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Gamble   Listen
verb
Gamble  v. i.  (past & past part. gambled; pres. part. gambling)  To play or game for money or other stake.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gamble" Quotes from Famous Books



... known it. As for getting goods from tradesmen without any hope or thought of paying for them, that with him was so much a thing of custom,—as indeed it was also with them,—that he was almost to be excused for considering it the normal condition of life for a man in his position. To gamble and lose money had come to him quite naturally at a very early age. There had now come upon him an idea that he might turn the tables, that in all gambling transactions some one must win, and that as he had lost much, so possibly might he now win more. He had not quite yet reached ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... entire fortune—amounting to some forty dollars—of that guileless youth. After the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful speculator behind the door and thus addressed him: "Tommy, you're a good little man, but you can't gamble worth a cent. Don't try it over again." He then handed him his money back, pushed him gently from the room, and so made a devoted slave ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... He tried to close his ears to the mutter of meaningless words coming from across the narrow cabin. Raf had known from the moment his name had been drawn as crew member that the whole trip would be a gamble, a wild gamble with the odds all against them. RS 10—those very numbers on the nose of the ship told part of the story. Ten exploring fingers thrust in turn out into the blackness of space. RS 3's fate was known—she had blossomed into a pinpoint ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... every one grows tired of them, and if a separation does not take place, the general indignation will in the end be transferred to the vogts of the cities also; for already have several of the latter been imprisoned for following their shameful example. These riotous fellows drink, gamble and live with lewd women, to the great scandal of honest people. In short, if we be not divided from them, or their power be not so diminished, that they must stand in dread of Zurich and Bern, then ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... bill passed the Commons by a majority of 172 against 55. In the other House, 17 peers were against it, and 83 for it. Then the madness fairly began. Stars and garters mingled with squabbling Jews, and great ladies pawned their jewels in order to gamble in the Alley. The shares sinking a little, they were revived by lying rumours that Gibraltar and Port Mahon were going to be exchanged for Peruvian sea-ports, so that the Company would be allowed to send ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... less than every cent we got saved in the world. It ain't right we should gamble with it, Roody. ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... "I won't gamble with my child's future," she returned. "I did with my own. Sit down again, Mr. Wayne. You have heard, I suppose, that I have been ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller

... place that seems accessible in order to procure a photograph. It was a foolhardy undertaking, and we knew it. But fortune favored us, and the much-desired picture was secured. But thus will men gamble with death to gratify a whim, for a false step or sudden vertigo would have sent us crashing on to the ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson

... more than was possible, under the shelter afforded by the spreading branches of the trees. Part of the time was fair, with occasional gleams of sunshine, when the men turned out to eat and smoke and gamble round the fires; and the two friends sauntered down to a sheltered place on the shore, sunned themselves in a warm nook among the rocks, while they gazed ruefully at the foaming billows, told endless stories of what they had done in time past, and equally ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... and the perfect movement of the machinery requires only the presence in Congress of dominant good sense. Congress is easily denounced, but no one has found a substitute for it, and it is fairly representative of the country. Congress will never gamble away the inheritance of the people. It will probably, in spite of all shortcomings, have its average of ability and utility kept up. Congress may go wrong, but will not betray. Our outlying possessions must be Territories until they ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... so. Chambers is going to go slow. The gamble is too big to risk any slip. He doesn't want to get in bad with the law. There won't be any strong-arm stuff ... not until he ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak

... and middle classes as a whole, and it may be said that open immorality and gross intemperance have vanished. Four and six bottle men are as extinct as the dodo. Women of good repute do not gamble, and talk modelled upon Dean Swift's "Art of Polite Conversation" would be ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... gamble, you're not even very hard up.... It's a woman, of course,' said Lord Selsey, 'and you want to marry, I suppose, or you wouldn't come to me ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... me, following me everywhere. I should have gone away, but one thing kept me there. The usurer was said to be very rich. I wished to have some return for my cowardice. You see, I tell you all. Come now, I have been punished. Old Strang died insolvent; he used to gamble, had ruined himself without saying a word. Then I put my wife and her rheumatism in a hospital, and came to France. I had to begin existence again, more struggles and misery. But I had experience on my side, hatred and contempt ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... will and dull the brain. I take a little wine at my meals, but never to excess, and I never was drunk in my life. I smoke three or four cigars a day and occasionally a cigarette, that is all. And I never gamble. No doubt there are vicious criminals, but they would probably have been vicious if they had not ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett

... if he had a clear idea of the value and significance of zero. But zero is woman inexplicable—something fantastically loyal or shiveringly perfidious, savagely cruel or quixotically self-sacrificing, something that is primitive, non-moral and resolved to win at all costs. In the sex-gamble, zero is more than a thirty-six to one chance; it is Poushkin's DAME DE PIQUE and turns up thirty-six times to one. And man shews his indifference or his greatness of soul by continuing to play, by rising imperturbably triumphant over zero. . . . Or perhaps he shews that he is an eternal sex-amateur. ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... every cent he has," he finally replied, "unless I had assured him that it wasn't so very much more than a man-sized gamble. Nor Mr. Ainnesley, either, I think. So that puts it up to me pretty squarely, doesn't it? We'll have to win ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... secretly, you know. The city is full of spies, and doubtless the movements of all known to be hostile to Hanno and his party are watched, therefore we thought it best to meet here. We have caused it to be whispered as a secret in the neighbourhood, that the house has been taken as a place where we can gamble free from the presence of our elders. Therefore the only comments we excite is, 'There go those young fools who are ruining themselves.' It is only because you are on horseback that I have come round to this gate; had you come on foot we should have entered by the front. Fortunately ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty

... the many circumstances that plead for this poor girl. The Spanish armies of that day inherited, from the days of Cortez and Pizarro, shining remembrances of martial prowess, and the very worst of ethics. To think little of bloodshed, to quarrel, to fight, to gamble, to plunder, belonged to the very atmosphere of a camp, to its indolence, to its ancient traditions. In your own defence, you were obliged to do such things. Besides all these grounds of evil, the Spanish army had just ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... in Maryland, announcing their arrival through the papers, and on flaming hand-bills, headed, "cash for negroes." These men were generally well dressed, and very captivating in their manners; ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. The fate{356} of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mothers by bargains arranged in a ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... young Canadian habitant was left in Pierre La Marche. He spoke mountain English and French patois with equal fluency. There was a decision of character about him that commanded the respect of his comrades. When the other trappers went to St. Louis, they used to drink and gamble away their hard-won dollars, few of these men caring for anything beyond the indulgence of immediate fancies. But Pierre was ambitious, and thought that money might be made subservient to his aspirations in a better way than speculating with it upon "bluff" or squandering it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... him short. "I thought you laid it to Man Fleetwood, burning fire guards," he retorted. "Keep on, and you'll get it right pretty soon. This never come from the railroad; you can gamble ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... savings recommended to me by the Secretary of Defense, who has assured me they can be safely achieved and will not diminish our ability to negotiate arms reductions or endanger America's security. We will not gamble with ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... Rule comes, intend to throw their abilities into making it a success, and who will be indispensable to Ireland at a moment of supreme national importance. Irretrievable mistakes may be made by too long a gamble with the chances of political warfare. Whatever the scheme produced, the extremists will have to oppose it tooth and nail. If the measure is big, sound, and generous, it will be necessary to attack its best features with the greatest vigour; to rely on beating up vague, anti-separatist sentiment ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... three and four thousand. In one, the girls are careless in dress, vulgar in speech, spend their evenings in the two dance halls and the cheap picture shows. While still young girls they marry men who drink and gamble, start homes with practically no money, are poor cooks and housekeepers and know nothing about the care and training of their ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery

... million of livres richer in plate and china, than in the June before, when she quitted it. She acknowledged that she left behind her some creditors and some money at Aix-la-Chapelle; but at Mentz she did not want to borrow, nor had she time to gamble. The gallant ultra Romans provided everything, even to the utmost extent of her wishes; and she, on her part, could not but honour those with her company as much as possible, particularly as they required nothing else for their civilities. Such was the Empress's expression to her lady in waiting, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... help saying, "I told father I did not feel as if the bet was such an awful thing on account of it being a regular custom here at Burrton. You know I've written before about the Standard being different. But father was all upset by it. Mother, I don't think I have any temptation to gamble as a regular thing, and I have promised never to bet again, but you know I like nice things and I wanted the money so I wouldn't have to bone quite so hard. Father is good to me to let me stay on. I don't know what I would have done if he had taken me out. There is no other school quite up to this ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... herself upon my protection. That shows how desperate she must have been. She scraped together and borrowed some money, enough to pay for three second-class passages to Natal and a few pounds over, and one day, when her brute of a husband was away on the drink and gamble, she slipped on board a sailing ship in the London Docks, and before he knew anything about it they were well out to sea. But it was her last effort, poor dear soul, and the excitement of it finished her. Before they had been ten ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... tell me, woman, How the God in heaven above Starts the fires of hell a-burning From a spark of human love; Why He ever made a woman Who could play a fickle part; Why He ever made a fellow With his soul tied to his heart; Why He made life just a gamble— I can't talk the way I feel— In the game that I've been playing, You know this ain't no square deal! I will go away and leave you, But 'twould kind o' ease the pain If you'd only tell me, Nancy— If ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker

... Molly, I wasn't going, but Courtlandt asked me to go with him, and I never thought of my shoes. You are always finding fault with me these days. I don't drink, I don't gamble, I don't run around after other women; I never did. But since you've got this social bug in your bonnet, you keep me on hooks all the while. Nobody noticed the shoe-strings; and they would have looked upon it as a joke if they had. After all, I'm the boss of this ranch. If I want ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... purchase price. If luck is with him, he may get a good ship and cargo cheap, but if fortune frowns and a storm breaks her up before he can save the cargo, then he suffers a heavy loss. It's a good business, but a big gamble." ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... he never had any desire. At noon the two would have luncheon with more drinks. In the afternoon they would retire to the poolrooms and play the races, and, when the races were over, they would then visit the faro banks and gamble until midnight or later. Later on they would proceed to another resort on Louisiana Street where Dodge really lived. Here his day may be said to have begun and here he spent most of his money, frequently paying out as much as fifty dollars a night for wine and invariably ending in a beastly ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... positive Lottie, "that will not satisfy me. A thing is either right or wrong. If you can prove to me that a quiet game of cards is wrong, I won't play any more—at least I ought not," she added hastily. "Because some vulgar and fast people gamble with them is nothing. You will take a sleigh-ride with us to-morrow, and yet loud jockeys bet and gamble ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... me at that time it was natural enough as a last resort. There was but one debt which my wife ever paid, but one promise she ever kept. It was that made at the gaming-table. I offered, as soon as my father, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, had gone tottering from the room, to gamble with ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... always some metaphor or comparison the concrete aspect of which is turned against him. You may remember the dialogue between a mother and her son in the Faux Bonshommes: "My dear boy, gambling on 'Change is very risky. You win one day and lose the next."—"Well, then, I will gamble only every other day." In the same play too we find the following edifying conversation between two company-promoters: "Is this a very honourable thing we are doing? These unfortunate shareholders, you see, we are taking the money out of their very pockets...."—"Well, out of what do you expect ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson

... the late publications that treat of Irish interests in general, and none of them are of first-rate importance. Mr. Gamble's "Travels in Ireland" are of a very ordinary description, low scenes and low humour making up the principal part of the narrative. There are readers, however, whom it will amuse; and the reading market becomes ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... long ago changed into a tragic retreat. The bourgeois press madly libelled the army. Whereas, on the eve of the advance, the ruling parties told us that we were an insignificant gang and that the army had never heard of us and would not have anything to do with us, now, when the gamble of the drive had ended so disastrously, these same persons and parties laid the whole blame for its failure on our shoulders. The prisons were crowded with revolutionary workers and soldiers. All the old legal bloodhounds of Czarism were employed in investigating the July 3-5 affair. ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky

... gamble both ways," remarked Hiram, his sporting instincts awake. "You may know more about water and ways of gettin' acrost that, but if this wind holds up the old spider will spin out a thread and ride away on it. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... of the United States be requested to present a silver medal, with like emblems and devices, to the nearest male relative of Lieutenant Peter Gamble, and of Lieutenant John Stansbury, and to communicate to them the deep regret which Congress feel for the loss of those gallant men, whose names ought to live in the recollection and ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... surveyor, "that when the Company has taken enough money from the settlers, whom they have induced to stake everything they have on the gamble by letting them think it is a sure thing, they will use a part of it to give the people what they think they ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... one morning, as she and I alone were sauntering down the long shady avenue which connects the town with the little-port of the lake, she said that people went into the Cercle and the Villa des Fleurs, the two Wonder Houses aforesaid, merely to gamble. I pooh-poohed ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... you ten and you will have to return an hundred fold. He has given the ten to Gregory Goodloe, and now is the night of his despair, but his morning will dawn. You can't dance down and drink down and gamble down and lust down a man like that. He can bide his time until his sheep come to the fold to be fed ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... use, and not for a lazy, loafing, cow-faced lump of slumgullion to glom and smoke. Why don't you spend something besides the evening now and then? Gawda-mighty, you sit on yore coin closer than a hen with one egg! I'll gamble that Robinson Crusoe spent more money in a week than you spend in four years. Two sacks of my smoking. You got a gall like a hoss. There was my extra undershirt under those sacks. It's a wonder you didn't ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... crash of '91 came across the water from England, and Grayson gave up. He went to Richmond, and came back with money enough to pay off his notes, and I think it took nearly all he had. Still, he played poker steadily now—for poker had been resumed when it was no longer possible to gamble in lots—he drank a good deal, and he began just at this time to take a singular interest in our volunteer police guard. He had always been on hand when there was trouble, and I sha'n't soon forget him the day Senator Mahone spoke, when we were punching ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.

... him which is to despair as an angel is to a demon; something in the same category of emotion, but just and fortifying, instead of void and vain and tempting and without an end. A man sees in this second phase of his experience that he must lose. Oh, he does not lose in a gamble! It is not a question of winning a stake or forfeiting it, as the vulgar falsehood of commercial analogy would try to make our time believe. He knows henceforward that there is no success, no final attainment of desire, because there is no fixity in any material thing. ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... as bookmakers, sharepushers, and vendors of patent pills or bad stuff to read. These folk, and others, live on our vices and stupidities, and it is our fault that they can do so. Because a large section of the public likes to gamble away its money on the Stock Exchange, substantial fortunes have been founded by those who have provided the public with this means of amusement. Because the public likes to be persuaded by the clamour of ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers

... of it somewhere," Red replied, disappearing over the edge of the bluff to gamble ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... ended, both boys had become so skillful in playing that the one could scarcely get the better of the other unless one in some way cheated. This caused them to try many underhanded tricks and encouraged them to bet and gamble; and in course of time they had exchanged as wagers the greater part of their simple belongings. Taking advantage of one another became a part of the game and seemingly was the principal aim. And the evenings that they did not spend in dancing were spent in ...
— How John Became a Man • Isabel C. Byrum

... eighty. To know which way he would decide, to extract any information from that inscrutable mind—that were to open a steel vault with a pen-knife. "All trading," the Sun assured its readers, "will be speculative; it is considered a pure gamble." ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin

... were perhaps a dozen men in the room similarly clad. I asked the fellow who had been my prompter at the dice table why they dressed in such a manner. He told me that men who had lost all the money and jewelry they possessed, frequently, in an effort to recoup their losses, would gamble away all their outer clothing and even their shoes; and that the proprietor kept on hand a supply of linen dusters for all who were so unfortunate. My informant went on to say that sometimes a fellow would become almost completely dressed and then, by a turn of the dice, would ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson

... it if you're going to hate me for it!" he said. "Reckon I can't afford that. I knew it was a gamble when I started. If I can't win, I'll ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... half-mad, and then he had friends who taught him to gamble. There were other things, too. Women. He was so handsome and so fascinating, and his success was just beginning, they all ran after him, and he enjoyed it. I," she added, "didn't. Then we went to Paris. That was bad, too, only Theo was on the way, which made things better. He was good ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... love isn't worth much; to a man of any age, in my opinion, life without money isn't worth much; it becomes worth still less when he is held to account for money he ought to have. So I cheerfully entered upon my biggest gamble, holding the stake of life well risked. My pleasure in the affair was only marred by the enforced partnership of McGregor. There was no help for this, but I knew he wasn't much fonder of me than I of him, and I found myself gently meditating on the friction likely to arise between the new President ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope

... and jump about on first being taken out, partly with the desire to keep themselves warm, and also with delight at being able to come out and enjoy a scamper. Dogs exhibit much the same skittishness; even old animals gamble like puppies when they are taken out, and the shying which results from freshness in horses should be tolerated within, of course, reasonable limits. Exercise will take away the superfluous playfulness, ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... nowadays, and the catches are occasionally so large (the other day a steam drifter brought in over 200 pounds worth of fish to Grimsby as the result of one night's fishing), that the great Martinmas fishing of the east coast has become a gamble in which fortunes may be made and lost. Many a boat earns over 2000 pounds from October to December. A lucky skipper may take 200 pounds for his share of the home fishing alone. But such figures would ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth

... popular throughout the Philippines as baseball is in the United States, finds its most enthusiastic devotees among the Moros, every community in the Sulu islands having its cockpit and its fighting birds, on whose prowess the natives gamble with reckless abandon. Gambling is, indeed, the raison d'etre of cockfighting in Moroland, for, as the birds are armed with four-inch spurs of razor sharpness, and as one or both birds are usually killed within a few minutes after they are tossed into the pit, very little sport attaches to the ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... the days of their youth. They gamble, yacht, race, enjoy prize-fights and cock-fights, the one openly, the other in secret; they establish luxurious clubs; they break themselves over horse-flesh and other things, and they are instant in a quarrel. At twenty they are experienced in business, embark in vast enterprises, ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... manner of man in his walk and conversation we are harboring beneath our roof. For a' he look so grand and carries his head so high, he has little gold in his purse, but the black devil of greed is in his heart. So, like the lave of the gallants that drink and gamble and do waur things at the king's court, he has been hunting for some lass that will bring him a tocher (dowry) and a title. For this is what the men of his generation are ever needing. Ye follow me, Jean? This may be news to ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... a heinous crime and was severely punished by a long prison term. But the members of the all-powerful propertied class could contract to deliver stocks which they did not own or which were non-existent, or they could gamble in produce often not yet out of the ground, and the law saw no criminal ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... watering-places or elsewhere, seeking pleasure instead of doing God service. It is not considered disreputable to take fee after fee to uphold injustice, to plead against innocence, to pervert truth, and to aid the devil. It is not considered disreputable to gamble on the Stock Exchange, or to corrupt the honesty of electors by bribes, for doing which the penalty attached is equal to that decreed to the offence of which I am guilty. All these, and much more, are not considered disreputable; yet by all these are the moral bonds ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat

... It is no ordinary gamble, for what the better stakes is his life, possibly his reason. Rarely indeed will a man beg shegri unless he has nothing further ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... was a valuable one—a little Jew chap, a diamond merchant, who was with us, had put it at three or four thousand when Padishah had shown it to him—and this idea of an ostrich gamble caught on. Now it happened that I'd been having a few talks on general subjects with the man who looked after these ostriches, and quite incidentally he'd said one of the birds was ailing, and he fancied it had indigestion. It had one feather ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... my heart and declare that I have never done either of two things which are done every day by men holding high offices and high places in the world's esteem. I have never taken a secret commission. And I have never taken advantage of my political information to gamble in stocks. ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward

... don't mean that. There isn't a man on the force in whom I have greater confidence than you. But, if I was to gamble, I'd wager ten to one that you'd lose out if I sent you up to ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... Ransome said, "I don't mind a man being large and yellowish, or even soft in reason; but when he shines, too, I draw the line." Henkel had thick hands with bent fingers, and large, brown eyes. He was a Hollander, and in that place he stood apart. For he didn't drink, or gamble, or fight, or even buy rubber. He was just a large, peaceful person who bought ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... He does gamble, and when he gets going he's a terror. But he's down on the whiskey and on the 'red lights.' You remember the big fight at Bull Crossing? It was Bailey pulled me out of that hole. The Pioneer was slating me, Colonel Hilliers, the town site agent, was fighting me, withdrew his offer ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... horses merely to exhibit them; of doing all things for the sake of what may be said of them; of wasting my substance to keep fools from crying out: 'Dear, dear! Paul is still driving the same carriage. What has he done with his fortune? Does he squander it? Does he gamble at the Bourse? No, he's a millionaire. Madame such a one is mad about him. He sent to England for a harness which is certainly the handsomest in all Paris. The four-horse equipages of Messieurs de Marsay and de Manerville were much noticed ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac

... does not take thee to the races,' she insisted in Yiddish. 'But all these young men with check suits and flowers in their buttonholes bet and gamble and go to the bad, and their wives and children fall back on their old ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... her very submissively; for it is with these simple amusements that some officers in India are accustomed to while away their leisure moments, while others of a less domestic turn hunt hogs, and shoot snipes, or gamble and smoke cheroots, and betake themselves to brandy-and-water. As for Sir Michael O'Dowd, though his lady and her sister both urged him to call upon the Major to explain himself and not keep on torturing a poor innocent girl in that shameful ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... but still Drew was impatient. Out there one of Kitchell's men, or perhaps the outlaw himself, was riding Shiloh. The fact that Rennie's plan seemed a gamble did not make it any easier to follow. But the Kentuckian could think of nothing better ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... unfortunate. Pray do not trouble to tell me again how foolish it is to gamble like that. You may be right. I have no doubt you are right. But I think one has as much right to gamble with one's own money as to do so with the money of ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson

... do," said the padron. "We brawl and gamble and seduce women, and we sing and we dance, and then we repent and the priest fixes it up with God. In America ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... bridge-building had such conditions been encountered; nowhere on earth had work of this character been attended with greater hazards; never had circumstances created a situation of more dramatic interest. By many the whole venture was regarded as a reckless gamble; for more than a million dollars had been risked on the chance not alone that O'Neil could build supports which the ice could not demolish, but that he could build them under the most serious difficulties in record-breaking ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... Preblesham's report was particularly enlightening, but it at least squelched any notion the Grass might be dying of itself. I did not expect any great results from the scientists' expedition, but I felt it worth a gamble. In the meantime I dismissed the lost continent from my mind and turned to more ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... an' dead. Why, she—she ain't even brown. She's white as white." His voice became softer, and he was no longer addressing the ex-Churchman. "Did y' ever see sech skin—so soft an' white? An' that ha'r, my word! I'd gamble a dollar her eyes is blue—ef she'd jest ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... "Fair, Mary? Maybe it isn't fair not to have one. Not to bring it into being and give it a chance. Life's always a gamble—" ...
— Where There's Hope • Jerome Bixby

... withdrawn from what would have employed lace-makers at Honiton; or makers of something else, as useless, elsewhere. We must spend our money in some way, at some time, and it cannot at any time be spent without employing somebody. If we gamble it away, the person who wins it must spend it; if we lose it in a railroad speculation, it has gone into some one else's pockets, or merely gone to pay navies for making a useless embankment, instead of to pay riband ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... am. But I do know I was only too glad to take the gamble with you. An' I'll take another one right now if you've got one ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne

... the Marquesas Islands, where he entered into the service of his country in the capacity of Midshipman under Commodore Porter—made his escape from there in company with Lieutenant Gamble of the Marine corps, by directions of the Commodore, was captured by the British, landed at Buenos Ayres, and ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... my titles and estates—She would be getting a very good exchange for her dollars, I am thinking. There is no use to make a face like that; I am not trying to sell her to an ogre. Why, he does not even gamble——" ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post

... will dim your eyes. I will not say that your mistresses will deceive you—that would not grieve you so much as the loss of a horse—but you can lose on the Bourse. For the first plunge is not the last, and even if you do not gamble, bethink you that your moneyed tranquillity, your golden happiness, are in the care of a banker who may fail. In short, I tell you, frozen as you are, you are capable of loving something; some fibre of your being can be torn and you can give vent to cries that will resemble ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... come to a place like this?" he asked himself. He knew the teacher to be a model man, who did not drink or gamble. ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer

... Chicago Deaconess Home, and the branch in New Orleans, there is the Elizabeth Gamble House in Cincinnati, of which Miss Thoburn is superintendent; the Home in New York city, instituted by the Board of the Church Extension and Missionary Society, under the superintendence of Miss Layton; ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... that week, for he was soon to die at Northfield, and in the quarter of a century that has passed since such a change has come over me that I not only have no desire to play cards, but it disgusts me even to see boys gamble ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger

... stay up all night and gamble in a place like that I can't understand," he murmured to himself. "I would rather be in bed and asleep. And it stands to reason the proprietors have the best of it, otherwise how could they ...
— The Missing Tin Box - or, The Stolen Railroad Bonds • Arthur M. Winfield

... dancing with 'Lord' Bill. Yes, you are right, Lablache does not look very amiable. I think this would be a good opportunity to suggest a little gamble ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... shrinking from what was coming. The translucent golden eyes looked at him and beyond him, as though they saw something not in the room. He wondered if it was in contact with its own kind on Johnny's World and was telling them it had made the gamble for high stakes, and ...
— Cry from a Far Planet • Tom Godwin

... and spirit. In 1797, when twenty-three years old, he was master of the bark Enterprise bound from Salem to Mocha for coffee. The voyage was abandoned at Havre and he sent the mate home with the ship, deciding to remain abroad and gamble for himself with the chances of the sea. In France he bought on credit a "cutter-sloop" of forty-three tons, no larger than the yachts whose owners think it venturesome to take them off soundings in summer cruises. In this little box of a craft he planned to carry a cargo of ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine

... behaviour. I was an enemy to all this; but I was a friend to the freedom of judgment, and the freedom of action, provided it did not injure the whole. If after what has been experienced, our countrymen will gamble with certain Frenchmen, above the rank of common seamen, let them do it, and endure the consequences. It is wrong to attempt to abridge the liberty of amusement, if that amusement does not harm, or endanger the comfort of the whole." ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... bed to seek roistering companions or, getting pen and paper, sat for hours figuring out new and more daring schemes for money making. The great forward movement in modern industry of which he had dreamed of being a part had for him turned out to be a huge meaningless gamble with loaded dice against a credulous public. With his followers he went on day after day doing deeds without thought. Industries were organised and launched, men employed and thrown out of employment, ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... said Sam, slowly and meditatively. "Well, it don't make no difference where you come from; we want good men in here, and you'll find this a good country, I'll gamble on that. I've followed the front clean acrost the State, the last ten years, and I tell you it's all right here. You can make it if you take hold right. Now I must be gittin' along again over toward Plum Centre. ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough

... Mr. Gamble, a traveler in Ireland, in his work on Irish "Society and Manners," gives the following statement of an old friend of his, whom ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... mine they are in constant fear of this death. They work very hard and the air is bad; they come up to sleep, to eat and to gamble. The air they sleep in cannot be much better than that in the mine, for they are laid out in close huts on shelves, like rolls of stuff in a draper's shop. They hardly know the difference between youth and age, between spring and autumn. They scarcely get a glimpse of ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... how it cramps one's style, not to mention limiting one's choice of real estate. A gentleman may stake his future happiness and his hope of a home on the toss of a coin, but he mustn't presume to want to see the other party to the gamble again, even if she's the only thing in the whole sweep of his horizon worth seeing. Is that fair? Where is Eternal Justice, I ask ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... gamble, they appoint the hour, and select some certain corner, in some certain shadow, behind some certain hammock. They then contribute a small sum toward a joint fund, to be invested in a bribe for some argus-eyed shipmate, who shall play the part of a spy upon the master-at-arms and corporals ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... has revolutionized the psychology of the sense of smell, see Der Geruch, by Hans Henning, 1916, or a review of the same by Professor Gamble in the American Journal of Psychology, 1921, Vol. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... and the pair on the roof pulled Charley to their side. Flat roofs were great institutions they decided as they crawled cautiously towards the other side. This roof was of hard, sun-baked adobe, over two feet thick, and they did not care if their friends shot up on a gamble. ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... not," said Teresa. "You see, nobody in his right mind wants to be a pioneer. To explore, yes; to settle rich new country with known and limited hazards, yes; but not to risk his children, his whole racial future, on a wild gamble. This group was driven into space by a conflict which just couldn't be settled at home. If that ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson

... My father used to gamble. All the young men of the country used to gather at my father's house-and they used to drink ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)

... why the brother of a marquis shouldn't turn thief as well as anybody else. They say he hasn't got anything of his own;—and I suppose that is what makes men steal other people's property. Peers go into trade, and peeresses gamble on the Stock Exchange. Peers become bankrupt, and the sons of peers run away;—just like other men. I don't see why all enterprises should not be open to them. But to think of that little purring cat, Lady Eustace, having been so very—very clever! ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... argument. This promptness took him by surprise. He felt called upon to explain, to excuse her acceptance. "I am taking a little flyer—making a gamble," said he. "Your father may turn up nothing of commercial value. Again the company may ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... bring their money with them in order to squander it at their favorite game of monte. Not only this fact is true, but men will often sell themselves into the slavery of debt in order to satisfy their craving desire to gamble. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... doesn't gamble—he doesn't spend money—he doesn't run away with other people's wives. He's just nothing!—just incurably empty and idle. He comes here very little. His mother terrifies him. And since he was twenty-one he has a little money of his own. He hangs about in studios and theatres. His mother doesn't ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward

... and inactive, his Christmases grew gradually duller, until he did little more than sit out a play or two, and gamble with his courtiers, his Christmas play-money requiring a special draught upon the treasury, usually for a hundred pounds. He died on January ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... time, and just looked in at the door to say gude-night: it was a sad sight. There was she sitting with the silent tear on her cheek, and Charlie greeting as if he had done a great fault, and the other four looking on with sorrowful faces. Never, I am sure, did Charlie Malcolm gamble ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt

... because it is, or may not be, new on the market is wickedness that carries its own punishment; but surely there must be things in this world paintable other and beyond those that lie between the North Cape, say, and Algiers. For the sake of the pictures, putting aside the dear delight of the gamble, it might be worth while to venture out a little beyond the regular circle of subjects and—see what happens. If a man can draw one thing, it has been said, he can draw anything. At the most he can but fail, and ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... note of authority in the rumblings of vox populi. For his own part, Lincoln began with two resolves: to go very cautiously,—and not give something for nothing. Far from him, as yet, was that plunging mood which in Seward pushed audacity to the verge of a gamble. However, just previous to the inauguration, he took a cautious step in Seward's direction. Virginia, like all the other States of the upper South, was torn by the question which side to take. There was a "Union" party in ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... out," said Laramie, casting up the situation with his companions. "One is across the Falling Wall and over the Reservation. If they've gone that way they've got a start; but they're easy to trail. The other way would be to strike east or west for the railroad. That's the big gamble—it's the easiest to play and the worst if they ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... the right moment we shall send him to the Cafe del Comercio. They gamble at that cafe; he can go there and in two or three days call a halt ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... to the edge of the kitchen floor and looked up through the trees. "He ought to be along soon now. I hope so; my biscuits are just on the brown." She turned to Bob, her eyes dancing: "Now comes the exciting moment of the day, the great gamble! Will he come alone, or will he bring a half-dozen with him? I am always ready for the half-dozen, and as a consequence we live in a grand, ingenious debauch of warmed-ups and next-days. You don't know what good practice it is; ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... them were the bodies of very young men—poor boys of sixteen and seventeen from German high schools and universities who were the sons of noble and well-to- do families, had been accepted as volunteers by Prussian war-lords ruthless of human life in their desperate gamble with fate. Some of these lads were brought to the hospitals in Furnes, badly wounded. One of them carried into the convent courtyard smiled as he lay on his stretcher and spoke imperfect French very politely to Englishwomen who bent over him, piteous as girls who see a wounded ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... put it on the shelf, declaring the wisdom of men to be but folly, and determined to know nothing else save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The result—he made the world turn somersault. His life was a perpetual gamble for God. Daily he faced death for Christ. Again and again he stood fearless before crowds thirsting for his blood. He stood before kings and governors and "turned not a hair". He didn't so much as flinch before Nero, that vice-president ...
— The Chocolate Soldier - Heroism—The Lost Chord of Christianity • C. T. Studd

... saw him enter upon it with a feverish energy borrowed from the future and the desperate optimism of a temperament willing to gamble with Fortune against such incalculable odds. At first he attempted to divine the motives likely to actuate a girl ignorant of London in seeking a hiding-place there, and shaped his search accordingly; but he gave ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... of middling rank, trembling at every rise and fall in his investments. "Cursed bet!" muttered the old man, clutching his head in despair "Why didn't the man die? He is only forty now. He will take my last penny from me, he will marry, will enjoy life, will gamble on the Exchange; while I shall look at him with envy like a beggar, and hear from him every day the same sentence: 'I am indebted to you for the happiness of my life, let me help you!' No, it is too much! ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... them was another village whose people were called Mooswa, or Moose people, and Nanahboozhoo soon found out that, while the inhabitants of these two villages were antagonistic to each other, they frequently met to gamble, and that the Moose people were nearly always successful and had won from the Elk people nearly everything they possessed. The latter were very much humiliated at Nanahboozhoo's finding them in such a wretched condition, but they told him they were convinced ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young

... got wedding cards a week ago, so I suppose "Jonesy" and Mabel are on their honeymoon now. I wonder if she's ever told her husband about what I heard in the bayberry bushes. Being the gamest sport, for a woman, that ever I see, I'll gamble she ain't said a ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Middle, and especially in the latter Middle, Ages it was otherwise. The great religious houses not only tended to accumulate wealth and to perpetuate it in the same hands (they could not gamble it away nor disperse it in luxury; they could hardly waste it by mismanagement), but they were also permanently fixed ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc

... his soul to the devil for fame. He made the best of the gamble, as he usually did when he gambled; for the poor, innocent Lucifer got only a fourth-rate soul, while Paganini secured a fame that will not ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... fringe of firm sand, soon made themselves apparent, and the Crescent, Hothampton Place and several other terraces in what is now the centre of modern Bognor quickly appeared. A determined attempt to change the name to Hothampton failed, and as soon as the speculator died, his gamble a personal failure, the town reverted to ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... stockades, and all that, than any of them did; and he worked with a right good-will in fixing that battery all right. I have always thought it was a pity Porter did not leave him in command there with Gamble. That would have settled all the question about his punishment. We should have kept the islands, and at this moment we should have one station in the Pacific Ocean. Our French friends, too, when they wanted this little watering-place, ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale

... nocturnal sittings would be impossible—and she comforted herself by thinking that they would not be consistent with any serious business in the city such as Elinor feared. The one danger must push away the other. He could not gamble at night in that way, and gamble in the other among the stockbrokers. They were both ruinous, no doubt, but they could not both be carried on at the same time—or so, at least, this innocent woman thought. ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... and cherishes the heart of a frog. True, he repeatedly insists on the obligation of truthfulness in all things, and of, honor in dealing with the world. His Gentleman may; nay, he must, sail with the stream, gamble in moderation if it is the fashion, must stoop to wear ridiculous clothes and ornaments if they are the mode, though despising his weakness all to himself, and no true Gentleman could afford to keep out of the little ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... darn fool," answered the sheriff. "We'll cut on round the valley, for all that. It's a gamble he'll be at Gold Mountain before you're half way across. But if you catch him, here"—he tossed Marcus a pair of handcuffs—"put 'em on him and bring him ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... as well be bad, don't you see? and I'm going to be, too. I want this five dollars to gamble with, and for nothing else in the world. I'm going to get square with ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan

... tall Gamble. Under the Circumstances, he didn't see that there was anything for Ferdinand to do except mop up a few Drinks and hope ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... for a little while, another woman, whom he had known—a Mrs. Josephine Ledwell, a smart widow, who came primarily to gamble on the Board of Trade, but who began to see at once, on introduction, the charm of a flirtation with Cowperwood. She was a woman not unlike Aileen in type, a little older, not so good-looking, and of a harder, more subtle commercial type of mind. She rather interested ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... too good for him; he drank the most expensive wines, got up parties and pic-nics for the ladies, and had a special addiction to the purchase of costly trinkets, which he generally gave away before they had been a day in his possession. He did not gamble; he had done so, he told me, once since he was at Homburg, and had won, but he had no faith in his luck, or taste for that kind of excitement, and should play no more. He was playing another game just now, which apparently ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... gamble that he will be out at Stanwick in the morning looking over those places he has neglected heretofore," laughed Ashton-Kirk, as the driver slammed the door shut after them and started ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... Percy, it is said, denied this marriage, and continued to live and go and come, like a bachelor. If the marriage ever occurred, it was kept, for some reason, very much under the rose. Be this as it may, Percy was always provided with money from some source. He used to gamble sometimes, but was not an habitual gamester. Philip said he was too much of a sybarite and ladies' man to ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... instead of to Corinth. Nor is it advisable to toss up, either, on the chance that we may hit upon the right way if we start upon any one at a venture. That is no impossibility; it may have come off once and again in a cycle; but I cannot think we ought to gamble recklessly with such high stakes, nor commit our hopes to a frail craft, like the wise men who went to sea in a bowl; we should have no fair complaint against Fortune, if her arrow or dart did not precisely hit the centre; the odds ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... began in very early life to plunder the boys of their farthings, and as he grew bigger used to gamble with the footmen who waited in the lobby of the House of Commons. While still quite small one of his elder brothers used to carry little Edward hidden in a basket on his back, and when in a crowd the future pirate would, from above, snatch ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... with an instrument for new and bolder aggression. This is not only the German doctrine; it is the German practice. In this way and no other modern Germany has been built up. It is a huge new State, founded on force, cemented by fear, and financed on speculative gains to be derived from the great gamble of war. You may have noticed that the German people have not been called on, as yet, to pay any considerable sum in taxation towards the expenses of this war. Those expenses (that, at least, was the original idea) were to be borne wholly by the conquered ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh

... contention that within a century or so man will have solved the problems of immortality and eternal youth, and it's also my suspicion that he will eventually be able to travel in time. So convinced am I of these possibilities that I am willing to gamble a portion of my fortune to investigate the presence in our era of ...
— Unborn Tomorrow • Dallas McCord Reynolds



Words linked to "Gamble" :   speculation, essay, adventure, seek, take chances, risk, raise, dice, go for broke, shoot craps, peril, gambling, stakes, try, long shot



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