"Dice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... follies of the garrison. The soldiers were oftener gambling and dancing beneath the walls than keeping watch upon the battlements, and nothing was heard from morning till night but the noisy contests of cards and dice, mingled with the sound of the bolero or fandango, the drowsy strumming of the guitar, and the rattling of the castanets, while often the whole was interrupted by the loud brawl and fierce and ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... also that the Crowns is an orderly house. Let me suggest, then, that you have several gentlemen of the army lodging under this roof; that one of these, if politely asked, might own that he had come across such a thing as a dice-box during his sojourn in the Low Countries. It may even be that in the sack of some unpronounceable town or other he has acquired a specimen, and is bringing it home in his valise to exhibit it to his family. Be so good as to inform him that three ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... produce an impression of caricature. Yet many subordinate details—a row of putti in a cinquecento frieze, for instance—and much of the low relief work—especially the Crucifixion with its characteristic episodes of the fainting Maries and the soldiers casting dice—are lovely in ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... games. The jackstraws will be people, and your family can live in that corner of the Parcheesi board, and mine will live in this. The other two corners will be strangers' houses, and the red counters can live in one and the blue counters in the other. This place in the middle will be a park, and these dice can be deer ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... man went to spend his day's earnings and debase himself with drink, was one of the lowest haunts of vice in the city. Gambling with cards, dominoes, and dice, occupied the time of the greater number who made it a place of resort, and little was heard there except language the most obscene and profane. For his daily task at the wheel, the man was paid seventy-five cents a day. His boarding and lodging cost him thirty-one ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... unnatural life, death near enough to make them reckless and far enough to make them gay. Commonly men and women more or less restrain themselves because of to-morrow; but what if there be no to-morrow? What if the dice are heavily weighted against it? And what of their already jeoparded restraint when the crisis has thrown the conventions to the winds and there is little to lighten the ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... impulses of your heart, you will run no risk of mistake, inasmuch as the verdict will be good provided it satisfy the passions that are your sacred law. But, all the same, if I was your President, I should imitate Bridoie, I should appeal to the arbitrament of the dice. In matters of justice it is still ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... was a household word throughout all England for every sort of mischief. Wine, women, dice, cards, racing—in all forms of debauchery he had earned for himself a terrible name. He was of an old and noble family, and it had been hoped that he had sowed his wild oats when he married ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... even condescended to appear as actors on the stage. They devoted themselves with such frantic eagerness to the excitement of gambling, that we read of their staking hundreds of pounds on a single throw of the dice, when they could not even restore the pawned tunics to their shivering slaves. Under the cold marble statues, or amid the waxen likenesses of their famous stately ancestors, they turned night into day with long and foolish orgies, and exhausted land and sea with the demands of ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... 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 ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... is the only one whose demeanour, since your arrival, remains unchanged. The live-long day he is now on one horse and now on another; he invites guests as usual, is merry and entertaining at table, plays at dice, shoots, and at night steals to his mistress. The others, on the contrary, have made a manifest pause in their mode of life; they remain at home, and, from the outward aspect of their houses, you would imagine that there was a ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... wildest disorder. The round table in the centre had been tilted over upon its side, and three broken bottles of wine, with apples, pears, nuts, and the fragments of the dishes containing them, were littered over the floor. A couple of packs of cards and a dice-box lay amongst the scattered feast. Close by the door stood Decimus Saxon, with his drawn rapier in his hand and a second one beneath his feet, while facing him there was a young officer in a blue uniform, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ye saints, whose skill in cavilling, Shock'd at skittles, cards, or dice, Thinks, except for Sunday travelling, Railway gaming is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... for example, that loaded dice may be discovered. Of course no dice are so clumsily loaded that they must always throw certain numbers; otherwise the fraud would be instantly detected. The loading, a constant cause, mingles with the changeable causes which determine what cast will be thrown in each individual instance. ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... always precedes, on the part of the creature to be paid, the certification of the amount. Amerigo knew it, the amount; he still held it, and the delay in his return, making her heart beat too fast to go on, was like a sudden blinding light on a wild speculation. She had thrown the dice, but his hand was ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... by flattery than by physic. Having discovered that Miss Laura was not inclined to give up her gingerbread, he immediately acknowledged its virtues, but recommended that it should be cut into extremely small dice, and allowed, as it were, to melt, away upon the tongue; stating, that her digestive organs were so refined and delicate, that they would not permit them selves to be loaded with any large particles, even of farinaceous compound. Isabel Revel, who had been informed that Mrs Ferguson ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... fiends in hell have flung the dice; The destinies depend On feet that run for fearful price, And fangs that gape to rend; And still the footsteps of his Vice Pursue him to the end:— The feet of his incarnate Vice Shall dog ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of my exploits was the hotel of Transylvania, where there was a faro table in one room, and other games of cards and dice in the gallery. This academy was kept by the Prince of R——, who then lived at Clagny, and most of his officers belonged to our society. Shall I mention it to my shame? I profited quickly by my instructor's tuition. I acquired an amazing facility in sleight of hand tricks, and ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... 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 it establishes the habit of staking ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... lukewarm allegiance to the Hanoverians. They would own no lover who did not don the white cockade of Jacobitism. They would hesitate at no sacrifice to advance the cause of this romantic young gambler who used swords for dice. All this my three days residence in the city had taught me. I was now to learn whether a personal meeting with him would inspire me too with the ardent devotion that animated ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Picture of London Life, Cadging Made Easy, the He-She Man, Doings of the Modern Greeks, Snoozing Kens Depicted, the Common Lodging-house Gallants, Lessons to Lovers of Dice, ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... not know. Perhaps a new voice in her ears, perhaps Poke Drury's tones become suddenly shrill. Or it may be that just a sudden sinking and falling away into utter silence of all voices, the growing still of hands upon dice cups, all eloquent of a new breathless atmosphere in the room had succeeded in impressing upon her sleep-drugged brain the fact of still another vital, electrically charged moment. She turned in her chair. Then she settled ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... me with second sight and the ability to read fortunes. I foretell good an' evil, questions of love and mattermony by means of numbers, cards, dice, dominoes, apple-parings, egg-shells, tea-leaves, an' coffee-grounds." The speaker's voice had taken on the brazen tones of a circus barker. "I pro'nosticate by charms, ceremonies, omens, and moles; by the features of the face, lines of the hand, spots an' blemishes ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... my liking the young woman are not in the dice-box. You call her Lady Ormont: you are not one of the servants. Don't call her Lady ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... care, Promis'd a ripe and plenteous crop to bear Of golden Virtues. But his care was vain: With these were mingled the accursed bane Of noble deeds, fell instruments of Vice, The treacherous Cards and desolating Dice, Which forc'd the noble Gamester, for support, To claim the mercies of a ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... room. Finally, he peeped into the Fourth class-room, and beheld the two invalids masquerading on the stage, and recognised the voice and sentiments of his kinsman, albeit proceeding through the nose, as he flourished his (or rather her) mop in the air, and announced that there was going to be a "dice doise." ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... mind, and he doesn't intend to have his solid convictions disturbed by anything so unimportant as a contradictory fact. Lenny was of the opinion that all mathematics was arcane gobbledygook, and his precise knowledge of the mathematical odds in poker and dice games didn't abate that opinion one whit. Obviously, a mind like that is utterly incapable of understanding a projected thought of scientific content; such a thought bounces off the impregnable mind shield that the bigot has set up around his ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... make them of the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs rubbed fine. Add the yolk of a raw egg, a tablespoonful of melted butter, a saltspoon of salt and half a one of pepper, and flour enough to make a dough which can be easily handled. Roll out; cut into little dice, and make each into a ball by rolling between the palms of the hands. Boil five minutes in ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... Nicholas Auger, 10 years old, binds himself, in 1694, to Wessell Evertson, a cooper, for a term of nine years, and swears that "he will truly serve the commandments of his master Lawfull, shall do no hurt to his master, nor waste nor purloin his goods, nor lend them to anybody at Dice, or other unlawful game, shall not contract matrimony, nor frequent taverns, shall not absent himself from his master's service day or night." In return Evertson will teach Nicholas the trade of a cooper, give him "apparell, meat, drink and bedding" and at the expiration ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... we settle priority, Doctor Hilton?" a girl called out; a tall, striking, brunette laboratory technician whose name Hilton needed a second to recall. "By pulling straws or hair? Or by shooting dice or ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... cheerful on the trail, handled the pack animals competently, during the day, and spent most of the nights grouped around the fire, gambling silently on the fall of the cut-crystal prisms they used for dice. ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... broken fire and gilded the gear of gigantic hoisting cranes. Scaffolding, clinging to bald facades, seemed frail and cobwebby at great height, and slabs of stone, drawn and held by cables near the summit of chutes, looked like dice on the ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... the bolero, the cachucha, or the lascivious movements of the bayaderes, the enterprising half-breed, the indolent Spaniard, and the sedate Chinese, retire to the gaming saloons, to try their fortune at cards and dice. The passion for play is carried to such an extent, that the traders lose or gain in one night sums of 50,000 piasters (L10,000 sterling). The half-breeds, Indians, and Chinese, have also a great passion for cock-fighting; these combats take place in a large arena. I have ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... passion and imagination which, in the noble and grotesque immaturity of the Middle Ages, had murmured confusedly in the popular legends which gave to Ezzelin the Fiend as a father, and Death and Sin as adversaries at dice; which had stammered awkwardly but grandly in the school Latin of Mussato's tragedy of "Eccerinis;" which had wept and stormed and imprecated and laughed for horror in the infinite tragedy—pathetic, grand, and grotesque, like all ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... to him that Fate was idly tossing the dice to and fro, before allowing herself to make the final, decisive cast. From the farther side of the hill, he heard a sudden terrified snort from one of the Boer ponies, then the thud of feet, as they charged up the approaches of ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... at eight. I had an hour to spare, and sallied into the street. I met an honest-faced old acquaintance as much at a loss as myself to slay the hour. We were driven by a shower into shelter. The rattle of dice was heard within a green-baize-covered door. We could not stay for ever shivering on the outside. Fortune favoured me; in half an hour I was master of a thousand pounds; it would have been obvious folly and ingratitude ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... and Napping. 'To top' and 'to nap' are slang terms signifying to cheat, especially with dice. cf. R. Head, Canting Academy (1673), 'What chance of the dye is soonest thrown in topping, shoring, palming, napping.' Both words occur very frequently, and are amply explained in the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... development in organic connection with the existing and constitutional legal status ... the decision on these principles will come not by Parliamentary debate, not by majorities of eleven votes; sooner or later the God who directs the battle will cast his iron dice." ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... 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 ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... of sweet cream and three well-beaten eggs, and stir the whole until the eggs are set. Stuff this into pig entrails, making links six inches long. Keep stored in a cool place, and cook like sausage. Or the boudin may be packed into jars, and sliced or cut into dice and ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... His friendship, 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 away, until Draupadi ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... what's his game? He sure is the lonesomest-lookin' cuss this side of that dead pine on Bald Butte, that I ever seen." But conviviality was the order of the evening, and the punchers grouped together and told and listened to jokes, old and new, talked sagebrush politics, and threw dice for the privilege of paying rather than winning. "Says he's scoutin' for a job cookin'," remarked a young cowboy to the main group of riders. ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... for a matron with daughters to marry and with sons to keep an eye to," it was said, "to have in her household too often a young gentleman who has squandered his fortune in dice and drink and wild living, and who 'twas known was cast off by a reputable young ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the forehead and on the arms, and for the payment of the quint to the officers of the crown. From this port the Indians were sent to the island of Hayti, after having often changed masters, not by way of sale, but because the soldiers played for them at dice."—Humboldt, Personal Narrative, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... numbers, that I might not miss the lucky class. Many conclusions did I form, and many experiments did I try, to determine from which of those tickets I might most reasonably expect riches. At last, being unable to satisfy myself by any modes of reasoning, I wrote the numbers upon dice, and allotted five hours every day to the amusement of throwing them in a garret; and, examining the event by an exact register, found, on the evening before the lottery was drawn, that one of my numbers had been turned up five times more than any of the rest in three hundred and thirty ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... "Dice, che non lauda per alcun modo di metter questo Serenissimo Dominio in tanto pericolo d' habitar un palazzo fabricato in aria."—Pareri di XV. Architetti, con illustrazioni dell' Abbate Giuseppe ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... like the first, bright and cold, without any more snow. Old Gaspard spent his afternoons in watching the eagles and other rare birds which ventured onto those frozen heights, while Ulrich returned regularly to the neck of the Gemmi to look at the village. Then they played at cards, dice or dominoes, and lost and won a trifle, just to create an interest in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... himself, with an enormous sense of relief and warmth, in the passage. The passage was behaving like a dice-box, its disposition was evidently to rattle him about and then throw him out again. He hung on with the convulsive clutch of instinct until the passage lurched down ahead. Then he would make a short run cabin-ward, and clutch ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... under the Stamp Act of 1765. Bills of lading, official documents, deeds, wills, mortgages, notes, newspapers, and pamphlets were to be written or printed only on special stamped paper, on which the tax had been paid. Playing cards paid a stamp tax of a shilling; dice paid ten shillings; and on a college diploma the tax amounted to L2. The Stamp Act bore heavily on just the most dangerous classes of the population— newspaper-publishers, pamphleteers, lawyers, bankers, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... differently, but not inconsistently with their relative circumstances. Both suffered severely from the weather as well as from fatigue; but whilst the French, anticipating an easy and sure victory, played at dice for their prisoners as their stake; the English, having prepared their weapons for the conflict, betook themselves to prayer, and the observance of the other ordinances of ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... frugal entertainment prepared for his supper. The one he viewed with indifference, the other with contempt. A magnificent feast was prepared by his order, and he amused himself, till a very late hour, with dice, and the performances of Pylades, a celebrated dancer. Yet it was observed, that after the crowd of flatterers dispersed, and left him to darkness, solitude, and terrible reflection, he passed a sleepless night; revolving most probably in his mind his own rash folly, the fate ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... voluptatum exitus, et quisquis voluptatum suarum reminisci volet, intelliget, as bitter as gall and wormwood is their last; grief of mind, madness itself. The ordinary rocks upon which such men do impinge and precipitate themselves, are cards, dice, hawks, and hounds, Insanum venandi studium, one calls it, insanae substructiones: their mad structures, disports, plays, &c., when they are unseasonably used, imprudently handled, and beyond their fortunes. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Michael said to Jacob, "Let me go, for the day breaketh," but Jacob held him back, saying, "Art thou a thief, or a gambler with dice, that thou fearest the daylight?" At that moment appeared many different hosts of angels, and they called unto Michael: "Ascend, O Michael, the time of song hath come, and if thou art not in heaven to ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... 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 ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... 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 ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... saying the prayers of the Church, but to care for the things of this world and to look at the plough that has been left is reckoned the highest wisdom. They take up bow and quiver, embrace arms and shield, devote the tribute of alms to dogs and not to the poor, become the slaves of dice and draughts, and of all such things as we are wont to forbid even to the secular clergy, so that we need not marvel if they disdain to look upon us, whom they see so much opposed ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... festivity of three generations, the frolicsome company had begun to practise the ancient and now forgotten pastime of High-jinks. This game was played in several different ways. Most frequently the dice were thrown by the company, and those upon whom the lot fell were obliged to assume and maintain, for a time, a certain fictitious character, or to repeat a certain number of fescennine verses in ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... was to put so many letters or even whole words, into an urn; to shake them together, and throw them out; and whatever should chance to be made out in the arrangement of these letters or words, composed the answer of the oracle. The ancients also made use of dice, drawing tickets, etc., in casting or deciding results. In the Old Testament we meet with many standing and perpetual laws, and a number of particular commands, prescribing and regulating the use of ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... which should be cold and quite dry, very finely, also the mushrooms, cut the potato into small dice, chop the parsley, then mix all well together with the seasonings, and moisten with the German sauce. When perfectly cold, roll into small balls, dip them in the egg and bread crumbs, and ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... the cards are marked and the game crooked—as crooked as Herby's." He began to laugh. "The world's dice are ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... season, would it have held its political supremacy in America? But omnipotent as was the slave-power in the Government, it was not equal to this labor. In the great game, in which Texas was the stakes, Fate had, unawares, slipped into the seat between the gamesters with hands full of loaded dice. At the first throw the South got Texas, at the second the war with Mexico fell out, and at the third new national territory ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... naturally. True that on Monday, back in the office that awaits its victims equally after Sundays golden or dreary, he forgot Ruth's existence for hours at a time. True that at lunch with two VanZile automobile salesmen he ate Wiener Schnitzel and shot dice for cigars, with no signs of a mystic change. It is even true that, dining at the Brevoort with Charley Forbes, he though of Istra Nash, and for a minute was lonely for Istra's artistic dissipation. Yet the ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... have been a tower here from a very early period if this was the bell that summoned the folk-mote. The Guild of Jesus owned the four bells of later times; and when that body was dissolved they reverted to the Crown, and were lost at dice to a Sir Miles Partridge, subsequently executed for sharing in the fortunes of the Protector Somerset. The cloister of the Chapter House, or Convocation House, shut off almost entirely the west wall of the south transept and four bays of the south wall of the nave. This was of the unusual arrangement ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... is not uncommon in Elizabethan writers. Cf. "touch me his hat;" "touch me hir with a pint of sack," etc.; "and stop me his dice you are a villaine" (Lodge's ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... point. Skim, reduce heat and let simmer five hours. Do not allow liquid to boil as it will destroy its gelatinous properties, and the stock will be turbid. The last hour of cooking add one-third cup each celery, carrot and turnip cut in small dice, one-third cup sliced onion, one teaspoon peppercorns, one tablespoon salt, three sprays thyme, one spray marjoram, two sprays parsley, one-half bay leaf. Remove fowl and knuckle; strain soup through double cheese ...
— Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners - A Book of Recipes • Elizabeth O. Hiller
... Blanda Donde Sornan en poblado A la Fresada Vellosa, Que mucho vello ha criado. Dice a la sabana Alba Porque es alba en sumo grado, A la camisa Carona, Al jubon llama apretado: Dice al Sayo Tapador Porque le lleva tapado. Llama a los zapatos Duros, Que las piedras van pisando. A la capa llama nuve, Dice al Sombrero Texado. Respeto ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... he seemed to glide aside, to pass out of Venters's sight. Next he saw many horses with bridles down—all clean-limbed, dark bays or blacks—rustlers' horses! Loud voices and boisterous laughter, rattle of dice and scrape of chair and clink of gold, burst in mingled din from an open doorway. ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... The sage, Vrihadasva, relates the story of Nala to king Yudishthira, in order to console him under the miseries to which he was exposed by bad success in play. By the terms of the gaming transaction, in which he was worsted by Sakuni, who threw the dice for Duryodhana, he was condemned to wander with his brothers for twelve years in the forest. The adventures of Nala showed how that king, having been in the same manner unfortunate with the dice, had suffered still greater ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... perfect a poem as Homer's "Iliad" was not the product of the genius of a great poet, and 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 ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... 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 of preternatural ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... forced the door of the saloon ajar, and was whistling through the crack; but in there it seemed to make no one afraid. Between roars of laughter, the clink of glasses and the rattle of dice on the hardwood counter were heard out in the street. More than one of the passers-by who came within range was taken with an extra shiver in which the vision of wife and little ones waiting at home for his coming was ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... omit the "kala (dice Turpino)" of the original: Torrens preserves "Thus goes the tale" (which it only interrupts). This is simply ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... at tennis, and he threw the dice a-main, And did all things that seemed to him for his own and England's gain; He would not be talked to lightly, he would not be checked or chid; And he got what things he dreamed to get, and did— what ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Oviedo, as contained in the recently published edition of his work, is, "acordaron de yrse a pohlar la costa delante hacia la costa accidental, e fueron a un grand rio (quarenta o quarenta e cico leguas de alli, pocas mas o menos) que si dice Gualdape," (ut supra, p. 628) they agreed to go and settle the coast further on towards the west coast, and sent to a large river (forty or fifty-five leagues from that place, a little more or less) which is called Gualdape. ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... but the rumors persisted. There were students who insisted that he hadn't the conscience of a snake, and a good many of them hinted that no honest man ever had such consistently good luck at cards and dice. ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... France been so thoroughly demoralized by that frightful vice as throughout his reign. Not only did his own example corrupt those immediately about him, but the rage for gaming gradually pervaded all classes. The nobility staked their estates where money failed; the citizens trafficked in cards and dice when they should have been employed in commerce or in science; the very valets gambled in the halls, and the pages in the ante-chambers. Play became the one great business of life throughout the capital; ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... the prevalent spirit of White's at this time is supplied by Lord Lyttelton in a private letter, wherein he wrote that he had fears, should his son become a member of that club, the rattling of a dice-box would shake down all the fine ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... always to be at home by midnight, he shipped himself off to Australia, trusting that so energetic a step "would bring the govenor to his senses." He was music-mad, and appeared to know every opera by heart, and wearied us out of all patience with his everlasting humming of "Ciascun lo dice" "Non piu ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... flaneur that may be met upon the Boulevards; the old, a lustful sinner—women the idol of both. Women is the constant theme of their conversation, their motive for every act. For these they throw the prairie dice; for these they race their swift mustangs. To win them, they paint in hideous guise; to buy them, they steal horses; to capture ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... soon as the sale had concluded, "I've got seven throws, all lucky ones. I'll take any man's bet for two hundred dollars that I gets the gal prize." Nobody seems inclined to accept the challenge. A table is set in the centre of the saloon, the dice are brought on, amidst a jargon of noise and confusion; to this is added drinking, smoking, swearing, and ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... from the hardships of captivity in Tartaria might be expected to seek. Mr. Stith says that it was the testimony of his fellow soldiers and adventurers that "they never knew a soldier, before him, so free from those military vices of wine, tobacco, debts, dice, and oathes." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Naples, the common sewer of Europe? whose women, I believe, would be swallowed up by Vesuvius to-morrow, if it were not that Belphegor is afraid of their making the pit itself too hot to hold him. Well, sir, she had all of mine and more; and when all was gone in wine and dice, woodcocks' brains and ortolans' tongues, I met the witch walking with another man. I had a sword and a dagger; I gave him the first (though the dog fought well enough, to give him his due), and her ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... over the stones the first day. Alvaro lent them dice and they gambled with each other for their new- found wealth. And as Alvaro wished, they quarreled; and Albuquerque and Fonseca drew steel upon each other, and there in the sunshine stabbed each other to death. 'The more for us,' said Alvaro, ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... five sons, the Pandava brethren; how the Pandavas were ousted by the Kauravas from the kingdom, the eldest Pandava prince Yudhishthira having been induced to stake the fortunes of himself and his brethren on a game of dice, in which he was defeated; how the five Pandavas, with their common wife Draupadi (observe this curious and ugly feature of polyandry, which is quite opposed to standard Hindu morals, but is by no means unparalleled in early Indian literature[20]) ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... obiecteth customes of lying in bed, and of dining: namely that ten persons, more or lesse, men and women be altogether in the same bed, and that they eat their meat lying in bed: and that in the meane time they do nothing but play at dice or ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... conduct in the political arena has been that of a shameless and lawless gamester. He succeeded at the time, but the hour of retribution approaches, and he will be obliged to disgorge his winnings, to throw aside his false dice, and to end his days in some retirement, where he may curse his madness at his leisure; for repentance is a virtue with which his heart is likely to remain ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... now be accounted very wonderful. Marocco could walk on his hind legs, and even dance the Canaries. At the bidding of his master he would carry a glove to a specified lady or gentleman, and tell, by raps with his hoof, the numbers on the upper face of a pair of dice. He went through, indeed, much of what is now the regular "business" of the circus horse. In 1600 Banks amazed London by taking his horse up to the vane on the top of St. Paul's Cathedral. Marocco visited Scotland and France, and in these countries his accomplishments ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... to be a great physician and astrologer. But his science had deceived him, if it gave him hope of dying peacefully in his bed at a good old age; his lot was to die with little warning. Cloridan ran his sword through his heart. A Greek and a German followed, who had been playing late at dice: fortunate if they had continued their game a little longer; but they never reckoned a throw like this among their chances. Cloridan next came to the unlucky Grillon, whose head lay softly on his pillow. He dreamed probably of the feast from which he had but just retired; ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... not an article of which, save the boots and trousers, had been made for me. But I had no thoughts to waste upon my own appearance. I sat wondering at the unhesitating way in which I had rushed ahead, and staked my all on this one throw of the dice, so to say. If my man had not left San Francisco, or if he had left, and in another direction, in great probability I had lost all trace of him for ever. Yet I had flung myself on board this train as though I had had my quarry in my ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... looked at me with glassy eyes. It was plain that he had been drinking all the afternoon. He was torpid, and the look on his face was sullen and vindictive. His glance rested on me for a moment, but I could see that he did not recognise me. Two or three other men were sitting there, shaking dice, and they took no notice of him. His condition was evidently too usual to attract attention. I sat down and began ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... great well, and Jean Semur's painted conjuring book stolen from the old sorceress, his grandmother, out of which he told their fortunes; with the musical instruments of others; with their carefully hidden dice and playing-cards, worn or soiled by the fingers of the older gamesters who had discarded them. Like their elders, they read eagerly, in racy, new translations, old Greek and Latin books, with a delightful shudder at the wanton paganism. It was a new element ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... if one could foresee what dice would read tomorrow—dice not yet thrown—one should be able to read what a report would read tomorrow—a report not yet written. In short, if one can foreknow what a comparison will reveal, telepathy before the comparison is unproven. In proving precognition, he had ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)
... in the blood,—that's the hell of it all," he concluded fiercely. "This morning, when I'd had my fill of thinking things out, I took a stiff dose of chlorodyne. Smashed the bottle afterwards, in disgust. But where's the use? The dice are loaded: and no doubt one will be driven back to it again, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... himself. His fare was made up of the choicest delicacies. His seraglio, guarded by eunuchs, contained a multitude of inmates, brought together by his arbitrary command, over whom, in a certain way, the queen-mother presided. His chief diversions were playing at dice within doors, and hunting without. Paradises, or parks, walled in, planted with trees and shrubbery, and furnished with refreshing fountains and streams, were his hunting-ground. Such inclosures ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... men who bestrode high-headed mounts and who wore spurs, wide hats, shaggy chaps, and who, perhaps, carried revolvers hidden away in their hip pockets, men who drank freely, spent their money as freely at dice and cards, and who, all in all, were a picturesque crowd. Elmer took up his hat and went down to the bank and had a talk with John Engle. Virginia's eyes followed ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... lawyer who was trying a case quoted all sorts of laws, read 20 pages of judicial senseless Latin, and then proposed to the judges to throw dice, and if the numbers proved odd the defendant would be ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... che dice Columbus de Terra Rubra, dico medesimamente Io viddi alcune sotto scritioni dell'Ammiraglio, primo che acquistasse lo stato, ou' egli si sotto scriueua, Columbus de Terra Rubra. Ma, tornando al Re d'Inghilterra, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... them and plead with them; quite without knowing it, they were taking on the tone of their new environment. They were learning to swear in voluble English; they were learning to pick up cigar stumps and smoke them, to pass hours of their time gambling with pennies and dice and cigarette cards; they were learning the location of all the houses of prostitution on the "Levee," and the names of the "madames" who kept them, and the days when they gave their state banquets, which the police captains and the big politicians all attended. If a visiting "country customer" ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... and mass was said before him, and hymns chanted discordantly. The elder D'Israeli, from whom I am quoting, writes: "On other occasions, they put burnt old shoes to fume in the censors: ran about the church leaping, singing, dancing, and playing at dice upon the altar, while a boy bishop or pope of fools burlesqued the divine service;" and later on he says: "So late as 1645, a pupil of Gassendi, writing to his master what he himself witnessed at Aix on the Feast of Innocents, ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... castle in Normandy, at a place called L'Aigle. He was spending some time there, in the year 1076, with his court and family. One day William Rufus and Henry were in one of the upper apartments of the castle, playing with dice, and amusing themselves, in company with other young men of the court, in various ways. There was a window in the apartment leading out upon a balcony, from which one might look down upon the court-yard of the castle below. Robert was in this court-yard ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Jayadratha, afraid of Dhananjaya, deserves of everything else to be protected by us. The heroic Yuyudhana and Vrikodara have both gone against the ruler of the Sindhus. All this that hath come is the fruit of that match at dice conceived by Sakuni's intellect. Neither victory nor defeat took place in the (gaming) assembly. Now that we are engaged in this sport, there will be victory or defeat. Those innocent things with which Sakuni had formerly played in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... delicately characteristic of one who had lived and been reared in the best society, and had been precipitated from it by dice and drabbing; yet still it strikes against my feelings as a note out of tune, and as not coalescing with that pastoral tint which gives such a charm to this act. It is too Macbeth-like in the "snapper ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... struck Hands all of a heap; he began to see the dice going against him; and after an obvious hesitation, he also hauled himself heavily into the shrouds, and, with the dirk in his teeth, began slowly and painfully to mount. It cost him no end of time and groans to haul his wounded leg behind him; and I had quietly finished my arrangements before ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of dice, called "sa'-ro," is universal. Instead of the familiar dots the marks on the small wooden cubes are incised lines made with a knife. These lines follow no set pattern. One pair of dice which I observed were marked as shown in fig. 2. The player has five chances, and if he can pair ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... 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 ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... the mighty current 'as things of life,' bearing speculators, merchants, dandies, fine ladies, everything real, and everything affected, in the form of humanity, with pianos, and stocks of novels, and cards, and dice, and flirting, and love-making, and drinking, and champagne, and on the deck, perhaps, three hundred fellows, who have seen alligators, and neither fear whiskey, nor gun-powder. A steamboat, coming from ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... everything in Revelations had a hidden meaning, and the expert found this obscure. There had been artless speculation among the listeners. A private with dice had professed to solve the riddle of the Number Seven, and had even alleged that twelve might be easier to throw if one kept repeating the verse, but this by his fellows was held to be rank superstition. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... destroy you or to involve the emperor's cause in ruin with you. For war is wont to be brought to a successful issue, not by unreasoning haste, but by the use of good counsel and forethought in estimating the turn of the scale at decisive moments. You, however, act as though you were playing at dice, and want to risk all on a single cast; but it is not my custom to choose the short course in preference to the advantageous one. In the second place, you promise that you will help us do battle against the enemy; but when have you ever taken training in war? Or who that has learned such things ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... dice was to decide the matter. While Lantry, who was appointed to make the throw, rattled the dice in the box, the diggers crowded round in eager curiosity, for, besides the unusual disparity between the stakes, there was much probability ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... an infernal bad road, the dice roll,' was the answer. 'They will finish their game in quiet. That is all. Lord, how your folks stare! Have they never ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman |
