"Roulette" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... six weeks the town was humming like a beehive. At the end of that period, the teacher fell ill and went his way with a fat pocket-book and not a warbling soul had got the chance to open his mouth. The experience dampened nobody. Generosity was limitless. It was equally easy to raise money for a roulette wheel, a cathedral or an expedition to Africa. And even yet the railroad was miles away and even yet in February, the Improvement Company had a great land sale. The day before it, competing purchasers had deposited cheques aggregating three times the sum asked for by the company for the land. So ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... this time, shooed them into the plush and crayon-enlargement parlor behind the barroom. His great voice overawed them—and they were cold. Mother secretively looked for evidences of vice, for a roulette-table or a blackjack, but found nothing more sinful than a box of dominoes, so she perched on a cane chair and ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... enough to consider me eminently respectable, while the signorina was graciousness itself. I was even admitted to the select circle at the dinner party which, as a rule, preceded her Wednesday evening reception, and I was a constant figure round the little roulette board, which, of all forms of gaming, was our hostess' favorite delectation. The colonel was, not to my pleasure, an equally invariable guest, and the President himself would often honor the party with his presence, an honor we found rather expensive, ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... currency results in a wild orgy of stock gambling, grain gambling, cotton gambling, and all the rest of it. There is no more of good in that—in fact, there is far more of harm in it to the country—than there would be if everybody went to betting at roulette or faro. It makes the lucky gamblers rich and the unlucky ones poor, but it produces nothing, even incidentally. This time the gambling is taking a more productive form. Instead of betting on market fluctuations, men are ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... their birthright for a mess of pottage. They had conceded the right of gambling to the Casino, the proprietors purchasing the right by certain outlays in the way of improvements, a new public garden, and so on. As yet roulette and rouge-et-noir are not permitted at Nice, the gambling at present carried on being apparently harmless. It is in reality even more insidious, being a stepping-stone to vice, a gradual initiation into desperate play. Just as addiction to absinthe is imbibed by potions quite ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... The long apartment, with its many recesses and deep windows, an apartment which took up the whole of one side of the large house, had all the dignity and even splendour of a drawing-room, and yet, with its little palm court, its cosy divans, its bridge tables and roulette board, encouraged an air of freedom ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... saw a Kansas City gambler come and strip Peden's hall of its long bar and furnishings, of its faro tables and doctored roulette wheels, load them all on a car and ship them to his less notorious but safer town, they knew it was the end. Ascalon had fallen with its most notable man, never to ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... refuse are lying in the streets, and certainly there are no weeds in the gardens. The profits of the gambling-tables provide the most efficient municipality in the world, and no one who lives in Monaco is charged any taxes; the revenue derived from roulette covers all that and more besides. At the same time, no actual resident is allowed to stake his ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... that my young man had departed; I concluded that he only strikingly resembled some one I knew. But who in the world was it he resembled? The ladies went off to their lodgings, which were near by, and I turned into the gaming-rooms and hovered about the circle at roulette. Gradually I filtered through to the inner edge, near the table, and, looking round, saw my puzzling friend stationed opposite to me. He was watching the game, with his hands in his pockets; but singularly enough, now that I observed him ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... very noble fight, although her 12-pound carronades rendered her almost helpless against the long guns of the Americans. She was greatly cut up, her commander, Lieutenant Buchan, was dangerously, and her acting first lieutenant, Mr. Roulette, severely wounded, and she ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... to stay; hasn't he, Dolly?—Oh, I forgot—Miss Wilming, Mr. Hamil, who's doing the new park, you know. All kinds of genius buzzes in his head—roulette wheels buzz in mine. Hamil, you remember Miss Wilming in the 'Motor Girl.' She was one of the acetylenes. Come on; we'll all light up ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... care to risk twenty thousand francs to buy a secret that may make rich men of you?' Why, the risk usually is in proportion to the profit, gentlemen. You stake twenty thousand francs on your luck. A gambler puts down a louis at roulette for a chance of winning thirty-six, but he knows that the louis is lost. Do ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... crowd, an' turned down th' box. 'Gintlemen,' says he, 'th' game is closed. Business conditions are such,' he says, 'that I will not be able to cash in ye'er checks,' he says. 'Please go out softly, so's not to disturb th' gintlemen at th' roulette wheel,' he says, 'an' come back afther th' iliction, whin confidence is restored an' prosperity returns to th' channels iv thrade an' industhry,' he says. 'Th' exchange 'll be opened promptly; an' th' usual rule iv chips f'r money an' money f'r chips, fifty on ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... proceedings being shrouded in serio-comic secrecy. In order that we might perfect ourselves in the use of our mathematical weapons, each day after breakfast the dining-room table was cleared and covered with a large green cloth divided into numbered spaces, like the green roulette board at Monte Carlo. In the middle of this was placed a large roulette. Rakes were provided of the true Monte Carlo pattern. One of us played the part of croupier, while to each of the others was allotted a certain number of counters ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... miss," begged Tommy Ryan, the roulette-dealer. Mr. Ryan was a pale-faced person whose addiction to harmful drugs was notorious; his extreme pallor and his nervous lack of repose had gained for him the title of "Snowbird." Tommy's hollow eyes were glowing, his colorless ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... good-looking she's sure to succeed. I expect to know everybody smart at Monte. That's what I've been promised, and Lady Dauntrey'll entertain a good deal. If that doesn't amuse her husband he can shoot pigeons, and gamble at the Casino. He's got a system at roulette that works splendidly on his little wheel. We were playing it this evening. But I expect I'm boring you. You look sleepy. I'll turn in, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the roulette tables," corrected Meakim. "Of course," he continued, grinning, "if you're fond of the game, Mr. Holcombe, it's handy having them in the same house, but I can steer you against a better one back of the French Consulate. Those at the ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... broken-winded tootle on a coach-horn and the black-and- scarlet drag of the local garrison trundles into view. The unsophisticated gun-horses in the lead shy violently at the flapping canvas of an orange-stall and swerve to the left into a roulette-booth presided over by a vociferous ancient in a tattered overcoat and blue spectacles. The gamblers scatter like flushed partridges and the ancient bites the turf beneath his upturned board amid a shower of silver coins. The leaders, scared by the animated table, and the blood-curdling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... after he had found No. 192 Layte Street to be a never-failing mint, when Braun became fascinated with the whirr of the roulette ball, the varying chances of the faro box, and, at last, the fine peculiarities of "unlimited poker" swept away his once ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... reputation, he was always free of the handsome salons wherein the Friends of Humanity devoted themselves to roulette, auction bridge, baccarat and chemin-de-fer: and of this freedom he now proceeded to avail himself, with his hat just a shade aslant on his head, his hands in his pockets, a suspicion of a smile on his lips and a glint ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... rolled no farther than the tongue's edge. She turned obediently back, re-entering the car and taking the first seat by the door. For this her memory was responsible. It had spun the day's events before her like a roulette wheel, stopping precisely at the remark of Marjorie Schuyler's concerning William Burgeman: "He's the most conventional young gentleman I ever saw in my ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... wonder, then, that an air of peculiar respectability attached itself to the "wheel" itself which revolved in a corner of the barroom night after night, whirling into opulence or penury, such as entrusted their fortunes to its revolutions. Despite its high-toned patronage, however, the terms "roulette" and "croupier" found small favor with the devotees at that particular shrine of the fickle goddess, and Dabney Dirke, its presiding genius, was familiarly known among "the boys," as "the boss of the wheel." "Waxey" Smithers,—he who was supposed to have precipitated Jimmy Dolan's ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... best. Do as you like, dear; I understand nothing, and you were always clever.' "So Saint-Cyr had his way, and went to work accordingly, without loss of time, a little shyly at first, not daring to venture on any considerable stake. So he remained for a week at the roulette tables; because at the rouge et noir one can only play with gold. The week came to an end and found him neither richer nor poorer. Then he grew bolder and ventured into the deeper water. He played on rouge et noir, with luck the first day or two, but after that fortune turned dead against him. He ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... They were roulette players. They noticed nothing but the table and the wheel. Malone wondered what they were thinking about, decided to ask Queen Elizabeth, and then decided against it. He felt it would make him ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... turned to the tennis courts, and played so much in the next week that he went stale and in the club tournament put up the worst game of his life. That evening, in disgust, he boarded the train for Monte Carlo, and before eleven o'clock had lost five thousand francs at roulette—which was more than even he could afford for an evening's entertainment that did not entertain. Without waiting for the croupier to rake in his last note, Monte hurried out and, to clear his head, walked all the way back to Nice along the Cornice Road. Above him, the mountains; below, ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... this unnatural calm, was broken one night by Mink himself, who shot and all but killed the livery-stable keeper in a dispute over roulette. Knowing that his deed would bring the new marshal down upon him at once, the gambler immediately declared ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... All the romance with which he had invested the idea of his suicide now vanished, leaving bare the stern and ignoble reality. He must kill himself, not like the gay gamester who voluntarily leaves upon the roulette table the remains of his fortune, but like the Greek, who surprised and hunted, knows that every door will be shut upon him. His death would not be voluntary; he could neither hesitate nor choose the fatal hour; he must kill himself because he had not ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... learn of the divorce, and—Just at that instant my eyes fell on Mr. Harbison—Tom Harbison, as Anne called him. He was looking on with an amused, half-puzzled smile, while people were rushing around hiding the roulette wheel and things of which Miss Caruthers might disapprove, and Betty Mercer was on her knees winding up a toy bear that Max had brought her. What would he think? It was evident that he thought badly of us already—that he ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... heard of any suicide on account of them. Neither can I recall any quarrel or murder directly attributable to this kind of gambling. It must be remembered that these public games were chiefly rouge et noir, monte, faro, or roulette, in which the antagonist was Fate, Chance, Method, or the impersonal "bank," which was supposed to represent them all; there was no individual opposition or rivalry; nobody challenged the decision of the "croupier," ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... tiger," and soon lost nearly all of it. To see if his luck would not change, he gave up the game, and started at "roulette." Here he steadily won, and soon had over seven hundred dollars in his possession. He was now all excitement, and jumped with many a "whoop-la" around the table, to the great amusement of the spectators. ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... office on West Forty-second Street, with gold lettering on the door, a staff of stenographers, and a private branch exchange, and the New York police didn't pay no more attention to them than if they would of been running a poolroom with a roulette-wheel in the rear office. The consequence was that when them Bolshevists finally got pulled, Abe, they beefed so terrible about how they were being prosecuted in violation of the Constitution and the Code of Civil Procedure, y'understand, that you would think the bombs ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... "Honest, I liked Von Blatzer, for all his freaky ways. He was human, he was, and we understood each other. He'll be at Monte Carlo now. Roulette, you know. That's all he lives for. Plays a system. Nice little income he has; not big, but comfortable. And during the season he feeds it all into the wheel. Someone ought to ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... two at the Gondolier, that newest and quotation-marked "Quaintest" of Village tea rooms. The chief points in the Gondolier's "quaintness" seem to be that it is chopped up into as many little partitions as a roulette wheel and that all food has to be carried up from a cellar that imparts even to orange marmalade a faint persuasive odor of somebody else's wash. Still, during the last eight months, the Gondolier has been a radical bookstore devoted to bloody red pamphlets, a batik ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... of pleasure, as he called it. With small success. Gaming soon ceased to attract him, for at the roulette table in Monaco he loathed the companionship of old professional gamblers with their gallows-bird faces, and of bedizened Paris courtesans, and at his club in Berlin or Baden, where he played only with respectable people, the stakes were never high enough to permit even the largest ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... adorned with a profusion of great, trumpery ornaments, and reminded Flemming of the Indians in the frontier villages of America. Near the churchyard-gate was a booth, filled with flaunting calicos; and opposite sat an old woman behind a table, which was loaded with ginger-bread. She had a roulette at her elbow, where the peasants risked a kreutzer for a cake. On other tables, cases of knives, scythes, reaping-hooks, and other implements of husbandry ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... form of separation called rouletting, from the French "roulette", a little wheel, its simplest form being produced by a small wheel with an edge of sharp points. By this process a series of small cuts is made between the stamps but none of ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff
... most of his money in the days when gambling was "open" in the town, and he had surrounded himself with a band of choice spirits who were experts in keno, roulette and poker. These still remained on his hands, some of them in the capacity of barkeepers, and others practically as pensioners. They were all great sportsmen, heavy drinkers and loyal-to-the-death friends. At short intervals they went on hunting trips down the river, generally remaining over ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... roulette, and judging by the satisfied expression of his face which the Captain noted in passing, he rightly conjectured that luck ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... but, as a point of fact, the operators on that night were almost exclusively Italians. The sailor, take him in the bulk, is a tolerable fool all the world over; but the northerner has some grains of sense though he is a sportsman, and roulette with twenty-six numbers and a zero is a trifle too strong an ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... door into the gambling-house. It was a large hall, in the front part of which was the saloon. In the back the side wall to the next building had been ripped out to give more room. There was a space for dancing, as well as roulette, faro, chuckaluck, and poker tables. In one corner a raised stand for the ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... at midnight. The proprietor was always rather attentive to me, and, to give him the credit due, seemed anxious that I should not play. At supper he always reserved the chair next to himself for me. One night while standing beside the roulette wheel, no one was playing, and the dealer was idly whirling the ball, a sudden impulse seized me, and the ball then rolling, I pulled a $20 bill from my pocket and threw it down on the red remarking, "I'll lose that to pay for my suppers." Unhappily I ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... demanded whiskey, and he would brook any insult to get it. He had reached the level of the sodden, and others passed him by. It was yet early in the night, and crowds were gathering in the rear of the large room, about the roulette wheel, the crap tables and faro layout, back of which the lookout was seated on a raised platform. Stacks of coin in gold and silver were on the tables to tempt the players. At other tables men were seated playing cards and smoking. ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... "isn't a gambler in the ordinary sense. He never plays cards. Little pictures on paste-board fidget him, he says; he loathes Monte Carlo because it's vulgar, and he dislikes roulette and bridge. He's only a gambler in the best sense of the word—and that's a ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... Togral Beg killed thirteen million people by accident or by an extraordinary succession of chances. Admit there is such an element as chance, and between it and Fate is room for a thousand doubts. It is natural enough for men who deal with the tiny, circling ball of a roulette wheel or with the turn of playing cards to deny any power higher than chance; but how of Napoleon, dicing for empires without end?—and how of Columbus, sailing indomitably westward into the wheel of the ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... "I came twice, and each time we played roulette. I lost all the money I'd had in advance. Honestly," he confessed, "I felt I couldn't afford ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... were finding her interesting," said Mrs. Fox. "To me it was like watching a game of roulette at Monte Carlo. It was intensely interesting, but I could not imagine it as having anything to ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... "Well, possibly it wouldn't, except here in Nevada. Specifically, it is designed to influence roulette and dice games." ...
— ...Or Your Money Back • Gordon Randall Garrett
... ironed out was how to speed up transportation; and failing that, to construct spacious space ships which would attract pleasure-bent trade from Terra—Earth to you—with such innovations as roulette wheels, steam rooms, cocktail lounges, double rooms with hot and cold ...
— Mars Confidential • Jack Lait
... mention them. For the few persons, at any rate, abnormal or not, with whom my anecdote is concerned, literature was a game of skill, and skill meant courage, and courage meant honour, and honour meant passion, meant life. The stake on the table was of a different substance, and our roulette was the revolving mind, but we sat round the green board as intently as the grim gamblers at Monte Carlo. Gwendolen Erme, for that matter, with her white face and her fixed eyes, was of the very type of ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... did not stint himself, drew him into spending more than he intended, and he owed Suvorin a sum which was further increased at Monte Carlo by Chekhov's losing nine hundred roubles at roulette. But this loss was a blessing to him in so far as, for some reason, it made him feel satisfied with himself. At the end of April, 1891, after a stay in Paris, Chekhov returned to Moscow. Except at Vienna and for the first days in Venice and at Nice, it ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... the "cure." Rode horseback, motored, played roulette at the casino for big stakes, and scorned the American plan of service for the smarter European idea, with a special a la carte menu for each meal. Extraordinary-looking mixed drinks, strictly against the mandates of the "cure," appeared at their table. Strange midnight goings-on ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... noticed, had not arrived. This was the Beqai, or Jicarilla. The Navajo asked the Ute where the missing ones were, and the Ute answered that they had passed the Jicarilla on the way; that the latter were coming, but had stopped to play a game of roulette, or ná[n]joj, and were thus delayed. Shortly before dawn the Jicarilla came and entered the corral to exhibit their alìli or show. It was a dance of the ná[n]joj, for the wands and implements of the dance were the sticks and wheels used in playing ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... barrack received a miniature billiard-table, which became immensely popular. Cards, roulette, ping-pong and chess greatly assisted in passing the time. We also had quite a good camp library, the books mostly having been received from home. I often heard it remarked that life there was one long queue, and it was not far wrong. Often one passed the morning ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... implements. All that matter about blood and speed we won't discuss; we understand all that; useful, very,—of course,—great obligations to the Godolphin "Arabian," and the rest. I say racing horses are essentially gambling implements, as much as roulette tables. Now I am not preaching at this moment; I may read you one of my sermons some other morning; but I maintain that gambling, on the great scale, is not republican. It belongs to two phases of society,—a cankered over-civilization, such as exists in rich ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... microseconds. Even a partial, low-efficiency explosion might leave the ship so weakened that it could not stand the stresses of return through the atmosphere. Firing on the enemy warhead at this range was not much different from playing Russian Roulette ...
— Pushbutton War • Joseph P. Martino
... throw of our camp. Morals are, after all, a local conception, Hiram. What is thought to be wrong in one country will be the accepted practice just over the border line. It's all in the viewpoint. I not only go into saloons with men friends of mine, but sometimes I play poker or roulette or faro just to please them. And listen: Never in all my rough-and-ready life in railroad camps have I been insulted by regular stiffs, as the laborers are called. Certain outsiders have misunderstood my freedom from conventionality on several occasions, ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins |
