"Toss-up" Quotes from Famous Books
... said Bob. "One knows what one is leaving, but one doesn't know what one is going to. It is a toss-up whether there is to be any happiness in the venture. But I prophesy the witch will see to it you don't want to come back in a hurry. You'll ... — Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... moment, however, speech or silence seemed immaterial, and she merely clapped her hands together, and looked at the distant woods with the rust-like bloom on their brown, and the green and blue landscape through the steam of her own breath. It seemed a mere toss-up whether she said, "I love you," or whether she said, "I love the beech-trees," ... — Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Quietly at first, and then with growing heat, he reviewed the advantages of backing out. It involved a loss; but (come to think of it) no such great loss after all; only that of the tontine, which had been always a toss-up, which at bottom he had never really expected. He reminded himself of that eagerly; he congratulated himself upon his constant moderation. He had never really expected the tontine; he had never even very definitely ... — The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... about the constitution of your present social Dis-order. A duel is downright childish, my boy! utter nonsense and folly! When one of two living men must be got out of the way, none but an idiot would leave chance to decide which it is to be; and in a duel it is a toss-up—heads or tails—and there you are! Now I, for instance, can hit the ace in the middle of a card five times running, send one bullet after another through the same hole, and at thirty-five paces, moreover! With that little accomplishment you might think yourself certain of killing your man, mightn't ... — Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... then I stuck fast in a grammatical bog. The Professor was very patient with me, but it must have been torment to him, and now and then he'd look at me with such an expression of mild despair that it was a toss-up with me whether to laugh or cry. I tried both ways, and when it came to a sniff or utter mortification and woe, he just threw the grammar on to the floor and marched out of the room. I felt myself disgraced and deserted forever, but didn't ... — Little Women • Louisa May Alcott |