"Athlete" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... twelve stone five. At the present moment he carried not an ounce of spare flesh, for he was in training for the great match, Rushmere v. Repton, and his weight was compact of solid bone, muscle, and sinew. As he stepped along the highway, moving with the easy grace of a well-built athlete, he looked the very picture of a handsome English lad, at one of the finest moments of his life, the point where youth and ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... from the retired London life he had led, were sensitive to a degree. He had never had them strung up by open-air sports or life among the hills, but had passed his time in study, reading almost incessantly; though even to the ears of an athlete, if he were shut up in a small chamber with a piper, the strains evoked from this extremely ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... wholly a matter of chance that Madeline Ayres should have succeeded in turning Helen Chase Adams into an athlete. Helen had come to college with several very definite theories about life, most of which had been shattered at the start. She had promptly revised her idea of a college in conformity with what she found—and loved—at Harding. She had decided, with some reluctance, that ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... rebellion headed by Douglas Earl of Angus, in which his father the late King had been overthrown at Sauchie Burn and murdered after the battle. He was now twenty-four years of age, of brilliant parts, no mean scholar, an admirable athlete, and ambitious to raise the name of Scotland among the nations. His weakness lay mainly in a boyish impulsiveness, which often caused him to mar well-laid plans on the spur of the moment, and in ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... athletes, nor these gladiators who resemble them.' And should you thus be accustomed to train yourself, you will see what shoulders you will get, what nerves, what sinews, instead of mere babblements, and nothing more. This is the true athlete, the man who trains himself to deal with such semblances as these. Great is the struggle, divine the deed; it is for kingdom, for freedom, for tranquillity, for peace. Think on God; call upon Him as thine aid and champion, as sailors call on the Great Twin Brethren in the storm. ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... man, with the head and shoulders of an athlete, and a face of such precise and unusual beauty that one's instinct called out, "Here, then, God ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... rustic party, with its rough Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff, And whirling plate, and forfeits paid, His winter task a pastime made. Happy the snow-locked homes wherein He tuned his merry violin, Or played the athlete in the barn, Or held the good dame's winding yarn, Of mirth-provoking versions told Of classic legends rare and old, Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome Had all the commonplace of home, And little seemed at best ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... some artificial fingers for his left hand, which was absolutely fingerless, but it seemed to cause him no inconvenience, and he was satisfied with his wax ears. He was very small, scarcely higher than a child of ten, but his arms were magnificently developed, and his thighs as thick as any athlete's. Still, the most remarkable thing about Mr. Wilde was that a man of his marvellous intelligence and knowledge should have such a head. It was flat and pointed, like the heads of many of those unfortunates whom people imprison in asylums for the weak-minded. ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... eyes were holden that he should not have discerned it at once; and in the immediate foreground the equestrian figure of the mountaineer, booted and spurred, the very "moral," as Hite would have called it, of an athlete, with his fine erect pose distinct against the hazy perspective, his expression of confident force, the details of his handsome features revealed by the brim of his wide black hat turned up ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... my feet stink!" Ramos once laughed. "They must be rotten. They're sore, and they itch something awful, and I can't scratch them, or change my socks, even. The fungus, I guess. Just old athlete's foot." ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... thing happened. That slender and effeminate Petronius seized the hand of the youthful athlete, which was grasping his shoulder, then seized the other, and, holding them both in his one hand with the grip of an iron vice, he said,—"I am incapable only in the morning; in the evening I regain my former strength. Try to escape. A weaver must have ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the small boy who had threatened to die if he should not be permitted to be in and of the struggle with the railway invaders, was completely and hopelessly lost in this quiet-eyed, reticent young athlete who ate heartily and slept soundly and went afield with his gun and the borrowed dog while Rome was burning. So said Caleb in his musings; which proves nothing more than that a father's sense of perspective ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... a burning curiosity as to the man they were sent to deal with, and pity was the feeling that entered Barry's breast now they were face to face. The trader had the frame of an athlete and a head and face that must in years gone by have caused many a flutter in feminine hearts: But now the eyes were bleary and sunken from alcohol, the high forehead was hidden under a mat of dirty, nondescript hair that was once undoubtedly a glorious tawny blond. The ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... tugging, straining, panting. In the old days Stern would not for one moment have been a match for this barbaric athlete, but the long months of life close to nature had hardened him and toughened every fiber. And now a stab of joy thrilled through him as he realized that in his muscles lay at least a force to balk the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... her hair; her cheeks crimsoned; then dainty as a lithe and spangled athlete, she turned clean over in the air, landing lightly on ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... go aboard," said Captain Hudgins, clambering up the swaying contrivance as nimbly as an athlete, "make our painter fast ter ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... through some rapid evolutions, first hanging head downward, and then, after developing speed, raising himself and turning over the crossbar. It was really work of which any athlete ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... hunter who was celebrated for his bravery and strength, and who, since California was settled, was the first man who attacked these great bears single-handed and armed only with a knife. It is the probable victory of the "Grizzly Killer" over the sixteen-year-old athlete of the circus that highly excites the minds of the males of Anaheim, because if Orso, who until now, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, had overthrown the strongest Americans, will be defeated, great glory will cover all California. The feminine ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the groups are not unworthy for spirit and design to be placed by the side of the metopes of the Parthenon. Most beautiful, for example, is the contrast between the young unarmed Hercules and the Amazon he overpowers. His naked man's foot grasps with the muscular energy of an athlete her soft and helpless woman's foot, the roughness of the sandstone and the smoothness of the marble really heightening ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Here, under the vigilant eye of Alf Pond, and with the help of a large retinue of sparring-partners, he was getting himself into what had come to be called "Burns's condition," which meant that he would enter the ring trained to the minute. Never did athlete work more conscientiously ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... exercise. Man is essentially a walking animal. When taken with a special object in view, it is the best and most pleasant of all physical activities. It is suited for individuals of all ages and occupations, and for residents of every climate. The child, the athlete, and the aged are all able to indulge in this simple and effective means of ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... resist Dr. Bird when he set out to make a favorable impression, and even a world's champion is apt to be flattered by the attention of one of the greatest scientists of his day, especially when that scientist has made an enviable reputation as an athlete in his college days and can talk the jargon of the champion's particular sport. Henry Ladd promptly capitulated to the charm of the doctor and allowed himself to be led away to supper at Bird's club. The supper ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... colossus he is," thought Donald, as he gritted his teeth to keep back the involuntary exclamation of pain, for, although the massive shoulders and Jovian head of the mountaineer were stooped forward, he towered fully three inches above the six foot city athlete, and his iron-gray beard, rusted with tobacco juice about his mouth, swept over his ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... in the world," replied the writer, who had listened to the Marquis's tirade; with an unconvinced smile, he repeated: "Not the least in the world.... You have spoken of me as an acrobat or an athlete. I am not offended, because it is you, and because I know that you love me dearly. Let me at least have the suppleness of one. First, before passing judgment on a financial affair I shall wait until I understand it. Hafner was acquitted. That ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... of golf with Jacques d'Ormeval, who rather fancies himself as an athlete, and I played at dolls with their two ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... known of them at the time of Bert's visit, was one called "Crazy Colin," a strange being, half wild, half civilised, with the frame of an athlete, and the mind of a child. Although more than thirty years of age, he had never shown much more sense than a two-year-old baby. He even talked in a queer gibberish, such as was suitable to that stage of childhood. Everybody was kind to him. His clothes ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... great mistake to rely entirely for this element on meat, as so many of our race do. The animal products—such as cheese, milk, and eggs—will also form an efficient substitute for much flesh-food. This simple diet suits both the brain-worker and the athlete, though each will have to make a selection of those foods most required by him. Certainly much animal food is liable to produce kidney disease, gout, and kindred troubles. If we have a tendency to corpulence (and many have this in advancing years), to resort to ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... my disgust he had picked out the most worthless girl, I do believe, of all those whom we used to meet. She was the daughter of wealthy parents, and she did as she liked with them; very beautiful, well-educated, very good at games—what they call a woman-athlete—and caring for nothing on earth but her own amusement. She was one of the most unprincipled flirts I ever knew, and quite the cleverest. Everyone knew it, and Mr. Marlowe must have heard it; but she made ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... statues of Alexander the Great by Lysippus were very numerous. The great King would only allow himself to be modeled by Lysippus. The head of Alexander, as the young Ammon on the coins of Lysimachus, is said to have been designed by him. An athlete, scraping his body with a strigil, was the most famous of the bronze statues of Lysippus. The statue of an athlete in the Vatican, in a similar position, is supposed to be a marble copy of the original bronze of Lysippus; though an inferior work, it illustrates the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... here, there, backward and forward, alert, accurate, bubbling with energy . . . Once, a mad rollicking impulse seized and urged him to vault the net and take her in his arms and hold her still for a moment. But he knew. She was using him as an athlete uses a ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... and the praise I got, and the benefit of the money made me contented for a time. My companion in this success, I am glad to know, is to-day alive and well, and like myself, a superannuated member of society. In his day he was a notable athlete, at one time bicycling champion of the Midland counties; and his prowess was won on the obsolete velocipede, with its one great wheel in front and a ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... Union craft had been entirely underestimated, and in the combat which ensued the very smallness of the "Monitor" gave her a great advantage, in the swiftness of her movements, over her gigantic opponent, not unlike an undersized but agile and skilful athlete in encounter with a large and lumbering, though more powerful, antagonist. Lieutenant Worden was the hero of the occasion in the rapidity of his manoeuvring, while Lieutenant Jones, now in command of the "Merrimac," was surprised to find that his shot made no impression on the ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... their voyage had passed, became conscious that Virginia was showing a slight but unmistakable desire to avoid his society. Being a Harvard graduate, something of an athlete, and a young man of fashion and popularity, he did not for a moment entertain the idea that there could be anything personal in her feeling. He came to the conclusion, therefore, that she had either discovered ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... arose between the two cities, and Sybaris was conquered and destroyed. Milo, the celebrated athlete, led the army of Crotona. Many stories are told of Milo's vast strength, such as his carrying a heifer of four years old upon his shoulders and afterwards eating the whole of it in a single day. The ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Mark Snyder said: 'Keep yourself to yourself. Don't be interviewed. Don't do anything except write. If publishers or editors approach you, refer them to me.' This suited Henry. He liked to think that he was in the hands of Mark Snyder, as an athlete in the hands of his trainer. He liked to think that he was alone with his leviathan public; and he could find a sort of mild, proud pleasure in meeting every advance with a frigid, courteous refusal. It tickled his fancy that he, who had shaken a couple of continents or so with one little ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... speculation on things as they might be. The day's work was always so vividly absorbing to him that day-dreams never got a chance. His sex impulses had always been crowded down to the smallest possible compass, not because he was a Puritan, but because he was, spiritually and mentally, an athlete. He had never thought of marriage as a serious possibility, Frederica's efforts to the contrary notwithstanding, until, in a moment of bewilderment, he found himself head over ears in love with Rose Stanton. That this emotion had ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... thoroughly practiced in all accomplishments of this kind by Pythoclides. Damon, it is not unlikely, being a sophist, out of policy, sheltered himself under the profession of music to conceal from people in general his skill in other things, and under this pretense attended Pericles, the young athlete of politics, so to say, as his training-master in these exercises. Damon's lyre, however, did not prove altogether a successful blind; he was banished the country by ostracism for ten years, as a dangerous intermeddler and a favorer ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... has ever had to take a thought of dollars and cents: thus he is naturally liberal both in his ideas and with his money. I am not,—not because I don't wish to be, but because I cannot be. Secondly, he is another animal physically,—an athlete born; while I have never engaged in any sport, know nothing of such matters, nor could I learn them. And then there is such a vast difference mentally between us: his mind is as quick and nimble as his muscles, while mine is much like a muddy stream, I'm afraid,—opaque and sluggish. Yes, I have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... of strength, as any college athlete will tell you. Self-denial is the road to wealth, as any banker will tell you. Self-denial is the method of all excellencies, as all human experience will tell you. But ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... right, and was reluctant to hurt her feelings or incur her displeasure. Besides, he was hungry: between the home-exerciser and the daily walks to and from the Brooklyn Bridge, his normal appetite was that of an athlete in pink of training. ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... restored to their normal condition. We have proved, therefore, that in exhaustion resulting from emotion or from physical work a certain number of the brain-cells are permanently lost. This is the probable explanation of the fact that an athlete or a race-horse trained to the point of highest efficiency can reach his maximum record but once in his life. Under certain conditions, however, it is possible that, though some chromatin is forever lost, the remainder may be so remarkably developed that ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... he queried, concluding. He had a certain decision of manner, not in the least arrogant, but the result of a serene self-surety that somehow accorded with his lithe, trained grace of movement. A judge of men would have read him an athlete, perhaps in an ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the pathetic case of the young man who "went to pieces" in Manila recently. He was a Harvard athlete, but was physically unsound. As a result of an unfortunate blow received upon the head a short time after his arrival in Manila, he became despondent and morose. After undue excitement he would fall into a dreamy trance. At such times he would fancy that his mother had died, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... more fully into the light which was shed from the open door of the deck saloon, and showed himself to be a man of distinguished appearance, apparently about forty years of age. He was well built, with the straight back and broad shoulders of an athlete,—his face was finely featured and radiant with the glow of health and strength, and as he smiled and laid one hand on Mr. Harland's shoulder he looked the very embodiment of active, powerful manhood. Morton Harland stared at him in amazement and ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... be evident, however, that we need more than the ability merely to distinguish a genius from a simpleton, just as a physician needs something more than the ability to distinguish an athlete from a man dying of consumption. It is necessary to have a definite and accurate diagnosis, one which will differentiate more finely the many degrees and qualities of intelligence. Just as in the ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... but less logical, who would teach us that in uniting with the antique, the mediaeval art of the fifteenth century purified and sanctified the beautiful but evil child of Paganism, that the goddess of Scopas and the athlete of Polyclete were raised to a higher sphere when Raphael changed the one into a Madonna, and Michel Angelo metamorphosed the other into a prophet. But both schools of criticism are wrong. Every civilization has its inherent evil; antiquity had its' inherent ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... a fold of the side, not of the front. Under these folds there must be breath, there must be blood; they indicate a glowing life. The immense vitality of the form appears in them, and even as an athlete's muscles are exhibited in relief at his exercises, so exceeding strength of life is evident in these grooves. A heart throbbing steadily and strong, veins full of rich, pure blood, a warm touch, an eager wish to be affectionate, and self lost in the desire to love—this is the expression of the ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... sleeping and bathing. Unlike most men who are indifferent to the outside world he was clean, because he found that slovenliness impaired his efficiency, and took the edge off his energy. He was as fastidious mentally as a trained athlete is physically. ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... he is a man that the first casual gaze instantly returns to with sharpened focus. You have seen gymnasts whose normal movements were slowly performed springs, just as rust is a slow combustion and fire the same thing in less time. Well, Clinton Browne strongly suggested that sort of athlete. Add to this a regularly formed, clearly cut, and all-but-beautiful face, with a pair of wonderfully piercing, albeit somewhat shifty, black eyes, and one need not marvel that men as well as women stared at him. ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... and the Pearl," he decided forthwith to go and collect it. But The Hornet was run by a set of clean- shaven, strapping young men, frank buccaneers who robbed everything and everybody, not excepting one another. After some breakage of the office furniture, the editor (an ex-college athlete), ably assisted by the business manager, an advertising agent, and the porter, succeeded in removing Martin from the office and in accelerating, by initial impulse, his descent of the first flight ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... recalls that when attacked by hysteric epilepsy, Flaubert postponed the crisis of the terrible malady by means of sedatives, this strained atmosphere of labor—I was going to say of stupor—which pervades his work is explained. He is an athlete, a runner, but one who drags at his feet a terrible weight. He is in the race only for the prize of effort, an effort of which every motion ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... could restrain an athlete of Hal's power only a brief moment; but in that moment sanity returned to ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... secondly, to describe a career which, though tragically cut short, was yet rich in honourable achievement; thirdly, to show the influence of the Great War on the mind of a public-school boy of high intellectual gifts and sensitive honour, who had shone with equal lustre as a scholar and as an athlete. ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... those anchored ships. Even as my thought had told, I saw her plain; Tense, like a supple athlete with lean hips, Swiftness at ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... but its lack of fruit makes it appropriate for contenders in the games. For being the fairest, greatest, and best proportioned of all sorts of trees, it bears no fruit amongst us; but by reason of its strong nature it exhausts all its nourishment (like an athlete) upon its body, and so has very little, and that very bad, left for seed. Besides all this, it hath something peculiar, which cannot be attributed to any other tree. The branch of a palm, if you put a weight upon it, doth not yield and bend downwards, but turns the contrary way as if ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... almost as the cables that swing out with the buoys. The wonderful fresh air that these men lived in, night and day, had brightened their eyes too, so that even the plainest face, and the most awkward man among them, was as nimble as an athlete, ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... the two speculatively: the spokesman seemed a bit old and fat, ripe for his pension, little apt to prove seriously effective in a rough-and-tumble; but the other was young, sturdy, and broad-chested, with the poise of an athlete, and carried in addition to his sword a pistol naked in his hand, while his clear blue eyes, meeting the adventurer's, lighted up with a ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... resting from their exercise. Near Charmides stood one with his back turned. He was scraping the oil and dust from his body with a strigil. Charmides' eyes danced with joy at the beauty of the firm, round legs and the muscles moving in the shoulders. Then the athlete turned toward the visitors and Charmides cried out, "Creon!" and ran and threw ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... favorite maxim. They hated every thing that was out of proportion. Their language, without a rival in flexibility and symmetry and in perfection of sound, is itself, though a spontaneous creation, a work of art. "The whole language resembles the body of an artistically trained athlete, in which every muscle, every sinew, is developed into full play, where there is no trace of tumidity or of inert matter, and all is power and life." The great variety of the spiritual gifts of this people, the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... investment are blocked up, and capital would seek the bonds as an investment." As contrasted with the measure proposed by the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Lovejoy intimated that his represented "the health and vigor of the athlete;" the other, "the bloated flesh ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... high-school eleven, and "tried for" the nine, but the experts were not long in eliminating him from either of these competitions, and he had to content himself with cheering instead of getting cheered. He was by no manner of means athlete enough, or enough of anything else, to put Dora Yocum in her place, and so he and the great opportunity were still waiting in May, at the end of the second year of high school, when the class, now the "10 A," reverted to an old fashion and decided ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... going out excessively to delight is the function, and the sole function, of Temperance. The measure of restraint is relative, as the golden mean is relative, and varies with different persons and in view of different ends. The training of the athlete is not ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... he still held pugnaciously to the pigskin oval ball. The coach, a rather heavy-set man who limped a little, now came hurrying up. Joe Hooker had once upon a time been quite a noted college athlete until an accident put him "out of the running," as he ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... of some part of a singer's preliminary education is to strengthen and fit the voice for the exacting demands of a professional career. As the training of an athlete—rower, runner, boxer, wrestler—not only perfects his technical skill, but also, by a process of gradual development, enables him to endure the exceptional strain he will eventually have to bear in a contest, so some of a singer's early ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... "'Honor bright! Fair play is a jewel! If you and I, who have seen Black Donald before, failed to recognize that stalwart athlete in a seemingly old and sickly man, how could you expect Mrs. Condiment to do so, who never saw him but once in her life, and then was so much frightened that ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... slight frown on her brow, as he began his speech, but it soon passed, and she said, softly, as she still lingered, "Well, I'm not an athlete. I should value more a man's strong arm ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... among the hills, with his already withering wreath, all the people would come and hail him a victor and wave ribbons in the air. A great sculptor would carve a statue of him in imperishable marble and it would be set up in the city. And on the head of the statue of the young athlete was carved a wreath. ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... his cheek-bones and jaw stood out hard and sharp, and in place of his former pasty colour his complexion had the clear glow of health. I saw now that he was a splendid figure of a man, and when he got to his feet every movement had the suppleness of an athlete in training. In that moment I realized that my serious business had now begun. My senses suddenly seemed quicker, my nerves tenser, my brain more active. The big game had started, and he and I ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... grooming distinctly increases the endurance and elasticity of their bodies. The influence of the grooming process appears to be somewhat like that obtained by massage and friction of the skin in the training of an athlete. More than once I have had occasion to observe the effect of this process on some ancient horse of good blood, which for years had been allowed in its old age to go uncared for as an idle tenant of the pastures. Two or three days of assiduous grooming will ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... between the best runners in each class of the different schools; and the best runner of all proved to be Sakane, of our own fifth class, who came in first by nearly forty yards without seeming even to make an effort. He is our champion athlete, and as good as he is strong—so that it made me very happy to see him with his arms full of prize books. He won also a fencing contest decided by the breaking of a little earthenware saucer tied to the left arm of each combatant. And he also won a leaping match between ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... a sepulchral orchestra of wind and bough shrieked a dirge that flattened in Bonner's ears; but it was not the weird music of the swamp that sent the shudder of actual terror through the frame of the big athlete. ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... had made them worse. The room looked gloomy, the walls were grey, the ceilings and the cornices were grimy; on the floor were chinks and yawning holes that were hard to account for (one might have fancied they were made by the heel of the same athlete), and it seemed as though the room would still have been dark if a dozen lamps had hung in it. There was nothing approaching an ornament on the walls or the windows. On one wall, however, there hung a list of regulations of some sort under a two-headed ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a fine athlete and a good sportsman—for the fun he gets out of the thing. But he has too good a mind not to be above the personal vulgarity of such an exhibition as this. His finer instincts, his natural modesty, his lack ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... breathed the woman, trembling violently all over, and holding her hands before her as if to ward off the dreadful vision. Without another word, Grodman applied his shoulder to the door, and made a violent muscular effort. He had been an athlete in his time, and the sap was yet in him. The door creaked, little by little it began to give, the woodwork enclosing the bolt of the lock splintered, the panels bent upward, the large upper bolt tore off its iron staple; the door flew back with ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... Abstinence Union. The site chosen is at the extreme western end of Machinery Hall. It looks along Fountain Avenue to the Horticultural Building. Mated thus with that fine building, it becomes a permanent feature of the Park. The central figure is Moses—not the horned athlete we are apt to think of when we associate the great lawgiver with marble, but staid and stately in full drapery. He strikes the rock of Meribah, and water exudes from its crevices into a marble basin. Outside the circular ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... with every shelf in a litter, filled the better part of one wall; and where I looked for cricketing groups, I found reproductions of such works as "Love and Death" and "The Blessed Damozel," in dusty frames and different parallels. The man might have been a minor poet instead of an athlete of the first water. But there had always been a fine streak of aestheticism in his complex composition; some of these very pictures I had myself dusted in his study at school; and they set me thinking of yet another ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... in a race, though all run, only one wins the prize? So run that you may win the prize. Every athlete exercises self-restraint in every way; but while they do this to win a crown that perishes, we do it to secure one that is eternal. So then I run as one who is sure of his goal. I do not plant my blows as a boxer who beats the air; rather I constantly train my body and keep it under control for ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... laureate or of a victor in the Olympic games. When that distinction falls to a city, it is believed that, in order to equalise matters, the event is sure to be followed by three years of dearth. In this instance, the highest mandarins escorted the wife of the literary athlete to the top of the wall, where she scattered a few handfuls of rice to ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... originally limned distinguished her from her more fickle sisters. The fault she found with the modern world was that it did not offer you man whole or complete, but only in fragments. To be quite plain, it offered you, from the athlete to the poet, a series of isolated manly characteristics, but it did not give you all the manly characteristics in one being at once, which constituted the ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... let them contract their chests, and injure their digestion and their eyesight, by sitting at desks, poring over books. Intellect is what we want. Intellect makes money. Intellect makes the world. We would rather see our son a genius than an athlete." Well: and so would I. But what if intellect alone does not even make money, save as Messrs. Dodson & Fogg, Sampson Brass, and Montagu Tigg were wont to make it, unless backed by an able, enduring, healthy physique, such as I ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... general confidence, they determined on a vigorous conduct of the war, and welcomed Brasidas with all possible honours, publicly crowning him with a crown of gold as the liberator of Hellas; while private persons crowded round him and decked him with garlands as though he had been an athlete. Meanwhile Brasidas left them a small garrison for the present and crossed back again, and not long afterwards sent over a larger force, intending with the help of the Scionaeans to attempt Mende and Potidaea before the Athenians should arrive; Scione, he felt, being too like an island for them ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... they usually do in the maelstrom of speculation. Though Mr. Allen was a trained athlete in business, the strain upon him grew greater day by day. But true to his promise, and in accordance with his habit of promptness, he transferred the deed for the little place in the country to Edith, who gloated over its dry technicalities as if they ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... apprehended more clearly than ever the powerful personality of Father Rowley when he found that these noble young animals accorded to him the same quality of respect that they gave to a popular master or even to a popular athlete. The Missioner seemed able to understand their intimate and allusive conversation, so characteristic of a small and highly developed society; he seemed able to chaff them at the right moment; to take them seriously when they ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... you, but I wonder whether you can spare me a moment. It's about my boy. He seems to me to have strained himself with his exercises. Jenkins, as you probably know, has gone away for a fortnight's holiday, so I can't consult him. I feel a little anxious. You're an athlete, I know, and could set me right in a moment if I'm making a fuss about nothing. The strain seems to be in the right ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... "Hunting man. Athlete. Don't be hard on the chap. He may be riding boundaries, or droving cattle, or humping his swag about the back-blocks away to the devil—somewhere. He may be even prospecting at the back ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... met his pupil Farel, and in the midst of cordial greetings was reminded by him that the day of "renovation" which he had long since predicted and desired had really come.[176] But the contrast between the two men had become sharply drawn. The fearless athlete, soon to measure his strength with no puny antagonists at Neufchatel, Lausanne, Geneva, and so many other places in French Switzerland, whose course was to be a succession of rough encounters, discovered that the master ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... on the decorative value of the details themselves. There are occasional flashes of brilliancy in his imagery, when it is lit up by his keen sense of beauty or splendour in external nature. A radiance, "as of fire," streams from the forms of the Nereids (xvi. 103 ff.). An athlete shines out among his fellows like "the bright moon of the mid-month night" among the stars (viii. 27 ff.). The sudden gleam of hope which comes to the Trojans by the withdrawal of Achilles is like a ray of sunshine "from ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... the Brahmin was watching with the eye of a hawk for a grip of the other arm, but it was closely drawn in, and firmly pressed in safety under the heaving chest of the blacksmith. The muscles were of steel; it could not be dislodged: that was seen at a glance. The calmness and placidity of the old athlete was surprising, it was wonderful. Still bending the imprisoned arm further back, he put his knee on the neck of the poor little hero, game as a pebble through it all, and by a strong steady strain tried to bend him over, till we thought either the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... up to Kling's who looks as if he had been a college athlete, and knows it all. Can't fool him for a cent," was the talk now, instead of "Keep at the old Dutchman and you may get it. He don't know the difference between a Chippendale sideboard and a shelf rack from Harlem. Wait for a rainy day ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... breakfast a half-hour earlier, but she accepted a cup of coffee. Mihul, all athlete, declined. She went over to Plemponi's desk and stood leaning against it, arms folded across her chest, calm blue eyes fixed thoughtfully on Trigger. With her lithe length of body, Mihul sometimes reminded Trigger ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... eatable apple; not for a superhorse, but for a horse of greater draught or velocity. Neither is it of any use to ask for a Superman: you must furnish a specification of the sort of man you want. Unfortunately you do not know what sort of man you want. Some sort of goodlooking philosopher-athlete, with a handsome healthy woman for his ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... pleading guilty, and in extenuation, presented my comrades to the entire room, Lonnegan's graceful body straightening to a present-arms posture as he grasped the outstretched hand of a brother athlete, and Mac's heartiness capturing every ...
— A Gentleman's Gentleman - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... wiser for them. We are thus taught what a grand instrument the soul is, and of what divine harmonies and profound emotions it is capable when played upon by any adequate power. To expect to maintain this exaltation with our present nature is like requiring of the athlete that he never relax his muscles, or of the prima donna that she never cease the exquisite trill which is but the momentary proof of what her present organization is capable. And yet it would appear that many, like poor Haldane, are tempted on one hand to ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... of the most popular masters in the school. He was a keen athlete and a tactful master. Fenn and Kennedy knew him well, through having played at the nets and in scratch games with him. They both liked him. If Kennedy had had to select a house-master, he would have chosen Mr ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... definite standards of the value of service. For example, the chef in a hotel may receive more than the superintendent of schools, and the football coach more than the college president; yet we would hardly want to conclude that the services of the cook and the athlete are worth more to society than the services of educators. And within the vocation of teaching itself there is (3) no fixed standard for judging teaching efficiency. Nevertheless, in general, teaching efficiency is in considerable degree measured by differences in salaries ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... outrun a landsman; he could do more. A little girl stood near, her bright face eager with watching for the fray. Cooper turned quickly and caught her up in his arms, and with the pride and muscle of an athlete exclaimed, "I'll carry her with me and beat you!" Away they flew, Cooper with his laughing burden upon his shoulders; one corner was turned, and the excited crowd saw with surprise James Cooper with his small rider keeping pace with the other flying youth. Another, and the other corners were ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... creatures. But in truth what the mind confers is a fact and no fancy; the loss of what Browning calls the "soul's iris-bow" is the loss of a substantial, a divine possession. The Epilogue has in it a certain energy, but the thews are those of an old athlete, and through the energy we are conscious of the strain. The speaker pitches his voice high, as if it could not otherwise be heard at a distance. The Reverie, a speculation on the time when Power will show itself fully and therefore ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... too thick for him to clasp with arms and legs. Will was not an athlete, though able to climb an ordinary tree if pushed. He always claimed that he could go up any kind if a bull were after him; but evidently here was a tree he could not ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... engaged, had great confidence in him, and frequently trusted him to carry important messages. The Colonel found him to be a most trusty fellow, and occasionally sent him alone to observe the enemy's movements. Paul was as straight as an athlete and had an eye keen as an eagle's. He scarcely ever failed in reporting to the Colonel ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... DEVILS OF GRENADIERS (No date).—... "But, Sire, one is n't always perched on the summit of Parnassus; one is a man. There are sicknesses about; I did not bring an athlete's health to these parts; and the scorbutic humor which is eating my life renders me truly, of all that are sick, the sickest. I am absolutely alone from morning till night. My one solace is the necessary pleasure of taking the air, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... athlete was a sovereign remedy against epilepsy in early days. In Lincolnshire a portion of a human skull taken from a grave was grated and given to epileptics as a cure for fits, and the water in which a corpse had been washed was given to a man in Glasgow for ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... I met, for the first time, Dr. Jack Hamilton, afterwards M.L.A. and whip for the National Party in the Parliament of 1888. Among the Palmer diggers Hamilton was extremely popular because of his prowess as an athlete, and his medical ability, which was given gratuitously to all. He was said to have been concerned in some of the many South American revolutions, but although we were friendly from this time until his death, he never alluded to such ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... says that he studied under Pythoclides. This Damon, it seems, was a sophist of the highest order, who used the name of music to conceal this accomplishment from the world, but who really trained Pericles for his political contests just as a trainer prepares an athlete for the games. However, Damon's use of music as a pretext did not impose upon the Athenians, who banished him by ostracism, as a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... mother by the shoulders and turned her face toward the door. He was a clean-looking, blondish fellow, younger than his sister—an athlete, a boxer, with far more restlessness of muscle than absorption of mind. He had failed at Harvard, where his great-grandfather had distinguished himself; he had, with the influence of a Congressman, secured a West Point cadetship, and there had fallen ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... stood a tall and handsome man, the picture of an athlete in the prime of condition. Short curling black hair clustered on his head; his eyes were of a humorous dark blue; his cheeks were like red apples; his shoulders were muscular, his back was straight, his figure slim; and he wore his night-gown as a Greek runner in ancient ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... it is, and thus we believe. But after receiving the knowledge of the truth and winning regeneration and adoption as sons, and tasting of the divine mysteries, we must strive hard to keep our feet lest we fall. For to fall becometh not the athlete, since many have fallen and been unable to rise. Some, opening a door to sinful lusts, and clinging obstinately to them, have no more had strength to hasten back to repentance; and others, being untimely snatched by death, and having not made speed enough to wash them from ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... Athlete and wit, whose genial tongue Cheered and refreshed but never stung; Maker of mirth and wholesome jokes; Fit mate of dear ROSINA VOKES; Creator, to our endless joy, Of priceless Arthur Pomeroy— Light lie the earth above his head Who lightened many a heart of lead; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... was the blue-eyed, golden-haired girl. Beside her was a youth, slim, dark, exquisitely fashioned, with limbs and arms as strong as were ever displayed in the games, yet powerful without brutality, graceful without weakness—marks of the ideal athlete that had long since disappeared with the coming of the Roman gladiator. Opposite was a grown man, tall, broad and deep chested, with prominent eyes wide apart and a large mouth. There was a singleness of attitude in him, as in all persons reared to a purpose. It was that certain self-centeredness ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... articulate, and it was painful to hear him attempt to speak. Lincoln's voice was clear and vigorous, and he really seemed in better tone than usual. His dark complexion was bronzed by the prairie sun and winds; his eye was clear, his step firm, and he looked like a trained athlete, ready to enter, rather than one who ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... that monument of recklessness and folly?" cried he. "That autograph is one of those weapons which an athlete in the circus cannot afford to lay down. That note proves that Lousteau has no heart, no taste, no dignity; that he knows nothing of the world nor of public morality; that he insults himself when he can find no one else to insult.—None but the son of a provincial ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... to his face. "Then you are the bravest and noblest of all girls," he said quietly, after a pause. "Without exception. Why, this is a journey for an athlete!" ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... of the blacks, and to whom other facts connected with it were personally known. Not many years ago a boy from from a distant locality visited a certain district in company with his master. He was tall, well favoured, a good rider, quite an athlete, an accomplished performer with the mouth-organ and concertina; ready and persuasive of tongue. These qualities provoked unaffected admiration; for the natives of the place are undersized, ill-looking, and deficient generally in the arts of pleasing. Before the master left, Caesar ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... no difficulty in pulling herself over the parapet. Then came the guns and ammunition, and then the one-armed Sime, who turned out to be an athlete. But it was no easy matter getting up the last three. Sir Archie anathematized his frailties. "Nice old crock to go tiger—shootin' with," he told the Princess. "But set me to something where my confounded leg don't get ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... strong was the force of habit, combined with the feebleness of his moral resistance and the nature of his environment, that instead of being an athlete, armed for a glorious strife, he had learned to drift where he should have steered, to float with the current instead of nobly breasting the tide. He conducted his plantation with as much lenity as it was possible to infuse into ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... house-afire batting that pingpong ball back and forth, back and forth, bang, sock, whizz, sizzle, ping-ping-ping-ping, pong-pong-pong-pong, sock, sock, sock.... Say, that little spindle-legged Dragonfly was good. He won the first game right off the bat. He really was a good athlete for such a thin little guy. "Hey, you guys!" he said, pretending to be very proud of himself, "Isn't there a window somewhere we can open? I want to throw out my chest," which was an old joke, but sounded funny ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... strongly built, was far more formed, and it was probable that years would effect but little change in it. There was a sinew and wire in his frame which would have told an athlete of great latent strength in the slight figure. His hair was light, his features clear and sharply cut, and the face a decidedly intellectual one. His manner was somewhat cold and restrained, but pleasant and courteous to men older than ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty |
