"Knock-out" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the time, even leaning on the ring. Once, while in this position, one of the men, who was bleeding, was knocked down. He struck the mallet. It became covered with blood. No one seemed to notice that, except myself—every one was too excited. A moment more and the fight was over, through a knock-out. Then I stuck the mallet in my pocket, telling every one who cared to hear that I was carrying away a souvenir. Langdon and I went ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... a table on four legs: a damned dull thing!" He was a creature of whims: so much so that, as a boy, he used to have the curse, "Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel," flung at him. He enjoyed the expression of knock-out opinions such as: "I always bless God for making anything so strong as an onion!" He laughed easily, not from humour so much as from a romping playfulness. He took a young boy's pleasure in showing off the strength of his mane of dark brown hair. He would get a child to get hold of ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... the moment after it happened, I had only one idea in my head, and that was to reach Captain Coe as fast as the paddles could race me off to the schooner. It is in them moments that the strong man looms up like a mountain and one's cry is for a leader. But it seemed for a spell like it was a knock-out blow for Coe, and that he couldn't grapple with the thing at all, moaning and grinding his teeth, and tearing the red-dotted handkerchief off his neck like it choked him. When I tried to talk, he swore at me terrible, saying he wanted to think, by God! and I was to shut my bloody ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... And this is the mystery: mare or gelding doesn't seem to matter, nor age, color, temper; just something set up and smelling like a horse. Thirteen's crest-jewel was an old roan Jezebel that smothered with hatred at the approach of the least or greatest of her slaves. She had a knock-out in four feet—but Beatrice, she was, to ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... accompaniment. On the stage, see? Grand piano. And a swell set. I haven't quite made up my mind to it. But a kind of an army camp room, see? And maybe you dressed as Liberty. Anyway, it'll be new, and a knock-out. If only we can get away with the voice thing. Say, if Eddie Foy, all those years ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... with his right extended, quivering, menacing, and poised for a knock-out blow, his left did not appear in ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... was a fair knock-out; just like Christmas: but as Ned Dawson and Bill Bates had drunk all the sauce before the pudding was served, they all had to have their first helping without any. However, as the landlord brought in another lot shortly ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... glass of water and sat down. His face was distorted. Renine looked at him for a few seconds, as a man will look at a failing adversary who has only to receive the knock-out blow, and, sitting down beside ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... Prince of Austria. What an unlucky family that has been! Franz Josef must be a tough old gentleman to have stood up against so many shocks. I used to feel so sorry for him when Fate dealt him another blow that would have been a "knock-out" for most people. But he has stood so many, and outlived happier people, that I begin to believe that if the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, the hides, or the hearts, of some people are toughened to stand the ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... as he read aloud, "this is Friday; Saturday, expect war records from Adjutant-General; Monday, hear from Ernst, surprise party in the evening; Tuesday, get money at express office; Tuesday afternoon, buy Hill's grocery and give Strout his first knock-out; Wednesday, see Stackpole and Smith and arrange to knock Strout out again; Thursday, Dr. Tillotson." He laughed and closed the book. Then he said, "And the city fellows think it must be dull down here because there is nothing going on in a country ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... abolishin' th' canteen. An' it's all right now. If a sojer wants to desthroy himself he has to walk a block. Some iv me enterprisin' colleagues in th' business have opened places convenient to th' fort where th' sons iv Mars, instead iv th' corroding beer, can get annything fr'm sulphuric acid to knock-out dhrops. I see wan iv thim stockin' up at a wholesale dhrug store last week. If the sojers escape th' knock-out dhrops they come down-town an' Doherty takes care iv thim. A sojer gets thirteen dollars a month, we'll ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... little cur dog, that he supposed wasn't fit for nothing but barking at chipmunks, I reckon the bear would have chawed and thumped the life out of him. The cur seemed to tumble to the situation right away, and he went for the bear's heels in good shape. It generally takes time and a few knock-out cuffs from bear's paw to teach a dog that there's two ends to a bear and only one of them safe to tackle, but that little ornery kiyi knew it from the start. If there's anything a bear can't stand, it's a dog nipping his heels, and when the cur began ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... "I thought I'd go over and see if I couldn't get an extra story out of it. Want to come along? It's about the last round of the fight. The managers have got five thousand new men here already or on the way. That will be the knock-out," he chatted briskly. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... five years," confided Mrs. Montague to her neighbours. "A hall show, of course—hadn't heard of movies then—doing Virginius and Julius Caesar and such classics, and then starting out with The Two Orphans for a short season. We were a knock-out, I'll say that. I'll never forget the night we opened the new opera house at Akron. They had to put ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... have of admiring a girl one moment, because she's a good sport, and throwing fits of disapprobation the next, because she tries to act like she is one. Why, David looked at me just now as if he'd have taken less than two cents to put knock-out drops in my ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... Copper, "it's a fair knock-out." The fist landed to a hair on the chin-point, the neck snicked like a gun-lock, and the back of the head crashed on the ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... ordinary mind retain the names of all the White Hopes or Black Despairs. At any moment some Terrible Magyar may wrest the bantam championship from us. You must learn to distinguish between WELLS, the reconstructor of the universe, and Knock-out WELLS. You must be acquainted with the doings and prospects of Dreadnought Brown and Mulekick Jones. You must know the F. E. Smithian repartees of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... cried McNab, diving his beef-steakish hands into his tunic pockets. "Why, so I did! I'm the biggest giddy fool at that kind of wheeze that ever lived. It's a knock-out, ain't it? Never mind—'honi soit qui mal y eighteen pence,' as the French poet ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... jes' the same with a circus. One year ye give 'em the rottenest kind of a thing, and they eat it up; the next year you hand 'em a knock-out, and it's a frost. Is that the way it is with ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... Despite the knock-out which Harley P. had given him, T. Morgan Carey was enjoying the gambler's society. Mr. Hennage was a new note in life. Carey had never met his kind before, and he was irresistibly attracted toward the ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... to understand the inducement which made these two giants agree not to oppose each other, but the agreement was dangerously like a "knock-out." Mr. Henry Stevens (in his Recollections of Mr. James Lenox) boldly deals with this question, and condemns any such agreement. He writes, "Shortly after, in 1850, there occurred for sale at the same auction rooms a copy of 'Aratus, Phaenomena,' Paris, 1559, ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... sir, now, though I didn't when he first came aboard with his crowd o' bloody cannibals. But when you give him that knock-out lift under the jaw the other day, me and Sam Button, you will remember, helped him down into the cabin and laid him in his bunk, hopin' the swab was dead. The skipper told us to open his shirt at the neck, as he was a-breathin' so bad, and ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... the finality of a smoothly conducted burial. For nothing has been settled. It's merely that Time has been trying to encyst what it can not absorb. I felt, for a day or two, that I had nothing much to live for. I felt like a feather-weight who'd faced a knock-out. I saw Pride go to the mat, and take the count, and if I was dazed, for a while, I suppose it was mostly convalescence from shock. Then I tightened my belt, and reminded myself that it wasn't the first wallop Fate had given me, and remembered that in this life you have to adjust yourself ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... the beginning of the end. Percy tottered up, blood spurting from his nose, his head spinning. He saw Jabe preparing for another rush and knew it would be the last one. He stiffened himself to receive the knock-out. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... Vanya: "It's a knock-out! It will go big! big! big! We got 'em started in Baltimore!"—a fact, but none of his doing! "We'll play Philadelphia next; I'm fixin' it for you. All you gotta do is go there and the yelling starts. Well, I guess. ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... with an extraordinary propensity for amour, but that on their first night of shore leave they hang around the water-front saloons and are given knock-out drops. ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... 'Tom Brown's School-Days.' Hookes's 'Amanda' was at the bottom of a lot of American devotional works, where it kept company with an Elzevir Tacitus and the Aldine 'Hypnerotomachia.' The auctioneer put up lot after lot, and Blinton plainly saw that the whole affair was a "knock-out." His most treasured spoils were parted with at the price of waste paper. It is an awful thing to be present at one's own sale. No man would bid above a few shillings. Well did Blinton know that after the knock-out the plunder would be shared among the grinning bidders. ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... Overlander Rider's fist sent Peg Tatem reeling, but before Tom could follow up his advantage, the lumberman collected himself and began leaping around Tom, now striking with the club, then kicking out with the wooden leg. It was impossible to get close enough to the fellow to give him the knock-out blow that Captain Gray was hoping to land on ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... stood over him, counting the seconds loudly in his ear. At the ninth he rose in fighting attitude, and Tom King, facing him, knew regret that the blow had not been an inch nearer the point of the jaw. That would have been a knock-out, and he could have carried the thirty quid home to the ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... ma'am—there's no blood drawn, as it happens," said Mr Latter, "but 'twas nibby-jibby,[1] the way you outed with it, and took me of a heap. If you'd ever happened now to stand up to a man and him gettin' his fist full on your wind—no, you wouldn't, o' course. But 'twas a knock-out. . . . 'Nicky-Nan,' says you, 'an'not a sovereign to bless hisself'—Why the man's fairly leakin sovereigns!—sheddin' ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... boy, who had been led astray by other boys, but had reformed. Jim Irwin had a distinct feeling of optimism. Newton had quit tobacco and beer, casually stating to Jim that he was "in training." Since Jim had shown his ability to administer a knockout to that angry chauffeur, he seemed to this hobbledehoy peculiarly a proper person for athletic confidences. Newton's mind seemed gradually filling up with interests that displaced the psychological complex out of which oozed the bad stories and filthy allusion. Jim attributed much of this to the ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... other show. We're the Sarras crowd, you know. We met in the desert, and we headed 'em off, and the other Johnnies herded 'em behind. We've got 'em on toast, I tell you. Get up on that rock and you'll see things happen. It's going to be a knockout ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... slip it to us in our tea. Like knockout drops, I guess. Gee, can you see him distributing tracts to that mob. It's a cinch that they will make ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... have heard that Coney has received moral reconstruction. The old Bowery, where they used to take your tintype by force and give ye knockout drops before having your palm read, is now called the Wall Street of the island. The wienerwurst stands are required by law to keep a news ticker in 'em; and the doughnuts are examined every four years by a retired steamboat inspector. The nigger man's head that was used by the old patrons ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... seem to be a shooting affair," Endicott answered, "and it is my own private opinion that Tex is abundantly able to take care of himself. Ah—he got him that time! He's down for the count! Good work, Tex, old man! A good clean knockout!" ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... service troops to volunteer for infantry training and eventual employment as individual replacements. General Eisenhower agreed, and on 26 December Lee issued a call to the black troops for volunteers to share "the privilege of joining our veteran units at the front to deliver the knockout blow." The call was limited to privates in the upper four categories of the Army General Classification Test who had had some infantry training. If noncommissioned officers wanted to apply, they had to accept a reduction in grade. Although patronizing in tone, the plan was a ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... to understand that you hadn't hit us hard enough. Your blow was not a knockout, and we mean to guard against the next. We have taken the contract and are going to put it over; I want you to get that. You can't scare us off, and while I don't know if you can smash us or not, it will certainly cost you high. ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... said. "They were topflight professionals, in any case. I got a glimpse of some of their equipment. Knockout guns—foggers—and that was a ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... slighter but quicker, and fought with more skill. Big Tom could hit a knockout blow, but there his tactics ended. He knew only the one way of dealing with an antagonist, and so, when one of his eyes suddenly closed up and his nose began to bleed, he began to realize that he had made a big mistake ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... French Canada the knockout blow in Empire Year. So, holding the extreme east and west at Louisbourg and Fort Duquesne, he sent a small force to cut the line of the Lakes at Niagara, a much larger one to cut into the line of the St. ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood |
