"Chessboard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... westward my spirits rose, to reach a climax of exhilaration when I saw the towers of New York rise gleaming like huge stalagmites in the early winter sun. Maude likened them more happily—to gigantic ivory chessmen. Well, New York was America's chessboard, and the Great Players had already begun to make moves that astonished the world. As we sat at breakfast in a Fifth Avenue hotel I ran my eye eagerly over the stock-market reports and the financial news, and rallied Maude for a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was the great granddaughter of So-and-So." "He married Lady This-and-That." Also, I find I need much more knowledge of literature than I have. This country is divided off into a kind of glorious chessboard, each square being sacred to some immortal author, playwright, or poet. The artists press them close, without overcrowding; and history lies underneath—history ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... counsel thee, thou wilt shut the door, lest the man should have a plot against thee." Upon that Gwalchmai arose, and when he came near unto the door, the man, with sixty others, fully armed, were ascending the tower. And Gwalchmai defended the door with a chessboard, that none might enter until the man should return from the chase. And thereupon, behold the Earl arrived. "What is all this?" asked he. "It is a sad thing," said the hoary-headed man; "the young girl yonder has been sitting and eating with him who slew your father. He ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... Masrur, "Allah broaden thy breast and banish thy bane!" Then she said, "O Masrur, I am used to play at chess: say me, knowest aught of the game?" He replied, "Yes; I am skilled therein;" whereupon she commanded her handmaid Hubub fetch her the chessboard. So she went away and presently returning with the board, set it before her, and behold, it was of ivory-marquetried ebony with squares marked in glittering gold, and its pieces of pearl and ruby.—And ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... masters. Madame de Warens tried to have him taught both dancing and fencing; he could never achieve a minuet, and after three months of instruction he was as clumsy and helpless with his foil as he had been on the first day. He resolved to become a master at the chessboard; he shut himself up in his room, and worked night and day over the books with indescribable efforts which covered many weeks. On proceeding to the cafe to manifest his powers, he found that all the moves and combinations had got mixed ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... the base, where they opened out on the parent valley, through which flowed a broad stream, fringed its whole length with a border of pale green banana-leaves with stems of gold. In the little valleys were gardens, showing up like a chessboard pattern in neat patches of green, red, and brown, according to whether there was ripening millet, young maize, or new-turned mould. Halfway down the valley was a village of beehive-shaped huts, with an open space in the centre, adorned with one fine tree, under whose spreading ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... are various interpretations of the Chinese adjective for this type of ground. Ts'ao Kung says it means "ground covered with a network of roads," like a chessboard. Ho Shih suggested: "ground ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... windmill to Farley Heath, two and a-half miles as the crow flies, nearer five miles as I walked it. The perplexing thing is the number of disused rides and paths in the wood. They cross each other perpetually at right angles, like lines on a chessboard, and if you are walking diagonally across them the temptation is to a succession of knights' moves which end in wrong places. I followed one of these rides a long way, and the wood grew thicker and thicker; suddenly it ended, and I found myself in a clearing, with the ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... the four types has an equal chance of being fertilised by a spermatozoon of any one of the four types. A convenient and simple method of demonstrating what happens under such circumstances is the method sometimes termed the "chessboard" method. For two series each consisting of four different types of gamete we require a square divided up into 16 parts. The four terms of the gametic series are first written horizontally across the four sets of four squares, so that the series is repeated four times. It is then ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... Bard wore sky-blue robes, and was universally honored, serving as the counsellor, the herald, and the minstrel of his patron. The domestic Bard and the chief of song had their office at the King's court, with many curious perquisites, among which was a chessboard from the King. The fine for insulting the Bard was 6 cows and 120 pence; for slaying him, 126 cows. With so much general respect, and great powers of extemporizing, the Bards were well able to sway the passions of the nation, and greatly contributed to keep up the fiery spirit ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... chessboard whereon the pieces move diversely: the knights leaping sidewise, and the bishops darting obliquely, and the rooks charging straightforward, and the pawns laboriously hobbling from square to square, each at the player's will. There is no discernible order, all to the onlooker is manifestly in confusion: ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... to divine what will be the next move upon the Spanish chessboard, it is out of the question, and nobody who knows the character of the people will attempt to do it. Unquestionably there is no such country in the world for anomalies of all kinds. Cosas de Espana! as Captain Widdrington amusingly enough says, when he meets with some ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... marked out just like a large chessboard!' Alice said at last. 'There ought to be some men moving about somewhere—and so there are!' She added in a tone of delight, and her heart began to beat quick with excitement as she went on. 'It's a great huge game of chess that's being ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... bears the mark of genius,—that is; of a new influx of truth or beauty,—as a nun over her missal. In short, he is one of those men that know everything except how to make a living. Him would I keep on the square next my own royal compartment on life's chessboard. To him I would push up another pawn, in the shape of a comely and wise young woman, whom he would of course take—to wife. For all contingencies I would liberally provide. In a word, I would, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... approaches the drawer of the box, and takes therefrom the cushion, which, after removing the pipe from the hand of the Automaton, he places under its left arm as a support. Then taking also from the drawer the Automaton's set of chess-men, he arranges them upon the chessboard before the figure. He now proceeds to close the doors and to lock them—leaving the bunch of keys in door No. 1. He also closes the drawer, and, finally, winds up the machine, by applying a key to an aperture in the left end (the spectators' left) of the box. The game now commences—the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Gould and Fisk were names to conjure with in the mart and on the board; when railroads and gold mines were but pawns upon the chessboard of "money changers and those who sold doves"; when "Black Friday" was still fresh in the memories of thousands, this incident is ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... and no one was more astonished than D'Azeglio, who, with the other ministers, had been kept entirely in the dark. By all ordinary rules Cavour ought to have communicated with his colleagues before revolutionising the parliamentary chessboard. The more sure he felt of their opposition the less easy is it to justify him for taking so grave a step without their knowledge. On public grounds, however (and these were the only grounds on which ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... Senator from Kentucky, [Mr. Clay,] and his denunciations of these petitioners as abolitionists, and the hearty response and cordial embrace which his efforts met from the Senator from South Carolina, [Mr. Calhoun,] clearly shows that new moves have taken place on the political chessboard, and new coalitions are formed, new compromises and new bargains, settling and disposing of the rights of the country for the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... appreciate his absolute mastery of the game, must be unpleasantly affected by the public and extravagant manner in which he has been lionized since his return from Europe. It was well that the chess-players of New York should present him with a chessboard so splendid that he can never use it; well that the cleverest men in Boston should have him to dine with them; but what need of such blatant publicity? what justification for such interminable and such miserable speeches as were made at him in Gotham? Why did not one compliment in each town suffice? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... middle-aged gentleman behind the counter of 13, Great Marlborough Street, proved to be the cashier of the firm, and used—being chess-mad like the rest of us—to spend his evenings at "Kling's." He was a player of my own strength, and for twelve months or so had I skirmished with him over the chessboard, and fought innumerable battles with him. He had never spoken of his occupation, or I of my restless ambitions—chess players never go far beyond ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... settlers from the East caused them intense alarm. They pressed the Government for certain grants of land and for the retention of the old French custom of surveying the land along the river front in deep narrow strips, rather than according to the chessboard pattern taken over by Canada from the United States. Red tape, indifference, procrastination, rather than any illwill, delayed the redress of the grievances of the half-breeds. In despair they called Louis Riel back from his exile ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... puzzle, only I think a bit of it's lost, and the clasp of a cricket belt, and old Dick Rodman's chessboard and some of the men, and some stuff ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... Jack," began Maverick after they had been shown to their room. "Aunt Jean is a trump! I almost forgive her Miss Lothrop. But I suppose women would be less than women, if they did not want to dip their fingers into destiny. It is their mental chessboard." ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... overnight, and on a pretext so shallow and farcical as to excite world-wide ridicule. Their disillusionment came too late. The trap had been unwittingly set by hands that made unexpected moves on the European chessboard, and the Bear's paw had this time been skilful enough to spring it at ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... shrapnel bursting all round in showers; one of the prettiest things I have ever seen." The enemy had open country and soon got away, but in the meantime the Union Jack was blowing bravely over Jacobsdaal, and we were in possession of a most important square on the big chessboard of the Orange ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... all night from the outlying suburbs—Botany, Fairfield, Willoughby, Smithfield, St Peters, Woollahra and Double Bay—carrying the patient harvest of Chinese gardens laid out with the rigid lines of a chessboard. A sleepy Chinaman, perched on a heap of cabbages, pulled the horse to a standstill, and one by one the carts backed against the kerbstone forming a line the length of the arcades, waiting patiently for the markets to open. And still, ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... and the neighboring fields, which had drunk their full of sunlight. Now and again a breath of fresh air was blown to us from the mountains. As the darkness deepened the country grew to look like a vast chessboard, with dark and light squares of grass and corn land, melting at no great distance into a colorless and unbroken horizon. But as night blotted out the earth, the heaven lighted up its stars. Never have I seen them so lustrous nor in such number. ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... lovely," he exclaimed passionately, stung by her scorn and fired by her beauty, almost beside himself as they stood there in the magical moonlight—for once in his life forgetting to calculate every move on life's chessboard. "You are too lovely for me. From the very first, in Switzerland, when I was so happy——no, I will not tell you. I will not lay down my heart to ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... period was bound up with the name of Metternich, who personified the old hide-bound methods of the bureaucracy, the diplomacy of a past age, to which the nations were mere pawns on a chessboard. Under him the "Police-State" assumed its most perfect form, a form not even surpassed by Russia from ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... spend a pleasant winter evening by your own fireside, and give yourself up luxuriously to memories of love or youth, while you watch the glow of the fire where the logs of oak are burning? Here, the fire outlines a sort of chessboard in red squares, there it has a sheen like velvet; little blue flames start up and flicker and play about in the glowing depths of the brasier. A mysterious artist comes and adapts that flame to his own ends; by a secret of his own he draws a visionary face in the midst of those flaming ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... met James—not at the shabby club, but in the deserted reading-room of the so-called Artizans Hall—where never an artizan entered, but only men of James's class. Here they took the chessboard and pretended to start a game. But their conversation was rapid ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... impertinent daisy and the pushing dandelion had never been allowed their way amongst the tender grass, and it was smooth and springy to walk on. It was Peter's pride that no such lawns could be shown anywhere in or around Heathermuir. There was nothing stiff or formal in this garden, no chessboard patterns or stripes of colour round the borders, but there were lovely masses of luxuriant blooms, radiant colourings, delicious scents, and all in such harmony that the result was a charm which no more ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... to pick him up, and used him as an excuse for coming to Eastbourne? I see. That removes a troublesome pawn off the chessboard." ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... "You won't hear from the Panchen—he's undoubtedly constructing a new, all-Red unit right now. After this bit, psi faculties, including telempathy, have to be considered another weapons family in the Cold War ... a new set of pieces of the big chessboard. So you're going to have to find a substitute for the Himalayan Quiz Kid, and ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... a high mark of efficiency. They were equipped in a way totally beyond the means of such little countries. Who was supplying this driving force, the money, officers? They were but pawns, the Balkan States on an international chessboard. ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... Lord Gumthorpe moves deeper into the recess, struggling with the emotions which the astounding act of Angela has produced. As he sits there, the moonlight, pouring through the diamond panes of the window, throws rhomboids of light on to the polished floor. It looks like some enchanted chessboard. Leaning back and gazing with half-closed eyes, he peoples it with fantastic rooks, and knights and bishops, when suddenly the strangely penetrating voice of Angela ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... wherever the mute e is found! What poverty of various sounds for rhyme, when, lest similar cadences should too often occur, their mechanic bards are obliged to marry masculine and feminine terminations as alternately as the black and white squares of a chessboard? Nay, will you believe me, Madam,—yes, you will, for you may convince your own eyes,-that a scene of Zaire begins with three of the most nasal adverbs that ever snorted together in a breath? Enfin, donc, desormais, are the culprits in question. Enfin donc, need I tell your ladyship, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... getting him to leave the great enclosure, divided like a chessboard by iron railings and elegant compartments, in which were tombs decorated with palms, inscriptions, and tears as cold as the stones on which sorrowing hearts had caused to be carved their regrets and coats of arms. Many good words are there engraved in black letters, epigrams reproving the ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... America know about these movements on the European chessboard, and upon what basis should she aspire to ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... crowd of urchins black and white. A feeling of blind rage surged within him. That the tables would be shortly turned, he was sure. He would play his part now without a scruple. He would use pretty Jennie Barton as any other pawn on the chessboard of Life and Death ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... log-fire burnt in the grate, and easy chairs invited. They discussed the topics of the day with evident relish during such time as Borkins was in the room, and smoked their cigars with the air of men to whom the hours were as naught, and life simply a chessboard to move their little pieces upon as they willed. But how soon they were to cry checkmate upon this case which they were all investigating, even Cleek did not know. Then of a sudden he looked up from his task of studying ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... the swells and nobs. Tom Peregrine alone was baffled. Whilst his family in general were bowing there, curtseying here, clapping hands and "passing under to the right" in the usual "Sir Roger" style, he stood in grey homespun of the best material (I never yet saw a Cotswold man in a vulgar chessboard suit), and as he stood he marvelled greatly, exclaiming now and then, "Well, I never; this is something new to be sure!" "I never saw such things in all my life, never!" He would not dance; but, seizing one of the bigotphones, ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... "revenge" might be too terrible. For another trivial chess anecdote: a very worthy old friend of mine, a rector too, was fond of his game, and of winning it: and I remember one evening that his ancient servitor, bringing in the chessboard, whispered to me, "Please don't beat him again, sir,—he didn't sleep a wink last night;" accordingly, after a respectably protracted struggle, some strange oversights were made, and my reverend host came off conqueror: so he was enabled to sleep happily. I remember too playing with ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... anybody who approaches either door, a moment before he enters. In the centre, a part of the house is curtained off; the curtains are drawn. There are unlighted torches in brackets on the walls There is, at one side, a small table with a chessboard and chessmen upon it, and a wine flagon and loaf of bread. At the other side of the room there is a brazier with a fire; two women, with musical instruments beside them, crouch about the brazier: they are comely women of about forty. ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... nature of the glorious children of the suns; they know the laws of the universe just as we know the rules of chess, and the course of the stars does not trouble them any more than the moves on the chessboard of the king and the other men trouble us. Those genii create worlds in such spaces of the infinite where none at present exist, and organise them at their will. It distracts them momentarily from their principal business, which is to unite among themselves in ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... softly yellowed with age, an exquisitely wrought iron balcony stretches across the front above the high ceilinged basement and great carved walnut doors open into a wide vestibule with a marble floor exactly like a bit of a gigantic chessboard. The transformation had so astounded me that I was almost afraid to touch the neatly polished beaten silver bell for fear the ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... top the scene unrolled before us like a wonderful panoramic painting, and we gazed out on this "great chessboard, where the last hard game of Napoleon's and ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... act of going forth—quite at my leisure, for I had no fear of the clerical poker—my eye happened to alight on a small side-table, covered with a chessboard-patterned cloth in gaudy colours, and adorned with some of those sombre volumes which seem like an outward evidence of the sober piety of their possessor. Among the sombre volumes lay something which savoured of another hemisphere than that to which those brown leather-bound ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... had an opportunity to get acquainted with all the leading diplomatists on the European chessboard, to study them in their own haunts, and to perfect himself in playing with ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... Gospel is, 'Yield yourselves to God.' Bring your wills and bow them before Him, and say, 'Here am I; take me, and use me as a pawn on Thy great chessboard, to be put where Thou wilt.' When once a man's will is absorbed into the divine will, as a drop of water is into the ocean, he is free, and has happiness and peace, and is master and lord of himself and of the universe. That system which proclaims ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... turned as soon as she had gone a sufficient distance that she might study the aspect of the house. It did not quite fulfil her expectations; it was neither remarkable for age nor beauty; the masonry was in a sort of chessboard pattern, alternate squares of freestone and of flints, the windows were not casements as she thought they ought to have been, and the long wing, or rather excrescence, which contained the drawing-room, was by no means ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Government, however, had planned its moves months in advance. Just as every great offensive on the battlefields is planned, even to the finest details, six months before operations begin, so are the big moves on the political chessboard of Europe. ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... Carey slowly. "And so now he turns from the Protestant's God to Destiny playing with the pawns upon the great chessboard. But if he's a man of sentiment, and not an intellectual, he'll never find this life all-sufficient, however he lives it. The darkness will ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... many things they dwelt on in their talks along, was the Chessboard, which was the Map of Europe, over which he had watched for many years certain hands hover in tentative experimenting as to the possibilities of the removal of the pieces from one square to another. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "We've a new chessboard," said Carl. "It's most ingenious. Hunch spent a large part of his valuable morning shopping for it. The board and chessmen are metal and I myself have added one or two unique improvements. Help ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious terror, some scission[14] in the continuity of man's experience, some wilful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as the defeated tyrant overthrew the chessboard, should break the mould of their succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might befall Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his doings like ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... rings, enormous bottles of rock crystal, chased gold and silver dishes, coffers, reliquaries in the form of churches, scent-boxes, mirrors, candelabra and torch-holders equally beautiful in material and workmanship, and incense-burners in the shape of monsters. And on one table stood a chessboard with ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... weakness in the workings of one of his characters. She was liberal with her praise, called his characters by their christian names as though they were old friends, suggested other moves across the chessboard of his plot, until he felt that he and she, and those dear puppets of his own creations, were denizens together of some fairy and ethereal world, wandering through the fascinating maze of imaginative ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... of utilising men like you in our plans is that we have to make use of no mask or illusion. But if I were to consult my prime minister, it would be absurd for me to call theft by any name less dignified than public benefit. I will go now, and move the princes about like pawns on the chessboard; the game cannot evidently go on if all the chessmen ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... with me," said Mider, "a chessboard which is not inferior to thine." It was even as he said, for that chessboard was silver, and the men to play with were gold; and upon that board were costly stones, casting their light on every side, and the bag that held the men was of ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... guided in deciding the great questions of feminine attire is imitation. Incidentally, we may remark that nobody profits by such a mistaken foundation except the manufacturer, who moves the women of the world about like pawns on a chessboard merely to benefit his business. The society woman brings the latest thing "from Paris." The large New York establishments sell to their patrons copies of "Paris models." The middle-class shops and the middle-class women copy the copies. The cheap shops and the poor women copy the copy of the ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... is useless for you to do so. The moment you reach France the big hand of General Headquarters takes hold of you; and from that instant it picks you up and puts you down as if you were a pawn on a chessboard. Whatever the railway station, there is always a big British policeman. The policeman directs you to the Railway Transport Officer and the Railway Transport Officer tells you how long you will stay and when ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... the Balkan chessboard then stood thus: A Serbia which was the most bitter enemy of Bulgaria and whose ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... hour's knowledge) into the band of his admirers; and that same evening, in the drawing-room, while Miss Kitty was playing one of Schulhoff's mazurkas, with her moustached cousin standing by her side, and turning over the music-leaves, Verdant privately declared, over a chessboard, to Miss Patty, that Mr. Frank Delaval was the handsomest and most delightful man he had ever met. And when Miss Patty's eyes sparkled at this proof of his truth and disinterestedness, Verdant mistook the bright signals; and ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... I hastily snatched our worldly possessions—our overcoat, blanket, can, spoon, chessboard and men, yelled to some of our neighbors that they could have our hitherto much-treasured house, and running down to the gate, forced ourselves well up to the front of the crowd that was ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... on the chessboard of Fate yesterday, but they were so very modest and mysterious that I almost ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... really seem as if they would never come to an end. The solitude of the scene around is astonishing to English eyes. For miles we only meet two road-menders and an itinerant glazier. On either side, far as the glance could reach, stretches the chessboard landscape—an expanse oceanic in its vastness of green and brown, fields of corn and clover alternating with land prepared for beetroot and potatoes. The extent and elevation of this plateau, formerly covered with forests, explain the excessive dryness of the ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... with the chessboard, drew blood with the blowe, and had presently slain him upon the place had he not been stayed by his ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... knock and enter in our soul, Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring, Round the ancient idol, on his base again,— * * * * * * * What have we gained then by our unbelief But a life of doubt diversified by faith, For one of faith diversified by doubt. We called the chessboard white,—we call it black." ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... sailed back with the prizes to England. I beg you to observe, my dear reader, that occurrences of this kind were common enough at this period even in times of peace, and not considered piracy either, the ocean was looked upon as a mighty chessboard, and the game was won by those who could command the greatest ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... it. I suppose I am slow-witted, but it did not occur to me for quite a long time, that, being a Scotch Presbyterian, the mention of bishops was more likely to call up to her mind the pieces which sidle obliquely across a chessboard than living men of lordly degree. I was not sure in the end that I had tracked her thought correctly, but I know that I made several bad mistakes during the next ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... the Rue de Rivoli. The girl sat on a small balcony from which she could view the Tuileries Gardens without turning her head; while looking farther westward she saw the Place de la Concorde, its windy spaces a chessboard for rapid vehicles, whose wheels, wet from the watered streets, ground out silvery fire in the sun-rays of this gay June afternoon. Where the Avenue des Champs Elysees began, a powdery haze enveloped the equipages, overblown with their summer toilets, all speeding to ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... brought to him a chessboard, and asked me by a sign if I understood that game, and would play with him? I kissed the ground, and laying my hand upon my head, signified that I was ready to receive that honour. He won the first game, but I won the second and third; and perceiving ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... accented by twin rows of flickering fire, the rear jets seen with a blurred halo of mist round each of them, the halo crawling feebly within itself, tormented by a feeble wind. The long vista of pavement became chequered like a chessboard, with patches of light from shop windows. Gable Inn, staring at the growing darkness with a single fiery eye, looked like a Rip Van Winkle. It had been old when Chaucer and the knights and ladies of whom he sang were young; and its hoary stunted angles and squat chimney cowls ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... amongst these pre-eminently stands the noble pastime of chess. It is very ancient, and is supposed to have been invented by Xerxes, a philosopher in the court of Evil-Merodach, king of Babylon. It was well known in England before the Conquest, and Canute was very fond of the chessboard. King John was so engrossed in this game that when some messengers came to tell him that the French king had besieged one of his cities, he would not listen to them until he had finished his chess. The complicated movements ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... which Martin Luther evoked had spent itself in religious wrangling and dissension, and in the inglorious conflicts of the Thirty Years' War. The Germans had become so many pawns that might be moved back and forth upon the international chessboard by Habsburg and Bourbon gamesters. Switzerland had been lost to the empire; both France and Sweden had deliberately dismembered other valuable districts. [Footnote: For the provisions of the treaties of Westphalia, see above, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Orient. Before me was a land-locked harbour in which all the navies of the world might ride in safety. Around me rose a noble chain of hills, their slopes adorned with fine residences, their valleys a chessboard of busy streets, with here and there a British battery perched ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... we can see that the engagement which he fought on the right at Gettysburg, on July 3, 1863, was from first to last, a well planned battle, in which the different commands were maneuvered with the same sagacity displayed by a skilful chess player in moving the pawns upon a chessboard; in which every detail was the fruit of the brain of one man who, from the time when he turned Custer to the northward, until he sent the First Michigan thundering against the brigades of Hampton and Fitzhugh Lee, made not a single false move; who was distinguished not ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... rules of the game to keep in mind. Well, here's this one little guy and every morning he wakes up there's all these things he's got to keep in mind to do or he'll lose his turn three times in a row and maybe a terrible black rook in iron armor'll loom up and bang him off the chessboard. But now, look, now he's got his tickler and he tells his sweet silver tickler all these things and the tickler's got to remember them. Of course he'll have to do them eventually but meanwhile the pressure's off him, the hook's out of his short ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... she continued, "that I never looked upon you as anything more than the ordinary stereotyped politician, a skilful debater, of course, and with the chessboard brains of diplomacy. This,"—she touched the newspaper with her ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hand: snow petrels, silver petrels, Cape pigeons and Antarctic petrels. They fluttered in hundreds about our bows. Cape pigeons are well known in lower latitudes, and it was interesting to find them so far south. As they have chessboard-like markings on the back when seen in flight, there is ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... darkness. Though called a castle, the building was little fortified, and had been erected with greater eye to internal convenience than those crannied places of defence to which the name strictly appertains. It was a castellated mansion as regular as a chessboard on its ground-plan, ornamented with make-believe bastions and machicolations, behind which were stacks of battlemented chimneys. On still mornings, at the fire-lighting hour, when ghostly house-maids stalk the corridors, and thin streaks of light through ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... figures of two eagles of ruddy gold thereon. Bracelets of gold were upon his arms, and many rings were on his hands, and a golden torque about his neck; and his hair was bound with a golden diadem. He was of powerful aspect. A chessboard of gold was before him, and a rod of gold, and a steel file in his hand. And he was ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... influence of His present work, and to-day He is working as truly as He wrought when on earth. One form of His work was finished on Calvary, as His dying breath proclaimed; but there is another work of Christ in the midst of the ages, moving the pawns on the chessboard of the world, and presiding over the fortunes of the solemn conflict, which will not be ended until that day when the angel voices shall chant, 'It is done! The kingdoms of the world are the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ.' The living Christ works by a true forth-putting of His own present ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... laid by that unknown master criminal, whose cunning, power and malignant genius was dominating and making itself felt in every den and dive of the underworld, and for whom the Pippin and the Mole that night had been but blind tools, pawns moved at the will of this unseen, evil strategist upon a chessboard ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... all was not so trivial in our abode of shadows. As example, I taught Oppenheimer to play chess. Consider how tremendous such an achievement is—to teach a man, thirteen cells away, by means of knuckle-raps; to teach him to visualize a chessboard, to visualize all the pieces, pawns and positions, to know the various manners of moving; and to teach him it all so thoroughly that he and I, by pure visualization, were in the end able to play entire games of chess in our minds. In the end, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... His thoughts were like those of Napoleon at the last hour of the battle of Waterloo: after a long day of success defeat had come with night. What was the reason? What mistake had he made? He replaced the pieces on the chessboard, and looked for the explanation of failure, but in vain. It had perhaps been rash of him to let two days pass without seeing her. But it was the most elementary rule that after such a scene as that ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... swift passing of longnose sharks, hammerhead sharks, spotted dogfish that frequent these waters, big eagle rays, swarms of seahorse looking like knights on a chessboard, eels quivering like fireworks serpents, armies of crab that fled obliquely by crossing their pincers over their carapaces, finally schools of porpoise that held contests of speed with the Nautilus. But by this point observing, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... play a game at chess with a far superior player, then at least one learns something; but impossible to sit at a chess board with a child who throws all into confusion. The national chessboard is very confused in the White House. Cunning is good for, and only succeeds in dealing with, mean ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... carry out similar tasks: to find and bring back to King Arthur a magical flying Chessboard that appeared one day through the window and went out again; to bring to King Wonder, the owner of the Chessboard, "the sword of the strange rings"; to win for the owner of the sword the Princess of the Garden ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... returned from England to receive the visit of his chief Triplice ally, the Emperor Franz Joseph, and to discuss with him doubtless the European situation. Bismarck has been pictured as sitting at the European chessboard pondering the moves necessary tor Germany to win the game of which the great prize was the hegemony of Europe. The chief opposing Pieces, whose aid or neutrality was desirable, were for long France, Russia, ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... walk up and down the chessboard of Beacon Hill—taking the knight's move occasionally across the narrow cross-streets—you could not help treading the very squares which were familiar to the feet of that generation of authors which has permanently stamped American literature. At 55 Beacon Street, ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... of Canterbury and the Lord Mayor of London had urged that it should be so. The Primitive Methodists' parson discovered himself next but one to Father Milton, who on any other day would have been a Popish priest, and whose wooden substitute for a wife was the queen on a chessboard. And on all ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the advance began before dawn, but Grant's plans were complete. He had drawn up his forces on the chessboard, and they were converging closely upon Jackson. They must keep their cartridges dry and ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... "What is the boy to me? Nothing more than a pawn upon the chessboard of life, one of the pieces I am using for the sake of France—France, my country, for which I have ventured this. For what is this gay butterfly? King? Yes, the King upon the chessboard, whom it is my ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... across the vast chessboard of the fenced back-blocks at dead of night. Stingaree and Fergus sat saddle and bareback without a break until near dawn their pioneer spurred forward yet again and was swallowed in a steely haze. It was cold as a sharp spring night in England. But for a mile or more Fergus had clung ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... of Effects. The masses of people are carried along, obedient to environment; the wills and desires of others stronger than themselves; heredity; suggestion; and other outward causes moving them about like pawns on the Chessboard of Life. But the Masters, rising to the plane above, dominate their moods, characters, qualities, and powers, as well as the environment surrounding them, and become Movers instead of pawns. They help to PLAY THE GAME OF LIFE, instead of being played and moved about ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... who gave good advice went to school. There was a rage for stag beetles at the school; the boys painted them and made them run races on a chessboard. They imagined—rightly or wrongly—that some stag beetles were much faster than others. A little boy called Bell possessed the stag beetle which was the favourite for the coming races. Another boy called Mason was consumed with longing for this stag beetle; and ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... bloodthirsty excitement in the camp which was reported in the States to have prevailed there," says Colonel Brown, "but there was a feeling of infinite chagrin, a consciousness that the expedition was only a pawn on Mr. Buchanan's political chessboard; and reproaches against his folly were as frequent as ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... matt: not outlined at all, but spotted and streaked in the matt itself, chequered and petalled and thumb-marked, just as nature spots and stripes and dapples, scatters daisies on the grass and snowflakes in the air, and powders over with chessboard chequers and lacings and "oes and eyes of light," the ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... military school excommunicated him, while bolting, and hence arose an implacable rancor of the old Caesarism against the new, of the old saber against the flashing sword, and of the chessboard against genius. On June 18, 1815, this rancor got the best; and beneath Lodi, Montebello, Montenotte, Mantua, Marengo, and Arcola, it wrote—Waterloo. It was a triumph of mediocrity, sweet to majorities, and destiny consented to this irony. In ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... the interview wasn't wasted. I learned that he is tall and does have a freckled face. Maybe we can build a chessboard. With my paper and his ballpoint pen and ruler, it should be easy. Don't know what we'll use ...
— The Dope on Mars • John Michael Sharkey
... high thoughts of Crusaders as I gazed up at the statue of St. Louis, and paced the sentinels' pathway round the gigantic ramparts, unchanged since Boccanegra built them. Looking down from the ramparts the town, enclosed in the fortress walls, was like a faded chessboard cast ashore from the wreck of some ancient ship; and round the dark walls and towers waves of yellow sand and wastes of dead blue waters stretched as far as my gaze could reach, ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... North, delivered battle on the territory of the enemy, suffered a repulse, retired, and was again occupying nearly the same ground which he had occupied before the advance. Moving backward and forward on the great chessboard of war, the two adversaries seemed to have gained or lost nothing. The one was not flushed with victory; the other was not prostrated by defeat. Each went into camp, ceased active operations, and prepared for the new conflict which was to take ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... constructive skill and tact in managing men; but in 1893, at the height of his success and popularity, he died at Wellington of an intestinal disease after a severe surgical operation. Quiet and unassuming in manner, Ballance, who was a well-read man, always seemed fonder of his books and his chessboard than of public bustle; yet his loss to New Zealand political life was great. A statue was erected to his memory in front of Parliament ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... addresses to workingmen Huxley compared life to a game of chess. We must learn the names and the values and the moves of each piece, and all the rules of the game if we hope to play it successfully. The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature. But it may be questioned if the comparison is a happy one. Life is not a game in this sense, a diversion, an aside, or a contest for ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... utterly helpless, a pawn on that tiny chessboard where the game was being played between Civilization and Barbarism. The fight must go on to the bitter end: he must either vanquish or be vanquished. There were other threads being woven into the garment of his life at that moment, but he knew not of them. Sufficient for the ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... batteries on that little thing before she got well into position, and established her line. If I am any judge of human nature, I rather guess from the set of her lips, and the stars that danced up and down in her eyes, that she is not quite as easily flanked as a pawn on a chessboard." ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the book Kamakurashi that there was formerly at Kamakura a temple called Emmei-ji, in which there was enshrined a famous statue of Jizo, called Hadaka-Jizo, or Naked Jizo. The statue was indeed naked, but clothes were put upon it; and it stood upright with its feet upon a chessboard. Now, when pilgrims came to the temple and paid a certain fee, the priest of the temple would remove the clothes of the statue; and then all could see that, though the face was the face of Jizo, the body was the body ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... square. The middle of this board she laid out in blocks with a pencil and ruler, careful to make them exactly perfect. The blocks were two inches square and there were eight each way; in fact, it was a copy of the chessboard her ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the Universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know to our cost that he never overlooks ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... so distinguished Mr. Lincoln, who, in fact, was simply insensible to personal feeling as an influence. In choosing incumbents for public trusts, he knew no foe, perhaps no friend; but as dispassionately as if he were manoeuvring pieces on a chessboard, he considered only which available piece would serve best in the square which he had to fill. In 1859 he and Stanton had met as associate counsel in perhaps the most important lawsuit in which Mr. Lincoln had ever been concerned, and Stanton had treated ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... the chessboard and played with him; but Sharrkan, instead of looking at her moves, kept gazing at her fair mouth, and putting knight in place of elephant and elephant[FN198] instead of knight. She laughed and said ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... circuitous, indirect, zigzag; crab-like. Adv. astray from, round about, wide of the mark; to the right about; all manner of ways; circuitously &c. 629. obliquely, sideling, like the move of the knight on a chessboard. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... not seem to have been much used that day; and in the small breakfast-room Deede Dawson had been accustomed to consider his special apartment, his favourite little travelling chessboard stood on the table with pieces in position ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... me how to play, sometime?" she said wistfully, one evening, when the momentary absence of Bertram had left the two alone together. "I used to watch Bertram and Marie play years ago; but I never knew how to play myself. Not that I can see where the fun is in just sitting staring at a chessboard for half an hour at a time, though! But Bertram likes it, and so I—I want to learn to stare with him. Will ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... highroad. Whatever artificial boundaries might be, these neighboring regions differed in all regards. The land of Goshen, though a rolling country, seemed a plain; the desert was composed of limestone hills and sandy valleys. The land of Goshen seemed a gigantic chessboard the green and yellow squares of which were indicated by the color of grain and by palms growing on their boundaries; but on the ruddy sand of the desert and its white hills a patch of green or a clump of trees and bushes seemed like ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... do, exactly the same with men and their thoughts in the case of women much talked about. So it was with General Ople, and nothing is left for me to say except, that there is broader ground than the chessboard. I am earnest in protesting the similarity of the singular couples on common earth, because otherwise the General is in peril of the accusation that he is a feminine character; and not simply was he a gallant officer, and a veteran in gunpowder strife, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Arab, robed in red Oriental swathes and with a chessboard fastened to its knees, sat cross-legged on a box-like structure. Upon dropping a coin into a slot in the flat top, two folding-doors in front of this box would open for a few moments, showing a glass-covered interior, which, as far as the ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... low tones they moved the men over their chessboard. Now and then an aide was summoned, and soon departed swiftly and in silence to move a battery or a regiment a little closer to the Union lines, but always he carried the injunction that no noise be made. Not a ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... looked at Opal Ledoux, he thought, "After all, how much of a real man can I ever be? What am I but a petty pawn on the chessboard of the world, moved hither and yon, to gain or to lose, by the finger ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... expounded by Lewis, that makes each particular hair on the heads of Oxford theologians stand on end, is ridiculous child's play compared with the atomistic school of Vaisheshika, with its world divided, like a chessboard, into six categories of everlasting atoms, nine substances, twenty-four qualities, and five motions. And, however difficult, and even impossible may seem the exact representation of all these abstract ideas, idealistic, pantheistic, and, sometimes, ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... delighted. We were dazzled as we came into this new room by the brilliance of the lamps that lit it. It was the convent kitchen. How clean and bright everything was! The copper saucepans shone resplendently. The black and white pavement looked like an ivory chessboard. Two Sisters were sitting peeling vegetables which they threw into a bowl of water. An enormous pot, on the well-polished stove, was humming its inviting monotone. It was this pot which exhaled the delicious smell that had greeted us when we entered the house. ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... ring-bedight oak of the ale-cup, And her eyes never left me unhaunted. The strife in my heart I could hide not, For I hold myself bound in her bondage. O gay in her necklet, and gainer In the game that wins hearts on her chessboard,— When she looked at me long from the doorway Where the ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... old man, with a chessboard of inlaid stone, which he hasn't an idea of selling; but finds it excellent to 'move on,' without being checkmated as a beggar without visible means of s'port. The first time he brought it round, and held it out square to Caper, that cool young man, taking ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... Cuchulainn's distortion.] so that his gullet was visible. The hero's light rose from his head. Then he strikes at the boys. He overthrows fifty of them before they reached the door of Emain. Nine of them came over me and Conchobar as we were playing chess. Then he springs over the chessboard after the nine. Conchobar caught ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... said Midir, and he drew from his cloak a folding chessboard whose squares were alternate gold and silver. From a men-bag made of brazen chainwork he drew out a set of men adorned with flashing jewels, and he ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... and a most wonderful panorama spread below us. The great plain beneath us was marked off like a chessboard in squares of various shades of yellow and green, dotted here and there with little villages surrounded by the billowy crests of trees. We saw straight white roads going off in all directions, and beyond, (p. 263) towards the east, low murky clouds behind the German lines. We flew ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... the frozen strait, and by the constant use of the telegraph, had kept up their communication with their fellow-countrymen on the other island. Colonel Murphy and the major had not even been forced to forego the pleasures of the chessboard. The game that had been interrupted by Captain Servadac's former visit was not yet concluded; but, like the two American clubs that played their celebrated game in 1846 between Washington and Baltimore, the ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... God's estimate. The obscurest among us has his place in the Divine plan, his lesson to learn, his work to do. The century opening before us can no more dispense with us than an orchestra with the piccolo. A pawn on God's chessboard may take a knight, or give check to a king. "We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God has before prepared (R.V.), that we should walk in them" ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... towns and an architectural anarchy that resembles nothing more than an orchestra playing with every instrument tuned to a different key. The stamp of public control is to be seen, if at all, in an inconvenient and monotonous chessboard plan for streets. Congestion of traffic at the busy points; wide stretches of empty pavement on streets little used; houses of every style and no style, imbued with all the colors of the spectrum; weed-grown vacant lots, unkempt yards, some fenced, some unfenced; poster-bedecked ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... in his contemplation: kings were his people; nations were his outposts; and he disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and cabinets, as if they were the titular dignitaries of the chessboard! Amid all these changes, he stood immutable as adamant. It mattered little whether in the field, or in the drawing-room; with the mob, or the levee; wearing the Jacobin bonnet, or the iron crown; banishing a Braganza, or espousing a Hapsburg; dictating peace on a raft to the Czar ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... two people in California, barring German spies, leapt instantly to the conclusion that the Sarajevo bomb meant a European War. The Judge, because he had the historical background and knew his modern Europe as he knew his chessboard; and Alexina because she recalled conversations she had had in France the summer before with people close to the Government, to say nothing of mysterious allusions in the letters of Olive de Morsigny; ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... did good work in that campaign. The struggle was so keen, the supervision of everything so searching, that daring fraud became a thing impossible. It was simply a test of persuasion, of popularity and of relative skill in those devices which are but the moves upon the chessboard in a game where chances are nearly even. We were but moderately hopeful. Harlson was immeasurably the better candidate. He was, at least, earnest and honest, and would represent the district well. I asked once why he wanted to go ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo |
