"Chess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... where were already gathered his nephew Roland, with Oliver his comrade, Geoffrey of Anjou his standard bearer, and many other famous Knights. They lay about on white carpets doing what they best liked—some played games, chess or draughts, but these were mostly the old men who were glad to be still: the young ones fenced and tilted. Under a pine tree, close to a sweet-briar, a seat of massive gold was placed, and on it sat the Emperor of the fair country of France, a strong ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... seemed to promise a good deal of varied experience, and I had let the year or two run on to four years before the end came. The offer came to me through the last thing in the world I should have put forward as a qualification for a salaried post, and that was chess.' ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... from his scholastic days, an elaborate clearness of enunciation and a certain nervous determination to be firm and correct upon all issues, important and unimportant alike. He is a sacerdotalist and a chess player, and suspected by many of the secret practice of the higher mathematics—creditable rather than interesting things. His conversation is copious and given much to needless detail. By many, indeed, his intercourse is condemned, to put it plainly, as "boring," and such have even done ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... wife, and all the good knights maimed, I trust that there is no one hurt to death, For our wild whim: and was it then for this, Was it for this we gave our palace up, Where we withdrew from summer heats and state, And had our wine and chess beneath the planes, And many a pleasant hour with her that's gone, Ere you were born to vex us? Is it kind? Speak to her I say: is this not she of whom, When first she came, all flushed you said to me Now had you got a friend of your own age, Now could you share your thought; now should men see ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... desperate effort to pierce the wall of gray, and once or twice his heroic veterans almost succeeded in battering their way through. But at every crisis Lee rose to the emergency and moved his regiments as a skillful chess player manipulates his pieces on the board, now massing his troops at the danger point and now diverting his adversary's attack by a swift counter-stroke delivered by men unacquainted with defeat. Both his hands were heavily swathed in bandages and far too painful ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... adapted to the purpose because it gives way certainly, though very slowly, to the pressure of the glass. In order that it may have room to change its form, grooves are cut through it in both directions, so as to leave it in the form of squares, like those on a chess-board. ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... standing on the same squares of the chess-board where we left them, we say they are all in the SAME place, or unmoved, though perhaps the chessboard hath been in the mean time carried out of one room into another; because we compared them only to the parts of the chess-board, which keep the same distance ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... have transmitted his or her distinguishing traits through a series of lives that cover more than two centuries, to our own contemporary. Inherited qualities move along their several paths not unlike the pieces in the game of chess. Sometimes the character of the son can be traced directly to that of the father or of the mother, as the pawn's move carries him from one square to the next. Sometimes a series of distinguished fathers follows in a line, or a succession of superior mothers, as the black or ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Chartres, that Catherine was more unconquered than invulnerable as to love, was paying court to her. The play of all these passions strangely complicated those of politics,—making, as it were, a double game of chess, in which both parties had to watch the head and heart of their opponent, in order to know, when a crisis came, whether the one would betray ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... presence of Miss Flora Cooper makes Willow Valley a new place. At least six hours are taken from the length of the days, though I have given up my afternoon slumber, and play chess and backgammon instead of drumming on the table or piano. Now am I relieved from that tedious companion, my own self. I never liked him very well; I had rather do any thing than have a sober talk with a serious ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... conceived as existing and studying to perfect itself, but without rulers a Utopia is impossible though the theory of its matrimony be complete. And the difficulty in this question is not simply the difficulty of a complicated chess problem, for example, in which the whole tangle of considerations does at least lie in one plane, but a series of problems upon different levels ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... when he and the rector started on long fishing tramps; and in the evenings, when Willie had gone to bed, and his cook was reading "The Death Beds of Eminent Saints" by the kitchen fire, Mr. Denner worked out chess problems by himself in his library, or read Cavendish and thought of next Saturday; and besides all this, he went once a week to Mercer, and sat waiting for clients in a dark back office, while he studied ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... Rooms, frescoed with illustrations of Goethe, Schiller, and Wieland; there is the room where Goethe and the Grand-Duke used to play chess together; there is the conservatory opening from it where they liked to sit and chat; everywhere in the pictures and sculptures, the engraving and intaglios, are the witnesses of the tastes they shared, the love they both had for Italy, and for beautiful Italian things. The prince was not so great ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... belonged to Goethe, a lead pencil used by Emerson, an autograph letter of Matthew Arnold, and a chip from a tree felled by Mr. Gladstone. Its library contains a number of rare books, including a fine collection on chess, of which game several of the members are ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... midnight he found his wife and his old friend Willoughby Crane playing chess in the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... has discovered a tenth muse and writes impassioned verses to the Goddess of Chess whom he apostrophises as 'Sublime Caissa'! Zukertort and Steinitz are his heroes, and he is as melodious on mates as he is graceful on gambits. We are glad to say, however, that he has other subjects, and ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... growled West, "you won't play chess, you won't eat things. You just drive a chap to study!" As spring came in the school talk turned to baseball and rowing. For the former Joel had little desire, but rowing attracted him, and he began to allow himself the unusual ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... of wide bench, which, covered with a neat plaid, looks quite sofa-like. A little pine table, with oilcloth tacked over the top of it, stands in one corner of the room, upon which are arranged the chess and cribbage boards. There is a larger one for dining purposes, and as unpainted pine has always a most dreary look, F. went everywhere in search of oilcloth for it, but there was none at any of the bars. At last, "Ned," the Humboldt Paganini, remembered ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... specially entertaining in an old-family-history way, with a view to keeping his patient within doors for a safe period. He had conceived a great liking for Frowenfeld, and often, of an afternoon, would drift in to challenge him to a game of chess—a game, by the way, for which neither of them cared a farthing. The immigrant had learned its moves to gratify his father, and the doctor—the truth is, the doctor had never quite learned them; but he was one of those ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... trouble him. The slaughter of thousands of men on the battle-field did not disturb his equanimity. He was unalterably fixed in his purposes, unscrupulous in the means employed, shrewd, keen and far-sighted in his measures, Europe being to him but a great chess-board, on which his hand moved kings, knights, and pawns with mechanical inflexibility. To him the end justified the means, however lacking in justice or mercy ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... down-dropped eyes and a pretty sacred smile on her lips, and now, when she spied on the other side of the street the figure of the vicar, she tripped slantingly across the road to him, as if by the move of a knight at chess, looking everywhere else, and only perceiving him with glad surprise at the very last moment. He was a great frequenter of tea parties and except in Lent an assiduous player of bridge, for a clergyman's duties, so he very properly held, were not confined to visiting the poor and exhorting the sinner. ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... they had been gathering for forty years and more, looked up and laughed as he passed; the ladies shopping in the streets paused to chat with him; and even the dry-goods clerks and lawyers, playing chess or draughts under the China trees that shaded the sidewalks, were willing to be interrupted long enough to exchange jokes ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... authorship, come into view, when the history of thought and of inquiry in each of its branches, or in any considerable number of them, has to be presented, the necessities of the case are terribly widened. Chess is a specialty and a narrow one. But I recollect a statement in the Quarterly Review, years back, that there might be formed a library of twelve hundred volumes upon chess. I think my deceased friend, Mr. Alfred Denison, collected between two and three ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone
... which had been left in the hall, leaning against the wall, was a perfect treasure to those who most craved active exercise. They practiced all sorts of gymnastics on this ladder, and cooled the fever in their blood with fatigue. Chess finally became the standard amusement, and those who did not understand the game watched it nevertheless with as much apparent relish as if they understood it. Chess books were bought and studied as carefully as any work ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... in the low country of Flanders. You have no grasp of what all the noise and struggle means, for you cannot see over the shoulders of the crowd. But in Lorraine you have only to ascend a hill and the moves in the chess game of war ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... Mary's favor. Panic seized him, and he turned his back on Miss Maine and devoted himself to Mary. Miss Maine went to stay with some neighbors, the Colemans. One night she was caught at the Mandisons by a storm. Mary asked Windham to entertain her, and he went and asked her to play chess. She declined coldly, and Windham turned away with such a look that Mary wondered what Agnes could have said so unkind. And the next day Miss Maine spoke so gently to him that it warmed him all through. Still he persistently ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... Lebanon of old. Into a quietness as of fallen bloom Their feet sank in that chamber; and, all round, Soft hills of Moorish cushions dimly drowsed On glimmering crimson couches. Near the lamp An ebony chess-board stood inlaid with squares Of ruby and emerald, garnished with cinquefoils Of silver, bears and ragged staves; the men, Likewise of precious stones, were all arrayed— Bishops and knights and ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... is bored with the sameness of his chess every evening. He would like to bring literary and scientific people about the Court, vary the society, and infuse a more useful tendency into it. The Queen however has no fancy to encourage such people. This arises from a feeling ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... of a plain, set round about with a margin of green downs. They were large enough to have the charm of vague, indefinite extension, and yet all could be distinctly seen. Large squares of green corn that was absorbing its yellow from the sunlight; chess squares, irregularly placed, of brown furrows; others of rich blood-red trifolium; others of scarlet sainfoin and blue lucerne, gardens of scarlet poppies here and there. Not all of these, of course, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... (le moi), as M. Nicole says, had so wide a dominion; who was the centre of so many orbs. What affairs had he not to manage! what designs, what projects, what secrets! what interests to unravel, what wars to undertake, what intrigues, what noble games at chess to play and to direct! Ah! my God, grant me a little time; I want to give check to the Duke of Savoy—checkmate to the Prince of Orange. No, no, you shall not have a moment, not a single moment. ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... ever been to Turin, by the way? To that city which reminds one of nothing so much as a gigantic chess-board set down upon the banks of the yellow river—that city with never-ending, straight streets, all running at right angles to each other, and whose extremities frame in delicious pictures of wooded hill or snow-capped Alp; whose inhabitants ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... courts and gardens of proportionate size. All these plots were assigned to different heads of families. Each square plot is encompassed by handsome streets for traffic; and thus the whole city is arranged in squares just like a chess-board, and disposed in a manner so perfect and masterly that it is impossible to give a description that should do ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... be overcome in setting words to sounds were like a game of chess—a pleasing diversion. In a month he knew as much of the science of music as many men did who had grubbed at the work a lifetime. "The finances! Get your principles right and then 'tis a mere matter of detail, requiring only concentration—I ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... as his business prospered, Franklin found more and more time for study and self-improvement. In 1733 he began the acquisition of languages, teaching himself to read French fluently, and then passing on to Italian and Spanish. Chess was always a favorite amusement with him; and we can imagine the grave philosopher playing a cautious and invulnerable game, with now and then, when least expected, a brilliant sally. But his conscience seems always ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... and breathe the open air. Every day Henriette, when her father was out, allowed him to race up and down the stairs, played at hide-and-seek with him in the passages, let him dance her round and round the lower rooms. Or else she played games with him, cards, chess, tric-trac; or he lay and listened to her while she told him fairy tales; listened with a dreamy half-understanding, with a certainty, underlying all his impatience, that there was nothing to live for now. ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... Cheerfulness gajeco. Cheer up rekuragxigi. Cheese fromagxo. Chemise cxemizo. Chemist apotekisto. Chemist-shop apoteko. Chemistry hxemio. Cheque cxeko. Cherry cxerizo. Cherub kerubo. Chess-pieces sxakoj. Chess-board sxaka tabulo. Chest of drawers komodo. Chest (box) kesto. Chest brusto. Chestnut (edible) kasxtano. Chevalier kavaliro. Chew macxi. Chicane cxikani. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... instrument; if that fail, he takes the height of his lord with a hawking pole. He follows the man's fortune, not the man, seeking thereby to increase his own. He pretends he is most undeservedly envied, and cries out, remembering the game, chess, that a pawn before a king is most played on. Debts he owns none but shrewd turns, and those he pays ere he be sued. He is a flattering glass to conceal age and wrinkles. He is mountain's monkey that, climbing a tree and skipping from bough to bough, gives you back his ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... mouse until someone said it was." The doctor turned and looked searchingly at Hoskins, who still sat quietly over his chess. ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... silence was never actually enforced; and as long as the members amused themselves in a reasonably quiet manner, and without turning the place into a bear-garden, they were allowed to converse over their games of chess or draughts, and exchange their opinions on the news of ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... the one. He's been hoverin' 'round, like an old buzzard, for three or four years now, playin' chess with the old man while he lasted, but always with his pop-eyes fixed on Marion. And since she's been left alone he'd been callin' reg'lar once a week, urging her to be his tootsy-wootsy No. 3. He was the main wheeze in some ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... therefore, as Louis XIII had his, and these two powerful rivals vied with each other in procuring, not only from all the provinces of France, but even from all foreign states, the most celebrated swordsmen. It was not uncommon for Richelieu and Louis XIII to dispute over their evening game of chess upon the merits of their servants. Each boasted the bearing and the courage of his own people. While exclaiming loudly against duels and brawls, they excited them secretly to quarrel, deriving an immoderate satisfaction or genuine regret from the success or defeat of their ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... passed in chess, music and conversation, and after an early tea Dr. and Mrs. Peters bade good-by to their entertainers and ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... at a depth of about three thousand feet, the river boiled through the rocky gorge until it reached the village of Perewelle at the base of the line of mountains, whose cultivated paddy-fields looked no larger than the squares upon a chess-board. On the opposite side of the river rose a precipitous and impassable mountain, even to a greater altitude than the facing ridge upon which I stood, forming as grand a foreground as the eye could desire. Above, below, around, there was the bellowing ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... a chap called Cloyster. James Orlebar Cloyster. The Reverend brought him down to teach boxing. For my own part, I don't fancy anything in the way of brutality. The club, so I thought, had got on very nicely with more intellectual pursuits: draughts, chess, bagatelle, and what-not. But the Rev. wanted boxing, and boxing it had to be. Not that it would have done for him or me to have mixed ourselves up in it. He had his congregation to consider, and I am often on duty ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... their intercourse was still more subtle, and now they sat without exchange of glance or gesture, silent as chess players, looking up the narrow water into a sunset exquisite in the delicacy of its silvery plumes, fleeces pink and dusk, and illimitable distances of palest green seen through fan-rays of white light shot down ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... up and down, some, squatted Upon their hams, were occupied at chess; Others in monosyllable talk chatted, And some seem'd much in love with their own dress. And divers smoked superb pipes decorated With amber mouths of greater price or less; And several strutted, others slept, and some Prepared for supper ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... trophy outside to freeze, and found the Trio had decamped to the Little Cabin. He glanced up anxiously to see if the demijohn was on the shelf. Yes, and Kaviak sound asleep in the bottom bunk. The Colonel would climb up and have forty winks in the top one before the Boy got in for their game of chess. He didn't know how long he had slept when a faint scratching pricked through the veil of slumber, and he said to himself, "Kaviak's on a raid again," but he was too sodden with sleep to investigate. Just before he dropped off again, however, opening a heavy eye, he saw ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... Shuffle-board, chess, and backgammon, with exercise and pleasant converse, will while away the intervening hours so quickly, that, if you do not keep a bright look-out, you will be surprised by the dinner-bell before you think of your toilet, which, if a luxury to you on shore, will be thrice welcome at ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... Was it possible, he asked himself, for a man to have two natures, quite distinct in tastes? He worried himself almost to distraction over the question; but as there was no one to answer it, he drove it from his mind by spending the evening at the Hamiltons' teaching Jessie to play chess. ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... a few hours on the 8th there was a lull and the store of ice was replenished, but the 9th and 10th were again spent indoors, repairing and refitting tents, poles and other sledging gear during the working hours, and reading or playing chess and bridge in the leisure time. Harrisson carved an excellent set of chessmen, distinguishing the "black" ones by a stain of ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... years when he entered as office-boy into the employment of Briggs & Livingstone—the firm at the time of which I am now writing was Lynde, Livingstone & Co. Mr. David Lynde lived in a set of chambers up town, and dined at his club, where he usually passed the evenings at chess with some brother antediluvian. A visit to the theatre, when some old English comedy or some new English ballet happened to be on the boards, was the periphery of his dissipation. What is called society saw nothing of him. He was a rough, breezy, ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Lucas, was all devotion and meekness. Don Juan saw that this young girl was a woman to make a long fight with a passion before yielding to it, so he hoped to keep from her any love but his until after his death. It was a serious jest, a game of chess which he had reserved ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... stay quiet, dusted the carriage, arranged his hair, remoulded his hat, encouraged his moustache, and in rather less than a quarter of a minute was ready to conduct her. Italians are born knowing the way. It would seem that the whole earth lay before them, not as a map, but as a chess-board, whereon they continually behold the changing pieces as well as the squares. Any one can find places, but the finding of people is ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... drawback. For the mind of the reader, always bent to pick up clews, receives no impression of reality or life, rather of an airless, elaborate mechanism; and the book remains enthralling, but insignificant, like a game of chess, not a work of human art. It seemed the cause might lie partly in the abrupt attack; and that if the tale were gradually approached, some of the characters introduced (as it were) beforehand, and the book started in the tone of a novel of manners and experience briefly treated, ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... collection of books of every description, was, as might have been expected, peculiarly rich in works of fiction. I was plunged into this great ocean of reading without compass or pilot; and unless when some one had the charity to play at chess with me, I was allowed to do nothing save read, from morning to night. As my taste and appetite were gratified in nothing else, I indemnified myself by becoming a glutton of books. Accordingly, I believe, I read almost all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... of the great work of Firdausi. Even the distant land of Hindustan was explored in the search after varied knowledge, and contributed to the learning and civilization of the time the fables of Bidpai and the game of chess. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... you have only to reckon how much you will give to avoid chapel." And yet they were very nice fellows. If they began by riding on John's back round the quad, they did not give him the cold shoulder—quite the reverse. He was asked everywhere to wine; he beat them all at chess; and they invaded him at all hours. "It does little good sporting his oak," wrote his mother, describing how Lord Desart and Grimston climbed in through his window while he was hard at work. "They say midshipmen and Oxonians have more lives than a cat, and they ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... of Hertfordshire are many, if we include several so small as hardly to deserve the name. They are the Ash, Beane, Bulbourne, Chess, Colne, Gade, Hiz, Ivel, Lea, Maran, Purwell, Quin, Rhee, Rib, ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... astounded Dickens by outlining the entire plot of "Barnaby Rudge" when only a few of the first chapters had been published; if he wrote imaginatively of science, he in fact demonstrated in "Maelzel's Chess Player" that a pretended automaton was operated by a man. "Hop Frog" and "The Cask of Amontillado" are old-world stories of revenge. "The Island of the Fay" and "The Domain of Arnheim" are landscape studies, the one of calm ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... my eyelids I constructed chess-boards and played both sides of long games through to checkmate. But when I had become expert at this visualized game of memory the exercise palled on me. Exercise it was, for there could be no real contest when the same player played both sides. I tried, and tried vainly, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... the head of a game of chess. The generals of the Danes were beaten at it, and they were vexed; and Cennedigh was killed on a hill near Fermoy. He put the Holy Gospels in his breast as a protection, but he was struck through them with a reeking dagger. It ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... his memory with indelible infamy. The story, in substance, I understand to be this—That Lord Braxfield once tried a man for forgery at the Circuit at Dumfries, who was not merely an acquaintance, but an intimate friend of his Lordship, with whom he used to play at chess: That he did this as coolly as if he had been a perfect stranger: That the man was found guilty: That he pronounced sentence of death upon him; and then added, "Now, John, I think I have checkmated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... amongst the trout on the Chess! I wrote for permission to spend one afternoon only upon certain private waters, and the noble owner by return of post sent me an order for two days. It was June. The meadows, hedgerows—ay! and even the prosaic railway embankments—were decked with floral colouring, and at Rickmansworth ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... increased. The seas ran mountains high. The hurricane, like an executioner hastening to his victim, began to dismember the craft. There came, in the twinkling of an eye, a dreadful crash: the top-sails were blown from the bolt-ropes, the chess-trees were hewn asunder, the deck was swept clear, the shrouds were carried away, the mast went by the board, all the lumber of the wreck was flying in shivers. The main shrouds gave out although they were turned in, and stoppered ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... time playing at chess with Helen, and had the best of the game, but at that moment he made a false move, was check-mated, rose hastily, threw the men together on the board, and forgot to regret his shameful defeat, or to compliment Helen upon her victory. Lady Castlefort, having just discovered ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... sleeplessness and its cause already referred to—an opening so felicitous that it was afterwards imitated by Froissart. And so, Chaucer continues, as he could not sleep, to drive the night away he sat upright in his bed reading a "romance," which he thought better entertainment than chess or draughts. The book which he read was the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid; and in it he chanced on the tale of Ceyx and Alcyone—the lovers whom, on their premature death, the compassion of Juno changed into the seabirds that bring good luck to mariners. ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... the Kiefel. He also kneaded bread in the hand, until it became as plastic as clay. This he modelled into snuffboxes (with strips of rag for hinges, and a piece of whalebone for a spring), draughts, chess-men, pipe-bowls, and other articles. When dry, they became hard and serviceable; and he sold them among the prisoners and the prison officials. He obtained thus a number of comforts not afforded by the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... softly. Why blame me? What business is it of mine. Do I love the cripple? Have I robbed the bank and murdered my double? This is not my game; it is Frontignac's. Would you have me kick over his chess board?" ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... pure logic, in the form of contest. Far more so than chess, which is merely sustained effort of concentration. Are you ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... for the girl and boy! for morning after morning their hands would be together tying up the same vines, or clearing out the same flower bed; day after day at the doctor's orders Traverse attended Clara on her rides; night after night their blushing faces would be bent over the same sketch book, chess ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... dreamed that we were no more than the toys of chance, the valueless shuttles between a rich man's gold and the kisses of a courtesan. We that likened ourselves to the conquerors of worlds were no better than petty pawns on an unfriendly chess-board, making moves of which we knew nothing, in obedience to forces of which we were as ignorant as children. All we knew, all we cared to know, in our then mood, was that we had come to the point where it was ordained that we were to meet and ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... afternoon exercise was then taken, and the evening meal, of tea, next partaken of. If it was school night, the voluntary pupils went to their tasks, the masters to their posts; reading men producing their books, writing men their desks, artists painted by candle-light, and cards, chess, or draughts, combined with conversation, and an evening's glass of grog, and a cigar or pipe, served to bring round ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... creature's back." I confess I found her rather disquieting company. The evening drew on. Lamps were brought by a man with a nondescript face and very quiet footsteps. Seaton was told to bring out the chess-men. And we played a game, she and I, with her big chin thrust over the board at every move as she gloated over the pieces and occasionally croaked "Check!" after which she would sit back inscrutably staring ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... uninterested third party, led them into their former habits of easy chat, and, after having served awhile as the channel of communication through which they chose to address each other, set them down to a pensive game at chess, and very dutifully went to tease papa, who was still busied with his drawings. The chess-players, you must observe, were placed near the chimney, beside a little work-table, which held the board and men, the Colonel ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and yesterday you walked three miles out, on the Southern turnpike, and came back soaked to the knees. To-day the storm is slightly increasing, but you are dry thus far, and wish to remain so; exercise is a humbug; you will give it all up, and go to the Chess-Club. Don't go to the Chess-Club; come ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... previous night, was the old Jacobin, the old senator, the old Carbonaro, laughing at the guillotine, the cannon, and the dagger—M. Noirtier, playing with revolutions—M. Noirtier, for whom France was a vast chess-board, from which pawns, rooks, knights, and queens were to disappear, so that the king was checkmated—M. Noirtier, the redoubtable, was the next morning 'poor M. Noirtier,' the helpless old man, at the tender mercies of the weakest creature in the household, that is, his grandchild, Valentine; ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... lofty-souled, That city guarded and controlled, With towering Sal trees belted round,(65) And many a grove and pleasure ground, As royal Indra, throned on high, Rules his fair city in the sky.(66) She seems a painted city, fair With chess-board line and even square.(67) And cool boughs shade the lovely lake Where weary men their thirst may slake. There gilded chariots gleam and shine, And stately piles the Gods enshrine. There gay sleek people ever ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... certain that the life and fortune of every one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game at chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... those which arise through a community of interests, are all dispersed, and the broadest, most express, and most positive interdictions are promulgated against their revival under any pretext whatever.[2250] France is cut up into geometrical sections like a chess-board, and, within these improvised limits, which are destined for a long time to remain artificial, nothing is allowed to subsist but isolated individuals in juxtaposition. There is no desire to spare organized bodies where the cohesion is great, and least ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... I am all fair and above-board, and no hole-and-corner gambling for me. And what tale has he to tell? Why that "Another night, not using his special light at the time, two other passengers began a game of chess under its rays." Which they had no right whatever to do. But I winked at it, and when the first officer was coming his rounds I winked at them; but this friendly act on my part they did not heed, and consequently ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... give a list of his amusements—Pickwick, chivalric romances, the Daily Telegraph, Staunton's games of chess, and finally analysis of the Dock Company's bill of charges ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... hurried: I can make excellent impromptus at leisure, but on the instant could never say or do anything worth notice. I could hold a tolerable conversation by the post, as they say the Spaniards play at chess, and when I read that anecdote of a duke of Savoy, who turned himself round, while on a journey, to cry out "a votre gorge, marchand de Paris!" I said, "Here is a trait of ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... So the books, chess-boards, and dominoes were all put away, and a new steel pen and a sheet of notepaper, neatly embossed with the heading "Crichton House School" in old English letters, having been served out to everyone, each boy prepared himself to write down such things as filial affection, strict ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... addressed themselves to their meal. So, having blithely breakfasted, they first of all sang some dainty and jocund ditties, and then, as they were severally minded, composed them to sleep or sat them down to chess or dice, while Dioneo and Lauretta fell a ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Victor's arrangements, sent him word to defend Marengo to the very last extremity. He himself needed time to prepare his game on this great chess-board inclosed between the Bormida, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... of character or intellect, that we attain to worthy pleasures. Men and women contend for each other in the lists of love, like rival mesmerists; the active and adroit decide their challenges in the sports of the body; and the sedentary sit down to chess or conversation. All sluggish and pacific pleasures are, to the same degree, solitary and selfish; and every durable bond between human beings is founded in or heightened by some element of competition. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Saint-Pol, Constable of France, perished on the scaffold. Besides these a score of the greater nobles of France had fallen, nor could the scarlet of the Cardinalate shield Balue from its vengeance. If these, the great ones of the chess-board, were beyond the pale of mercy, what hope would there be for a simple pawn like Stephen La Mothe, if once he fell beneath that inflexible ban? And yet to the courtier the King's question could have but ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... want, it really seemed that he had provided for everything. If he liked, he could go to church on Friday morning; hunt otters from twelve to one on Saturday; toboggan or dig for badgers on Monday. He had the different suits necessary for those who attend a water-polo meeting, who play chess, or who go out after moths with a pot of treacle. And even, in the last resort, he ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... near the base of the stone-ladders; a practice unquestionably taken from the original, unsophisticated, domestic defences of this wary and enterprising race. Among a great many of these chevaux-de-frise, I remarked certain iron images, that resemble the kings of chess-men, and which I took, at first, to be symbols of the calculating qualities of the owners of the mansions—a species of republican heraldry—but which the brigadier told me, on inquiry, were no more than a fashion that had descended from the custom of having stuffed images ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Cousin Chilian, who had been playing a rather prolonged game of chess with a visitor. But Bentley kept on with them, and said good-night with a polite bow, adding, "She must come again, Mr. Leverett, we had such ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... SPECIAL TIMES FOR YOUR RECREATIVE STUDY.—Cultivate some hobby as a relief from your concentrated study of books. Music, some games of cards, chess, billiards, or other relaxations, are admirable means of recuperation. When you indulge in recreation or recreative reading, do not let the mind worry about problems of your previous studies. Make your recreative ...
— How to Study • George Fillmore Swain
... they said, from sea, and come with sunburned skins from a very long voyage to the South; and one of them had a board and chessmen under his arm, and they were complaining that they could find no one who knew how to play chess. This was the year that the Tournament was in England. And a little dark man at a table in a corner of the room, drinking sugar and water, asked them why they wished to play chess; and they said they would play any man for ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... company of chess-men, standing on the same squares of the chess-board where we left them, we say they are all in the SAME place, or unmoved, though perhaps the chessboard hath been in the mean time carried out of one room into another; because we compared them only to the parts of the chess-board, which ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... "Young Chevalier" when France took it into her head to make a pawn of him in the political chess-game with England. As a man he was beneath contempt; as a "King"—well, he was a Roi pour rire; but at least the Royal House he represented might be made a useful weapon against the arrogant Hanoverian who sat on his father's ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... he could tell a tale would serve a man for wages, Sing a song would put the joy of dancin' in two sticks; But Saints between themselves and harm that saw him in his rages, Blazin' and oratin' over chess and politics. ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison
... Chess is a game which can only be played by two persons at the same time. The requisites are a board consisting of 64 squares of alternate black and white, and 32 pieces of wood, ivory, bone or other composition, which ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... their experience teaches is, that Nature makes no leaps,—does nothing per saltum. The greatest brain that ever lived, no doubt, was only a small fraction of an idea ahead of the second best. Just look at the chess-players. Leaving out the phenomenal exceptions, the nice shades that separate the skilful ones show how closely their brains approximate,—almost as closely as chronometers. Such a person is a "knight-player,"—he must have ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... dining at my club with two friends, one of them a young Dutch attache, the other a barrister of my Inn. We did ourselves pretty well, and took our cigars into the smoking-room, which was crowded. Some men in a corner were playing chess; the club bore, decent enough in peace but positively lethal in war, was demonstrating to a group of impatient listeners that the Staff work at G.H.Q. was all wrong, when, catching sight of me, he came up and said, "Hullo, old man, back from the ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... are far more amusable, far more jovial and open-hearted. They have their coffee-houses every night, and their religious festivities periodically; they play at all sorts of complicated games, resembling draughts and chess, and find means ingeniously to vary their sports. If they compromise their dignity, they succeed in whiling away their leisure time far more successfully than the pride-stuffed Levantine. One of their amusements—called the game of plaff—is worth mentioning, especially as it is not only ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... with, dialecticians of varying creeds—himself seated in the middle, and the doctrinaires in four pulpits around him; here is the Mint; here is the house of the Turkish queen, with its elaborate carvings and decorations; here is the girls' school, with a courtyard laid out for human chess, the pieces being slave-girls; here is a noble mosque; here is the vast court where the great father of his people administered justice, or what approximated to it, and received homage. Here are the spreading stables and riding ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... and set me in the seventh heaven of satisfaction. My father (for I can scarcely say myself) was trying at this time a "straddle" in wheat between Chicago and New York; the operation so called, is, as you know, one of the most tempting and least safe upon the chess-board of finance. On the Thursday, luck began to turn against my father's calculations; and by the Friday evening I was posted on the boards as a defaulter for the second time. Here was a rude blow: my father ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... magic of its own brightness. The boughs were waving over head, covered with many-colored foliage, and the sun, glancing through, not only enriched the tints above, but checkered the mossy path along which they wandered like a chess-board of brown and gold. Some of the late autumn birds uttered their short sweet songs from the copse hard by, and the musical wind came sighing up from the valley, as if nature had furnished Eolus with a harp. It was in short quite a ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... these prefer passing their lives in making huge efforts to become second-class chess-players, or to pocket ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... all decision until we are better informed," was the advice of that Fabius in a dressing-gown, whose prudent reflections revealed to him the meaning of these moves on the Tourainean chess-board. He tried to enlighten Birotteau on the dangers of his position; but the wisdom of the old "sly-boots" did not serve the passions of the moment, and ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... volumes number seventeen. If we continue to partake as largely of the gale of public favour as hitherto, we shall not despair of an evergreen old age. We know the value of this favour, and shall strive to maintain it accordingly. It is to us like the Queen of Chess: ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... most majestically bleeds us instead," answered Aristo, "that she may have treasure to give them. We are not so troublesome as they; the more's the pity. No offence to you, however, or to the emperor, or to great Rome, Cornelius. We are over our cups; it's only a game of politics, you know, like chess or the cottabus. Maro bids you 'parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos;' but you have changed your manners. You coax the Goths ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... in any game," Thornly replied. "I rather think it comes from my chess training. When a child begins that pastime, as you might say, in his cradle, with such a teacher as father, it's ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... know. Nothing particular, I guess. Oh, yes, I learned her name was Ellison before she was married, but the sisters don't consult her about family matters at all. They do about clothes, though. And she knows a lot. Why, Chess, she's having the loveliest things made, if they are mourning, and the sisters, they ask her about everything they order—to wear, I mean. And, just think! Mrs. Schuyler never wears any jewels but pearls! It's a whim, you know, or it was her husband's whim, or something, ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... English artillery, falling back on their centre, and stationing their cannon, which our gunners had begun to dismount, higher up the hill. But the remainder of their line did not change; they had squares of red and squares of black touching each other at the corners like the squares of a chess-board, in the rear of the deep road; and in attacking them we would come under their crossfire. Their artillery was in position on the brow of the hill, and in the hollow on the hill-side toward Mont-St.-Jean their ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... truth, it was, that though more than fifty persons were variously engaged therein, their number was lost in the immense space. Of these, at one end of the longer and lower table beneath the dais, some squires of good dress and mien were engaged at chess or dice; others were conferring in the gloomy embrasures of the casements; some walking to and fro, others gathered round the shovel-board. At the entrance of this hall the porter left Marmaduke, after exchanging a whisper with a gentleman ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... world, as in a game of chess; We serve our friends but where our profit is. When fortune smiles, we're yours, and yours alone; But when she frowns, the servile herd are gone. So, in a play, they act with mimick art, Father, or son, or griping miser's ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... "set down," "reserved," or "put off," because counsel are engaged elsewhere? How often has he heard the same advocate in four or five causes in the same week, in the same court, changing positions like the queen of an active chess-board; profiting his fame and pocket by means of only a hurried glance at the elaborate brief which his junior has "got ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... has been hinted, was a place deposited in the block upon a corn-field. There was no suburb in the modern sense, or transitional intermixture of town and down. It stood, with regard to the wide fertile land adjoining, clean-cut and distinct, like a chess-board on a green tablecloth. The farmer's boy could sit under his barley-mow and pitch a stone into the office-window of the town-clerk; reapers at work among the sheaves nodded to acquaintances standing on the pavement-corner; the red-robed judge, when he condemned a sheep-stealer, pronounced ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... victorious humor, in the early days of June, Year 1547. Johann Friedrich of Saxony had been, by some Imperial Court-Council or other,—Spanish merely, I suppose,—doomed to die. Sentence was signified to him while he sat at chess: "Can wait till we end the game," thought Johann;—"PERGAMUS," said he to his comrade, "Let us go on, then!" Sentence not to be executed till ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... fishing-lines, nets, and other purposes, from the supply of hibiscus bark previously laid in. We have also manufactured more than a dozen pairs of serviceable moccasins, with no other materials than cocoa-nut cotton and bread-fruit bark. Browne has made a chess-board, and rudely but elaborately carved a complete set of men, of gigantic size, in which he has evinced much skill and ingenuity, and a vast deal of perseverance. The castles are mounted upon the backs of elephants, which Johnny innocently mistook for enormous swine with ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer |
