"Fencer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... literary acquirements; with a gaiety of heart and cheerfulness of mind that spread happiness on all around him. His conversation was brilliant and engaging, as well as instructive. He was, moreover, the best fencer, dancer, swimmer, runner, dresser, the best shot, the best horseman, the best draughtsman, of ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... but restfulness is a quality for cattle; the virtues are all active, life is alert, and it is in repose that men prepare themselves for evil. On the other hand, they are bruised into a knowledge of themselves and others; they have in a high degree the fencer's pleasure in dexterity displayed and proved; what they get they get upon life's terms, paying for it as they go; and once the talk is launched, they are assured of honest dealing from an adversary eager ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... only checked for a moment, and under his fiercer attack the trainer was forced to give ground. They were so close that the tiger could not spring, but he struck savagely with his great forepaws and tried again and again to pass the guard which Miller maintained with the training rod, using it as a fencer uses a foil. It was an unequal contest and the trainer realized that he was beaten; Depew would not be driven from the cage. The useless training whip was discarded and a savage rush from the tiger was met by a pistol shot in the face, blank cartridge, of course, but effective for a moment. Five ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... ancient seat of learning have gained so great a proficiency; it was, however, an art which, as he found, was to be acquired with equal ease at Goettingen. The young Bismarck was at this time over six feet high, slim and well built, of great physical strength and agility, a good fencer, a bold rider, an admirable swimmer and runner, a very agreeable companion; frank, cheerful, and open-hearted, without fear either of his comrades or of his teachers. He devoted his time at Goettingen less to learning than to social life; in his second term he entered the ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... nation the Americans are fond of athletics, which are taught in the schools. There are splendid gymnasiums, and boys and girls are trained in athletic exercises. Athletics are all in vogue. It is fashionable to be a good "fencer." All the young dance. I believe the Americans stand high as a nation in all-around athletics; at least they are far ahead of ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... Cf. L. Sudre, "Les allusions a la legende de Tristan dans la litterature du moyen age", "Romania", xv. 435 f. Tristan was famed as a hunter, fencer, wrestler, ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... Carrbroke one day, "only I don't like him. He puts me out of heart. I used to think that I was a good fencer, but when I cross swords with him I feel quite a baby. You are lucky to have some one like that to give you lessons. Why, you must be ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... shoulder to the massive oaken door, we know there is going to be work next morning for the carpenter. Maybe he is a party belonging to the Middle Ages. Then when he reluctantly challenges the crack fencer of Europe to a duel, our instinct is to call out and warn ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... to have known very little concerning poisonous reptiles; had never heard of the terrible fer-de-lance, which infests the cane-swamps of Brazil—a snake ten feet in length which strikes without warning and straight as a fencer's thrust. But "Elsie Venner" and Holmes's second novel, "The Guardian Angel," are, to use Lowell's ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... wound; fire sparkled from his eye. I burn'd, and had a combat in my breast, Glad t' have her company, yet 'twas not best (Methought) to see her lost, but 'tis in vain T' abandon goodness, and of fate complain; Virtue her servants never will forsake, As now 'twas seen, she could resistance make: No fencer ever better warded blow, Nor pilot did to shore more wisely row To shun a shelf, than with undaunted power She waved the stroke of this sharp conqueror. Mine eyes and heart were watchful to attend, In hope the victory would that way bend It ever ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... adroit fencer, and could explain the difference between the French system and the American plan as taught at West Point. I learned both from him. His conversational powers and the extent of his general knowledge surpassed ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... looked up with a queer little smile. He admired the girl's spirit. It was the smile of the fencer on touching ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... the Highlander. The blades crossed again with the same sound like song, and the men went to work again with the same white and watchful faces. Evan, in his impatience, went back a little to his wildness. He made windmills, as the French duellists say, and though he was probably a shade the better fencer of the two, he found the other's point pass his face twice so close as almost to graze his cheek. The second time he realized the actual possibility of defeat and pulled himself together under a shock of the sanity of anger. ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... girl of to-day, a marvellous compound of intense energy and languorous grace. She had done as brilliantly at Vassar as Nitocris had done at Girton and London, and she had also rowed stroke in the Ladies' Eight, and was champion fencer of the College. Yet as far as her physical presence was concerned, she was just a "Gibson Girl" of the daintiest type—fair-skinned, blue-eyed, golden-haired—her hair had a darker gleam of bronze in it in certain ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... of the muscles by the mind, take the ceaseless practice by which a musician gains mastery over his instrument, or a fencer gains skill with a rapier. Innumerable small efforts of attention will make a result which seems well-nigh miraculous; which, for the novice, is really miraculous. Then consider that far more wonderful instrument, the perceiving mind, played on ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... him he will be mortally offended if you speak of me as his murderer! He maintains that he was a much better swordsman than I, and that if his foot had not slipped he would have killed me. No doubt he is right: I was not a good fencer. I never dispute the point; so we are ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... occasion Boku-den took a ferry to cross over the Yabase in the province of Omi. There was among the passengers a Samurai, tall and square-shouldered, apparently an experienced fencer. He behaved rudely toward the fellow-passengers, and talked so much of his own dexterity in the art that Boku-den, provoked by his brag, broke silence. 'You seem, my friend, to practise the art in order to conquer the enemy, but I do it in order not to be conquered,' said Boku-den. ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... been, in my day, something of a fencer, and my knowledge of the foils stood me in good stead now. With a tremendous thwack I knocked Morgan’s club flying over the snow, and, as we grappled, Bates yelled from the house. I quickly found that Morgan’s wounded arm was still tender. He flinched at the first grapple, and his ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... in the use of weapons, here was a place where Frank excelled. He was a dead shot with rifle or revolver and was a strong swordsman. Jack was a good shot himself and a skillful fencer, but he was not in Frank's class when it came to the ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... seemed thoroughly and instinctively to comprehend her every word, and chilled by the disagreeable suspicion that he was only playing with her, and her mathematics and geometry, and meta-physic and dialectic, like a fencer practising with foils, while he reserved his real strength for some object more worthy of him. More than once some paradox or question of his had shaken her neatest systems into a thousand cracks, and opened up ugly depths of doubt, even on the most ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... equipp'd were on their way; One fearful; one without dismay, An able fencer. As they went, A robber came with black intent; Demanding, upon pain of death, Their gold and silver in a breath. At which the man of spirit drew, And instantly disarm'd and slew The Thief, his honor to maintain. Soon as the rogue was fairly slain, The tim'rous chap began to puff, And drew ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus |
