"Dice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... another attempt on the life of Washington, who must pass her father's house on his return from a distant settlement. The Tory knows nothing of this; but he starts whenever the men in the next room rattle the dice or break into a ribald song, and a frown of apprehension crosses his face as the foragers crunch by, half-barefoot, through the snow. The hours go on, and the noise in the next room increases; but it hushes suddenly when a knock at the door is heard. The ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... were certainly models of diligence and conscientiousness in their own industry, which was to torture people till they gave up their goods, and then to run them through the body, and spend the spoils over drink and dice. Except Dampier, who was a clever man, but a poor buccaneer (Mr. Clark Russell has written his life), they were the most hideously ruthless miscreants that ever disgraced the earth and the sea. But their courage and ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... greater yet: to cry his own up neat. He doth, at meals, alone his pheasant eat, Which is main greatness. And, at his still board, He drinks to no man: that's, too, like a lord. He keeps another's wife, which is a spice Of solemn greatness. And he dares, at dice, Blaspheme God greatly. Or some poor hind beat, That breathes in his dog's way: and this is great. Nay more, for greatness' sake, he will be one May hear my epigrams, but like of none. Surly, use other arts, these ...
— English Satires • Various
... slowly forward amidst a concourse of mourners, its three-fold hangings concealed from the eye of the observer the journeymen coach and harness makers, drinking, and playing at dice on the lid of his highness's coffin, by way of dispelling the ennui of the journey. These careless fellows were placed there to be at hand to repair any accident that might happen on the road; ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... hand with dice; but he always threw sixes and his imaginary opponent aces. The force of habit is ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... win when you play with loaded dice. I get boiling mad when I think of these low-down, worthless rascals who don't stop at any meanness, ready to commit murder for fifteen cents. They ought to be treated worse than rattlesnakes. But, as you said just now, all this don't ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... thought you cared, too, and then I was not sure, so I have kept the words back, fearing to lose what I have. But to-night, after having read his letters, I feel that I must throw the dice for eternal winning or eternal loss. You can never know, if I should spend the rest of my life in telling you, just how much you have meant to me in a ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... variations are in the main matters of luck? From variations into which a moral and intellectual system of payment according to results has largely entered? Or from variations which have been thrown for with dice? From variations among which, though cards tell, yet play tells as much or more? Or from those in which cards are everything and play goes for so little as to be not worth taking into account? ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... they contemplated with dismay. Over against their fears there was nothing to be put but their leader's assurances that everything would come right. They had taken "a leap in the dark," they had staked the fortunes of the party on the dice-box, and events were to decide the issue. When the blow came Mr. Disraeli's reputation for sagacity fell to zero. At last the hollowness of his pretensions was detected, and there was no mincing of epithets for the man who had befooled and destroyed ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... who took their guidance on his hands. Had the lads seen the place at the opening of the century they would have thought it a piteous spectacle, for desecration and sacrilege had rioted there unchecked, the magnificent peal of bells had been gambled away at a single throw of the dice, the library had been utterly destroyed, the magnificent plate melted up, and what covetous fanaticism had spared had been further ravaged by a terrible fire. At this time Bishop Bancroft had done his utmost ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... farmers in the country nurse The poor that else were undone; Some landlords spend their money worse On lust and pride at London. There the roysters they do play, Drab and dice their lands away, Which may be ours another day; And therefore ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... between two and three o'clock in the afternoon according to our mode of reckoning; the institution of masters of the revels at banquets, who were appointed from among the guests present, generally by throwing the dice, and who then prescribed to the company what, how, and when they should drink; the table-chants sung in succession by the guests, which, however, in Rome were not -scolia-, but lays in praise of ancestors—all these were not primitive customs in Rome, but were borrowed from the Greeks ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... heart's dance, outvie all, the songs of the dairy! White and red are a-blending, on thy cheeks a-contending, And a smile is descending from thy lips of the cherry; Teeth their ivory disclosing, like dice, bright round rows in, An eye unreposing, with twinkle so merry; At summer-dawn straying, on my sight beams are raying, From the tresses[129] they 're playing of the maid of the dairy. My brown dairy, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... two rows, face upwards and fixed; while on the Monte tables but two cards appear thus—the Queen and Knave; or, as designated in the game—purely Spanish and Spanish-American—"Caballo" and "Sota." They are essentially card games, and altogether of chance, just as is the casting of dice. ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... this one, and prove its importance in the Greek mind, by noting that Polygnotus painted these maidens, in his great religious series of paintings at Delphi, crowned with flowers, and playing at dice; and that Penelope remembers them in her last fit of despair, just before the return of Ulysses, and prays bitterly that she may be snatched away at once into nothingness by the Harpies, like Pandareos' daughters, rather ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... a mistake to represent Wolsey's failure to obtain a sentence in Henry's favour as the sole or main cause of his fall. Had he succeeded, he might have deferred for a time his otherwise unavoidable ruin, but it was his last and only chance. He was driven to playing a desperate game, in which the dice were loaded against him. If his plan failed, he told Clement over and over again, it would mean for him irretrievable ruin, and in his fall he would drag down the Church. If it succeeded, he would be hardly more secure, for success meant the predominance ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... events were sufficient to explain any amount of anxiety. It was the second week of July, 1870; and the destinies of France trembled, as upon a cast of the dice, in the hands of a few presumptuous incapables. Was it war with Prussia, or was it peace, that was to issue from the complications of a ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... sought some companions, and to while away the tedious hours, he played at dice, and soon forgot ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... while Kantos Kan was some inches under six feet. As they advanced to meet one another I saw for the first time a trick of Martian swordsmanship which centered Kantos Kan's every hope of victory and life on one cast of the dice, for, as he came to within about twenty feet of the huge fellow he threw his sword arm far behind him over his shoulder and with a mighty sweep hurled his weapon point foremost at the green warrior. It flew true as an arrow and piercing the ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... business of the evening. The great drawing-room, lighted by an hundred candles, was filled with gayly dressed macaronies, and the sound of their laughter and voices in contention mingled with the pounding of the packs on the mahogany and the rattle of the dice and the ring of the gold pieces. The sight was dazzling, and the noise distracting. Fox had me under his especial care, and I was presented to young gentlemen who bore names that had been the boast of England through the centuries. Lands their forebears had won by lance and sword, they were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... dice! Make me rich in a trice, Let me win in good season! Things are badly controlled, And had I but gold, So ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... crude, of course, but as good a tool as any. Dice are no good for measuring anything, but that was why I was there. I was the measuring instrument. The dice were only reactors. Sensitive enough, two balsam cubes, tossed from a box with only gravity to work against. I showed her first, picked up her mind as the dice popped out, led her through ...
— Second Sight • Alan Edward Nourse
... inside well as out, Are clean,[6] and servants civil;[7] When dice (if e'er 'twill be I doubt) ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... sight than smash! down fell the boy and broke his arm." Even the Pope himself has the reputation of possessing the Evil Eye to some extent. Ask a Roman how this is, and he will answer, as one did to me the other day,—"Si dice, e per me veramente mi pare di s": "They say so; and as for me, really it seems to me true. If he have not the jettatura, it is very odd that everything he blesses makes fiasco. We all did very well in the campaign of '48 against the Austrians. We were winning battle ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... "Burra Burra," and it is procured in barter or war from the Islanders of Torres Straits, who frequently visit the continent. It is neatly made of a solid piece of wood scooped out, in shape like an elongated dice box. One end is covered with the skin of a snake or iguana, the other being left open. When this instrument is played upon by a muscular and excited "nigger," a music results which seems to please him in proportion to its intensity; keeping time with these, and aiding ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... affair of honour," it is best to toss up to see if you should follow the law or the custom; and as the law and the custom in regard to duelling are contradictory, the magistrates would also do well to frame their sentence on the throw of the dice. Probably, it was in this way that they determined that my journey ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... neither in the eyes nor out of them, but ever in motion between the object and the eye, and varying in the case of every percipient. All is relative, and, as the followers of Protagoras remark, endless contradictions arise when we deny this; e.g. here are six dice; they are more than four and less than twelve; "more and also less," would you not say?' 'Yes.' 'But Protagoras will retort: "Can anything be more or less without ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... from Massilia have cloaks of fine wool and earrings of brass. When they see me coming they stand on the prows of their ships and call to me, but I do not answer them. I go to the little taverns where the sailors lie all day long drinking black wine and playing with dice and I ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... again," said the agent. "Tell you what let's do. Here's ten of us. Each man put up a two, and we'll shake the dice to see who gives it to the kid—winner to set 'em up. That'll make seventy-five—a very ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... none may tell; both being dead so long ago; but, at any rate, he had found out that Charley was the man who had robbed him of his wife and honour. It was Carver Doone who took her away, but Charleworth Doone was beside him; and, according to cast of dice, she fell to Charley's share. All this Kit Badcock (who was mad, according to our measures) had discovered, and treasured up; and now was ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... justice, on condition of their serving in the Moorish war. Throughout this motley host the strictest discipline and decorum were maintained. The Spaniards have never been disposed to intemperance; but the passion for gaming, especially with dice, to which they seem to have been immoderately addicted at that day, was restrained by the severest ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... crap became a passion. They gambled as long as they had a dollar left or could get credit on the next month's pay day. Then they gambled for their shirts and their bayonets. All day long whenever they were in the barracks, you could hear the rattle of the dice, and the familiar call of "Phoebe," "Big Dick," "Big Nick," and "Little Joe." When they were not on drill the men would infest the barracks for hours at a time, gathered in crouching groups about the dice, the air thick and blue with cigarette smoke; while others had nothing better ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... brought forth crisply. "Immediately. We are gambling with the fate of a world, a fine and happy people. Let us throw the dice quickly, for the strain of waiting will not help us. Is that as ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... me hearties. Duke! Patch! I loves both o' yer. I loves yer equal, like two mugs o' grog as is full alike. Yer can pitch dice ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... whose Honour was more before their names than after; There was the preux Chevalier de la Ruse, Whom France and Fortune lately deign'd to waft here, Whose chiefly harmless talent was to amuse; But the clubs found it rather serious laughter, Because—such was his magic power to please— The dice seem'd ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... is still, after all the chances and changes of seven hundred years, the finest inhabited chateau in the Soissonnais, and as, by a curious throw of the dice of Destiny, it now belongs to a fair compatriot of mine, perhaps I may be allowed to tell this somewhat gruesome tale, which has a ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... had youth no thought of failure lurking Beyond to-morrow's dawn should fright my soul. Let failure strike—it still should find me working With faith that I should some day reach my goal. I'd dice with danger—aye!—and glory in it; I'd make high stakes the purpose of my throw. I'd risk for much, and should I fail to win it, I would not ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... shrimp until tender, about twenty-five minutes. Peel and break in halves, if large; dice celery and olives with the shrimp, mix well and ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various
... master thrice, is generally perched on the tip-top; and an ornithological phenomenon he always is. Under him is the inscription. Then, hung on to the cross-beam, are the spear, the reed with the sponge of vinegar and water at the end, the coat without seam for which the soldiers cast lots, the dice-box with which they threw for it, the hammer that drove in the nails, the pincers that pulled them out, the ladder which was set against the cross, the crown of thorns, the instrument of flagellation, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... daughter of a banker, he might take an interest in the house of the father-in-law of his son; then again, if he disliked his choice, the major takes the key, double-locks his coffer, and Master Andrea would be obliged to live like the sons of a Parisian family, by shuffling cards or rattling the dice." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... naked hulk alongside came, And the twain were casting dice; "The game is done! I've won! I've won!" Quoth she, ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... your die. The table is the sand of Egypt, the dice-cup is your hand, the dice are your life and my life, the stakes our happiness. Decide again and quickly for I hear the rumbling of wheels. Make known your choice, for although we travellers through the desert ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... and strong wine this vessel, in which at that time the champagne of twenty-two-year-old youth sparkled uselessly away, leaving stale dregs behind. Where and how may Isabella Loraine and Miss Russel be living now? How many of those with whom I then flirted, tippled, and played dice are now dead and buried! How many transformations has my view of the world undergone in the fourteen years which have since elapsed, while I always considered the existing one as alone correct! and how ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... whispers of other orgies than those of Osiris in his gloomy mansion. He is rich, too, they say. Can we not get him amongst us, and teach him the charms of dice? Pleasure of pleasures! hot fever of hope and fear! inexpressible unjaded passion! how fiercely beautiful thou ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... we all know what we mean by it in common parlance. It may be well, however, to look into the etymology of the two words we are considering. They both come ultimately, from the Latin "cadere," to fall. Chance is a falling-out, like that of a die from the dice-box; and coincidence signifies one falling-out on the top of another, the concurrent happening of two or more chances which resemble or somehow fit into each other. If you rattle six dice in a box and throw them, and ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... him closely, with the piece of plate under his arm. This man also he left behind him in an ante-room,—where three or four pages in the royal livery, but untrussed, unbuttoned, and dressed more carelessly than the place, and nearness to a king's person, seemed to admit, were playing at dice and draughts, or stretched upon benches, and slumbering with half-shut eyes. A corresponding gallery, which opened from the ante-room, was occupied by two gentlemen-ushers of the chamber, who gave each a smile of recognition as the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Earl of Crabs in the English peerage, who was playing high; and it was after hearing of the passion of this young English nobleman that my uncle, then at Prague, determined to visit Berlin and engage him. For there is a sort of chivalry among the knights of the dice-box: the fame of great players is known all over Europe. I have known the Chevalier de Casanova, for instance, to travel six hundred miles, from Paris to Turin, for the purpose of meeting Mr. Charles Fox, then only my Lord Holland's dashing ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... circumstance and dignity of demeanor, but the conviction had taken hold of the people of Red River, and especially of the French half-breeds, that these meant curtailment of their freedom. They felt the dice ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... form of this fondness for taking needless risks.—The gambler is too feeble in will, too empty in mind, too indolent in body to carve out his destiny with his own right hand. And so he stakes his well-being on the throw of the dice; the turn of a wheel; or the speed of a horse. This invocation of fortune is a confession of the man's incompetence and inability to solve the problem of his life satisfactorily by his own exertions. It is the most demoralizing of practices. For ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... description of his behaviour to a dullard who made his life at Salamanca a burden: 'Acerca del capitulo cuarto, demas de lo dicho digo que creo que este testigo es un bachiller Rodriguez, y por otro nombre el doctor Sutil que en Salamanca llaman por burla; y sospecholo de que dice en este capitulo que le deje sin respuesta, porque jamas deje de responder a ninguna persona de aquella universidad que me preguntase algo, sino a este que digo, con el cual por ser falto de juicio y preguntar algunas ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... 'loaded the dice' in a way that is even more lucrative than any other method ever invented! If the principle of this machine is what I think it is, you have certainly solved the secret of a sufficiently absorbing area ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... denunciations of usury, luxury, and scandalous fashions, are the opening of the gaols—which meant no more than the discharge of the poorest debtors—and the burning of various instruments of luxury and amusement, whether innocent or not. Among these are dice, cards, games of all kinds, written incantations, masks, musical instruments, song- books, false hair, and so forth. All these would then be gracefully arranged on a scaffold ('talamo'), a figure of the devil fastened to the top, and then ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... though a sexagenarian, liked no companion better than a minor. His Lordship was the most amiable man in the world, and the most lucky; but the first was his merit, and the second was not his fault. There was the juvenile Lord Dice, who boasted of having done his brothers out of their miserable 5,000L. patrimony, and all in one night. But the wrinkle that had already ruffled his once clear brow, his sunken eye, and his convulsive lip, had been thrown, we suppose, into the bargain, and, ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... happened that this Hamilton, who had been originally a Scotch Redshank, became privately acquainted with a beautiful and wealthy orphan girl, a relation of the O'Neils; and it so happened again, that whether they made a throw on the dice for it or not, he won her affections. So far, however, there was nothing very particularly obnoxious in it, because we know that intermarriages between Catholics and Protestants may disarm the parties of their religious prejudices against each other; and although I cannot affirm the ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... importance under what impression the others are discharged? If the discharged feel (as assuredly they do) that punishment is a matter of chance, they return to their habits as the hazard-player goes again to the dice, in hopes of coming off a winner, and reimbursing himself for former losses. There is another evil comes out of these unequal sentences. The discontent it produces on the minds of those who fall under the more heavy judgments, which militates against their reformation: instead of reflecting on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... mansion follow hard upon the grip. Once there you cannot throw the dice, nor taste the wine you sip; Nor look on blooming Lycidas, whose beauty you commend, To whom the girls will presently ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... mischief, and that he would himself keep out of it. So Will promised as much as his aunt or his mother chose to demand from him, gave them his word that he would never play—no, never; and when the family retired to rest, Mr. Will would walk over with a dice-box and a rum-bottle to cousin Harry's quarters, where he, and Hal, and his reverence would sit and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... quarrelled with his parents in Johnstown and had not seen them since. He was on the way now to see if anything was left of them. One moment he was in maudlin tears and the next he was cracking some miserable joke about the disaster. He went about the car shaking dice with other inebriated passengers, and in the course of half an hour had won $6. Over this he exhibited almost the glee of a maniac, and the fate of his people was lost sight of. Then he would presently forget his ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... of Christmastide, Strutt mentions their propensity for gaming with dice, as derived from their ancestors, for Tacitus assures us that the ancient Germans would not only hazard all their wealth, but even stake their liberty, upon the turn of the dice: "and he who loses submits to servitude, though younger and stronger than his antagonist, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... my best to reform. I have sold off my horses, and I have not touched dice nor card these six months: I would not even put into the raffle for the last Derby." This last was said with the air of a man who doubted the possibility of obtaining belief to some assertion ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... to Dhritarashtra that his son, while partaking of various objects of enjoyment and diverse precious things, was becoming meagre, wan, and pale. And Dhritarashtra, some time after, out of affection for his son, gave his consent to their playing (with the Pandavas) at dice. And Vasudeva coming to know of this, became exceedingly wroth. And being dissatisfied, he did nothing to prevent the disputes, but overlooked the gaming and sundry other horried unjustifiable transactions arising therefrom: ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... table, and, taking from the shelf that held my meagre library a bundle of Master Shakespeare's plays (gathered for me by Rolfe when he was last in London), I began to read; but my thoughts wandered, and the tale seemed dull and oft told. I tossed it aside, and, taking dice from my pocket, began to throw. As I cast the bits of bone, idly, and scarce caring to observe what numbers came uppermost, I had a vision of the forester's hut at home, where, when I was a boy, in the days before I ran away to the wars in the ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... features, a massive conformation of jaw, and thick, sensual, but resolute lips; this man was the Prince di—. His form, middle-sized, but rather inclined to corpulence, was clothed in a loose dressing-robe of rich brocade; on a table before him lay his sword and hat, a mask, dice and dice-box, a portfolio, and an inkstand ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Dowager Duchess of Orleans, cunning women both, had brought her to Paris in her girlhood, with that secret object; and had very nearly managed it. Queen of France that might have been; and now it is but Brandenburg, and the dice have fallen somewhat wrong for us! She had Friedrich Wilhelm, the rough boy; and perhaps nothing more of very precious property. Her first child, likewise a boy, had soon died, and there came no third: tedious ceremonials, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... IX, 26.—The rattling of dice in the box of Circumstance now announced the final cast in the struggle with Carthage,—the third of the series. The Carthaginians could not endure their subordinate position, but contrary to the treaty were setting their fleet ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... fright of an Englishwoman, known among sailors as "Old Mother Tot." From New Zealand to the Sandwich Islands, she had been all over the South Seas; keeping a rude hut of entertainment for mariners, and supplying them with rum and dice. Upon the missionary islands, of course, such conduct was severely punishable; and at various places, Mother Tot's establishment had been shut up, and its proprietor made to quit in the first vessel that could be hired to land her elsewhere. But, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... take to smoking, and in general their constitutions are as much injured by the one as by the other. Cigar-smoking is a sort of devil-may-care imitation of the vulgar by gentlemen, and is no more requisite for health or amusement than whiskey, dice, or cards. It is amusing in the extreme to see old fellows aping extreme juvenility, and professing to smoke before breakfast; and it is ridiculous to see young gentlemen, very young and very green, cigar in mouth, fancying it very manly and very ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... pale hand! I saw him, yet so shadowy and so transparent, that I might mark the waving of the canvass through his figure!—But tush! tush! it is but a trick of the fancy. I am worn out with this daily marching; and the body's fatigue hath made the mind weak and weary. And it is dull here too, no dice, no women, and no revelling. I will take some wine," he added, starting up and quaffing two or three goblets' full in quick succession, "my blood is thin and cold, and wants warming. Ha! that is better—It is right old Setinian too; I marvel whence Manlius had it." Then ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... property of the pledger, and pawned without the authority of the owner. [395] [See note 3 F, at the end of this Vol.] With respect to gaming, the act ordained that all publicans suffering journeymen, labourers, servants, or apprentices, to game with cards, dice, shuffleboards, mississippi, or billiard tables, skittles, nine-pins, &c. should forfeit forty shillings for the first offence, and for every subsequent offence, ten pounds shall ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... moderately heavy bet supplies them with a topic for conversation; it gives them all the keen pleasures of anticipation as the day of the race draws near, and when they open the paper to see the final result they are thrilled just as a gambler is thrilled when he throws the dice. No wonder that the mild and moral places of recreation are left empty; no wonder that the public-houses are well filled. If I were asked to name two things which interest the English nation to the supreme degree, I should say—first, Sport; second, Drink. If the strongest Ministry ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... Cards, dice, brethren's brethren, father's money, sickness of private enemies, enemies of friends, death of kings, friends ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... times—the brave "Bras de Fer"—that the preaching of the Gospel was the great instrument of imbuing the army with the spirit of order. Crimes, he tells us, were promptly revealed; no blasphemy was heard throughout the camp, for it was universally frowned upon. The very implements of gambling—dice and cards—were banished. There were no lewd women among the camp-followers. Thefts were unfrequent and vigorously punished. A couple of soldiers were hung for having robbed a peasant of a small quantity of wine.[146] Public prayers ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... rooms each. This is by far the most extensive watering place in the Union. Of the effect of such establishments on morals I shall say nothing. The reader will draw his own conclusions, when he understands that the card-table, roulette, wheel of fortune, and dice-box are amongst its principal amusements. Here, not unfrequently, cotton bales, negroes, and even plantations, change owners in a night. The scenery around is highly picturesque and romantic. Declivities ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... if gambling crooks from everywhere had collected at Comanche, and as if the most openly and notoriously crooked of them all was the bony, dry-faced man with a white spot over the sight of his left eye, who conducted a dice-game in the front part of the chief amusement-place of the town. This was a combination variety theater and saloon, where free "living pictures" were posed for the entertainment of those who drank beer at the tables ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... to confirm what he had heard concerning his grandson's character. Thrown together in disorderly confusion were bottles of wine and whiskey; soiled packs of cards; a dice-box with dice; a box of poker chips, several revolvers, and a number of photographs and paper-covered books at which the old gentleman merely glanced ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the dice-box with great deliberation. Presently he rolled the ivories out. "Three sixes," he said slowly, "an' I'll ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... slaves and indentured servants labored, and from their coastwise and overseas trade. Their battles with forest and red man were long past. They had leisure for diversions such as the chase, the breeding and racing of thoroughbred horses, the dance, high play with dice and card, cockfighting, the gallantry of love, and the skill of the rapier. Law and politics drew their ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... dat gun, suh? Nobody goin' play cyahds ner frow dice wid a gun, is dey?" asked Mamie, as she rose and walked ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... interruption be suffered to dissipate their attention, or distract their meditations: for this reason, all visits and letters from ladies are strictly to be prohibited; and if any of the members shall be detected with a lapdog, pack of cards, box of dice, draught-table, snuffbox, or looking-glass, he shall, for the first offence, be confined for three months to water gruel, and, for the second, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... believe that so perfect a poem as Homer's "Iliad" was not the product of the genius of a great poet, but that the letters of the alphabet, being confusedly jumbled and mixed, were by chance, as it were by the cast of a pair of dice, brought together in such an order as is necessary to describe, in verses full of harmony and variety, so many great events; to place and connect them so well together; to paint every object with all its most graceful, most noble, and most affecting attendants; in short, to make every person ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... any one of the four to whom it should fall by lot. When this had been decided, they sat down and watched him till the end, beguiling the weary lingering hours by eating and drinking, and gibing, and playing dice. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... Walter, son of Magister William de Dice, who wanted the vicarage of Chevington, he answered: "Thy Father was Master of the Schools; and when I was an indigent clericus, he granted me freely and in charity an entrance to his School, and opportunity of learning; wherefore I now, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... circles of the social world right around you? Idolatry! you cannot find any more gross, any more cruel, on the broad earth, than within the area of a mile around this pulpit. Dark minds from which God is obscured; deluded souls, whose fetish is the dice-box or the bottle; apathetic spirits, steeped in sensual abomination, unmoved by a moral ripple, soaking in the slump of animal vitality. False gods, more hideous, more awful, than Moloch or Baal; worshipped with shrieks, worshipped with curses, with the hearth-stone ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... partner and dice, and guineas clinking on the cloth, the night passes like a dream. You don't like ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... used; for yer the scholer can be preferred, such briberye is made, that pore men's children are commonly shut out, and the richer sort received (who in times past thought it dishonour to live as it were upon almes) and yet being placed, most of them studie little other than histories, tables, dice & trifles, as men that make not the living by their studie the end of their purposes; which is a lamentable bearing. Besides this, being for the most part either gentlemen, or rich men's sonnes, they oft bring the universities into ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... peaceful blockade iv this town. Ye can see th' pieces ivrywhere. I hope ye're injyin' th' same gr-reat blessin'. So no more at prisint. Fr'm ye'ers thruly, George Dooley.' He ain't that kind. 'Tis a nice day, an' he's there smokin' a good tin-cint see-gar, an' throwin' dice f'r th' dhrinks. He don't care whether we know what he's done or not. I'll bet ye, whin we come to find out about him, we'll hear he's ilicted himself king iv th' F'lip-ine Islands. Dooley th' Wanst. He'll ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... Catiline's own chosen comrades, the smooth-faced patrician youths with curled hair and redolent with perfumes, as yet beardless or with the first down upon their chins, wearing scarves and veils and sleeved tunics reaching to their ankles, industrious but only with the dice-box, night-watchers but in the supper- rooms, in the small hours before dawn, immodest, dissolute boys, whose education had been in learning to love and to be loved, to sing and to dance naked at the midnight ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... a picture suddenly revealed for an instant by a flashlight. In the cabin there were four men. Two sat at a table directly in front of him. One held a dice box poised in the air, and had turned a rough, bearded face toward him. The other was a younger man, and in this moment it struck Billy as strange that he should be clutching a can of beans between his hands. A third man stared from where he had been looking down upon the dice-play of the ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... este Pu.^o volvera en algun tiempo como ha sido constumbre en ellos y dice el confesante que no que ya esta muy metido en terror que aunque estaban abilantados con lo que les habia susedido a los de el Pu.^o de Zia el ano pasado juzgaba que era un imposible que dejaran de dar la obediencia; por lo ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... [GRILLON and his Party exeunt one way, Rabble the other. Haste, brother, draw out fifteen thousand men, Surround the Louvre, lest the prey should 'scape. I know the king will send to treat; We'll set the dice on him in high demands, No less than all his offices of trust; He shall be pared, and cantoned out, and clipped So ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... almost of fear, had taken hold on the Master's heart. This fear was not in the least for himself or any of the men. Hard-bitted adventurers all, they had gone into this expedition with their eyes open, well knowing that some must inevitably die before its close. They had gambled at dice with Fate; and, losing, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... much the bravest of all the princes of his time, only what he got by great actions he lost again by vain hopes, and by new desires of what he had not, kept nothing of what he had. So that Antigonus used to compare him to a player with dice, who had excellent throws, but knew not how to use them. He returned into Epirus with eight thousand foot and five hundred horse, and for want of money to pay them, was fain to look out for a new war to maintain the army. Some of the Gauls joining him, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... returned to the hotel. They settled for ham and eggs in the Cortez Coffee Shop, then stopped on the way through the casino to watch the gambling. Even at noontime the dice table was jammed with customers, and the blackjack tables were nearly full. The roulette table was not getting much play, however, and they watched for a few spins ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... these orders; but my heart smote me for my selfishness, when I witnessed their effect on Mr. Dick, who was so low-spirited at the prospect of our separation, and played so ill in consequence, that my aunt, after giving him several admonitory raps on the knuckles with her dice-box, shut up the board, and declined to play with him any more. But, on hearing from my aunt that I should sometimes come over on a Saturday, and that he could sometimes come and see me on a Wednesday, he revived; and vowed to make another ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... sad," said Ferne, rousing himself. "Come, I'll dice with thee for fifty ducats and a gold jewel—to be paid from the ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... elections were hurried on with unseemly haste. They began on the 20th of June, and all the returns were in during the first week in July. The issue was an exciting, but not a doubtful one, for the official party entered upon the contest with loaded dice and a determination to win. Numerous attempts have been made to explain and excuse their conduct during this eventful epoch; but it is impossible to blink the fact that the result was a foregone conclusion from the very moment ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... all knew I had no job; I have sat on every doorstep that against me wasn't fenced, you could scarcely find a building that I haven't leaned against; I have smoked a thousand stogies, I have chewed a cord of plug, I have shaken dice with dozens, I have touched each cider jug, to sustain my drooping spirits while I waited for a berth, with some up-to-date employer who'd appreciate my worth. But the world is out of kilter and the country's out of plumb, and the poor downtrodden voter finds ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... more solemn assemblage, his relations with which were less tender. This was the consistory of the Church, which found it less easy to allow for the old man's infirmities. His first appearance before this body was under accusation of playing at dice with Clement Marot, another famous character and the sweet singer of the French Reformation. He comes next time of his own accord, asking the venerable brethren to interfere because his second wife ran away from him on their wedding-day, she defending herself on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... or boiled mutton may be cut into dice and used for an ordinary mutton salad. At serving time arrange this neatly on lettuce leaves, or any accessible green; season with salt and pepper, and cover with mayonnaise dressing to which has been added a tablespoonful ...
— Made-Over Dishes • S. T. Rorer
... without God and immortality. One disciple of naturalism recently denied his desire to believe in God because he wanted a risky universe. But the universe without God is not risky; it is a foregone conclusion; the dice are all loaded. After the lapse of millions of years which, however long they be stretched out, will ultimately end, our solar system will be gone, without even a memory left of anything that ever was dreamed or done within it. That is the inevitable issue ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... and Conrad hight, A Greek and German, at two thrusts he gored, Who in the air had past large part of night With dice and goblet; blest it at that board They still had watched, till, clothed in amber light, The radiant sun had traversed Indus' ford! But mortals Destiny would set at nought If every ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... the nearest table. On the surface of it were marked six squares with chalk, and each with its appropriate number. The man who ran the game stood behind the table and shook three dice. The numbers which turned up paid the gambler. The numbers which failed to show paid ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... rope-ends, he cast them across to the reef. In such small ways do men throw invisible dice with death. With those two lines he would, within a few fleeting seconds, drag himself ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... for the confusion of his people—these hybrid, kaleidoscopic combinations of Russian and Jewish politics—but as he fled from the philosophers through the now darkening streets, his every nerve quivering, it seemed to him as if the alphabet had only to be thrown about like dice to give always the name of some Party or other. He had a nightmare vision of bristling sects and pullulating factions, each with its Councils, Federations, Funds, Conferences, Party-Days, Agenda, Referats, Press-Organs, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... the Mexicans, play with knuckle-bones as dice. The game is called la taba, and the bones are taken from either the deer, the sheep, or the goat. Only one bone is used by the two players. Twelve points make a game, and each player has twelve grains of corn with which ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... himself but of two different terms of exclamation in this encounter,—namely, Diable! and Peste! that there are, nevertheless, three in the French language: like the positive, comparative, and superlative, one or the other of which serves for every unexpected throw of the dice in life. ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... The Rambler, No. 80, he wrote:—'It is scarcely possible to pass an hour in honest conversation, without being able, when we rise from it, to please ourselves with having given or received some advantages; but a man may shuffle cards, or rattle dice, from noon to midnight, without tracing any new idea in his mind, or being able to recollect the day by any other token than his gain or loss, and a confused remembrance of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... sentry, where a couple of squatting thralls were skinning a slain deer; and as far as eye could swim in the flood of sunset light, the green aisles were dotted with scattered groups. Every flat rock had a ring of dice-throwers bending over it; every fallen trunk its row of idlers. Wherever a cluster of boulders made a passable smithy, crowds of sweating giants plied hammer and sharpening-stone. The edges of the little stream that trickled down to the valley ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... more intricate and is played with the claws of a bear or some other animal marked with various lines and characters. These dice which are eight in number and cut flat at their large end are shook together in a wooden dish, tossed into the air and caught again. The lines traced on such claws as happen to alight on the platter in an erect position indicate what number of counters ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... Courage should never put any thing to the Risk but his Life. These are the Tools of a Man of Honour. Cards and Dice are only fit for cowardly Cheats, who prey ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... made;[21] Love the Artist sets his signature beneath the soul which he has created;[22] Love the Helmsman steers the soul, like a winged boat, over the perilous seas of desire;[23] Love the Child, playing idly with his dice at sundawn, throws lightly for human lives.[24] Now he is a winged boy with childish bow and quiver, swift of laughter and speech and tears;[25] now a fierce god with flaming arrows, before whom life wastes away like wax in the fire, Love ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... Bagshot at the threats of Wild that he drew forth all he found in his pockets, to the amount of twenty-one guineas, which he had just gained at dice. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... came forward, O Commander of the Faithful (and indeed the Kurd's speech had bewildered me) and said, 'Allah advance our lord the Kazi! Verily, there was naught in this my wallet, save a little ruined tenement and another without a door and a dog house and a boys' school and youths playing dice and tents and tent-ropes and the cities of Bassorah and Baghdad and the palace of Shaddad bin Ad and an ironsmith's forge and a fishing-net and cudgels and pickets and girls and boys and a thousand pimps who will testify that the bag is ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... that his trade was according to the law of Christ and of direct service to His holy cause, he was not allowed to carry it on at all. He must either change his calling or leave the Church. In the Brethren's Church there were no dice makers, no actors, no painters, no professional musicians, no wizards or seers, no alchemists, no astrologers, no courtezans or panderers. The whole tone was stern and puritanic. For art, for music, for letters and for pleasure the Brethren ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... how ceaseless His protection, how careful His thought to guard their honour and their lives; and yet how wise; at every point where His presence would have frustrated the object of His coming, He goes away. He is not present at the great game of dice, for that was necessary for the working out of the divine purpose; He was away. Had He been there, He must needs have interfered; had He been there, He could not have left His friends unaided. He remained ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... But things oughtn't to go by the casting of dice. Money may, for that does not signify, but not the souls and bodies of men. It should not be the way in a poem any more than in the open world.—Let me think!—I have it!—They were not good men, those sailors! They first blamed, and then justified, and then again blamed and cruelly ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... misgives me: Here you win At one throw of the dice the loveliest Of maidens and a mighty empire too: You stake your head to win, and, having won, ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... shall be equal in number and similar in composition. The methods of handicapping are obvious. A slight inequality (chances of war) may be arranged between equal players by leaving out 12 men on each side and tossing with a pair of dice to see how many each player shall take of these. The best arrangement and proportion of the forces is in small bodies of about 20 to 25 infantry-men and 12 to 15 cavalry to a gun. Such a force can maneuver comfortably on a front of 4 or 5 feet. Most of our games have been ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... he bare it from the field Its touch was cold as ice, And the ivory teeth within the jaw Rattled aloud, like dice. ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various |
