"Chance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slightly increased infirmity, and his old eyes will glimmer with a moist and marshy light. Then the little old man is drunk. A very small measure will overset him; he may be bowled off his unsteady legs with a half-pint pot. Some pitying acquaintance—chance acquaintance very often—has warmed up his weakness with a treat of beer, and the consequence will be the lapse of a longer time than usual before he shall pass again. For the little old man is going home to the Workhouse; and on his ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... township names derived from the aboriginal languages; and to some efforts for bettering the condition of the natives, by making it penal to sell or give them ardent spirits, and thus desired to render my position as a legislator useful, where there was but little chance of general action. As chairman of the committee on expenditures, I kept the public expenditures snug, and, in every respect, conformable to the laws of congress. The session was closed about the first of July—early enough to permit me to ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Hypochondries pent, Proves but a blast, if downwards sent; But if it upward chance to flie Becomes ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... creature!" said Nymphalin; "it is easy to guess that he need not be buried alive to lose all chance of marrying ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not at all!" answered Nance, contradictorily. "My bunnit ain't trimmed on the congregation side, an' I want to give 'em a chance to see it all round. I'm a-goin' up ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... goodness' sake! My dear girl, don't cry!" he exclaimed. He felt he would say anything to comfort her, and get over the chance of some one seeing ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... We command that our said alguazil-mayor shall not tolerate forbidden games of chance or notorious immoralities; and if in the performance of his duty he shall meet with resistance, let him immediately come and declare the same to the said Audiencia, and on Saturday of each week let him come and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... at Lausanne, says:—'The principles of philosophy were associated with the examples of taste; and by a singular chance the book as well as the man which contributed the most effectually to my education has a stronger claim on my gratitude than on my admiration. M. de Crousaz, the adversary of Bayle and Pope, is not ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... new race have started up, whose manners and appearance have little of the vieille cour about them; chiefly. It is said, wives of military men, sprung from the hotbeds of the revolutions, ignorant and full of pretensions, as parvenus who have risen by chance and not by merit must be. I continue my list after the fashion of the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... those lawless times encouraging him to sacrifice the most sacred ties to his ambition. He resolved to seize the chieftainship by deposing his father and banishing him to the Pale, where, after passing some years in captivity, he died. He was, no doubt, urged to do this, lest by some chance the son of the baron of Dungannon should be adopted by England as the rightful heir, and made Earl of Tyrone. This title he spurned, and proclaimed himself the O'Neill, the true representative of the ancient kings of Ulster, to which office he was elected by his people, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... organs concerned in speaking and singing, the inseparable connection of the palatal resonance with the resonance of the head cavities. In this way is gained perfection in the art of singing, which is based, not on chance, but on knowledge; and this slow but sure way is the ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... hev killed two or three of McDermid's horses that had strayed out on the plains, and Elspie's mare Vixen iss out too. Some of us will be going to seek for her. The day bein' warm an' the snow soft, we hev a good chance of killin' some o' the wolves. I thought Peter ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... best of her kind, lent me her book of devotion—the "Ursuline Manual." It interested me much until I found in it the reasons very cogently given why salvation was confined to the Roman Catholic Church. This disgusted me. According to this, even our good rector had no more chance of salvation than a Presbyterian or Baptist or Methodist minister. But this serious view of the case was disturbed by a humorous analogy. There were then fighting vigorously through the advertisement columns of the newspapers two rival doctors, each claiming ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... unusual to me, I had not suddenly thought of an expedient. I had, the evening before, drunk plentifully of a most delicious wine called glimigrim, (the Blefuscudians call it flunec, but ours is esteemed the better sort,) which is very diuretic. By the luckiest chance in the world, I had not discharged myself of any part of it. The heat I had contracted by coming very near the flames, and by labouring to quench them, made the wine begin to operate by urine; which I voided in such a quantity, and applied so well to the proper places, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... you in mighty beneficent circles of defensive, protective and ever re-creative power,—power which is yours to use and to control- -imagine that the entire Cosmos is the design of mere blind unintelligent Chance, and that the Divine Life which thrills within you serves no purpose save to lead you to Death! Most wonderful and most pitiful it is that such folly, such blasphemy should still prevail,—and that humanity should still ascribe to the Almighty Creator less wisdom and ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... That evening, as chance would have it, Ulrich returning to his homestead—a rambling mill beside the river, where he dwelt alone with ancient Anna—met Elsa of the dimpled hands upon the bridge that spans the murmuring Muhlde, and talked a while with her, and ...
— The Love of Ulrich Nebendahl • Jerome K. Jerome
... by a power superior to their own. On the morning of the 14th they elected the Committee of Eight who were to draw up the Constitution. Mounier and the friends of the English model still prevailed. By evening their chance had vanished, for the English ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Convention were to show itself reluctant to give to a select committee so large a power as this of preparing an agenda paper, it still would be possible to refer to such a committee the subject-matter of so many of the resolutions as might chance, when put upon their passage, to fail ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... of her affection made it the more difficult and the more terrible for me to wound her. She had endured so much, poor mother! and was looking so wan and pale. If it had not been for Johanna's threat, I should have resolved to say nothing about Olivia, and to run my chance of matrimonial happiness. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... these Germans, and who was there by mere chance, called out to them with an indignant voice, and immediately assumed their command. The men obeyed him as they would their own leader. In this case of pressing danger the differences of convention disappeared. The man really superior ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... Sergeant in a tone of surprise, "a good deal, sir, I should say. By Jove, sir, I could have—if I could have pulled it off myself—but of course she was an old flame of Cameron's and I'd no chance." ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... such as the strength of the current, the direction of the wind, the weight of the block or the quantity and draught of the ice attached to it. The smaller fragments would, on the whole, have the best chance of going farthest; because, in the first place, they were more numerous, and then, being lighter, they required less ice to float them, and would not ground so readily on shoals, or if stranded, would be more easily started again on their travels. ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... must be a gentleman, because he's so much in contact with the men. But a general, or even a colonel, may be any sort of riff-raff if he understands the shop well enough. A lieutenant is a gentleman: all the rest is chance. Why, who do you suppose won the battle of Lodi? I'll tell ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... where the dogfennel was wonderfully advanced for June, Zene took the gray from the wagon and hitched him to the carriage, substituting Old Hickory. The gray's shoulder was rubbed by his collar, and Zene reasoned that the lighter weight of the carriage would give him a better chance of healing his bruise. Thus paired the horses looked comical. Hickory and Henry evidently considered the change a disgrace to them. But they made the best of it and uttered no protest, except keeping as wide a space as possible ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... she began, 'the only chance of restoring order is to observe method. Let us follow our usual rule of precedence. I claim the first turn as ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the winter. On the other hand, if the white men continued to follow the wild river canyon north, it would bring them to Fort George on the main Fraser in ten days. There was no time to waste on chance travelling. The Overlanders knew that somewhere south from Moose Lake must lie the headwaters of the Thompson, which would bring them to Kamloops. Was that what the Indians meant by their drawings of a white ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... got to keep Hynds House, if only to teach these Hyndsville women a lesson." She spoke after a pause. "Sophy, they flatten their ears and arch their backs at sight of us; and whenever there's a good chance for a wipe of a paw, why, we catch it across the nose. Now I," she admitted frankly, "am naturally full of cat feelings myself. I will not do what you want to do—walk off looking aggrieved, after the fashion of Old Dog Tray. I will repay in kind, retaliate in true lady-cat manner. And these,"—she ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... taken from the circle of my own acquaintance. This is a matter, by-the-bye, on which considerable judgment and good taste have to be exercised; for if the likeness of the person depicted is recognisable by his friends (he never recognises it by any chance himself), or still more by his enemies, it is no longer a sketch from life, but a lampoon. It will naturally be asked by some: 'But if you draw the man to the life, how can he fail to be known?' For this there is the simplest remedy. You describe ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... to be in no way jealous or unhappy, which he would have been had he thought that Captain Roderick had the slightest chance ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... indemnities came into being from three words inserted almost by chance into the armistice treaty on November 2, 1918, reparation des dommages. It was merely a matter of a simple expression to content public feeling: Je supplie le conseil de se mettre dans l'esprit de la population francaise.... It was a ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... and significant they were, these things: his constant uneasiness on seeing himself watched by her; his invitation when he thought she was going to question him; his access of passion when, through heedlessness or forgetfulness, or simply by chance, she asked him a question on certain subjects, and immediately the tenderness that followed, so sudden that they appeared rather planned in view of a determined ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... sweeps so that it stuck well outboard. "Now, my lad," said Mr. Trapp, turning to me, "you've been a very good lad 'pon the whole, and I see you fighting with the tackers down 'pon the quay and holding your own. But they can swim, and you can't, and it's wearing your spirit. So here's a chance to larn. I can't larn' ee myself, for the fashion's come up since I was a youngster. Can you ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... develops any energy other than that in it at the outset. In the same way the optic nerve has, at its end, a bit of mechanism readily excited by light vibrations of the ether, and hence the optic nerve will always be excited when ether vibrations chance to have an opportunity of setting the optic machinery in motion. And so on with the other senses. Each sensory nerve has, at its end, a bit of machinery designed for the transformation of certain kinds of external energy into nervous energy, just as ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... leisure class is not consistently for or against the rehabilitation of this proto-anthropoid human nature. So far as concerns the chance of survival of individuals endowed with an exceptionally large share of the primitive traits, the sheltered position of the class favors its members directly by withdrawing them from the pecuniary struggle; but indirectly, ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... Clara's verdict respecting Will Belton, as she lay thinking of him in bed that night. Why that warranty against love-making should be a virtue in her eyes I cannot, perhaps, explain. But all young ladies are apt to talk to themselves in such phrases about gentlemen with whom they are thrown into chance intimacy,—as though love-making were in itself a thing injurious and antagonistic to happiness, instead of being, as it is, the very salt of life. Safe against love-making! And yet Mrs Askerton, her ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... to doubt my own wisdom in having chosen you as next in command. There's a bit of doubting Thomas in your ego. It's not too late, yet, for you to turn back. I'll let you, as a special concession. Brodeur will jump at the chance to be your successor." ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... them, some pulled by horses but more by yoked oxen, and the men walked beside the animals and cracked long whips. A few men were on horseback, but all kept together, for Indians were plenty and were often hiding near the road, watching for a chance to cut off and capture any wagons lagging ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... freedom had been declared he had the good fortune to find his father. However, he never got a chance to spend any time with him as the Ormonds ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... made a don of Gray, of Calverley. Cambridge men are for ever casting Calverley in our teeth; whereas, in truth, he is specially to be quoted against them. As everybody knows, he was at both Universities, so over him we have a fair chance of comparing methods. As everybody knows, he went to Balliol first, and his ample cabin'd spirit led him to climb a wall, late at night. Something else caused him to be discovered, and Blaydes—he was called ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... laws and statutes of this realm, our most lawful and rightful sovereign, liege lady, and queen, etc. It appears, then, that if King James's divine right be not mentioned by parliament, the omission came merely from chance, and because that phrase did not occur to the compiler of the recognition; his title being plainly the same with that of his predecessor, who was allowed to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... seek a stone, But, as chance was, then found he none. For the stone he took a loaf, And at the poor man it drove. The poor man caught it up quickly, And was thereof full strangely glad, To his fellows fast he ran With the loaf ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... brighter and brighter colours is intelligible. But the beauty of flowers is far more than mere conspicuousness of colours even though that be the main ingredient. Why should the wonderful grace, and delicacy, and harmony of tint be added? Is all this mere chance? Is all this superfluity pervading the whole world and perpetually supplying to the highest of living creatures, and that too in a real proportion to his superiority, the most refined and elevating ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... there was any news from Paris, and receiving an answer in the negative, we drove off. Up hills, over lawns and flower- beds, zigzagging through vineyards and gardens, never by any chance keeping to the proper road, we made the tour ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... worrying about his wife's behaviour. Not so M. de Dreux d'Aubray: he had the scrupulosity of a legal dignitary. He was scandalised at his daughter's conduct, and feared a stain upon his own fair name: he procured a warrant for the arrest of Sainte-Croix wheresoever the bearer might chance to encounter him. We have seen how it was put in execution when Sainte-Croix was driving in the carriage of the marquise, whom our readers will doubtless have recognised as the woman who ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... are away ahead of the story, for we have planted and sold lettuce before Jack has had a chance to really make his garden. The soil in the backyard was very poor, so Jack decided to cultivate only a strip twenty feet long and eight feet wide. He dug out all the soil to the depth of two feet. His father lent him the use ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... said lightly. "Senor Rey knows I am to have luncheon with you. We had a long talk this morning, and I think I left him in excellent spirits.... Oh, yes, he's an artist with the probe. I didn't give him a chance to talk about you, because I asked the ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... from the chance of your death in the meantime, a chance so small as to be negligible, an interest to-morrow is as ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... by chance one night at the club. There is one old man there, extremely rich, with one of the best faces of the lot, just like a hyena. I never used to know how he had got so rich. So one evening I asked one of the millionaires how old Bloggs had made all ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... of bronchos may be up here, but it's the only way into the Basin; and, once in, they may get behind us. Now's your chance ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... free from care. Would I had lived In that good, golden time; nor e'er had known A mob in arms arrayed; nor felt my heart Throb to the trumpet's call! Now to the wars I must away, where haply some chance foe Bears now the blade my naked side shall feel. Save me, dear Lares of my hearth and home! Ye oft my childish steps did guard and bless, As timidly ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... portents preceded my arrival in this world; but in my childhood I remember hearing a traditional account of the manner in which I lost the chance of an endowment of great practical value. The windows of my mother's room were open, in consequence of the unusual warmth of the weather. For the same reason, probably, a neighbouring bee-hive had swarmed, and the new colony, pitching on the window-sill, was making its way into the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... emperor's clemency, and having besought and received mercy, return to the fight; is that character renewed, when the man has been set free and reprimanded? is it not rather acknowledged and approved? Are the Christian sacraments, by any chance, of a nature less lasting than this ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... in this nerve-racked world.' Every chemist in the country that knows my line of work will be searching in a furious effort to forestall the new legislation by discovering and putting on the market new synthetic opiates. There is not, perhaps, much fear that chance shooting will achieve the actual bull's-eye of Ambrotox. But there is a greater danger than commercial rivalry—criminal! The illicit-drug interest is growing in numbers and wealth. Every threat of ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... participation lie My troubles, and beyond relief: If any chance to heave a sigh, They pity me, and not my grief. Then come to me, my Son, or send 75 Some tidings that my woes may end; I have ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... thought," brave Nisus said, "To wound you with so base a dread: So may great Jove, or whosoe'er Marks with just eyes how mortals fare, Protect me going, and restore In triumph to your arms once more. But if—for many a chance, you wis, Besets an enterprise like this— If accident or power divine The scheme to adverse end incline, Your life at least I would prolong: Death does your years a deeper wrong. Leave me a friend to tomb my clay, Rescued or ransomed, which ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... nonsense. There is no certainty that men will not believe to the end of time the doctrines which imposed upon so able a man as Sir Thomas More. Not only, that is, have men been hitherto wandering in a labyrinth without a clue, but there is no chance that any clue will ever be found. The doctrine, so familiar to our generation, of laws of intellectual development, never even occurs to him. The collective thought of generations marks time without advancing. A guess of Sir Thomas More is as good or as bad as the guess ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... a sigh of relief, as he resumed his knife and fork, "then there's the barest chance of a possibility that if—but you've asked her to ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... earth and the fruits of the trees and drinking of the streams, till he came in sight of a city; whereupon he rejoiced and hurried on; but before he reached it, the night overtook him and the gates were shut. Now, as chance would have it, this was the very city in which he had been a prisoner and to whose king his brother Amjed was vizier. When he saw the gate was shut, he turned back and made for the burial-ground, where finding a tomb ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... infringement of either the municipal law, or the anxiously-guarded neutrality of England; and as the Foreign Enlistment Act clearly forbade the equipment of ships of war for belligerent uses, it was necessary that the new cruiser should leave England unarmed, and take her chance of capture, until some safe place could be found for taking her ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... wanted kicking, too, and in any case the "flabby" way they fooled about with girls, and their "silly goats' talk" outraged Ranny. It made a girl cheap, and kept other fellows off her. It didn't give her her chance. It wasn't cricket. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... the belfry, Leonard chanced to cast his eyes on a stout staff left there, either by one of the bell-ringers or some chance visitant, and seizing it as an unlooked-for prize, he ran down the steps, followed ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... this covenant, or law, even all of it, for a long time, ten, twenty, forty, fifty, or threescore years, yet if thou do chance to slip and break one of them but once before thou die, thou art also gone and lost by that covenant; for mark, "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things," that continueth not in ALL things, mark that, "which are written in the book of the law to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... A more general form of the legend ran to the effect that but one of these shields fell from heaven, and that the others were made like it, to lessen the chance of the genuine ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... would certainly be very dangerous and mischievous for you, if your love should chance not to be in accordance with the command of ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... deep young man, and, without waiting for any answer, except such as was afforded by her rosy silence, went on: "American girls do have lots of fun, I see that. I am afraid they are too fond of flirting, though. English girls don't get much of a chance at that, as girls. They don't amount to much until they are married and get ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... of Mercury, Apollo, Hercules, Diana, Minerva, Jupiter Ammon, &c., which last was consulted by Alexander the Great. But Herodotus remarks that in his time there were neither priests nor priestesses who uttered oracles. They were derived from certain presages, which they drew by chance, or from the movements of the statues of the gods, or from the first voice which they heard after having consulted. Pausanias says[183] that he who consults whispers in the ear of Mercury what he requires to know, then he stops his ears, goes out of the temple, and the first ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... the time as a nutty thing to do, but of course I'm no judge. I had a hunch that Rupert was registerin' importance and showin' how he was boss of the expedition—something he hadn't a chance to get over before. It ain't long, though, before Meyers begins talkin' like ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... priori, viz., that in the course of the changes in the world—for the causal principle holds only for effects in nature, not for the existence of things as substances—there can be neither blind chance nor a blind necessity (but only a conditional, hence an intelligible, necessity); and, further, that in the series of phenomena, there can be neither leap, nor gap, nor break, and hence no void—in mundo non datur casus, non datur fatum, non ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... all. But it was not for yourself you took the chance, it was for us." She laid her hand upon his arm. "I—I don't want you to think that I will ever forget and I hope that we shall ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... breaking up the rocks, do not act there, where there is no moisture of any sort. So far as we can see, the purpose of the moon is to be the servant of the earth, to give her light by night and to raise the tides. Beautiful light it is, soft and mysterious—light that children do not often have a chance of seeing, for they are generally in bed before the moon rises when she is ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... in Florida I would want to take a chance on for a long trip. I only know two fellows I would like to have along, and we can't get them. One is Walter Hazard, the Ohio boy who chummed with us down here for so long. The other is that little Bahama darky, Chris, whom Walter insisted on taking ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... way,' I said, bitter-like. 'As soon as a poor man's got a chance of a decent crop, the season turns against him or prices go down, so that ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... O 'Neil met in the same grade, but they did not have a chance to speak, for the boys sat on one side of the room, and the ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... travelled forty-eight miles, and fell at Petworth in Sussex. On the 22nd of February 1784 a balloon of five feet in diameter, liberated at Sandwich in Kent, travelled seventy-five miles, and after crossing the Channel, fell at Warneton in Flanders. To inflate a bag with gas and let it take its chance in the air is no great achievement, but these were flights of good promise. The first person in Great Britain to navigate the air was James Tytler, a Scot, who on the 27th of August 1784 ascended in a fire-balloon, ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... Sure, there's plenty of girls here without any fellows at all, at all. Why should a young man sit all alone like a bump on a log, whin there's so many handsome colleens waiting for the chance at him? ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... that it was Malvern Hill, where a great battle was soon to be fought. I am glad we did not know it before it came. In our ignorance, we assumed that now the fighting was over for a time, and we would be given a chance to recuperate after the strain of the past week. As soon as arms were stacked details for water gathered the dry canteens and went in search of the much needed fluid. Those who could, stretched out on ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... today there is an unreasonable prejudice against it. The great and good effect of the reform, however, is that corporations are no longer in politics. Of course corruption is not all gone, but it is largely stayed, and there is no longer any chance that corporations can ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... take your place in the life of the camp and belittle your past achievements, but to me, O unregenerate goat, you shall ever remain a refreshing memory. Good butting, O excellent ruminant, wherever thou should chance to be. ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... evidently, to enter the house and salute the old people. But the boys say to themselves that they have not been seen coming, and they prefer to sit near their sweethearts, by the side of the brook, on the gigantic roots. And, as if by chance, the two couples manage not to bother one another, to remain hidden from one another ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... behind them, smoking silently or moodily discussing the situation. McDonald was florid and heavily built, his gray mustache hanging heavily over a firm mouth, while the Captain was of another type, tall, with dark eyes and hair. The latter by chance opened ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... Service clerk so famous for his drollery was entering the office doors at half-past ten in the morning, or exactly sixty minutes past the appointed time. By an unfortunate chance his principal met him, as, alas! he had too often done, at the same tardy hour. "Late again," said the great man, consulting his watch. "I believe that you get here later every day." "Yes," said the clerk, "I do. But then I always stay ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... figured it out about right," said Douglas approvingly. "I thought I'd dodge your British law; for I was not sure how I stood under it, and also I saw my chance to throw these hounds once for all off my track. Mind you, from first to last I have done nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing that I would not do again; but you'll judge that for yourselves when I tell you my story. Never mind warning me, Inspector: I'm ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... long time afterwards, one of the unpublished papers of this statesman, that it was his duty to give it to the public. 'Having had,' he says, 'the MS. of this treatise ["The Cabinet Council"] written by Sir Walter Raleigh, many years in my hands, and finding it lately by chance among other books and papers, upon reading thereof, I thought it a kind of injury to withhold longer the work of so eminent an author from the public; it being both answerable in style to other works of his already extant, as far ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... "If by any chance," Mr. Mathews went on in a steady voice, "there should be a stock-holder who is unwilling to take advantage of this magnificent offer, we need hardly say that we are prepared to buy his stock back at the amount he gave for it." He smiled, as if inviting ridicule at ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... and wariness, it holds its place in a district much longer than its more timid and better-conditioned neighbor. Mr. Oswell was once stalking two of these beasts, and, as they came slowly to him, he, knowing that there is but little chance of hitting the small brain of this animal by a shot in the head, lay expecting one of them to give his shoulder till he was within a few yards. The hunter then thought that by making a rush to his side he might succeed in escaping, but the rhinoceros, too ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... the stubs." The consequence of this imprudent measure, said our informant, is that the planters have no control over the children born on their estates; and in many instances their parents have sent them away lest their residence on the property should, by some chance, give the planter a claim upon their services. Under the good old system the young children were placed together under the charge of some superannuated women, who were fit for nothing else, and the mothers went into the field ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... must move slowly, that is all. Give him a chance to see you in other and better lights. Drop into the Hoffman House reading-room. Talk with the best men you meet while there; but not too much, or too indiscriminately. Mr. Clavering is fastidious, and will not feel honored by the attentions of one who is hail-fellow-well-met ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... are considered somewhat expensive luxuries. They are called gammelost and pultost, and are made from sour skimmed milk, being afterwards kept in a dark cellar for a year or so to ripen. The latter is the greater delicacy, and is stored, in a sloppy state, in wooden tubs. If you should ever chance to see one of the tubs being produced, do not wait to see it opened, or your nose will ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... natural that the Greeks should take up arms to emancipate themselves from Turkish oppression, the moment a favourable opportunity presented itself; but certainly, few foreigners conceived that the time they selected afforded them much chance of success. Kolocotroni, however, appears to have understood the internal condition of the Ottoman empire rather better than Metternich. The unwarlike habits of the majority of the Greek population, contrasted with the military feelings of the Turks, and with the numbers and valour of the Ottoman ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... island;[415] when the only respectable military force was the archers, already an obsolete arm. Invading hosts could never be victualled for more than three months, or stand a winter campaign; English troops were ploughmen by profession and soldiers only by chance; Henry VII.'s treasure was exhausted, and efforts to raise money for fitful and futile inroads nearly produced a revolt. Henry VIII. himself was writing that to provide for these inroads would prevent him keeping an army in Ireland; and Wolsey was declaring that for the same reason English ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... when an apothecary's apprentice, performed his first experiments with instruments of the rudest description. He extemporised the greater part of them himself, out of the motley materials which chance threw in his way,—the pots and pans of the kitchen, and the phials and vessels of his master's surgery. It happened that a French ship was wrecked off the Land's End, and the surgeon escaped, bearing with ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... it. 'I hardly know what I meant to say,' he went on more firmly, 'but I know what I meant to accomplish. That is the truth, such as it is. I saw this afternoon that I should never persuade you to ask for your freedom unless I could talk to you alone where you must hear me; the chance came unexpectedly and I took it, for it would never have come again. I had no other place, I had not thought of what I should say, but I was ready to risk everything, all for all—as I ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... matter had to be decided by lot. Now this chance threw Wesley Boone out, and there was great rejoicing in the Acredale group, who hoped that this stroke of luck would make place for their favorite, Jack Sprague. But, to everybody's astonishment, a day or two after the event, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... too, Mr. Randolph had ample time and chance to observe Daisy's action which had so disturbed her mother at meal times. Yet hitherto he had never spoken of it. In fact it was so quietly done that often the moment escaped him; and at other times, Daisy's ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... George now went together to the stern of the boat and watched anxiously the pursuing rebels, who after their first volley from the shore had wasted no more powder, apparently content to wait until they came up with their prey. They filled two boats, and George thought that, given a fair and even chance, they could easily be overpowered. They were still some distance in the rear, and had so far gained nothing on the fugitives. But it was very apparent they were making a great effort, and presently it became evident they were slowly but surely ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... first view was a magnificent sight. The two armies were on the two banks of the Niemen. The Emperor was the first to arrive at a raft built in the middle of the river; the Emperor Alexander's boat found some difficulty in approaching, which gave him a chance to speak of his eagerness thwarted by the stream. They tell me that when the two Emperors kissed, wide-spread applause arose from both banks. What most interests me in all this good news is my hope of soon seeing ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... life, until he was surrounded by a great number of assailants, and died by the multitude of the wounds which they gave him. The third man was Anteius, a senator, and a few others with him. He did not meet with these Germans by chance, as the rest did before, but came to show his hatred to Caius, and because he loved to see Caius lie dead with his own eyes, and took a pleasure in that sight; for Caius had banished Anteius's father, who was of the same name with ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... all good-byes said—personally I had a heart like lead, but, with every one else on board, bent on doing my duty and following Captain Scott to the end. There was work to be done, however, and the crew were glad of the orders that sent them from one rope to another and gave them the chance to hide their feelings, for there is an awful feeling of loneliness at this point in the lives of those who sign on the ships of the "South Pole trade"—how glad we were to hide those feelings and make sail—there ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... that shut, leaving them no room to turn around; and while they stood bellowing and plunging, over the top of the pen there leaned one of the "knockers," armed with a sledge hammer, and watching for a chance to deal a blow. The room echoed with the thuds in quick succession, and the stamping and kicking of the steers. The instant the animal had fallen, the "knocker" passed on to another; while a second man raised a lever, and the side of the pen was ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... the quarry he is stalking. How very often it happens! The hunter sees afar some trophy that he is eager to secure and straightway begins a careful stalk of many hundred yards. At last, after much patient work, he reaches a point where he feels that he can chance a shot. He takes a careful sight and at that moment a kongoni that has been silently watching him from some place or other gives the alarm, and away goes the trophy beyond reach of a bullet. And then how the hunter curses at the kongoni, who has stopped some little distance away and is regarding ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... Mrs. Leslie, recalling all the pining, restless, untiring love that Lady Vargrave had manifested towards the lost, and feeling that she ought not to sacrifice to slight scruples the chance of happiness for her friend's future years,—"stay; I think this question you should address to Lady Vargrave,—or ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and because you are unhappy my love for you is greater than before. You are enduring a great sorrow, as I am. You have lost your hopes of happiness," he added in a low, melancholy tone. "If you had kept your secret from me and I had heard it by chance, even so my esteem for you could not have been diminished. For there is no duty laid on you to reveal a secret which belongs to you alone. No one has the right to judge you." The last words were spoken in a trembling voice which made it clear that he also was oppressed by the secret, the weight ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... execution, not engage in a warfare of man to man, was his resolution; for they were not soldiers hew as seeking, but assassins; and to pitch his brave Scots in the open field against such unmanly wretches would be to dishonor his men, to give criminals a chance for the lives they ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... doing a thing because he has been led by some one else. In the second, Julian had grown ardently to dislike Cuckoo's unreasoning antipathy to Valentine. Originally, and for some time, he had believed that she would get over it. Finding later that there was no chance of that, he had once told her that he could not hear Valentine abused. Since that day she had been careful not to mention his name. But now her bitterness against him peeped out once more, and seemed even to have been gathering force ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... coarsely and roundly the anticipation of a person's death. Suppose a child, heir to some estate, the subject of conversation—the hypothesis of his death is put cautiously, under such forms as, 'If anything but good should happen;' 'if any change should occur;' 'if any of us should chance to miscarry;' and so forth. Always a modified expression is sought—always an indirect one. And this timidity arises under the old superstition still lingering amongst men, like that ancient awe, alluded to by Wordsworth, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... As the reader already knows, Obed had a far keener ear than I, and it had warned him of the canoe's approach. It turned out afterwards that the toen had planned this little reconnoitring expedition on his own account, and on the chance perhaps of filching a ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... increasing number of adherents, who have used it for all ordinary purposes of communication. A great number of newspapers and reviews of all kinds are now published regularly in Esperanto in a great variety of countries. I take up a chance number of the Internacia Scienca Revuo, which happens to be on my table, and find the following subjects among the contents of the month: "Rle of living beings in the general physiology of the earth," "The carnivorous animals of Sweden," "The part played by heredity in the etiology ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... hangers-on; lovers, whose mistresses were absent, sighed their woes into the ears of confidants; officers tossed curt nods to their creditors, and high officials were receiving obsequious bows from their subordinates, anxiously hoping for the time when death would give them a chance of promotion. And then—before the young ladies had had time to exhibit their latest Paris gowns in the course of one turn up and one down the promenade, and just as admiring young clerks were opening the conversation with their charmers, while ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... What, then, is our position? Under the decision of the Supreme Court we are entitled to participate in all the territory of the United States. We are offering to give up the great part and the best part of it, and in payment we are to take the naked chance of getting a little piece of the worthless territory south of the proposed line! Such an idea was never entertained by those who made the Compromise. The idea which governed their action was, beyond all doubt, not that present territory alone should be thus divided, ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... him on his word and assurance. Besides, it is not possible for me to give sufficiently ample instructions to any one I might send, to enable him to do what may be necessary under every circumstance that may arise, as I myself might do. Even if it should chance that they kill me, it were better this should happen in the discharge of my duty, than that I should preserve my life by neglecting to perform it. You, my friends, remain at sea in good ships: And if you hear of any mischance befalling me, my desire is that you ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... the park at the Plaza and sped up the shining, almost empty drive. Larry kept watch, now on the trailing Lefty, now on the best chance for execution of his idea—all the way up the east side and around the turn at the north end. As the car, now south-bound, swung up the hill near One Hundred and Fifth Street, at whose crest there is a sharp curve with thick-growing, overhanging trees, Larry opened ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... incurvicervicus, borders on the ludicrous. [17] Some of his fragments show the same sceptical tendencies that are prominent in Ennius. One of them contains a comprehensive survey of the different philosophic systems, and decides in favour of blind chance (temeritas) as the ruling power, on the ground of sudden changes in fortune like that of Orestes, who in one day was metamorphosed from a king into a beggar. Pacuvius either improved his later style, or else confined its worst points to his tragedies, for ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... explaining your position, and said he thought that, upon the whole, it was the best thing you could have done, as a vigorous search had been set on foot, at the instance of the Jews, and there would have been but little chance of your making your way through the country alone. He added that he felt confident that, if alive, you would manage somehow to rejoin us before the ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... he, with an Irishman's easy insolence, "Lookin' for a chance to steal somethin'—is it?" And then Kennedy was both amazed and enraptured at the prompt reply in the fervent ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... explained Yarchenko. "'I dreenk to the health of the luminary of Russian science, Gavrila Petrovich Yarchenko, whom I saw by chance when I was passing by through the collidor. Would like to clink glasses together personally. If you do not remember, recollect the National Theatre, Poverty Is No Disgrace, and the humble artist who played African.' Yes, that's right," said Yarchenko. "Once, somehow, they saddled me ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... the burghers had come to light at Nooitgedacht—namely, that they shirked their duty in their eagerness for plunder. He was afraid that if they took the town their plundering spirit would get the better of them and so give the enemy a chance of catching them or putting them to flight. Lastly he said that he was going to act in opposition to the orders received from the Commandant-General, and would send the Zoutpansbergers and Waterbergers home that evening, as it was ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... come. The world reaps not a little advantage from criticism. It is a very imperfect world; no generation of its inhabitants does its work as well as it ought to be done, and it is the undoubted right of the next generation to detect its defects; for in this lies the only chance of improvement. There is something awe-inspiring in the first glance cast by the young on the world in which they find themselves. It is so clear and unbiassed; they distinguish so instantaneously between the right ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... has depth in him seldom broods over real trouble—not at first, at least. By this test may often be known the real from the fanciful woe. Caius, knew, or his instincts knew, that his only chance of breasting the current was, not to think of its strength, but to keep on swimming. He took his horse's bits and the harness that had been given him for his little sleigh, cleaning and burnishing ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... with majestic grace; Such seems thy gentle height, made only proud To be the basis of that pompous load, 50 Than which, a nobler weight no mountain bears, But Atlas only, which supports the spheres. When Nature's hand this ground did thus advance, 'Twas guided by a wiser power than Chance; Mark'd out for such an use, as if 'twere meant T' invite the builder, and his choice prevent. Nor can we call it choice, when what we choose, Folly or blindness only could refuse. A crown of such majestic towers doth grace The gods' great mother, when her heavenly race 60 Do ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... of those sudden doubts that are created by a chance glimpse from an accidental new point of view; and Morgan thrust it from him as absurd and unjust. It could have no foundation, else why had Ingram responded to his appeal at the beginning? Why ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... there are some passages which can be better, and more easily understood by comparing the various versions, they are the result of chance, and are not numerous: their continuance in obscurity would have impaired neither the clearness of the narrative nor the ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza
... know. Still, for all that, if I could come upon a saddled pony, and there was a chance of getting off with it, I should take it without hesitation as a fair ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... enough when he chose to be. Netty walked backward and forward down the broad walk in the middle of those gardens, which the government have so frequently had to close against public manifestations, and wondered why Martin was so long in coming. For the chance meetings had gradually resolved themselves into something very much like an understanding, if not a distinct appointment. All people engaging in the game of love should be warned that it is a game which never ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... the yellow hue is perceptible—the appetite failing, and vomiting ensuing, the cure is doubtful; and, if inflammation of the stomach has taken place, with high fever, vomiting of blood, wasting away, and fits occurring, there is no chance of cure. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... faithful native servant, went and hid himself in proximity to the hole whence the leopard was likely to spring. It was a lovely moonlight night, and several hours had been passed in perfect silence and vain waiting for the chance of a shot, when a bright idea struck the native servant. Certain that the leopard was no longer there, and wishing to retire to his warm room, he addressed his master in poetic terms somewhat ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... resource. Believing also that piety, false or true, was a becoming manner in which to meet her future, she continued in the Church, as though it were the cross-roads of a forest, where, seated on a bench, she read the sign-posts, and waited for some lucky chance; feeling all the while ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... front of the trenches. Sprays of bullets cut crosswise of the blasts of the German curtains of artillery fire. How any men could go the breadth of No Man's Land and survive would have been called miraculous in other days; in these days we know that it was due to the law of chance which will wound one man a dozen times and never bark the ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... Days! in times long gone Thy lofty halls in regal splendour shone! Thou stoodst a monument of strength sublime, A Giant, laughing at the threats of Time! Strange scenes have passed within thy walls! and strange Has been thy fate through many a chance and change! Thy Towers have heard the war-cry, and the shout Of friends within, and answering foes without, Have rung to sounds of revelry, while mirth Held her carousal, when the sons of earth Sported with joy, till even he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... a chance to redd up this, either," poor John Upham whispered in his ear, and gathered up with a furtive swoop ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... possible to get down the river in a boat to the steamer, he thought, there would of course be a chance of bringing Purvis back before it was light; but if he did that he would have to start within the hour. The nights ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... wanted, or conscription, or a customs tariff—it may be merely to suit the coward fears of autocratic rulers, or the selfish interests of some group of contractors or concession-hunters—all that the parties concerned have to do is to play the patriotic stop, and they stand a good chance of getting what they want. Just now there is a good bit of fleecing going on in this fashion—both of the public and the wage-workers. Even in its more healthy forms, when delayed in too long, patriotism easily becomes morbid and delays also the birth of the larger spirit which is ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... minutes a day. After the visitation of the expert the girls were so efficient that they never for a second stopped their work—except when one of them would explode in hysteria and be hurried off to the rest-room. But no expert was able to keep them from jumping at the chance to marry any one who would condescend to take them out of this ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... a chance to dream, Out fishin'; He learns the beauties of a stream, Out fishin'; An' he can wash his soul in air That isn't foul with selfish care, An' relish plain and simple ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest |
