"Chequer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consider'd yet. "Good Mr. Dean, go change your gown, Let my lord know you're come to town." I hurry me in haste away, Not thinking it is levee-day; And find his honour in a pound, Hemm'd by a triple circle round, Chequer'd with ribbons blue and green: How should I thrust myself between? Some wag observes me thus perplex'd, And, smiling, whispers to the next, "I thought the Dean had been too proud, To justle here among a crowd!" Another, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... I dream of water pure Before the coming morn, 'Tis a sign I shall be poor, And unto wealth not born. If I dream of tasting beer, Middling then will be my cheer— Chequer'd with the good and bad, Sometimes joyful, sometimes sad; But should I dream of drinking wine, Wealth and pleasure will be mine. The stronger the drink, the better the cheer— Dreams of my destiny, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... of the money I borrowed. I pray God, any that did put such scruple in her, have not deceived her more than I have done. I thank God I have a clear conscience for deceiving her, and for money matters. I think I may justly say I have been the only cause of more gain to her coffers than all her chequer-men have been. But so is the hap of some, that all they do is nothing, and others that do nothing, do all, and have all the thanks. But I would this were all the grief I carry with me; but God is my comfort, and on Him I cast all, for there is no surety in this world beside. What hope ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... old town, which slopes down the hill-side to the old church,—just "restored," though by Lords Minchampstead and Vieuxbois, not without Mark Armsworth's help, to its ancient beauty of grey flint and white clunch chequer-work, and quaint wooden spire. Pleasant churchyard round it, where the dead lie looking up to the bright southern sun, among huge black yews, upon their knoll of white chalk above the ancient stream. Pleasant white wooden bridge, with its row of urchins dropping flints ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... of the Game He plays Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days; Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays, And one by one ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... all that creeps or flies, and his soul is ready to soar from his breast. How pure is the air, how spicy is the scent from the fallen leaves on such an autumn day! In Spring, truly, white and rose-red, blue and yellow chequer the green turf; but now gold and crimson are bright in the tree tops, and on the service trees. The distance is clearer than before, and fine silver threads wave in the air as if to catch us, and keep us in the woods whose beauty is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... caught with Sylvia on his knees; - A cautious burgess with a careful wife To be so caught!—'tis false, upon my life. Next are a lower kind, yet not so low But they, among them, their distinctions know; And when a thriving landlord aims so high, As to exchange the Chequer for the Pye, Or from Duke William to the Dog repairs, He takes a finer coat and fiercer airs. Pleased with his power, the poor man loves to say What favourite Inn shall share his evening's pay; Where he shall sit the social hour, and lose His past day's labours and his next day's views. Our ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... reply the shadows back, and truth Was manifested, as a star in heaven. And when the words were ended, not unlike To iron in the furnace, every cirque Ebullient shot forth scintillating fires: And every sparkle shivering to new blaze, In number did outmillion the account Reduplicate upon the chequer'd board. Then heard I echoing on from choir to choir, "Hosanna," to the fixed point, that holds, And shall for ever hold them to their place, From everlasting, irremovable. Musing awhile I stood: and she, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... glowing golden green, shooting long bright arrows down, through the dim, hot, hazy atmosphere of the wood, till it rested at last upon the dappled beach of pink and grey pebbles, and the dappled surge which wandered up and down among them, and broke up into richer intricacy with its chequer-work of woodland shadows, the ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... waving groves a chequer'd scene display, And part admit and part exclude the day; As some coy nymph her lover's fond address, Nor quite indulges nor can ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... a more marked individuality in the Russian tales of this kind, as compared with those of Western Europe, than is to be traced in the stories (especially those of a humorous cast) which relate to the events that chequer an ordinary existence. The actors in the comediettas of European peasant-life vary but little, either in title or in character, wherever the scene may be laid; just as in the European beast-epos the Fox, the Wolf, and the Bear play ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... dots. Some are polished, others dull, some rosy pink, others almost crimson. Some are marked with cream and purple like the juice of black currants with cream in it. In some the scale pattern changes to a chequer, some are white with purple zig-zags. And lastly come a whole series in pale olive, and olive and cream, in which the general colour is that of a blackcap's egg, and the pattern made by alternate spots of olive and ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... interesting houses that help to keep alive the old-world flavour of the town. Only a few years ago the old manor-house had a most picturesque and rather remarkable exterior, for its plaster walls were covered with a large black and white chequer-work and its overhanging eaves and tailing creepers gave it a charm that has since then been quite lost. The restoration which recently took place has entirely altered the character of the exterior, but inside everything has been preserved with just the care that should have been expended outside ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... I think, be compared to a chequer-work, where light and shade appear by turns; and in proportion as either of these is most conspicuous, the man is alone worthy of praise or censure; for none there are can boast of being ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... wild briar overtwined, And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind Upon their summer thrones; there too should be The frequent chequer of a youngling tree, That with a score of light green brethren shoots From the quaint mossiness of aged roots: Round which is heard a spring-head of clear waters Babbling so wildly of its lovely daughters, The spreading bluebells; it may haply mourn ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... stranger near the ruin in the wood, Who as it seemed was gathering herbs and wild flowers. I had followed him at distance, seen him scale Its western wall, and by an easier entrance Stole after him unnoticed. There I marked, That mid the chequer work of light and shade, With curious choice he plucked no other flowers, But those on which the moonlight fell: and once I heard him muttering o'er the plant. A wizard— Some gaunt slave prowling ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... besides these we now have. But what need I mention books that are not canonical, when indeed it does not appear from those of our canonical books which were last written, that the church knew any thing of the gospels, or that the clergy made a common use of them. The writers of these times do not chequer their works with texts of the New Testament, which yet is the custom of the moderns, and was also theirs in such books as they acknowledge for scripture; for they most frequently cite the books of the Old Testament, and would, ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... after gift; they block my court at last And pile themselves along its portico Royal with sunset, like a thought of thee: 10 And one white she-slave from the group dispersed Of black and white slaves (like the chequer-work Pavement, at once my nation's work and gift, Now covered with this settle-down of doves), One lyric woman, in her crocus vest Woven of sea-wools, with her two white hands Commends to me the strainer and the cup Thy lip hath bettered ere it ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... a Chequer-Board of Nights and Days, Where Detiny with men for pieces plays, Hither and thither moves, and mates and slays, And one by one back in the ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... extremely wearisome; to him, as I am now sorry to think, bitterly mortifying. The river was to me a pretty and various spectacle; I could not see—I could not be made to see—it otherwise. To my father it was a chequer-board of lively forces, which he traced from pool to shallow with minute appreciation and enduring interest. "That bank was being undercut," he might say; "why? Suppose you were to put a groin out ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... *-a-t in the van, The Spy of an old Spy; Who beat up for recruits in town, Mong little girls, in chequer'd gown, Of ages rather shy. That mild, complacent-looking face,{36} Who sits his bit of blood with grace, Is tragic Charley Young: With dowager savant a beau, Who'll spout, or tales relate, you know, Nobility ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... institute any general comparison; they are quite infinite, from mere inlaid geometrical figures up to incrustations of elaborate bas-relief. The architect has perhaps more license in them, and more power of producing good effect with rude design than in any other features of the building; the chequer and hatchet work of the Normans and the rude bas-reliefs of the Lombards being almost as satisfactory as the delicate panelling and mosaic of the Duomo of Florence. But this is to be noted of all good wall ornament, that it ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... have the good Fortune to be so pleasantly lodg'd as to have a Prospect of a neighboring Grove, where the Eye receives the most delicious Refreshment from the lively Verdure of the Greens, and the wild Regularity by which the Scene shifts off and disparts itself into a beautiful Chequer." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... fir-trees (which, being evergreen, and not changing their colour, are emblematic of an unchangingly virtuous heart), and bamboos (emblematic of an upright and straight mind). The child is placed upright on a chequer-board, facing the auspicious point of the compass, and invested with the dress of ceremony. It also receives a sham sword and dirk. The usual ceremony of drinking ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... decoration, and of the kind of patterns suitable to the material. For my own part, I have not the slightest doubt that the cushions of chairs and royal couches, and the sails of funeral and sacred boats used for the transport of mummies and divine images, were most frequently made in leather-work. The chequer- patterned sail represented in one of the boat subjects painted on the wall of a chamber in the tomb of Rameses III. (fig. 274), might be mistaken for one of the side pieces of the canopy at Gizeh. The vultures and fantastic birds depicted upon the sails of ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... "but thy self; for my inclination was here; tho' (so help me Hercules) it was all well. Scissa kept a nine-days feast for his servant Miscellus, whom he infranchised after he was dead: It is said he had a round sum in the chequer, for they reckon he died worth 50,000 sesterces; yet this was all done in good order; tho' every one of us were obliged to pour half his ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... distracted mind dictates to my trembling pen! How do you? You have been very ill, it seems. That you are recovered, my dear, let me hear. That your mother is well, pray let me hear, and hear quickly. This comfort surely is owing to me; for if life is no worse than chequer-work, I must now have a little white to come, having seen nothing but black, all unchequered dismal black, for a great, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... that of a rather tangled garden, where creepers are continually growing and taking root in new soil and where life is therefore always threatening and being threatened by new life. The point is that we are dealing with life—with its growth and decay; not with the movements of pieces on a chequer-board. ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... brazen columns adorned with "nets of chequer work" in Solomon's Temple are very curious.[361] And the author of "Letters from Italy, 1776," tells of the garment of a statue at Portici, edged with a border resembling fine netting. Egyptian robes of state ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... the young advocate. "Whatever of guilt, crime, imposture, folly, unheard-of misfortunes, and unlooked-for change of fortune, can be found to chequer life, my Last Speech of the Tolbooth should illustrate with examples sufficient to gorge even the public's all-devouring appetite for the wonderful and horrible. The inventor of fictitious narratives has to rack his brains ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... faithful and true. Yonder man is more like the giants in romaunts than a man of mould like ourselves; and yet Christians might take an example from him for his lealty. A simple contrivance this, though, to finger a man from off their enemies' chequer, as if there would not be twenty of the wildcats ready to supply ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... life can never counterfeit. Lucien was living from hand to mouth, spending his money as fast as he made it, like many another journalist; nor did he give so much as a thought to those periodically recurrent days of reckoning which chequer the life of the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac |
