"Pugilistic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I can recall a droll scene, de eodem genere, which I witnessed within a week of the other. There was a rather first-class saloon, bar, and restaurant on Broadway, kept by a good-looking pugilistic-associated individual named George Shurragar. As he had black eyes, and was a shoulder-hitter, and as the name in Romany means "a captain," I daresay he was partly gypsy. And, when weary with editorial ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Peerless Kid. The man Cosy Moments is running for the light-weight championship. We are his pugilistic sponsors. You may say that it is entirely owing to our efforts that he has obtained this match with—who exactly is the gentleman Comrade Brady fights at the Highfield ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... straight, or nearly straight, bang, nor wear her hair low on her forehead, nor adjust the greater portion of her hair so that the coil cannot be seen above the crown of her head. The low bang brings into striking relief all the hard lines of her face and gives the impression that she has pugilistic tendencies. ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... drinking it, were wont to say things about Locusta and Borgia. The commoner sort swore like hell at Freddy Parker. It made you feel squiffy after the sixth glass—argumentative, magisterial, maudlin, taciturn, erotic, sentimental, sea-sick, ecstatic, paralysed, lachrymose, hilarious, pugilistic—according to your temperament. Whatever your temperament it gave you a thundering head next morning, and a throat like Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace. It was known ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... hope for his brother's cause; he was baffled and infuriated by the general unquestioning belief in Frank's guilt, and a dozen times had been compelled to sit biting on his bitterness, when every instinct impelled him to square up and teach the fools better with all the force of his pugilistic knowledge. Of late years he had been schooled in a class that accepted 'a ready left' as the most convincing argument, and, being beyond the immediate province of law and order, repaired immediately with all ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... family did the greatest honor to his benevolent discrimination. His lordship extended his goodness to little Rawdon: he pointed out to the boy's parents the necessity of sending him to a public school; that he was of an age now when emulation, the first principles of the Latin language, pugilistic exercises and the society of his fellow-boys would be of the greatest benefit to the boy.... All objections disappeared before the generous perseverance of the marquis. His lordship was one of the governors ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... Paladins, the Orlando of ancient romance; Agamemnon, for ever the Charlemagne; Ajax, for ever the sullen, imperturbable, columnar champion, the Mandricardo, the Bergen-op-Zoom of his faction, and corresponding to our modern 'Chicken' in the pugilistic ring, who was so called (as the books of the Fancy say) because he was a 'glutton'; and a 'glutton' in this sense—that he would take any amount of cramming (i. e. any possible quantum of 'milling,' or 'punishment'). ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... you going to make your fortune, John, and get out of that disagreeable hardware concern?" demanded Di, pausing after an exciting "round," and looking almost as much exhausted as if it had been a veritable pugilistic encounter. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... thoughts were far from pugilistic. He was thinking of the immediate past and the future. Every man in his crew was aware of the fact that 35 per cent of the output of these mines went to the homeless starving ones of the most hopelessly wrecked nation on the face of the earth. And though for the most part they were rough men, ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... the forward deck. The latter, without a word, made a rush for him, grasped him by the throat, and, much to the amusement of a group of Americans, who immediately began to bet on him, administered to the detective a perfect volley of blows, which proved the great superiority of French over English pugilistic skill. ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... stage of the burning her heart burst and leapt out of her body, to the terror of them all, and that not one of those ten thousand people ever cared particularly for hot roast after that. In addition to these old tragedies, pugilistic encounters almost to the death had come off down to recent dates in that secluded arena, entirely invisible to the outside world save by climbing to the top of the enclosure, which few towns-people in the daily round of their lives ever ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... The best pugilistic encounters then took place at Lambeth, a parish in which the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury has a palace though the air there is unhealthy, and a rich library open at certain ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... the excited seaman, leaping to a perpendicular rock, against which he placed his back, and raised his fists in a pugilistic attitude, "Keep one or two in play with your broken toothpick, an' I'll floor 'em one after another as they comes up. Now, then, ye black baboons, come on,—all at once, if you like,—an' Jo Bumpus'll show ye wot ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... to grow into a much bigger man. His hair was uncompromisingly red, and grew in such irregular fashion that the comb was not made which could subdue it. He had the wide-open, fighting blue eyes of the Chief Inspector, and when he smiled the presence of two broken teeth lent him a very pugilistic appearance. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... rural disturbance; muddy police are coming in on jaunting-cars, with prisoners from the nearest eviction. Everywhere you meet them; young policemen, with fresh, rosy complexions; middle-aged policemen, with stern faces, bearing strong evidence of Irish pugilistic talent; old policemen, with deeply scarred and weather-beaten countenances, looking forward to speedy retirement and a moderate pension; they are in the city, in the village, on the high road, in the by-way, and on the mountain paths. At every railroad station they are to be seen in pairs, ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... little ostentatiously, to Rupert Carey. Her husband saw it and began at once to look pugilistic. He could not say anything, for at this moment two or three men strolled up to speak to Lady Holme. While she was talking to them, Pimpernel Schley came in sight waltzing with Mr. Laycock, one of those abnormally thin, narrow-featured, smart ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... and young, and was called the robin; and well would it be if its English namesake possessed its sterling virtues; for, with all its pleasant traits and world-wide reputation, the English robin is a pretentious, arrogant busybody, characteristically pugilistic and troublesome in the winged society of England. In form, dress, deportment, disposition, and in voice and taste for vocal music, the American robin surpasses the English most decidedly. In this our grave forefathers did more than justice to the home-bird they missed on Plymouth Rock. ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... He was not without pugilistic training, and he struck back vigorously, striking Callum once in the chest and once in the neck. In an instant the two rooms of this suite were in an uproar. Tables and chairs were overturned by the energy of men attempting to get to the scene of action. The ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... and a Christian—the hero of the Russian Campaign, of Waterloo, etc., after his retirement to the Rock, became deeply interested in theology, fighting being no longer a pastime he could indulge in unless by pugilistic assault on the British guards, which, contrary to his past experience, would have been entirely at his own expense, hence uncomfortable. And here we find him talking so well—this grand disturber of the world's peace—so profoundly, so ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... their bayonets, stood grouped in careless attitudes—some with their wives leaning on their arms—others with their children upraised, that they might the better observe the enlivening sports without—some lay indolently with their legs overhanging the works—others, assuming pugilistic attitudes, dealt their harmless blows at each other,—and all were blended together, men, women, and children, with that heedlessness of thought that told how little of distrust existed within their breasts. The soldiers of the guard, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... to his feet, his face streaming with blood; and he was just about making a rush at me like a mad bull at a gate, while I put myself in a posture of defence in proper pugilistic fashion, when an interruption, though but of a temporary character, ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... level, dry turf Will faced his big antagonist. Baizley was heavy of build, strong of arm, and not without some knowledge of the pugilistic art. He was also a little taller than Will. To the casual glance the latter appeared no match for him. Fair-skinned, slender, and with something of a studious stoop to his shoulders, Will's appearance gave small indication of the strength ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... it wasn't for the Johnnie with the dibs. She doesn't care for HIM: she wants his money. He dresses badly, don't you see; and, after all, the clothes make the man! I'D like to get at him. I'D spoil his pretty face for him." And he assumed a playfully pugilistic attitude. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... the assault on the policeman was wanton and unprovoked, and the matter was further aggravated by the fact that a person of the defendant's well-known pugilistic powers had chosen to attack an unoffending party. He should, therefore, call on the defendant Evans to put in ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... me that Prince George had been talking once more to Frederick Augustus about the pugilistic performances of my mother. Perhaps he was trying to pluck up courage to beat me, a diversion not altogether unknown in the House of Saxony, according to the Memoirs of the famous Baron ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... settled than the conviction that the conquering qualities of a great captain are courage and confidence. He has given no sign of these qualities. Nature, it would seem, has fashioned him neither pachydermatous nor pugilistic. He appears upon the platform as a gentleman makes his entrance into a drawing-room, not as a toreador leaps into the bull ring. He expresses his opinions as a gentleman expresses his views at a dinner-table, not as an ale-house politician airs his dogmatisms in the tap-room. ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... amount of indelicacy in the episodes in "Tom Jones," and also of hostility, which is exhibited in the rough form of pugilistic encounters, so as almost to remind us of the old comic stage. He seems especially fond of settling quarrels in this way, and wishes that no other was ever used, and that "iron should dig no bowels but those of the earth." The character of Deborah Wilkins, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Turkey rose to his feet and threw his arms into a pugilistic position. He was hurrying away to make good his promise, when I detained him, alarmed at the effect of incautiously rousing Turkey's combativeness ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville |
