"Pugilist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... again; they would draw back so as to avoid those stinging strokes, sniff, growl and push upward, more eager than ever to clutch the poor fellow, who was compressing himself between the limb and the trunk, and raining his blows with the persistency of a pugilist. ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... came and went on Bruce Carmyle's dark face. "My cousin has many excellent qualities, no doubt—he used to play football well, and I understand that he is a capable amateur pugilist—but I should not have supposed him entertaining. We find him ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... old women. Each was in the full bloom of rosy health, erect, serene, standing sure-footed and light as any pugilist. They had no weapons, and we had, but we had ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... experienced a pugilist to be perturbed by the mystery surrounding his adversary. The stakes had been handed in, and the purse of L20,000, in one pound-notes, had formed a full-page illustration in The Trumpet, with a photo of the Mauler eating gooseberries inset. Content with this knowledge, he trained faithfully and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... the savage license of the state of nature. Usurpation will invoke the weakness of human nature, and insurrection will invoke its dignity, till at length the great sovereign of all human things, blind force, shall come in and decide, like a vulgar pugilist, this pretended contest ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Bevan's knowledge, of the plays, especially the tragedies, was wide, and at first inexplicable to Sheen. It was strange to hear him declaiming long speeches from Macbeth or Hamlet, and to think that he was by profession a pugilist. One evening he explained his curious erudition. In his youth, before he took to the ring in earnest, he had travelled with a Shakespearean repertory company. "I never played a star part," he confessed, "but I used to come on ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... his mind. He was struck on the top of his hat by a "fizzing devil" made out of moist powder, which burnt a hole through it. He says that he would rather have this recollection on his mind now, than the "fizzer" on his head at the time. The young artist in embryo was a rare young pugilist at school. He was forced to use his fists, as friction was strong between the Irish and English lads at the school he went to. But he did well in athletic sports, and was never beaten in a hundred yards race. He firmly believes that this early athletic training is responsible for ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... her strength was failing her, he was certain; her moans were becoming more frequent, her protests more vehement. The veins stood out on the doctor's forehead as he worked with her—muscular, like a pugilist. Gigantic, he seemed to Thyrsis—terrible as fate. Time and again the girl screamed, in sudden agony; he would toil on, his lips set. Once it was too much even for him—her cries had become incessant, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... paused; obviously in his case egotism allied to enthusiasm made his duties a pleasure; he seemed now briefly commending himself in his own mind. "Up to this time," he resumed, "our friend, the ex-pugilist, had never actually killed any one, but soon after I engaged myself to look after him, word was brought to the department that a poor woman had been murdered, a cheap music-hall dancer. She ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... on any subject. Such is the nature and power of the art of rhetoric! And yet, Socrates, rhetoric should be used like any other competitive art, not against everybody,—the rhetorician ought not to abuse his strength any more than a pugilist or pancratiast or other master of fence;—because he has powers which are more than a match either for friend or enemy, he ought not therefore to strike, stab, or slay his friends. Suppose a man to have been trained in the palestra and to be a skilful boxer,—he in the fulness ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... of eyes stared at the speaker with a new and suddenly awakened interest, and beholding in him that lithe assurance of poise, that indefinable air that bespeaks the trained pugilist and which cannot be mistaken, elbows were ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... nonsense, and behave herself—but I suppose it was in her natur' and she couldn't help it. She made eyes and gave encouragement to the men, until they became saucy and I became jealous, and I had to fight one, and then the other, until I became a noted pugilist. I will say that your mother seemed always very happy when I beat my man, which latterly I always did; but still she liked to be fit for, and I had hardly time to earn my bread. At last, some one backed me against another man in the ring for ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... had looked for succour to come up-stream rather than down. But as the precious hours passed, a deep dejection fastened on the camp. There had been a year when, through one disaster after another, no boats had got to the Upper River. Not even the arrival from Dawson of the Montana Kid, pugilist and gambler, could raise spirits so cast down, not even though he was said to bring strange ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... aimed a blow at her assailant, which, had it taken effect, would have interrupted for some time—if not terminated for ever—that rascal's career. But the thief, though drunk, was young, strong, and active. It is also probable that he was a professional pugilist for, instead of attempting to spring back from the blow—which he had not time to do—he merely put his head to one side and let it pass. At the same instant David received a stinging whack on the right eye, which although it failed to ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... from Tennessee, will it pay? Will it not be a declaration of war against the seceding States, involving the people of all the States in a long and bloody conflict, ruinous to both sections? Are their ethics not the ethics of the school-boy pugilist, "Knock the chip off ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... accoutrements; it had set up their marble effigies in churches or laid them in cross-legged attitudes to trip up the unwary, until in death, as in life, they got between the congregation and the Truth that was taught there. It had allowed an Oldenhurst crusader, with a broken nose like a pugilist, on the strength of his having been twice to the Holy Land, to hide the beautifully illuminated Word from the lowlier worshipper on the humbler benches; it had sent an iconoclastic Bishop of the Reformation to a nearer minster to ostentatiously ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... no doubt that I could put something handsome into my pocket and yours, for I should wish you to be the fighting man, as I think I can depend upon you." "You really must excuse me," said I, "I have no wish to figure as a pugilist, besides there is such a difference in our ages; you may be the stronger man of the two, and perhaps the hardest hitter, but I am in much better condition, am more active on my legs, so that I am almost sure I should have the advantage, for, as you very properly observed, 'Youth will be served.'" ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... and loins, and approaches in form the simian tribe, the business of whose life is climbing. The sledge-hammer brings out the biceps of the blacksmith, and striking out from the shoulder the triceps of the pugilist. The calves of the ballet-dancer are noted for the abrupt line which marks the transition from muscle to tendon; and other instances might be cited. As a general rule, however, numerous muscles act in concert. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... highly valued for his pertinacity, if not for his appearance. In 1806 Lord Camelford possessed one for which he had paid the very high price of eighty-four guineas, and which he presented to Belcher, the pugilist. This dog was figured in The Sporting Magazine of the time. He was a short-legged, thick-set, fawn-coloured specimen, with closely amputated ears, a broad blunt muzzle, and a considerable lay-back; ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... judges should esteem his word as nothing in comparison with the bartender's—poor Jurgis could not know that the owner of the saloon paid five dollars each week to the policeman alone for Sunday privileges and general favors—nor that the pugilist bartender was one of the most trusted henchmen of the Democratic leader of the district, and had helped only a few months before to hustle out a record-breaking vote as a testimonial to the magistrate, who had been made the ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... his reserves of pride to combat the persistent silence that was damaging his dignity. And he went off, sticking his head forward like a pugilist. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Buffalo Bill and Alkali Ike stuff!" said the pugilist sneeringly. "I ain't afraid ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... propre, and what with the thing he called love, Clarence Copperhead mounted all at once upon a pedestal. He had a certain dogged obstinacy in him, suspected by nobody but his mother, who had little enough to say in the guidance of her boy. He set himself square like a pugilist, which was his notion of resistance. Mr. May looked on with a curious mixture of feelings. His own sudden and foolish hope was over, and what did it matter to him whether the detestable father or the coarse son ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... cane and wonderfully vacant countenance, who is anticipating, in feeble follies, an estate that has been in the possession of his ancestors since the reign of Henry the Eighth. There is a hairy, high-nosed, broken-down nondescript, in appearance something between a horse-dealer and a pugilist. He is an old Etonian. Five years ago he drove his four-in-hand; he is now waiting to beg a sovereign, having been just discharged from the Insolvent Court, for the second time. Among the women, a pretty actress, who, a few years since, looked forward to a supper of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... historian of prize-fighting, Henry Downes Miles, the author of Pugilistica, has his own statement of the case. You will find it in his monograph on John Jackson, the pugilist who taught Lord Byron to box, and received the immortality of an eulogistic footnote in Don Juan. Here ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... sands of American opinion yield suddenly under their feet. With this game an elderly friend had long before carried acquaintance as far as he wished. There was nothing in it for him but the amusement of the pugilist or acrobat. The larger study was lost in the division of interests and the ambitions of fifth-rate men; but foreign affairs dealt only with large units, and made personal relation possible with Hay which could not be maintained with Roosevelt or Lodge. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... indescribable pug nose, and a good clean cut mouth, with a continual dimple at the left corner, made up his phiz. For the rest, four feet ten inches did Tim stand in his stockings, about two-ten of which were monopolized by his back, the shoulders of which would have done honor to a six foot pugilist,—his legs, though short and bowed a little outward, by continual horse exercise, were right tough serviceable members, and I have seen them bearing their owner on through mud and mire, when straighter, longer, and more fair proportioned limbs were ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... spend on killing men, or rather in making preparation for killing men and then not doing it, the secrets of the earth would be laid bare in a time inordinately short." But this very warlike ambition is a matter of CRIMINAL OSTENTATION, like that of the bullying pugilist, seeking the belt—the desperate determination to shine and boast as the master power in the field of war, which is to-day the insane ostentation fostered by the leading powers of Europe. Vanity, literally meaning emptiness, is the antithesis of wisdom, and military vanity is a half-way ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... well-known fact that any man who desires to excel and retain his excellence as an accurate shot, an oarsman, a pedestrian, a pugilist, a first-class cricketer, bicyclist, student, artist, or literary man, must abstain from self-pollution and fornication. Thousands of school boys and students lose their positions in the class, and are plucked at the time of their examination by reason of failure of ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... heat that if his body had been made of combustible matter it would have burnt out. In the midst of his roaring, to save himself from choking, he stripped and cast away his cravat, unbuttoned his waistcoat, and had the air and aspect of a half-naked pugilist. And this man comes from a judicial bench, and passes for an eloquent orator!" On another occasion, the same critic tells us, Douglas "raved an hour about democracy and anglophobia and universal empire." Adams had been professor of rhetoric and oratory ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... individual case, before the actual trial. Many a man has been unable to discover, till the critical moment, whether he himself possessed it or not. It is often denied to the healthy and strong, and given to the weak. The pugilist may be a poltroon, and the bookworm a hero. We have seen the most purely ideal philosopher in this country face the black muzzles of a dozen loaded revolvers with his usual serene composure. And on the other hand, we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... the above was correct in the identity of the dying pugilist with his cultured passenger, his parents or friends never came forward to recognise him. He was buried in a corner, the lower corner, of the Barkway Churchyard, and the only trace of him is in the Parish Register, which tells the simple fact of the death of William Phelps, ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... end. Springing up with flaming cheeks he leaped towards the bully, and putting in practice the methods he had learned in many a hard-fought mill at Mr. Burslem's school, he began to punish the offender. His muscles were in good condition; Parmiter was too much addicted to grog to make a steady pugilist; and though he was naturally much the stronger man, he was totally unable to ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... palace, when from Crete he came. Now all the other keen-ey'd Greeks I see, Whom once I knew, and now could call by name; But two I miss, two captains of the host, My own two brethren, and my mother's sons, Castor and Pollux; Castor, charioteer Unrivalled, Pollux, matchless pugilist. In Lacedaemon have they stay'd behind? Or can it be, in ocean-going ships That they have come indeed, but shun to join The fight of warriors, fearful of the shame, And deep disgrace that on my name attend?" Thus she; but they beneath ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... Graft Prosecution and the latest signs that the town was to be run wide open, down through all the grotesque sordidness and rottenness of man-hate and man-meanness, until the name of O'Brien was mentioned—O'Brien, the promising young pugilist who had been killed in the prize-ring the night before. At once the air had seemed to freshen. O'Brien had been a clean-living young man with ideals. He neither drank, smoked, nor swore, and his had been the body of ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... RING RIDDLE.—Why was the win of the Gladstonian Party at Newcastle like the triumph of a single-fisted pugilist over his two-handed opponent? Because the victory was achieved ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... under the ageing lady's grieved glance, tried to quench the exultation on her face, somewhat like a child trapped. But she could not. Tom again cried "Hooray!" His tone, however, grated on her sensibility. It lacked emotion. It was the tone of a pugilist's backer. And Janet permitted herself some pleasantry. And Charlie became frankly facetious. Was it conceivable that Charlie could be interested in religion? She liked him very much, partly because he and she had learnt to understand each other at the dancing-classes, and partly because his curly ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... have been five hundred men around that ring. A big Australian pugilist was umpire. Some one suggested gloves, but Locasto would ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... good or evil? Which is getting the crowd? Oh, I know they publish pictures of pugilists' big toes and base ball pitchers' thumbs the size of a half page; but if I could ram a moral truth or a hard fact down the fool-public's throat on the very next page by advertising it with a pugilist's big toe, I'd do it—you bet! I'd take a leaf out of the Devil's note book and go him one better! You ask whether I'd publish a yellow journal? Miss MacDonald, if I could get the facts of exactly what is going on in this country before the public, I wouldn't publish 'em yellow! ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... at Florence Hamilton, Captain, author of Cyril Thornton his boat on lake Handwriting, Mary Mitford's Hare, Landor's friend Harrison, American President Harrow days, old Hatred, Our Lady of Hebraist, learned Heckfield, Mary Mitford at Heenan the pugilist Heidelberg Heights, Witley Hennell, Miss Sara, Mrs. Lewes to Heretics, persecution of Hermolaus, Barbarus Hervieu, M., his portrait of my mother High Church opinions, my sister's Highways and Byeways, Grattan's new edition of Hill, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... the reverend man, As thrice he stroked his face, and thus began: "And hopest thou then," the injured Bernard said, "To launch thy thunders on a master's head? O, wont to deal the trope and dart the fist, Half-learn'd logician, half-form'd pugilist, Censor impure, who dar'st, with slanderous aim, And envy's dart, assault a H——r's name. Senior, self-called, can I forget the day, When titt'ring under-graduates mock'd thy sway, And drove thee foaming from the Hall away? Gods, with what raps the conscious tables rung, From every form how ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... needing no message—least of all the simple old truth he had to give. He tried to picture his message blazing against the sky among the other legends: from where he stood the three most salient were the names of a popular pugilist, a malt beverage and a theatre. The need of another ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... weaker. He still could inflict punishment, and the hides of both of them were terrible to see, but he was no longer able to take advantage of his openings. Then Muztagh did a thing that reassured the old bulls as to his craft and wisdom. Just as a pugilist will invite a blow to draw his opponent within range, Muztagh pretended to leave his great shoulder exposed. The old bull failed to see the plot. He bore down, and Muztagh was ready ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... What right had he to use, or rather abuse, his superior skill as a pugilist for the purpose of carrying out an act of wrong-doing, and so to give pain and inflict loss on a plain working- man who had done him no harm, and had not had the same advantages ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... ado he dropped the evil smelling cigar, and moved toward the place where an excited knot of men were gathered, gesticulating and expostulating, about the aggrieved pugilist The latter was a burly fellow with wide shoulders, a small round head and a protruding jaw; his eyes were inflamed with drink and he was glowering savagely at ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... contrast was the figure of Price, who looked like a well-dressed pugilist. He was verging on stoutness, and his face was round, but underneath the superfluous flesh one could see the jaw of a man of iron will. It was easy to believe that Price had fought his way through ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... and more so every day. Formerly a crowned head, when he thought himself aggrieved, or felt that he would enjoy a campaign, plunged into war gaily. If he succeeded, all was well; if not, he hauled off to repair damages,—very much as a pugilist would do after receiving a black eye in a fist fight,—and in a short time the losses were repaired and all went on as before. In these days the case is different: it is no longer a simple contest in the open, with the possibility of a black eye or, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... woman in curl papers, with a baby in her arms, and six youngsters in varying stages of Sabbath cleanliness, hung upon the words of a man who sat in a large, plush self-rocker, and read from a highly colored picture book. In the head of the family Dillingham recognized Richard Sheeley, ex- pugilist, and present proprietor of ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice |
