"Hard knocks" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said Ide. "Stay with me, Dawson—that's a good fellow. Walk around with me awhile. I never went to pieces like this before, and I've had a good many hard knocks. Do you think you could hustle something in the way of a little lunch, old man? I'm afraid my nerve's too far ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... privateer—like ourselves—heavily enough armed and manned to admit of their venturing, without much risk, over to our side of the Channel, on the look-out for homeward-bound British ships. To encounter such a customer as this would mean plenty of hard knocks, without very much profit, and with just the chance of losing one or the other of our prizes. We were, therefore, heartily thankful to find a clear horizon all round us when the fog cleared away. We were destined, however, to have ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... specialty, generating his purest fun and consecrating his versatile talents to highest ends. Wherever he catches meanness, avarice, selfishness, force, preying upon the humble and the weak, he is sure to give them hard knocks with his baton, or home-thrusts with his pen and pencil. His practical kindness is charmingly comprehensive, too. He speaks for the dumb beast, pleads for the maltreated brutes of Smithfield Market, craves compassion for skeleton omnibus-horses, with the same ready sympathy that he fights ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... with fighting blood in his veins, and, like other eminent men who have risen to the White House, poor. His father, an Irish immigrant, died before his youngest son was born,—in 1767,—and life held for the boy more hard knocks than soft places. His mother, who was ambitious to make him a clergyman, tried to secure him some early advantages of schooling. Andrew, however, was not of a studious disposition, nor at all inclined to ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... outstanding quality of the New York gangsman. His personal preference is for retreat when it is a question of unpleasantness with a stranger. And, in any case, even when warring among themselves, the gangs exhibit a lively distaste for the hard knocks of hand-to-hand fighting. Their chosen method of battling is to lie down on ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
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