"Fencer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perfect type of the highly developed, highly educated American girl of to-day, a marvellous compound of intense energy and languorous grace. She had done as brilliantly at Vassar as Nitocris had done at Girton and London, and she had also rowed stroke in the Ladies' Eight, and was champion fencer of the College. Yet as far as her physical presence was concerned, she was just a "Gibson Girl" of the daintiest type—fair-skinned, blue-eyed, golden-haired—her hair had a darker gleam of bronze in it in certain lights—exquisitely ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... fifty or seventy-five years younger, by Jove! If you two boys let any rank outsider take her out of the family, you'll have me to reckon with. Yes, by Jove, you will! And you'll find that while I may be a poor fencer, and a worse boxer, I'm still ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... and left regardless of consequences, and leaping from the ground when making a thrust at his opponent's heart, or savagely attempting to rival the hero of Chevy Chase who struck off his enemy's legs, is no mean foe. Donald was a capital fencer; and, well skilled in the tricks of the art, he had a parry for every known thrust. But Fandy's thrusts were unknown. Nothing more original or unexpected could be conceived; and every time Dorry cried "foul!" he redoubled his strokes, taking the word as a sort of ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... catching fish, that is to say, How to make a man that was none to be an Angler by a book, he that undertakes it shall undertake a harder task than Mr. Hales, a most valiant and excellent fencer, who in a printed book called A Private School of Defence undertook to teach that art or science, and was laughed at for his labour. Not but that many useful things might be learned by that book, but he was laughed at because that art was not to be taught by words, but practice: ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... death! how did my sword miss him? These rogues that are most weary of their lives Still 'scape the greatest dangers. A pox upon him; all his reputation, Nay, all the goodness of his family, Is not worth half this earthquake: I learn'd it of no fencer to shake thus: Come, I 'll forget him, and go drink ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... thoroughly and instinctively to comprehend her every word, and chilled by the disagreeable suspicion that he was only playing with her, and her mathematics and geometry, and meta-physic and dialectic, like a fencer practising with foils, while he reserved his real strength for some object more worthy of him. More than once some paradox or question of his had shaken her neatest systems into a thousand cracks, and ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... vast embroideries of the bed Stirring the monstrous tapestries, Retreating before the sable impending gloom of the canopy With a swift thrust and sparkle of gold, Lipping my hands, Then Rippling back abashed before the ominous silences Like the swift turns and starts of an overpowered fencer Who sees before him ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... blood lust unless necessary to the work in hand. Don Diego sulkily made the sign of the cross at the Name, and Don Ruy noted that the good father was good on the parry—and if he could use a blade as he did words, he would be a rare fencer for sport. One could clang steel all day and no one be the bearer ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... literary acquirements; with a gaiety of heart and cheerfulness of mind that spread happiness on all around him. His conversation was brilliant and engaging, as well as instructive. He was, moreover, the best fencer, dancer, swimmer, runner, dresser, the best shot, the best horseman, the best draughtsman, ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... extricate Gonsalvo from the difficulties of his situation, without the most flagrant errors on the part of his opponent. The Spanish general, who understood the character of the French commander perfectly well, lay patiently awaiting his opportunity, like a skilful fencer, ready to make a decisive thrust at the first vulnerable point that should be presented. Such an occasion at length offered itself early in the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... trouble of crossing over to France or Belgium—I dare say that will be the programme—for nothing. Then there's another thing, Nina: I am the challenged party; I ought to have the choice of weapons. Well, now, I am not a very good shot; but I'm considered a very fair fencer; and I suppose you would say that I should be magnanimous and choose pistols? Oh, no; I'm not going to do anything of the kind. There might be a very awkward accident with pistols—that is to say, if our bloodthirsty seconds put in more than half a charge ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... done!" said Gary. "I have got more than my match. But I know who will plague people worse than a puzzle, if she gets well educated. There's a pair of gloves, you little fencer." ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and adroit fencer, and could explain the difference between the French system and the American plan as taught at West Point. I learned both from him. His conversational powers and the extent of his general knowledge surpassed anything that ever graced the border. In a word, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... at this time was in brilliant correspondence with the ideal which imagination might form of a youthful poet. Perfect in all bodily proportions, an accomplished fencer, with delicate flowing hair, and beautiful features through which genius, still half in slumber, shed its mystic glow, he was all that the imagination of Greece saw in the young Hyperion ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... she struck savagely. But with the skill of a fencer he met the blow and broke it, seizing ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... at the age of ten, and from 1822 to 1824 he was a student at the Academy of Lausanne. Agassiz afterwards spent some years as a student in the Universities of Zurich, Heidelberg, and Munich, where he gained a reputation as a skilled fencer. It was at Heidelberg that his studies took a definite turn towards Natural History. He took a Ph.D. degree at Erlangen in 1829. Agassiz published his first paper in "Isis" in 1828, and for many years devoted himself chiefly to Ichthyology. During a visit to Paris ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... dare withdraw for a second his eyes from Crispin's. Until that hour Joseph Ashburn had accounted himself something of a swordsman, and more than a match for most masters of the weapon. But in Crispin he found a fencer of a quality such as he had never yet encountered. Every feint, every botte in his catalogue had he paraded in quick succession, yet ever with the same result—his point was foiled and ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... a half-load of pressed skins. Bullocks living on box-leaves and lignum. Rode over to get the geography of this place by daylight. Saunders, the fencer, told me about it this morning. He's got a ten-mile contract away on Poolkija, and he's going out with three horses and a dray-load of stores for himself. Dray stopped on the road for the last week, with his wife minding it. Horses supposed to be lost in the lignum on Yoongoolee, and him hunting ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... was for his life that he now wielded sword, and he was not now taken by surprise as he had been in our former meetings, or unsteadied by a desire of making a great flourish before a lady. He now brought to his use all his training as a fencer. He had a strong wrist and a good eye, despite the dissolute life that he had led. For some minutes our swords clashed, our boots beat the ground, and our lungs panted as we fought in the moonlight. I was anxious to have the thing ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... son of a clergyman, who sent his gifted son to the Universities of Zuerich, Heidelberg, and Munich, where he acquired reputation for his brilliant powers, and entered into the enthusiastic, intellectual, and merry student-life, taking his place in the formal duels, and becoming known as a champion fencer. Agassiz was an influence in every centre that he touched; and in Munich, his room and his laboratory, thick with clouds of smoke from the long-stemmed German pipes, was a gathering-place for the young scientific aspirants, who affectionately ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... which are deemed of importance. Practice of this kind should form a part of every naturalist's daily routine. After a certain time, it need not be consciously done. The movements of thought and action will, indeed, become as automatic as those which the trained fencer makes ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... face, foil in hand, Just out of lunging range they salute, Who anon, swordsman stark, old fencer grand, Must fight their duel out, foot to foot. Mere preliminary flourish, all of this; The punctilio of "form" without a fault; But soon the blades shall counter, clash, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... with a silver knife, throwing the blood into the fire, together with many sweet perfumes, and even thrust the bloody blade of the knife often into the fire that none of the blood may be lost; then the priest maketh many strange gestures with the knife, like a fencer, giving or defending thrusts. In the mean time other priests with burning censers go round about the altar perfuming it with incense, and ringing a small silver bell all the time of the sacrifice. The priest who sacrifices ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... priest's eyes, and, remembering his words spoken under the lee of the wall of the Hotel de la Plage, he laughed as a fencer may laugh who has been touched beyond doubt by ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... the man. His thin lips had come together in a straight line. His hollow cheeks were flushed. Every sense was as alert as a fencer's. If he had lived long like that, no wonder his eyes had gone bad. Yet last night Monte himself had lived like that, pacing his room hour after hour. Only it was not work that had given a cutting edge ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... comers successfully. The duke got angry, and one day he took up a foil and defied the Neapolitan marquis to a combat. Dragon accepted and was thoroughly beaten, while the duke went off in triumph, for he might say from henceforth that he was the best fencer ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Hood over the sticks," he said. "I've found out he's a good fencer; there'll be some meetings under National Hunt rules during the winter ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... great Klang gambling house, and when I reached the door, I halted for the space of an eye-flick, and spilled the scent over my hand and arm as far as the elbow. Then I rushed in among the gamblers, suddenly and without warning, stepping like a fencer in the sword-dance and crying "Amok! Amok!" till the coins danced upon the gaming tables. All the gamblers stayed their hands from the staking, and some seized their dagger hilts. Then I cried aloud three times, "I am Si-Hamid, the Tiger Unbound!"—for by that ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... well yield gracefully. You don't know this big fellow as well as I do. He's obstinacy itself. You can make the most obstinate donkey go on by pulling its tail hard enough, but when Jeannin gets a notion into his pate, not all the legions of hell can get it out again. Besides that, he's a skilful fencer, so there's nothing for it ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... strong fingers, all this with the naive satisfaction of a ditch-digger. His conversation always turned on feats of strength and before the two artists he strutted as if he belonged to another race, talking of his prowess as a fencer, of his triumphs in the bouts, of the weights he could lift with the slightest effort, of the number of chairs he could jump over without touching one of them. Often he interrupted the two painters when they were eulogizing the great masters of art, to tell them of the latest victory ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... desired to write in metrical lines. However, he never liked this collection that he often regretted having published. His encounters with prosody had left him with that monotonous weariness that the horseman and the fencer feel after a period in the riding school, or a ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... teach a damned Tory some manners. So the four went out of the town to Nicholas Bayard's woods, where, after a few passes with rapiers, the dark-eyed gentleman was disarmed, and admitted, with no good grace, that Harry was the better fencer. Harry left New York that afternoon, having learned that his antagonist was Mr. John Colden, son of the postmaster of New York. His grandfather had ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... against duelling, I myself should have demanded satisfaction from him, for this attack upon the honour of my family, but I am at present Anne's only protector. It is many years since I have drawn a sword, while de Tulle is noted as a fencer, and has had many affairs, of which he has escaped the consequences owing to royal favour. Therefore, were I to challenge him, the chances are that I should be killed, in which case my daughter would become a ward of the crown, ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... his master's arm kindly. "If you wish to get rid of the masher," said he, "I can show you a way;" and throwing himself into the position of a fencer, he made a lunge with his right arm, ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... concern, I suppose, that we cannot award you more than one tenth share." M. de Rivarol smote the table in exasperation. This pirate was too infernally skillful a fencer. ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... methods of defense. The right whale can only see dead ahead, and his one weapon is his tail, which gigantic fin, weighing several tons and measuring sometimes twenty feet across the tips of the flukes, he swings with irresistible force and all the agility of a fencer at sword-play. He, therefore, is attacked from the side, well toward his jaws. The sperm whale, however, is dangerous at both ends. His tail, though less elastic than that of the right whale, can deal a prodigious up-and-down blow, while his gigantic jaws, well garnished with ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... slightest defection from her ranks is viewed in the light of a catastrophe. She had called on Mrs. Bennington the second, armed with all those subtle cruelties which women of her caliber know so well how to handle. And behold! she met a fencer who quietly buttoned the foils before the bout began. She had finally departed with smiles on her lips and rage in her heart. This actress, whom she had thought to awe with the majesty of her position in Herculaneum, ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... such a firago: I had a passe with him, rapier, scabberd, and all: and he giues me the stucke in with such a mortall motion that it is ineuitable: and on the answer, he payes you as surely, as your feete hits the ground they step on. They say, he has bin Fencer to the Sophy ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... you are certain must do you harm? Fall upon your sword, as Tully—I mean Brutus—or some of those old Romans, were wont to do when the Game was up! In the first place, I should like to see the man, howsoever expert a fencer, who could so tumble on his own blade and kill himself. 'Tis easier to swallow a sword than to fall upon one, and the first is quite as much a Mountebank's Trick as t'other. Blow your brains out! A mighty fine climax truly, to make a Horrible Mess ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Mrs. Agar, with a vague laugh. In conversation with Dora she invariably felt clumsy and unable to protect herself, like a stout fencer conscious of many vulnerable outlying points. She did not understand this girl, and never knew which was carte and which tierce. "So ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... that Tony arrived back at his House. The boarding Houses at St Austin's formed a fringe to the School grounds. The two largest were the School House and Merevale's. Tony was at Merevale's. He was walking up from the station with Welch, another member of Merevale's, who had been up to Aldershot as a fencer, when, at the entrance to the School grounds, he fell in with Robinson, his fag. Robinson was supposed by many (including himself) to be a very warm man for the Junior Quarter, which was a handicap race, especially as an injudicious Sports Committee had given him ten yards' ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... for the lesson the two swordsmen came on guard. Lagardere explained while he fenced, naming each feint and lunge and circle of the complicated attack as he made it. With the last word of his steel-illuminated lecture his sword, that had illustrated the words of the fencer, seemed suddenly to leap forward, ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... a charger, while I travel on shanks' mare; He messed on wine and venison; I eat far humbler fare. I'll grant he was some fencer with his doughty snickersnee, But Richard Coeur de Lion didn't ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... apparently sober man among the crew struck a match and rolled his body over to show the granger's battered hands. The others were not convinced by this evidence, nor softened in the least. He was a granger, anyhow, a fencer of the range, an interloper who had come into their ancient domain like others of his grasshopper tribe to fence up the grazing lands and drive them from the one calling that they knew. If for no other reason, he deserved hanging for that. Ask ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... had already often fought, without wishing to injure the other, all for the mere sake of honor. He had always contrived to disarm his adversary, and had then forgiven him; nay, he was such a good fencer, that he was once very much perplexed by striking the sword of his opponent up into a high tree, so that it was not ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... big woman, with a balanced strength that seldom showed. Her eye was as quietly watchful as a fencer's. She maintained a pleasant relation with her charge, but I doubt if many, even in that country, could have done ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... of control of the muscles by the mind, take the ceaseless practice by which a musician gains mastery over his instrument, or a fencer gains skill with a rapier. Innumerable small efforts of attention will make a result which seems well-nigh miraculous; which, for the novice, is really miraculous. Then consider that far more wonderful instrument, the perceiving mind, played on by that fine musician, the Soul. Here ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... stage in sheer wantonness or bloodthirstiness. This is a mistake, and is attributable to his father, the elder Booth, who had the madness of confounding himself with the character. Wilkes was too good a fencer to make ugly gashes; his pride was his skill, not his ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... i' faith. Heart! I think I fight with a familiar, or the ghost of a fencer. Call you this an amorous visage? Here's blood that would have served me these seven years, in broken heads and cut fingers, and now it runs out ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... brought from Paris a skilful and unscrupulous political writer to crush its opponents and to effect the ruin of the rival paper, "La Republique du Morvan," by fair means or foul. The first stabs dealt by the new pen were directed against notable residents, and being a good fencer and a good shot—in fact, a sort of bravo—M. Tremplier, the wielder of the pen, proclaimed loudly after every libel that he was ready to maintain what he advanced at the point of the sword, and to give a meeting to all adversaries. Unacquainted with the real ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... the attitude of a lunging fencer, to reach after his oilskin coat; and afterwards he staggered all over the confined space while he jerked himself into it. Very grave, straddling his legs far apart, and stretching his neck, he started to tie deliberately the strings of his ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... great a proficiency; it was, however, an art which, as he found, was to be acquired with equal ease at Goettingen. The young Bismarck was at this time over six feet high, slim and well built, of great physical strength and agility, a good fencer, a bold rider, an admirable swimmer and runner, a very agreeable companion; frank, cheerful, and open-hearted, without fear either of his comrades or of his teachers. He devoted his time at Goettingen less to learning than to social life; in his second term he entered ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam |
