"Dark horse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had Inspector Whiteleaf and this dark horse in the fur coat been gone at the time you ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... shouted furiously, "an 'expert from the Home office'! So that's the dark horse in the fur coat. Coombes! I'm fed up to the back teeth with this gun from the Home office! If I'm not to have entire charge of the case I'll throw it up. I'll stand for no blasted overseer checking my work! Wait till I see the Assistant Commissioner! ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... I was merely a dark horse," said Vetch, "I was afraid to pull on the curb; but now that I've won the race, they'll find that I'm my own master. ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... let the cat out of the bag now," he replied with a laugh, "if Mr. Herrick had not asked such a direct question. I am not one for meddling in other folks' business; but as this seems a grave matter, and my friend Saul is evidently playing the dark horse, I will tell you ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... by virtue of the quarter-mile. Fenn won it; Peel was second; and a dark horse from Denny's got in third. With the greater part of the sports over, and a lead of five points to their name, Dencroft's could feel more comfortable. The hurdle-race was productive of some discomfort. Fenn ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... is one I expected to be made in the natural order of things. The attempt to bring out a dark horse against two persons evenly matched, or supposed to be so, is an extremely difficult feat, because any break from one of the leaders would naturally carry a portion of his followers to the other leader. Therefore, the nomination of Harrison seemed to be the natural sequence ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... life has its handicaps like the turf, and that old jockey of many Cabinets began seriously to think whether he might not lay a little money on that dark horse Joe Atlee, and make something out of him before he was better known in ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... chief of a gang of poachers!" cried Saurin. "By Jove, I did not think it was in him, and fairly confess that I have not done him justice. He is a dark horse and ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... but with unmistakable significance, that it would not do to take things too easily, or let a rival obtain too long a start. There was nobody of whom the Statesman could be supposed to be thinking, except the dark horse that Dick Benyon had brought into the betting—Alexander Quisante! Such predictions from such quarters have no small power of self-verification; they predispose lesser men to a fatalistic acquiescence which smoothes the way of ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... candidate by the convention. Several states had "favorite sons" whom they would be sure to present, and if so many of these should appear as to prevent McKinley's nomination on the first ballot or at least on an early one, there might be a stampede to an unknown man—a "dark horse"—and then Hanna's ambitions would be frustrated. Thomas B. Reed of Maine was an especial source of anxiety as he possessed considerable strength throughout New England. To guard against such a danger, ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... bursts of words which had come from him in former days in the House of Commons. These had occasionally surprised men and induced them to declare that Planty Pall,—as he was then often called,—was a dark horse. But they had been few and far between, and Phineas had never heard them. Now he gazed at his companion in silence, wondering whether the speaker would go on with his speech. But the face changed on a sudden, and the Duke with an awkward motion ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope |
