me while this clay endures. The place was beset by a hum and a glitter and a mist; suspense brooded large o'er the blank, mysterious arena. Strung up to the highest pitch of expectation, we knew not from what quarter, in what divine shape, the ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... Imperator, morituri te salutant," nineteenth century womanhood frowns, and deplores the brutal depravity which alone explains the presence of that white-veiled vestal band, whose snowy arms are thrust in signal over the parapet of the bloody arena; yet fair daughters of the latest civilization show unblushing flower faces among the heaving mass of the "great unwashed" who crowd our court-rooms—and listen to revolting details more repugnant to genuine modesty, than the mangled remains in the Colosseum. The rosy thumbs ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the Court at London and the King of the Peak, and the baron surmised little good from the arrival of the courtier. As the latter urged his horse through the crowd, and entered the arena, Sir ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... to coalesce with contemplative or philosophic thinking. Pass from these narrow fields of the intellect, where the relations of the objects are so few and simple, and the whole prospect so bounded, to the immeasurable and sea-like arena upon which Shakspeare careers—co- infinite with life itself—yes, and with something more than life. Here is the other pole, the opposite extreme. And what is the choice of diction? What is the lexis? Is it Saxon exclusively, or is it Saxon ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... to anarchy and civil war, were continually threatened with foreign invasion. Almost all the south presented the melancholy spectacle of one-vast arena of conflicting factions. The nation groaned beneath the yoke of tyrannical laws; despotism was systematically established; the law of hostages struck a blow at personal liberty, and forced loans menaced every man's property. The generality of the citizens had declared ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Surgham and Kerreri ridges curved in towards each other, enclosing what lay between. Beyond the long swell of sand which formed the western wall of this spacious amphitheatre the black shapes of the distant hills rose in misty confusion. The challengers were already in the arena; their ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... foeman worthy of any man's steel, so long as I was reasonable in my arguments; but when I finally observed that it wouldn't be ten years before Barnum and Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth had the whole lot engaged for the New York circus season, stalking about the Madison Square Garden arena, with the Prince of Wales at the head beating a tomtom, he grew iridescent with wrath, and fled madly through the wainscoting of the room. It was purely a mental victory. All the physical possibilities of my being ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... display a grievous want of magnanimity and of a predominant sense of right. Fortunately his instinct taught him to see in the constitution of the republic the fairest field for the display of his peculiar talents; the orator and the pleader could not fail to love the arena on which the greatest triumph of his genius had been or were yet, as he hoped, to be acquired. And Cicero indeed was not less ambitious than Caeesar or Pompeius, Antonius or Octavius. To the pursuit of fame he sacrificed many interests and ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... all this imposing strength, this mighty domineering will, and this keen intelligence, a man was found bold enough to brave them all in the arena of pure humbug. It was toward the close of the year 1667, when Louis, in the plenitude of military success, returned from his campaign in Flanders, where his invincible troops had proven too much for the broad breeched but gallant Dutchmen. In the short space ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... against big horses, some of which were ridden by steeplechase jockeys. The competition took place at night in a circus which was lighted by electricity, and which was open at each end. The object to be jumped was a white gate placed midway across the arena, and raised each time that it had been successfully cleared. From the glare of electric light in this crowded place, we had to go into outer darkness and carefully avoid the tent pegs and ropes in finding our way to the other entrance. While we were waiting our turn to jump, ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... easy to die in an ecstasy of enthusiasm for a creed, with all the world looking on; to exchange life for eternal glory; but put the virgin, who would face without shrinking the flames or the wild beasts of the arena, into some wretched garret, in some miserable alley, surrounded by the low, the ignorant, the vile; close every avenue and prospect of hope; shut off every ennobling thought or sight or deed; and then subject the emaciated frame to endless toil and hopeless hunger, and ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... borne along together with those whom we appear to control. We are permitted, like children, to lay our hands upon the reins; but it is a dark and unknown genius who drives. We are his creatures; and it is his ends, not ours, that are furthered by our contests, our efforts, our ideals. In the arena Remenham and I must play our part, combat bravely, and be ready to die when the crowd turn down their thumbs. But here in a moment of withdrawal, I at least cannot fail to recognize behind the issues ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... will call the arena, stood a temple that in its main outlines, although small, exactly resembled those still to be seen in Egypt. There was the gateway or pylon; there the open outer court with columns round it supporting roofed cloisters, which, ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... the terrible passage of the bridge of Lodi that the idea entered my mind that I might become a decisive actor in the political arena. Then arose for the first time the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... with the Nobles, who are well-nigh as beggarly as they; and the Houses are as lofty as any in Europe, and the Streets between them as dark and narrow as Adam and Eve Court in the Strand. The Suburb called San Pietro d'Arena very pretty, and full of commodious Villas. There are thirty Parish Churches, and at San Lorenzo they show a large Dish made out of One Emerald, which they say was given to King Solomon by the Queen of Sheba. The Genoese are a cunning and industrious People, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... chivalrous contest, you understand,—nothing bitter or malicious about it,—but none the less it was a duel a l'outrance, a struggle for the mastery between two men whom nature had made rivals, and for whom circumstances had prepared the arena in the double sphere of ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... syrtis; arena (Med.). Associated words: dune, downs, arenicolous, burst, sabulosity (sandiness), psammophilous, ammophilous, medano, eschar, os, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the hubbub arose, converting the cloisters into an arena. One word led to another. Fiery blood bubbled up; harsh things were said. Gerald Yorke and his party reproached Tom Channing with being a disgrace to the school's charter, through his brother Arthur. Huntley and a few more warmly espoused ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Suddenly they all troop off down the dark narrow stairs for the triumphal entry. The splendour of this parade may not be marred by any clown costumes, so the two novices are left upstairs, peering through holes in the dressing-room wall. The big arena is all an expanse of eager faces. The band strikes up a stirring ditty. A wave of excitement sweeps through the dingy quarters of the Garden. The show is on, and ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... the ladder to eminence, and merited the applause which the public lavished upon him. Success only inflamed his ambition, and it became evident he aimed at political renown. Nature had fitted him for the political arena, had endowed him with oratorical powers of no ordinary stamp; and, though long dormant, they were not impaired by his inertia. It was fortunate for him that an exciting Presidential canvass afforded numerous opportunities for ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... it cannot fail to represent us. Therefore we appeal to every Negro man and woman, who has any real pride, to do all in his or her power to make this department a success. Before another centennial celebration others will have our place in the arena of life, and they will love and honor us for this and other examples of patriotism that we may leave on record for ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... represented in Dante's life; a state of intense democratical partizanship, in which an exaggerated importance was attached to individuals, and which whilst it afforded a vast field for the intellect, opened also a boundless arena for the passions, and in which envy, jealousy, hatred, and other malignant feelings, could and did assume the form of patriotism, even to ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... a throbbing faith in everything but myself, I boldly and voluntarily entered the arena of commercial activity at the pliable age of eight. My first job away from home was in a mattress factory. Ah, that first job! I was a triumphant Archimedes who had found his fulcrum. I helped move ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... one immediately before him. Additional articles were stowed away here and there among the boxes. The last instructions were given by Sigurdr to the guides, and everything was declared ready for a start. With the air of an equestrian star, descending into the arena of Astley's Amphitheatre, the cook then stepped forward, made me a superb bow, and was assisted into the saddle. My little cabin-boy accompanied ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... is capable in all of its parts. Colossal forces are behind and under the movement which is making for the final emancipation of the Negro, and for his eventual admission on terms of complete equality of rights and opportunities into the arena of that never-ending rivalry and struggle which is the ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... dead silence in the crowded Court—an unnatural silence, such as must have fallen on the blood-loving Roman populace when they saw the Christian martyrs kneeling on the hot yellow sands of the arena, and watched the long, lithe forms of lion and panther creeping steadily towards their prey. The hour being late the gas had been lighted, and there was a sickly glare through the ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... sahib,—see, I draw in the dust—the Kurds coming this way at an angle—Ranjoor Singh and his forty coming this way—and we advancing toward them all along the bottom stroke of the Y, with hills around forming an arena. The best the Turks could do would have been to take the higher ground where we were and there reform, except for the fact that we had come on the scene unknown to them. Now that we had arrived, they ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... me with some of his sledge-hammer declamation, being thoroughly roused, when Bessie Dasher averted the storm, by entering the arena and changing the conversation to a ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of Dacia, which included all of lower Hungary, Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia and Bessarabia. The country was divided into Roman provinces, over each of which a prefect was established. In the third century, the Goths, from the shores of the Baltic, came rushing over the wide arena, with the howling of wolves and their gnashing of teeth. They trampled down all opposition, with their war knives drove out the Romans, crossed the Black Sea in their rude vessels, and spread conflagration and death throughout the most flourishing cities and villages ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... life and the good offices society asks of us may be left to take care of themselves while we contemplate the infinite. There is no safer fortress for indolence than "the Everlasting No." The chimney-corner is the true arena for this class of philosophers, and the pipe and mug furnish their all-sufficient panoply. Emerson undoubtedly met with some of them among his disciples. His wise counsel did not always find listeners in a fitting condition to receive it. He was a sower who went forth to sow. Some of the ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... from the earliest period of his life, to write in cipher, has already been noticed. To this may be added an unwillingness, on all important questions, to commit himself in writing. As soon as he entered the political arena, this characteristic was visible even in his letters to Mrs. Burr. On the 14th of November, 1791, he writes her—"To the subject of politics I can at present make no reply. The mode of communication would not permit, did no other reason ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... forming such ideals are the token that He is for whom heart and flesh do thus yearn. And how blessed is it to set over against these dreary ghosts that call themselves hopes, and that pathetic vain attempt to find refuge in the green fields of the imagination from the choking dust of the logical arena, the old faithful words: 'This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and that this ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... account of their barbarous Latinity, their uncritical methods, and their pointless wranglings; the Scholastics retorted by denouncing their opponents as pagans, or, at least, heretics. In this way the claims of religion were drawn into the arena, and, as neither the extreme Scholastics nor the extreme Humanists had learned to distinguish between dogmas and systems, between what was essential and what was tentative, there was grave danger that religion would suffer in the eyes of educated men on account of the crude ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... was like an arena; it was sunk two or three steps below the surrounding gallery. Just now it was comparatively clear of people, save for the benches on which sat the men who were to compose the jury. Some way from these men, huddled together in a kind of ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... old Romans thought the chariot-races were pretty nifty, but if an old Roman should reassemble himself and watch the dray-race to a Homeburg fire, he'd wonder how he ever managed to sit through a silly little dash around an arena. From the south comes a cloud of dust and a terrific racket. At an equal distance from the east comes another cloud of dust and an even more terrible uproar, Clay Billings's dray having more loose spokes than Bill Dorgan's. The clouds approach with tremendous speed. ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... way, expansion, compass, sweep, swing, spread. dimension, length &c. 200; distance &c. 196; size &c. 192; volume; hypervolume. latitude, play, leeway, purchase, tolerance, room for maneuver. spare room, elbow room, house room; stowage, roomage[obs3], margin; opening, sphere, arena. open space, free space; void &c. (absence) 187; waste; wildness, wilderness; moor, moorland; campagna[obs3]. abyss &c. (interval) 198; unlimited space; infinity &c. 105; world; ubiquity &c. (presence) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... invited them to apply their system—in conjunction with that which it seeks to supplant. Meanwhile, the popular interest has been kept busily absorbed by issues of a different nature; and the Reformers, snubbed in quarters where they had confidently counted on aid, and hustled from the arena in which they had fondly imagined they were to play a prominent part and exert a decisive influence, are now, it is announced, about to devote their energies to the quiet propagation of their views by means of tracts and other publications, abstaining from any appearance in the domain of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... handsome lad of about fourteen years of age, uncovering his head with all the grace of a born hidalgo and grandee of Spain, led her solemnly in to a little gilt and ivory chair that was placed on a raised dais above the arena. The children grouped themselves all round, fluttering their big fans and whispering to each other, and Don Pedro and the Grand Inquisitor stood laughing at the entrance. Even the Duchess—the Camerera-Mayor as she was called—a thin, hard-featured ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... contests of the arena and the course form so conspicuous a feature in all ceremonies, solemn or festal, of this people, that a description of them may not with advantage be wholly omitted here. The Siamese are by nature warlike, and their government has thoughtfully and liberally fostered those manly sports ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... yelling like one possessed of ten shrill-tongued demons, burst on the gallop away from the others, and spurring his horse cruelly, forced the animal to race, bucking and plunging, half way around the arena and back to the group. This, then, was a type of the dare-devil horse breaker of the Wild West? The cheers travelled in waves around and around the house and rocked back and forth like water pitched from side to ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... years for Smith Crothers to collect his insurance, recover his health, and begin his business career again. He had left The Forge for two years, and since his return had gone slowly about his work of rebuilding and entering the arena. Whatever he thought or remembered of the night when his factory was burned, no one, but himself, knew. From a grim shadow of his former self he regained his health and looks; he nodded to Cynthia when he met her on The Way and the ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... the speaker, who should be above all political antagonisms, acting as the leader of an arrogant majority, and urging them to continue in their hostility to the government. It was Mr. Papineau who first brought the governor-general directly into the arena of political conflict by violent personal attacks; and indeed he went so far in the case of Lord Dalhousie, a fair-minded man anxious to act moderately within the limits of the constitution, that the latter felt compelled by a ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... the orators near us. The sound of My Grand's last sentence had not died out when a fresh-coloured, rather aristocratic-looking elderly man, whose white hair was carefully combed and smoothed, and whose appearance and manner suggested a very different arena to the one he waged battle in now, claimed the attention of the Thoughtful ones. Addressing 'Mee Grand' in the rich and unctuous tones which a Scotchman and Englishman might try for in vain, this orator proceeded, with every profession of respect, to contradict ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... new member of the vestry entered the arena. This was the venerable Mr. Curtis, who looked like a statue of the Olympian Jove. "Boy," he said sternly, "you object to being put out of the church— and yet you confess to being ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... desirous of obtaining accurate and reliable information regarding its foundation and general principles. The public are deeply indebted to Professor Agassiz, for it is not every man of real science who is willing to step into the popular arena, throw aside (in so far as possible) technicalities, and strive to impart to the unlearned the valuable results of years of severe study, observation, and thought. We are happy to see that the illustrious author enters "an earnest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... into it was possible with the sea that was running. Indeed the fishermen of the North Sea are acrobats by necessity, and their tumbling is quite as wonderful, though not quite so neat, as that of professionals. Perchance if the arena in which the latter perform were to pitch about as heavily as the Evening Star did on that occasion, they might be beaten at their ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... peasant population made huge profits during the campaign and her armies despoiled Serbia, Rumania, and Greek Macedonia and sent home enormous booty. In a word, she is richer and more prosperous than before she entered the arena against ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... to the amphitheater Tarzan of the Apes melted into the branches upon the other side of the arena. There he waited to inspect the newcomers. Nor had he long ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... death and duly executed. Most of the others were transported to the convict settlements of Australia. It is worthy of remark that none of those executed or deported had been persons of note in the political arena before 1837. On the whole, it must be confessed that these sentences showed a commendable moderation. It was thought necessary that a few examples should be made, as Lord Durham's amnesty of the previous year had evidently encouraged some {127} habitants to believe ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... Socialist—agreed! But now, as between us and the Master of Elibank or Sir Hugh Bell or any other Free Trade Liberal capitalist or landlord, which side is he on? You cannot have more than one fight going on in the political arena at the same time, because only one party or group of ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... at once. Good-by for the moment, Miss Holladay. I repeat, you may rely on me," and he hastened from the room as confidently as though she had girded him for the battle. Instead, I told myself, she had bound him hand and foot before casting him down into the arena. ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... battle, repeatedly urged Govinda, saying, "Proceed, Proceed." Having shown the field of battle to Partha, Madhava, while proceeding quickly, slowly said unto Partha once more, "Behold those kings rushing towards king Yudhishthira. Behold Karna, who resembles a blazing fire, on the arena of the battle. Yonder the mighty-bowman Bhima is proceeding to battle. They that are the foremost among the Pancalas, the Srinjayas, and the Pandavas—they, that is, that have Dhrishtadyumna for their head, are following Bhima. The vast army of the enemy is again broken ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... of his cage, he did, sir, that there lion—been fiddling all night, I suppose, at the bolts and bars—and we followed him up to where he got in the loose-box of a gentleman's stable; and there was the poor horse down—a beauty he was—and that there lion—Arena his name was—lying on him with his face flattened out and teeth buried in the poor hoss's throat, so that when I got to the stable door there he was, all eyes and whiskers, and growling at you like thunder. I knowed ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... place of public amusement in which the varied orders of society are permitted to participate. Here, lolling at his ease, in a snug box on the first circle, in dignified security from the vulgar gaze, he surveys the congregated mass who fill the arena of the house, deigns occasionally a condescending nod of recognition to some less fortunate roue, or younger brother of a titled family, who is forcing his way through the well-united phalanx of vulgar faces that guard the entrance to Fop's Alley; or, if he should be in a state of single ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and if it came to a fight the three of us Klaas was also well armed could almost exterminate them. So, leaving the old man behind, we ventured down the narrow cleft clinging, scrambling, and occasionally using the rope. At length we stood in the open arena. ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... which, to an actual stranger, would have seemed more notable than details of a dozen other views which he had peered at through his half-closed, weather-beaten eyes within the hour. Here, clearly, was the arena of some great event in his past life—an arena which he gladly would have never seen again. His face went pale beneath its coat of tan, his shoulders trembled slightly as he tried to shrug them with ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... mother; Thou wilt not for sixty summers Join in war or deadly combat, Even though thou wishest silver, Wishest gold and silver treasures." Spake the grateful Lemminkainen: "I will swear an oath of honor, That I'll not in sixty summers Draw my sword in the arena, Test the warrior in battle; I have wounds upon my shoulders, On my breast two scars of broadsword, Of my former battles, relies, Relies of my last encounters, On the battle-fields of Northland, In the wars with ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... either through a burst of generous praise for an act so chivalrous and so brilliant, or because they would not be crowed over, clapped their ten thousand hands as loudly, and thundering heart-thrilling salvo of applause answered salvo on both sides that terrible arena." ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the walks and the walls there are the groups of trees, the statues with green spaces about them, the masses of evergreen trees, and finally the great trees that follow the lines of the wall. Indeed, the tapis vert is like the arena of an ample theater, with the ascending flowers and shrubs and trees representing the ascending tiers of seats. One feels that all the trees and flowers look down upon the central stretch of greensward, and ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... You don't honest mean we're goin' in? Stefana, she does—she means! We're goin' in!" As of course they were. The best seats in the great tented arena were none too good for them. Stefana laboriously shut up Elly Precious' go-cart, and Miss Theodosia lifted Elly Precious in her arms. In the procession they sought those best-of-all seats. What followed, even Evangeline gazed upon in silence; there were no words in Evangeline's dictionary for ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... pen as she had always looked on his own. For a few years my brother attended a private school for boys in Amherst; then, at the age of fourteen, he was intrusted to the care of Rev. James Tufts, of Monson, one of those noble instructors of the blessed old school who are passing away from the arena of education in America. By Mr. Tufts he was fitted for college, and from the enthusiasm of this old scholar he caught perhaps the inspiration for the love of the classics which he carried through life. In the fall of 1868 he entered Williams College—the ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... o'er Sahara Flings the blue shadow Of the crown of ostrich feathers— As described so graphically By LAYARD, in his recent book On Nineveh! With tongue as sharp As aspic's tooth of NILUS, Or sugary Upon the occasion As is the date Of TAFILAT. DIZZY, the bounding Arab Of the political arena— As swift to whirl Right about face— As strong to leap From premise to conclusion— As great in balancing A budget— Or flinging headlong His somersets Over sharp swords of adverse facts, As were ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the march of affairs, and of being, on occasions of civil dissensions, the mere tools of whatever party possessed the greatest tact in turning them to their purpose. Hence a wide field was open to corruption. Uncertainty embarrassed every operation of the government. The Hague became an arena for the conflicting intrigues of every court in Europe. Holland was dragged into almost every war; and thus, gradually weakened from its rank among independent nations, it at length fell an easy prey to the ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... arena two men stood face to face under the full glare of the gas-lamps—one was Guy Livingstone; the other a denizen of the Potteries, yclept "Burn's Big 'un," who had selected B—— as his training quarters, in preparation for his fight to come off in the ensuing week ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... back, but the rest of the party descended into the ravine, and, leaning on a good strong arm, I followed. We all sat down on the great trunk of a fallen tree, and soon the dancers came into the arena. ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... our protecting aegis to the weak and unsupported, we feel ourselves called upon at the present juncture to step into the arena as the defenders of several meritorious individuals whom we conceive to have met with the most unworthy treatment in regard to the exhibition, or rather the non-exhibition of their productions of art in the Crystal Palace. We have received a number of communications ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... arches, the old Roman numerals may yet be seen; and there are corridors, and staircases, and subterranean passages for beasts, and winding ways, above ground and below, as when the fierce thousands hurried in and out, intent upon the bloody shows of the arena. Nestling in some of the shadows and hollow places of the walls, now, are smiths with their forges, and a few small dealers of one kind or other; and there are green weeds, and leaves, and grass, upon the parapet. But little else ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... opposition he had not contemplated, he placed the man who had freed Rome from a foreign yoke, with his whole family, in the arena, and let loose a ferocious lion upon them. But the lion, to the astonishment of all, held down his head before them, as if in reverence. On which the ungrateful emperor ordered a brazen ox to be fabricated, and heated to the highest degree. In this his victims were cast alive; ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... in the race, blasting the fair fame of no man; but the envious, who thinks that he ought to get the better by defaming others, is less energetic himself in the pursuit of true virtue, and reduces his rivals to despair by his unjust slanders of them. And so he makes the whole city to enter the arena untrained in the practice of virtue, and diminishes her glory as far as in him lies. Now every man should be valiant, but he should also be gentle. From the cruel, or hardly curable, or altogether incurable acts ...
— Laws • Plato
... journey." The Christian's home is a scene of retirement favorable to moral culture and to growth in grace. There the soul may contemplate its Creator, and hold communion with the lovely image of his Son. Far from the fields of ambition and gain, away from the agitations of a public arena, in sacred seclusion pursuing her domestic avocations, why should not woman be distinguished for her spiritual attainments? Can it be, that with the same watchfulness, and self-denial, and toil, she should not surpass man in the acquisition of holiness ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... magnificently. Connie, sitting beside Mrs. Hooper in the semicircle of the Sheldonian Theatre, drew the eyes of the crowd of graduates as they surged into the arena, and tantalised the undergraduates in the gallery, above the semicircle, who were well aware that the "star" was there, but could not see her. As the new doctors' procession entered through the lane made for it by the bedells, as the whole assembly rose, ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a loud voice as a sign of the glorious victory which He had gained, when after a single combat with His strong and cruel enemy, and having descended into the arena—the battlefield of this world—He had routed him on Mount Calvary and stripped him bare of his spoils. This victory, this glorious triumph, Christ proclaimed with a loud voice, and thus departing from the battlefield triumphant and victorious, He departed to the place of all ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... had turned Languedoc for four years into a vast arena, only Ravanel remained, but he refused either to surrender or to leave the country. On the 8th October the marechal issued an order declaring he had forfeited all right to the favour of an amnesty, and offering a reward of 150 Louis to whoever ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in the arena excited little or no condemnation, the prevalence of various other sorts of immorality, at variance with the practice of better days, could not fail to call out ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... politicians, the scum of a great city was shaved, curled and painted free; and there were public houses, where vagabond slaves and sexless priests drank the mulled wine of Crete, supped on the flesh of beasts slaughtered in the arena, or watched the Syrian women twist ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... the neighbours and enemies of Christendom, yet hoped for time to sail off to the new-found countries and so fulfil his oath and promise to perfect a life of unmatched adventure by unmatched discovery. He had fought with wild beasts in the Arena of Constantinople; he had bathed in the Jordan and cleared the Syrian roads of robbers; he had stormed eighty castles in Africa; he had succoured the Icelanders in famine and lived as a prince in Russia and ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... decline to confine themselves within these liberal bounds. They would cover the whole domain of industrial activity, and think it hard that they should not reap the same rich harvests from every part of the field. They must descend into the arena with Sheffield and Manchester, and yet secure the rewards of Chicago and St. Louis. They must employ European conditions of production, and obtain American results. What is this but to quarrel with the laws of nature? These ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... the Net. These last two bore his own name, John Leicester Warren. He was somewhat disappointed by their lukewarm reception, and when in 1876 The Soldier of Fortune, a drama on which he had bestowed much careful labour, proved a complete failure, he retired altogether from the literary arena. It was not until 1893 that he was persuaded to return, and the immediate success in that year of his Poems, Dramatic and Lyrical, encouraged him to publish a second series in 1895, the year of his death. The genuine interest with which these volumes were welcomed did much ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... the proposals initiated by Mr. Chamberlain, one thing appears tolerably certain, and that is that so long as Tariff Reform and Imperial policy are intimately connected together there is not, so far as can at present be judged, the most remote chance of Imperialism emerging from the arena of party strife. It is true, and is, moreover, a subject for national congratulation, that there has been of late years a steady growth of Imperialist ideas. The day is probably past for ever when Ministers, whether Liberal or Conservative, could speak of the colonies ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... in the world, Yvonne longed for a bath, but she suppressed this desire as unworthy of a true vagabond and washed in a bucket of water which Philidor had brought from the pump, sharing at the last in the suppressed excitement which pervaded the arena. There was no doubt in the minds of any that the Troupe Fabiani was to be the great success of the occasion. The duties and destinies of all its members had already been explained and decided. A girl was hired to care for the bambino. Yvonne was to beat her drum and play her orchestra on the ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... wore. The light fencing foil in his hand felt as heavy as a bar of lead to his exhausted muscles, worn out by a month of continual exercise. These things were of no importance. The cut on his chest, still dripping blood, the ache of his overstrained eyes—even the soaring arena around him with the thousands of spectators—were trivialities not worth thinking about. There was only one thing in his universe: the button-tipped length of shining steel that hovered before him, engaging his own weapon. He felt the quiver and scrape of its life, knew when it ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... corrected by recourse to arms have much of a ceremonial character. Whatever may be the material accidents that surround any given concrete grievance that comes up for appraisal and redress, in bringing the case into the arena for trial by combat it is the spiritual value of the offense that is played up and made the decisive ground of action, particularly in so far as appeal is made to the sensibilities of the common man, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... prime favorite, in spite of many rivals. I never grew weary of her. She was the most knowing little thing in the world. Her proper sphere in life—and the one to which she ultimately attained—was the saw-dust arena of a travelling circus. There was nothing short of the three R's, reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic, that Gypsy couldn't be taught. The gift of speech was not hers, but the faculty of ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... "I feel more and more that woman's work is inside, that the great battle must first be fought within, and the conquest obtained over her love of admiration, her vanity, her want of moral courage, her littleness, ere she is prepared to use her rights without abusing them. Women must come into the arena with men, not to increase the number of potsherds, but to elevate the standard ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... preferable to the knife, and then he went on to weave a web of ineffectual casuistry in support of his view, which moved the Court to pity and contempt. He cited the Lex Cornelia, which doomed the common people to the arena, and the patricians to exile, and claimed the penalty last-named as the one fitting to the present case.[193] Then he proceeded to show that the woman had really died from natural causes; for, even granting that she had swallowed arsenic in the ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... course, be examination to ascertain and attest both progress and relative capacity; but our aim should be to make the students rather look upon it as a means of ascertaining their own true positions and powers in the world, than as an arena in which to carry away a present victory. I have not, perhaps, in the course of the lecture, insisted enough on the nature of relative capacity and individual character, as the roots of all real value in Art. We are too much in the habit, in these ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, was about to leave Sicily, he exclaimed: "What a grand arena [Footnote: Arena in Latin meant "sand," and as the central portions of the amphitheatres were strewn with sand to absorb the blood of the fighting gladiators and beasts, an arena came to mean, as at present, any ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... Mr. Shaw's comedy, and the characteristic "realistic" fun he has with his Romans and Christian martyrs, and the lion who, remembering the mild-mannered Androcles, who had once pulled a sliver from his foot, danced out of the arena with him instead of eating him. And you can imagine the peculiarly piquant eloquence given to the dialogue between Mr. Shaw's meek but witty Christians and their might-is-right Roman captors, spoken by British prisoners in the spring of 1915, in a German prison camp ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... amphitheatre of granite, curving away on either hand and reaching up, tier on tier, till the tiers melted in the grey sky overhead. The lowest tier stood twenty feet above my head; yet curved with so lordly a perspective that on the far side of the arena, as I looked across, it seemed almost level with the ground; while the human figures about the great archway yonder were diminished to the size of ants about a hole. . . For there were human figures busy in the arena, ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... him, in that place of historic wraiths and memories, a girl, her eyes sad, but loyal and without reproof. For an instant, he could see a scene of centuries ago. A barbarian and captive girl stood in the arena, looking up with ignorant, but unflinching, eyes; and a man sat in the marble tiers looking down. The benches were draped with embroidered rugs and gold and scarlet hangings; the air was heavy with incense—and ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... was at the age when a youth begins to feel that he is about to step into a fresh arena—that of manhood, but with a good deal that is boyish to hold him back. And in those moments, oppressed and overcome as he was by the long-continued darkness, he felt a strong disposition to search out a hand so as to cling to whoever was nearest, but ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... Portuguese pilot of much fame" (Herrera) made a map in 1505 showing Sable Island, feared and dreaded by all fishermen even in those days, where he called it "Santa Cruz." Jacamo Gastaldi, an Italian cartographer, in 1548 shows it "Isolla de Arena." Sir Humphrey Gilbert or his historian, says that the Portuguese had made an interesting settlement here for shipwrecked mariners. This, "Upon intelligence we had of a Portugal who was himself present when the Portugals, above ...
— Fishing Grounds of the Gulf of Maine • Walter H. Rich
... tomb, or a completer satisfaction in an ended testimony and finished work, whatever part he left for us to finish. Several years ago, forced by illness away from the theatre of public duties and affairs into a country refuge, as the sounds came softened by distance from the arena at the capitol where the combatants struggled together, however pleasantly fell the counsels of moderation and prudence on my ear, I recognized the clarion of Sumner, urging to absolute truth and honor, and, far or near, resounding ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol
... inexpressible loneliness assailed her. A large engraving of a picture of a sentimental school hung on the wall: she could not bear to look at it, and yet her eyes, from time to time, were fatally drawn thither. It was of a young girl taking leave of her lover, in early Christian times, before entering the arena. It haunted Honora, and wrought upon her imagination to such a pitch that she went into ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... quite different from other mendicant brotherhoods, the so-called Sannyasi and Hossein. This Pandit is considered the greatest Sanskritist of modern India and is an absolute enigma to everyone. It is only five years since he appeared on the arena of great reforms, but till then, he lived, entirely secluded, in a jungle, like the ancient gymnosophists mentioned by the Greek and Latin authors. At this time he was studying the chief philosophical ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... afterwards both Androcles and the Lion were captured, and the slave was sentenced to be thrown to the Lion, after the latter had been kept without food for several days. The Emperor and all his Court came to see the spectacle, and Androcles was led out into the middle of the arena. Soon the Lion was let loose from his den, and rushed bounding and roaring towards his victim. But as soon as he came near to Androcles he recognized his friend, and fawned upon him, and licked his hands like a ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... of Gospellers yet left in Staplehurst. Various questions had been considered, and dismissed as settled, and the conversation flagged for a few seconds, when Tabitha suddenly flung a new topic into the arena. ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... landlords brandish a redoubtable weapon: starvation. Already thousands of acres that might be richly fertile lie idle or are pasture for herds of wild bulls for the arena. The great land-owning families hold estates all over Spain; if in a given region the workers become too exigent, they decide to leave the land in fallow for a year or two. In the villages it becomes a question of starve or emigrate. To emigrate many certificates are needed. ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... I think he's a criminal! He buys women, and tortures animals in an arena, and keeps a troupe of what he is pleased to call dancing-girls. I've seen his eyes in the morning, and I suspect him of most of the vices in the calendar. He's despicable. But if I were in his shoes I'd find that money and make it hot for ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... worth a glance. He turned aside and walked to one of the empty arches, near which, as he observed, an open carriage—one of the little Roman streetcabs—was stationed. Then he passed in, among the cavernous shadows of the great structure, and emerged upon the clear and silent arena. The place had never seemed to him more impressive. One-half of the gigantic circus was in deep shade, the other was sleeping in the luminous dusk. As he stood there he began to murmur Byron's famous lines, out of "Manfred," but before he had finished ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... state of affairs when the clangor of arms again burst upon the ear of Europe. France was the arena of woe upon which the Catholics and the Protestants of England and of the Continent hurled themselves against each other. Catharine, breathing vengeance, headed the Catholic armies. Jeanne, calm yet inflexible, was recognized as at the head of the Protestant ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... throw the light of publicity on its acts; to compel a full explanation and justification of all of them which any one considers questionable; to censure them if found condemnable; to be at once the nation's committee on grievances; an arena in which not only the opinion of the nation, but that of every section of it, and as far as possible, of every eminent individual that it contains, can produce itself in full sight and challenge ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... interpretation of the meaning of progress, we may well discriminate between two aspects of human life in one of which we plainly have progressed, but in the other of which progress is not so evident. In the Coliseum in ancient Rome centuries ago, a group of Christians waited in the arena to be devoured by the lions, and eighty thousand spectators watched their vigil. Those Christians were plain folk—"not many mighty, not many noble"—and every one of them could have escaped that brutal fate if he had been ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... seen the 'St. George's'," he said, hastily. "Lakely is always ready to shake the red rag where Russia is concerned; whether we are to enter the arena is another matter. But what about Craig, Burnage? I think you mentioned ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... through his mind, without his thinking it prudent to attempt to fix a volunteer visit upon any of them. Many people he knew could pen polite excuses, who yet could not hit them off at the moment, especially in that great arena of hospitality—the hunting-field. He went to bed ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... the arena were loudly cheered by their respective adherents, but the expected duel did not come off. Mr. ASQUITH'S questions were searching enough, but not provocative. Mr. LLOYD GEORGE'S reply was comprehensive and conciliatory, and ended with the promise of a day for discussion. Instead ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various |
