"Chessboard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from England to receive the visit of his chief Triplice ally, the Emperor Franz Joseph, and to discuss with him doubtless the European situation. Bismarck has been pictured as sitting at the European chessboard pondering the moves necessary tor Germany to win the game of which the great prize was the hegemony of Europe. The chief opposing Pieces, whose aid or neutrality was desirable, were for long France, Russia, Austria, and Italy; but in 1883, with the conclusion of the Triple Alliance, ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... his hostility to the powers that be, and he will answer to little purpose. A vague idea is floating in his brain of some 'good time coming' for his party, yet he knows very little what or when this good time shall be, living on in the hope of some unknown event which shall reverse the political chessboard. The opposition of to-day is that of ultra conservatism to radicalism, of which the tendency of the one is toward the stationary, that of the other to the rapidly progressive. The so-called conservative, apparently ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... bloodthirsty excitement in the camp which was reported in the States to have prevailed there," says Colonel Brown, "but there was a feeling of infinite chagrin, a consciousness that the expedition was only a pawn on Mr. Buchanan's political chessboard; and reproaches against his folly were as ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... sometime?" she said wistfully, one evening, when the momentary absence of Bertram had left the two alone together. "I used to watch Bertram and Marie play years ago; but I never knew how to play myself. Not that I can see where the fun is in just sitting staring at a chessboard for half an hour at a time, though! But Bertram likes it, and so I—I want to learn to stare with him. Will ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... the act of going forth—quite at my leisure, for I had no fear of the clerical poker—my eye happened to alight on a small side-table, covered with a chessboard-patterned cloth in gaudy colours, and adorned with some of those sombre volumes which seem like an outward evidence of the sober piety of their possessor. Among the sombre volumes lay something which savoured of another hemisphere than that to which those brown leather-bound ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the party now set forth, the three gentlemen walking together first. Henrietta turned as soon as she had gone a sufficient distance that she might study the aspect of the house. It did not quite fulfil her expectations; it was neither remarkable for age nor beauty; the masonry was in a sort of chessboard pattern, alternate squares of freestone and of flints, the windows were not casements as she thought they ought to have been, and the long wing, or rather excrescence, which contained the drawing-room, was by no means ornamental. It was a respectable, ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... black and white. A feeling of blind rage surged within him. That the tables would be shortly turned, he was sure. He would play his part now without a scruple. He would use pretty Jennie Barton as any other pawn on the chessboard of Life and Death ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... loose; rambling; stray, erratic, vagrant, undirected, circuitous, indirect, zigzag; crab-like. Adv. astray from, round about, wide of the mark; to the right about; all manner of ways; circuitously &c. 629. obliquely, sideling, like the move of the knight on a chessboard. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a small table near the window, opposite a longfaced man whose beard and gaze hung intently down on a chessboard. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... careered across the vast chessboard of the fenced back-blocks at dead of night. Stingaree and Fergus sat saddle and bareback without a break until near dawn their pioneer spurred forward yet again and was swallowed in a steely haze. It was cold as a sharp spring night in England. But for a ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... the swift passing of longnose sharks, hammerhead sharks, spotted dogfish that frequent these waters, big eagle rays, swarms of seahorse looking like knights on a chessboard, eels quivering like fireworks serpents, armies of crab that fled obliquely by crossing their pincers over their carapaces, finally schools of porpoise that held contests of speed with the Nautilus. But by this point observing, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... chessboard; when the men were placed upon it, they would play of themselves. The chessboard was of gold, ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... there is the present influence of His present work, and to-day He is working as truly as He wrought when on earth. One form of His work was finished on Calvary, as His dying breath proclaimed; but there is another work of Christ in the midst of the ages, moving the pawns on the chessboard of the world, and presiding over the fortunes of the solemn conflict, which will not be ended until that day when the angel voices shall chant, 'It is done! The kingdoms of the world are the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ.' The living Christ works by a true forth-putting of His own present ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... this news he met James—not at the shabby club, but in the deserted reading-room of the so-called Artizans Hall—where never an artizan entered, but only men of James's class. Here they took the chessboard and pretended to start a game. But their ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... sides and back were encased in splendid Milanese mail, which he had once captured from the Fryzjans. He had on his head a helmet with an open visor, and without feathers; on his legs was bull's hide. On their left shoulders, they carried shields with coat of arms; on the Teuton's at the top was a chessboard, at the bottom, three lions rampant; on Zbyszko's, a blunt horseshoe. In the right hand they carried broad, huge, terrible axes, set in oaken, blackened helves, longer than the arm of a grown man. The warriors who seconded them were: Hlawa, called by Zbyszko, Glowacz, and van Krist, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... gentleman took a sheet of paper and divided it off into twenty-five squares, like a square portion of a chessboard. Then he placed nine almonds on the central squares, as shown in the illustration, where we have represented numbered counters for convenience in giving ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... overnight, and on a pretext so shallow and farcical as to excite world-wide ridicule. Their disillusionment came too late. The trap had been unwittingly set by hands that made unexpected moves on the European chessboard, and the Bear's paw had this time been skilful enough to spring it at the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... and was universally honored, serving as the counsellor, the herald, and the minstrel of his patron. The domestic Bard and the chief of song had their office at the King's court, with many curious perquisites, among which was a chessboard from the King. The fine for insulting the Bard was 6 cows and 120 pence; for slaying him, 126 cows. With so much general respect, and great powers of extemporizing, the Bards were well able to sway the passions of the nation, and greatly contributed to keep up the ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... continuity of man's experience, some wilful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as the defeated tyrant overthrew the chessboard, should break the mould of their succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might befall Markheim: the solid walls ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... tender and reverential to all that bears the mark of genius,—that is; of a new influx of truth or beauty,—as a nun over her missal. In short, he is one of those men that know everything except how to make a living. Him would I keep on the square next my own royal compartment on life's chessboard. To him I would push up another pawn, in the shape of a comely and wise young woman, whom he would of course take—to wife. For all contingencies I would liberally provide. In a word, I would, in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... to play a game at chess with a far superior player, then at least one learns something; but impossible to sit at a chess board with a child who throws all into confusion. The national chessboard is very confused in the White House. Cunning is good for, and only succeeds in dealing with, ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... me," said Mider, "a chessboard which is not inferior to thine." It was even as he said, for that chessboard was silver, and the men to play with were gold; and upon that board were costly stones, casting their light on every side, and the bag that held the men was of woven chains ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... with the emotions which the astounding act of Angela has produced. As he sits there, the moonlight, pouring through the diamond panes of the window, throws rhomboids of light on to the polished floor. It looks like some enchanted chessboard. Leaning back and gazing with half-closed eyes, he peoples it with fantastic rooks, and knights and bishops, when suddenly the strangely penetrating voice of Angela ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... our worldly possessions—our overcoat, blanket, can, spoon, chessboard and men, yelled to some of our neighbors that they could have our hitherto much-treasured house, and running down to the gate, forced ourselves well up to the front of the crowd that was being assembled ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... his family in general were bowing there, curtseying here, clapping hands and "passing under to the right" in the usual "Sir Roger" style, he stood in grey homespun of the best material (I never yet saw a Cotswold man in a vulgar chessboard suit), and as he stood he marvelled greatly, exclaiming now and then, "Well, I never; this is something new to be sure!" "I never saw such things in all my life, never!" He would not dance; but, seizing one of the bigotphones, he blew into ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... men were placed upon it, they would play of themselves. The chessboard was of gold, and the ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... rocky ledge in mid-stream, whence the dull steady roar of the "falls" thrilled the atmosphere, like the "tremolo" in a dim cathedral, where fading daylight dies on painted apse and gilded pipes. As a chessboard the squares of buildings were spread out, defined by wide streets, where humanity and its traffic sped, busy as ants. In a green plot, the sombre facade of the court-house surmounted by an eyeless stone statue of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... man should have a plot against thee." Upon that Gwalchmai arose, and when he came near unto the door, the man, with sixty others, fully armed, were ascending the tower. And Gwalchmai defended the door with a chessboard, that none might enter until the man should return from the chase. And thereupon, behold the earl arrived. "What is all this?" asked he. "It is a sad thing," said the hoary-headed man, "the young ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... by twin rows of flickering fire, the rear jets seen with a blurred halo of mist round each of them, the halo crawling feebly within itself, tormented by a feeble wind. The long vista of pavement became chequered like a chessboard, with patches of light from shop windows. Gable Inn, staring at the growing darkness with a single fiery eye, looked like a Rip Van Winkle. It had been old when Chaucer and the knights and ladies of whom he sang were young; and its hoary stunted angles and squat ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... the cashier of the firm, and used—being chess-mad like the rest of us—to spend his evenings at "Kling's." He was a player of my own strength, and for twelve months or so had I skirmished with him over the chessboard, and fought innumerable battles with him. He had never spoken of his occupation, or I of my restless ambitions—chess players never go far ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... west, and, at the same time, would have covered Washington. This plan, though not without elements of danger, offered some advantages. Nor were soldiers wanting to advise it. Both Rosecrans and Shields had submitted schemes for such a combination. Mr. Stanton, however, preferred to control the chessboard by the light of unaided wisdom; and while McDowell was unnecessarily strengthened, both Banks ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... not seem to have been much used that day; and in the small breakfast-room Deede Dawson had been accustomed to consider his special apartment, his favourite little travelling chessboard stood on the table with ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... everyday young lady, who has a genius for reverence, she reveres her; and these two, with their male congeners, are the dress-figures the woman of the world places about her rooms like ivory pieces on a chessboard. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... satisfaction as any that the hot battle of the day has given me. But there is another thing I shall ask for. On the lower shelf of the bookcase, close to the Boswell, there will have to be a box of chessmen and a chessboard, and the men who were boys when I was a boy, and who come and sit with me, will be expected after supper to set out the chessmen as instinctively as they fill their pipes. And then for an hour, or it may be two, we shall enter into that rapturous realm where the knight prances ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... "What is the boy to me? Nothing more than a pawn upon the chessboard of life, one of the pieces I am using for the sake of France—France, my country, for which I have ventured this. For what is this gay butterfly? King? Yes, the King upon the chessboard, whom it is my fate to ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... suits. The bay is shallow and warm. At night you can relax right here. Plenty of books, TV, radio, or a chessboard. If it gets cool, ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... was not so trivial in our abode of shadows. As example, I taught Oppenheimer to play chess. Consider how tremendous such an achievement is—to teach a man, thirteen cells away, by means of knuckle-raps; to teach him to visualize a chessboard, to visualize all the pieces, pawns and positions, to know the various manners of moving; and to teach him it all so thoroughly that he and I, by pure visualization, were in the end able to play entire games of chess in our minds. In the end, did I say? Another tribute ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... seventh volume of the book Kamakurashi that there was formerly at Kamakura a temple called Emmei-ji, in which there was enshrined a famous statue of Jizo, called Hadaka-Jizo, or Naked Jizo. The statue was indeed naked, but clothes were put upon it; and it stood upright with its feet upon a chessboard. Now, when pilgrims came to the temple and paid a certain fee, the priest of the temple would remove the clothes of the statue; and then all could see that, though the face was the face of Jizo, the body was the ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... nothing, compared with what you've got before you now," he answered. "Look here, I'll tell you a very good idea of how to pass the time. You take a chessboard with you and a set of men. You'll thank ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... cushion, which, after removing the pipe from the hand of the Automaton, he places under its left arm as a support. Then taking also from the drawer the Automaton's set of chess-men, he arranges them upon the chessboard before the figure. He now proceeds to close the doors and to lock them—leaving the bunch of keys in door No. 1. He also closes the drawer, and, finally, winds up the machine, by applying a key to an aperture in the left end (the spectators' left) of the box. The game now commences—the Automaton ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... walk up and down the chessboard of Beacon Hill—taking the knight's move occasionally across the narrow cross-streets—you could not help treading the very squares which were familiar to the feet of that generation of authors which has permanently stamped American literature. At 55 Beacon ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... celebrities: "Oh, she was the great granddaughter of So-and-So." "He married Lady This-and-That." Also, I find I need much more knowledge of literature than I have. This country is divided off into a kind of glorious chessboard, each square being sacred to some immortal author, playwright, or poet. The artists press them close, without overcrowding; and history lies ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... two and a-half miles as the crow flies, nearer five miles as I walked it. The perplexing thing is the number of disused rides and paths in the wood. They cross each other perpetually at right angles, like lines on a chessboard, and if you are walking diagonally across them the temptation is to a succession of knights' moves which end in wrong places. I followed one of these rides a long way, and the wood grew thicker and thicker; ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... the beginning of the war had followed every move on the great chessboard of the struggle, these things meant knowledge for which the editors of newspapers would have given fortunes. In Paris they had had a great map, and every day they had shifted the tiny flags that showed where the troops were. They had flags for each ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... any body attempting to divine what will be the next move upon the Spanish chessboard, it is out of the question, and nobody who knows the character of the people will attempt to do it. Unquestionably there is no such country in the world for anomalies of all kinds. Cosas de Espana! as Captain Widdrington amusingly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... types has an equal chance of being fertilised by a spermatozoon of any one of the four types. A convenient and simple method of demonstrating what happens under such circumstances is the method sometimes termed the "chessboard" method. For two series each consisting of four different types of gamete we require a square divided up into 16 parts. The four terms of the gametic series are first written horizontally across the four sets of four squares, so that the series is repeated four times. It is then written ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... of the Gospel is, 'Yield yourselves to God.' Bring your wills and bow them before Him, and say, 'Here am I; take me, and use me as a pawn on Thy great chessboard, to be put where Thou wilt.' When once a man's will is absorbed into the divine will, as a drop of water is into the ocean, he is free, and has happiness and peace, and is master and lord of himself and of the universe. That system which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... here. Suppose we play a game of chess. If you win, the souls shall be yours. There are lot which I should like to see crossed off the revision list. Hi, Porphyri! Bring me the chessboard." ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... singular apartment, we crossed a square, in the midst of which was placed an immense slab of stone, raised a little off the ground; on each of the four sides of this slab there were 16 squares marked on the ground like those on a chessboard. ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... position; but by frequent excursions across the frozen strait, and by the constant use of the telegraph, had kept up their communication with their fellow-countrymen on the other island. Colonel Murphy and the major had not even been forced to forego the pleasures of the chessboard. The game that had been interrupted by Captain Servadac's former visit was not yet concluded; but, like the two American clubs that played their celebrated game in 1846 between Washington and Baltimore, the two gallant officers made ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... when Gould and Fisk were names to conjure with in the mart and on the board; when railroads and gold mines were but pawns upon the chessboard of "money changers and those who sold doves"; when "Black Friday" was still fresh in the memories of thousands, this incident is ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... subsistence, and the arrival of settlers from the East caused them intense alarm. They pressed the Government for certain grants of land and for the retention of the old French custom of surveying the land along the river front in deep narrow strips, rather than according to the chessboard pattern taken over by Canada from the United States. Red tape, indifference, procrastination, rather than any illwill, delayed the redress of the grievances of the half-breeds. In despair they called Louis Riel back from his exile in Montana. ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... privilege of departure. The reference was to American press correspondents in Berlin, whose fate was apparently thought to weigh with American public opinion. This threat to detain newspaper representatives as supposedly important pieces on the diplomatic chessboard before war was declared brought a firm refusal from Mr. Gerard to yield to such pressure. He also expressed doubt whether the newspaper representatives could be utilized to urge acceptance of the protocol under pain of detention. Thenceforth nothing further was heard of the protocol. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... good deal of highly starched linen, amusing himself by teazing Ann, who liked it, and paid him in impertinence. Adelaide played chess with him. Desmond sauntered in about nine, threw himself into a chair behind the sofa where I sat, and swung his arm over the back. The chessboard was put aside, and a gossipy conversation was started, which included Mrs. Somers, who was on a sofa across the room, but he did not join in it. I watched Mrs. Somers, as her fingers moved with her Berlin ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... historic in God's estimate. The obscurest among us has his place in the Divine plan, his lesson to learn, his work to do. The century opening before us can no more dispense with us than an orchestra with the piccolo. A pawn on God's chessboard may take a knight, or give check to a king. "We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God has before prepared (R.V.), that we should walk ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... succeeded in getting him to leave the great enclosure, divided like a chessboard by iron railings and elegant compartments, in which were tombs decorated with palms, inscriptions, and tears as cold as the stones on which sorrowing hearts had caused to be carved their regrets and coats of arms. Many good words are there ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... won't hear from the Panchen—he's undoubtedly constructing a new, all-Red unit right now. After this bit, psi faculties, including telempathy, have to be considered another weapons family in the Cold War ... a new set of pieces of the big chessboard. So you're going to have to find a substitute for the Himalayan Quiz Kid, and ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... chessboard is divided into sixty-four squares, and there is plenty of room between the opposing armies for a terrific battle, since each army ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... the chessboard for a moment to hide her face. Then she said in a lower voice, "I have thoroughly convinced myself that there is no such thing ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... a squatting Arab, robed in red Oriental swathes and with a chessboard fastened to its knees, sat cross-legged on a box-like structure. Upon dropping a coin into a slot in the flat top, two folding-doors in front of this box would open for a few moments, showing a glass-covered interior, which, as far as the back of the box, was filled ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... present the principle by which the modern woman is guided in deciding the great questions of feminine attire is imitation. Incidentally, we may remark that nobody profits by such a mistaken foundation except the manufacturer, who moves the women of the world about like pawns on a chessboard merely to benefit his business. The society woman brings the latest thing "from Paris." The large New York establishments sell to their patrons copies of "Paris models." The middle-class shops and the middle-class ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... admiration on the Gibraltar of the Orient. Before me was a land-locked harbour in which all the navies of the world might ride in safety. Around me rose a noble chain of hills, their slopes adorned with fine residences, their valleys a chessboard of busy streets, with here and there a British battery perched ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... laugh, 'while we fought like wild boars, and thought of nothing but the killing, this base-born king kept his wits and moved us like pawns on a chessboard, we all unwitting. First, he drew us into ambush, and now he thrusts us into a chasm. We war-wise fighters, grown grey in battle, ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... fond of games of mental skill, and curiously enough, first gained distinction, not in letters but at the chessboard, and in the course of his subsequent travels he challenged and defeated the champions of Europe. He was concerned for a short time in business; but being left with an independent income at the death of his father, he resolved to devote ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... It was an old-fashioned house with an entrance in the Rue Saint-Honore and another in the Rue de Rivoli. The girl sat on a small balcony from which she could view the Tuileries Gardens without turning her head; while looking farther westward she saw the Place de la Concorde, its windy spaces a chessboard for rapid vehicles, whose wheels, wet from the watered streets, ground out silvery fire in the sun-rays of this gay June afternoon. Where the Avenue des Champs Elysees began, a powdery haze enveloped the equipages, overblown with their ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... of the cafe's regular customers would march across the floor, exchange a word or two on the affairs of the day, and be bidden with a wave of the hand into the opposite seat. A waiter would instantly place the chessboard with its marshalled ranks of combatants in the required position, and the contest ...
— When William Came • Saki
... chessboard," said Carl. "It's most ingenious. Hunch spent a large part of his valuable morning shopping for it. The board and chessmen are metal and I myself have added one or two unique improvements. Help yourself to ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... looked at Opal Ledoux, he thought, "After all, how much of a real man can I ever be? What am I but a petty pawn on the chessboard of the world, moved hither and yon, to gain or to lose, by the finger ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... easily remedied," said Midir, and he drew from his cloak a folding chessboard whose squares were alternate gold and silver. From a men-bag made of brazen chainwork he drew out a set of men adorned with flashing jewels, and he set ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... only I think a bit of it's lost, and the clasp of a cricket belt, and old Dick Rodman's chessboard and some of the men, and some stuff ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... will of God, they came down like a hammer upon that corrupt so-called Christian Church, and swept it off the face of the earth, as it deserved to be swept. And the same thought of the sovereign will, of which we are but instruments—pawns on its chessboard—made the grand seventeenth century Puritanism in England, and its sister type of men and of religion in Holland. For this is a historically proved thesis, that there is nothing which so contributes to the formation, and valuation of, and the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... idealist or positivist, and eclipse them all in turn. That positivism expounded by Lewis, that makes each particular hair on the heads of Oxford theologians stand on end, is ridiculous child's play compared with the atomistic school of Vaisheshika, with its world divided, like a chessboard, into six categories of everlasting atoms, nine substances, twenty-four qualities, and five motions. And, however difficult, and even impossible may seem the exact representation of all these abstract ideas, idealistic, pantheistic, and, sometimes, purely material, in the condensed ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... way in the near future; he reorganized his railroads with the idea of making them pay their way as soon as possible and of showing a good return on the capital invested. He thought little of what might be the outcome a decade or two hence or of what combinations might later be worked on the chessboard as a result of his immediate moves. Morgan's mind was not philosophical; it was ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... brought the chessboard and played with him; but Sharrkan, instead of looking at her moves, kept gazing at her fair mouth, and putting knight in place of elephant and elephant[FN198] instead of knight. She laughed and said to him, "If thy play be after this fashion, thou knowest naught of the game." "This ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Kitty was scarcely sensible of the importance of the promise she had given. And in silence he gazed on the landscape, letting it sink into and fix itself for ever in his mind. Below them lay the great green plain, wonderfully level, and so distinct were its hedges that it looked like a chessboard. Thornby Place was hidden in vapour, and further away all was lost in darkness ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... hand: snow petrels, silver petrels, Cape pigeons and Antarctic petrels. They fluttered in hundreds about our bows. Cape pigeons are well known in lower latitudes, and it was interesting to find them so far south. As they have chessboard-like markings on the back when seen in flight, there ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... chairs invited. They discussed the topics of the day with evident relish during such time as Borkins was in the room, and smoked their cigars with the air of men to whom the hours were as naught, and life simply a chessboard to move their little pieces upon as they willed. But how soon they were to cry checkmate upon this case which they were all investigating, even Cleek did not know. Then of a sudden he looked up from his task of studying ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... King briefly called for information upon some point. It was the royal will to direct each move on the gigantic chessboard; to hold in the hollow of his hand the hosts who looked to him for guidance. At his left, a flock of swallows, affrighted by the noise of the cannonade, rose high in air, wheeled, and vanished ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... if they would never come to an end. The solitude of the scene around is astonishing to English eyes. For miles we only meet two road-menders and an itinerant glazier. On either side, far as the glance could reach, stretches the chessboard landscape—an expanse oceanic in its vastness of green and brown, fields of corn and clover alternating with land prepared for beetroot and potatoes. The extent and elevation of this plateau, formerly covered with forests, explain the excessive dryness of the climate. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... to win," said Florence, "but then, it was such fun to see how desperately he played, for fear I should get him! Now, Dr. Lacey, I suppose you have been proposing to Julia in the real old, orthodox way, but that is too common. You must sit down at the chessboard and let Julia play for you," and she pushed them both toward the chairs, which she and Mr. Middleton ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... quite recovered his presence of mind, carried on his reflections clearly. His thoughts were like those of Napoleon at the last hour of the battle of Waterloo: after a long day of success defeat had come with night. What was the reason? What mistake had he made? He replaced the pieces on the chessboard, and looked for the explanation of failure, but in vain. It had perhaps been rash of him to let two days pass without seeing her. But it was the most elementary rule that after such a scene as that in the ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... was bound up with the name of Metternich, who personified the old hide-bound methods of the bureaucracy, the diplomacy of a past age, to which the nations were mere pawns on a chessboard. Under him the "Police-State" assumed its most perfect form, a form not even surpassed by Russia from 1881 ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... too terrible. For another trivial chess anecdote: a very worthy old friend of mine, a rector too, was fond of his game, and of winning it: and I remember one evening that his ancient servitor, bringing in the chessboard, whispered to me, "Please don't beat him again, sir,—he didn't sleep a wink last night;" accordingly, after a respectably protracted struggle, some strange oversights were made, and my reverend host came off conqueror: ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... popularity, he died at Wellington of an intestinal disease after a severe surgical operation. Quiet and unassuming in manner, Ballance, who was a well-read man, always seemed fonder of his books and his chessboard than of public bustle; yet his loss to New Zealand political life was great. A statue was erected to his memory in front of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... which so distinguished Mr. Lincoln, who, in fact, was simply insensible to personal feeling as an influence. In choosing incumbents for public trusts, he knew no foe, perhaps no friend; but as dispassionately as if he were manoeuvring pieces on a chessboard, he considered only which available piece would serve best in the square which he had to fill. In 1859 he and Stanton had met as associate counsel in perhaps the most important lawsuit in which Mr. Lincoln had ever been concerned, and Stanton had treated Lincoln ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... all that is lovely," he exclaimed passionately, stung by her scorn and fired by her beauty, almost beside himself as they stood there in the magical moonlight—for once in his life forgetting to calculate every move on life's chessboard. "You are too lovely for me. From the very first, in Switzerland, when I was so happy——no, I will not tell you. I will not lay down my heart to be trampled under ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... upon the hero. The further enumeration is most characteristic of the time. First comes Antenor, the brother of Priam, who founded Padua with a band of Trojan fugitives; King Dardanus, who defeated Attila in the Euganean hills, followed him in pursuit, and struck him dead at Rimini with a chessboard; the Emperor Henry IV, who built the cathedral; a King Marcus, whose head was preserved in Monselice; then a couple of cardinals and prelates as founders of colleges, churches, and so forth; the famous Augustinian ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... are softly yellowed with age, an exquisitely wrought iron balcony stretches across the front above the high ceilinged basement and great carved walnut doors open into a wide vestibule with a marble floor exactly like a bit of a gigantic chessboard. The transformation had so astounded me that I was almost afraid to touch the neatly polished beaten silver bell for fear the whole ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... his addresses to workingmen Huxley compared life to a game of chess. We must learn the names and the values and the moves of each piece, and all the rules of the game if we hope to play it successfully. The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature. But it may be questioned if the comparison is a happy one. Life is not a game in this ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... with the chessboard, drew blood with the blowe, and had presently slain him upon the place had he not been ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... him up, and used him as an excuse for coming to Eastbourne? I see. That removes a troublesome pawn off the chessboard." ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... time and to kill Boers—both equally difficult." The siege is becoming intolerably tedious. It is three weeks to-day since "Black Monday," when the great disaster befell us, and we seem no nearer the end than we were at first. We console ourselves with the thought that we are but a pawn on a great chessboard. We hope we are doing service by keeping the main Boer army here. We hope we are not handed over for nothing to ennui enlivened by sudden death. But the suspicion will recur that perhaps the army hedging us in is not large after all. It is a bad ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... have to do, exactly the same with men and their thoughts in the case of women much talked about. So it was with General Ople, and nothing is left for me to say except, that there is broader ground than the chessboard. I am earnest in protesting the similarity of the singular couples on common earth, because otherwise the General is in peril of the accusation that he is a feminine character; and not simply was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... engagement which he fought on the right at Gettysburg, on July 3, 1863, was from first to last, a well planned battle, in which the different commands were maneuvered with the same sagacity displayed by a skilful chess player in moving the pawns upon a chessboard; in which every detail was the fruit of the brain of one man who, from the time when he turned Custer to the northward, until he sent the First Michigan thundering against the brigades of Hampton and Fitzhugh Lee, made ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... alone. We're not a couple of boarding-school misses fresh from a course of hygiene lectures. Get the chessboard out." ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... may observe that their influence in this regard has not yet passed away. Only a few months ago, I saw a number of pretty cotton prints, fresh from the mill, picturing Oguri-Hangwan making the horse Onikage stand upon a chessboard. Whether the versions of the ballads I obtained in Izumo were composed there or elsewhere I am quite unable to say; but the stories of Shuntoku-maru, Oguri-Hangwan, and Yaoya O-Shichi are certainly well known ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... Government, however, had planned its moves months in advance. Just as every great offensive on the battlefields is planned, even to the finest details, six months before operations begin, so are the big moves on the political chessboard of Europe. ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... sinister too, of that vague after-taste as of evil things that lurks so often, for a suspicious sensibility, wherever the terrible game of the life of the Renaissance was played as the Italians played it; wherever the huge tessellated chessboard seems to stretch about us; swept bare, almost always violently swept bare, of its chiselled and shifting figures, of every value and degree, but with this echoing desolation itself representing the long gasp, as it were, of overstrained time, the great ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Look and see." Thereupon Miss Julia, looking through a transparent square in a glass chessboard into the bar, saw that the typical sot was certainly under the impression that he had an audience. He was, in fact, addressing a homily to Michael on the advantages of Temperance. See, he said—substantially—the reward of self-restraint! He was no mere bigoted ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... with him, showed him a psychological weakness in the workings of one of his characters. She was liberal with her praise, called his characters by their christian names as though they were old friends, suggested other moves across the chessboard of his plot, until he felt that he and she, and those dear puppets of his own creations, were denizens together of some fairy and ethereal world, wandering through the fascinating maze of imaginative life. It was almost an intoxication, this wonderfully stimulating contact ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... guilty of conceit, but I honestly think that I was not the last pawn on the chessboard in the drawing-room, and that is perhaps the reason why I have been thinking during the past two years and could not understand why I was thrown ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... laid by that unknown master criminal, whose cunning, power and malignant genius was dominating and making itself felt in every den and dive of the underworld, and for whom the Pippin and the Mole that night had been but blind tools, pawns moved at the will of this unseen, evil strategist upon a chessboard of ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... of chess-men, standing on the same squares of the chess-board where we left them, we say they are all in the SAME place, or unmoved, though perhaps the chessboard hath been in the mean time carried out of one room into another; because we compared them only to the parts of the chess-board, which keep the same distance one with another. The chess-board, we also say, is in the same place it was, if it remain in the same part of the ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... and fencing; he could never achieve a minuet, and after three months of instruction he was as clumsy and helpless with his foil as he had been on the first day. He resolved to become a master at the chessboard; he shut himself up in his room, and worked night and day over the books with indescribable efforts which covered many weeks. On proceeding to the cafe to manifest his powers, he found that all the moves and combinations ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley |
