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Sporting   /spˈɔrtɪŋ/   Listen
Sporting

adjective
1.
Exhibiting or calling for sportsmanship or fair play.  Synonyms: clean, sportsmanlike, sporty.  "A sporting solution of the disagreement" , "Sportsmanlike conduct"
2.
Relating to or used in sports.  "Sporting equipment"
3.
Involving risk or willingness to take a risk.  "Sporting blood"
4.
Preoccupied with the pursuit of pleasure and especially games of chance.  Synonyms: betting, card-playing, dissipated.  "A betting man" , "A card-playing son of a bitch" , "A gambling fool" , "Sporting gents and their ladies"



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"Sporting" Quotes from Famous Books



... touch, by his lack of sympathy with the romance of which he writes, and to a certain extent even by his own integrity and right conscience. Whether the man hunts the woman or the woman the man, at least it should be a splendid pagan hunt; but Shaw is not a sporting man. Nor is he a pagan, but a Puritan. He cannot recover the impartiality of paganism which allowed Diana to propose to Endymion without thinking any the worse of her. The result is that while he makes Anne, the woman who marries his ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... hours' practising in the morning,—I foresaw it,' said Manisty, stopping short. 'Eleanor, we have been like children sporting over the abyss!' ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... frown, reminiscent for several minutes, unsuccessful. Then he suddenly smiled, and moving underneath the gas lamp, shook open an evening paper which he had been carrying. He turned over the pages until he arrived at the sporting items. Here, in almost the first paragraph, he saw the name which had happened to catch his eye a ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... St. Louis Sporting News, in one of his letters of last winter, sent the following interesting account of an interview had between Manager Selee, of the Bostons, and a business man he met on a train last October. The B.M. asked the manager "whether ball-players, ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick

... their wits. This was something to hear; but the old man went on to say, that a bait, consisting of a dead horse, had been laid, and he doubted not, but that in a day or two a shot might be had at the brute. After this narrative our sporting curiosity had reached its zenith; and mutually promising to meet at a certain hour on the morrow, we ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... as passing through the towns To west of us; but soon he was forgot By all except myself and one poor maid Whom much love led astray. And soon she paid The debt of Nature, not as doth befit Such payment dread, but, maddened by cold looks, She, sporting with dank grasses in a pool, Gave back to God the life His creatures scorned, And breathed in death moist ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... work; the smoke goes up through the shining haze; the farmhouse door stands open, and lets in the afternoon sun; the cow lows for her calf, or hides it in the woods; and in the morning the geese, sporting in the spring-sun, answer the call of the wild flock steering ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... but the sporting men did not give Saratoga their complexion. It was convention time, but except in the hotel corridors politicians were not the feature of the place. One of the great hotels was almost exclusively occupied by the descendants of Abraham, but the town ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... frequent loss of a wounded animal. Mr. Holland is now experimenting in the conversion of a Whitworth-barrel to a breech-loader. If this should prove successful, I should prefer the Whitworth projectile to any other for a sporting rifle in wild countries, as it would combine accuracy at both long and ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... friend, and devoutly wishing he could get away. "I mean by 'things' the study of the inanimate part of creation, of such sciences as are not directly connected with man's thoughts and actions, and such pursuits as hunting, shooting, and sporting of all kinds, which lead only to the amusement of the individual. I mean also the production of literature for literature's sake, and of works of art for the mere sake of themselves. When I say I like 'people,' I mean men and women, their opinions ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... partridges are "calling" all around, and a covey actually passes over your head. Your sporting instincts begin to revive, and you take up your gun and proceed to stalk that covey, stealing round under a wall. Then you suddenly remember that the V.W.H. hounds meet in your village to-morrow, and you begin wondering whether they will once again find ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... Bulwer[24] is a serious affair, which will add to our many embarrassments; the Queen is, however, not surprised at it, from the tenor of the last accounts from Madrid, and from the fact that Sir H. Bulwer has for the last three years almost been sporting with political intrigues. He invariably boasted of at least being in the confidence of every conspiracy, "though he was taking care not to be personally mixed up in them," and, after their various failures, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... merry singing-birds were sporting in the grove; Some were warbling cheerily, and some were making love: There were Bobolincon, Wadolincon, Winterseeble, Conquedle,— A livelier set was never led by tabor, pipe, or fiddle,— Crying, "Phew, shew, Wadolincon, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... declares to carry off the torch-bearers, torch and all. Bears they said were scarce, and all other wild animals, but a natural jealousy of Europeans often leads the natives to deny the existence of what they know to be an attraction to the proverbially sporting Englishman. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... a parrot belonging to King Henry VIII. having been kept in a room next the Thames, in his palace at Westminster, had learned to repeat many sentences from the boatmen and passengers. One day sporting on its perch, it unluckily fell into the water. The bird had no sooner discovered its situation, than it called out aloud, 'A boat, twenty pounds for a boat.' A waterman happening to be near the place where the parrot was floating, immediately ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various

... to his shooting, and in obedience to this command he appeared on Mrs Dale's lawn after breakfast, accompanied by Bernard and two dogs. The men had guns in their hands, and were got up with all proper sporting appurtenances, but it so turned out that they did not reach the stubble-fields on the farther side of the road until after luncheon. And may it not be fairly doubted whether croquet is not as good as shooting when a ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... matters to a crisis. The young people eloped together, and the old man died of a broken heart. Your mother went by the name of Moncton, and was introduced to his sporting friends as my brother's wife. But no evidence exists of a marriage having taken place; and until such evidence can be procured, the world will ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... peddlers. This was Tuesday and there was no half-holiday. These men appeared to have unbounded leisure while the rest of the city toiled or demanded work. But they were always warmly dressed and indubitably well-fed. They belonged to what is vaguely known as the sporting fraternity, and were invariably in funds, although they must have existed with the minimum of work. The army of unemployed was hardly larger and certainly no bread line was ever half as long. Mounted police rode up and down to avert any anticipation ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... looking back, as all men will, that revisit their home of childhood, over the great gulf of time, and surveying himself on the distant bank yonder, a sad little melancholy boy, with his lord still alive—his dear mistress, a girl yet, her children sporting around her. Years ago, a boy on that very bed, when she had blessed him and called him her knight, he had made a vow to be faithful and never desert her dear service. Had he kept that fond boyish promise? Yes, before Heaven; ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... an individual sent by Prince Urusov turned up and asked me for a short story for a sporting magazine edited by the said Prince. I refused, of course, as I now refuse all who come with supplications to the foot of my pedestal. In Russia there are now two unattainable heights: Mount ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... for the posteriors. Also, in the sporting sense, strength and spirits to support fatigue; as a bottomed horse. Among bruisers it is used to express a hardy fellow, who will bear a ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... meet with many of these writers, who will give you a fine heroic long preface, that makes you hope for something extraordinary to follow, when after all, the body of the history shall be idle, weak, and trifling, such as puts you in mind of a sporting Cupid, who covers his head with the mask of a Hercules or Titan. The reader immediately cries out, "The mountain {39} has brought forth!" Certainly it ought not to be so; everything should be alike and of the same colour; the ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian

... say, the small black-and-tan English terrier, though I regret to say he is decidedly not, of the breed of that Billy indeed, who used to kill rats for a bet; I forget how many one morning he ate, but you'll find it in sporting books yet. It was very late when we reached our old bough gunyah camp; there was no water. I intended going up farther, but, being behind, Mr. Tietkens and Jimmy had began to unload, and some of the horses were hobbled out when I arrived; Gibson was still behind. For the second time I have ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... right men can be woke up and the others—and the ladies—sleep on. Now, straightaway, while the shouter's still aboard—and the two shooters. If we wa'n't sporting men we'd like to sit into that game ourselves. Maybe ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... man was at one time following his wonted occupation of repairing the tombs of the martyrs, in the churchyard of Girthon, and the sexton of the parish was plying his kindred task at no small distance. Some roguish urchins were sporting near them, and by their noisy gambols disturbing the old men in their serious occupation. The most petulant of the juvenile party were two or three boys, grandchildren of a person well known by the name of Cooper Climent. This artist enjoyed almost a monopoly in ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... and lo! it was but a garment of feathers, and there came forth therefrom ten virgins, maids whose beauty shamed the brilliancy of the moon. They all doffed their clothes and plunging into the basin, washed and fell to playing and sporting one with other; whilst the chief bird of them lifted up the rest and ducked them down and they fled from her and dared not put forth their hands to her. When Hasan beheld her thus he took leave of his right reason and his sense was enslaved, so he knew that ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... and went among the household, in hopes that, amid busy outer scenes, the hold of the invisible tigers would be loosed. But then, while conversing on commonplace subjects, I realized more fully than ever upon what a fearful precipice the heedless spiritist is ever sporting. For, clearer, more distinct, came threats, curses, goblin laughter; and 'Fool! dolt!' ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... meantime the hunting season was going on in the Brake country with chequered success. There had arisen the great Trumpeton Wood question, about which the sporting world was doomed to hear so much for the next twelve months,—and Lord Chiltern was in an unhappy state of mind. Trumpeton Wood belonged to that old friend of ours, the Duke of Omnium, who had now almost fallen ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... the difference between the geniuses of the two countries will allow, to the spirit of the painters who painted in the Campo Santo at Pisa. Look, again, at Garrard, at the close of the last century. We generally succeed with sporting or quasi-sporting subjects, and our cheap coloured coaching and hunting subjects are almost always good, and often very good indeed. We like these things: therefore we observe them; therefore we soon become ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler

... adroitness and eloquence had always prevented his friends from forming any general policy against him. He had a brave manner of coming up to a party of them in a bar and of holding himself nimbly at the borders of the company until he was included in a round. He was a sporting vagrant armed with a vast stock of stories, limericks and riddles. He was insensitive to all kinds of discourtesy. No one knew how he achieved the stern task of living, but his name was ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... for doing this was brought home to me with renewed force by the fact that, when I left Dorlin, I was engaged to stay at Ardverikie with Sir John Ramsden, who was the owner, by purchase, of one of the greatest sporting territories in the Highlands, a large portion of which he was then planting with timber. The first stage of my journey from Dorlin was again Fort William, where I slept, and whence next morning I proceeded by an old-fashioned stagecoach to my destination, which ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... Mortimer Carnaby's 'Clasher' and if I should happen to break my neck, it might disappoint the lady in question, or even break her heart.' 'Horatio,' says my Roman—more Roman than ever—'I strongly disapprove of your sporting propensities, and, more especially, the circle of acquaintances you have formed in London.' 'Blackguardedly Bucks and cursed Corinthians!' snarls my uncle, the Captain, flapping his empty sleeve at me. 'That, sirs, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... satisfied. Better go and hire a hall," remarked the sporting editor, with a yawn. "If you are engaged in a talking match you have won the money. Blanket him somebody, and take him to ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris

... amiable was this generally irritable individual that he positively listened with equanimity to the plans which Fortescue and Evelin—the latter with a broad patch of plaster across his brow— were discussing relative to a properly organised sporting excursion into the Cordilleras—or Andes, as they indifferently termed them, much to the perplexity of Brook—nor did he allow himself to show any signs of annoyance when the last-named individual sought to ruffle his (Dale's) feathers, as he elegantly ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... panting fugitive from the water and, without asking any questions, advanced to the bank of the stream and prepared to take aim. Whether my gentleman had at some period of his life been so closely associated with the barrel of a sporting-rifle that he understood the significance of my movement, I know not; but certain it is that as soon as I raised the weapon, the bear first of all reared himself on his hind quarters, displaying ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn

... neighbourhood of Egham, at which he had a set of stables a little bigger than his house, and a set of kennels a little bigger than his stables. It was here he kept his horses and hounds, and himself too when business connected with his sporting life did not take him to town. It was now the middle of August and he had come to Tally-ho Lodge, there to look after his establishments, to make arrangements for cub-hunting, and to prepare for the autumn racing campaign. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... new covered buggy. Things is very different from what they was when I was a girl. Then a farmer's daughter had to work. Now Margaret's took her diploma at the ladies' college, and Arthur he's begun at the university, and Henry's sporting round in a new buggy. They have a piano there, with the organ moved ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... Sun God being her favourite mythological deity at the moment. Apropos of mythology, by the way, she was rather amusing this morning on the subject of Icarus, who, she contends, was the pioneer of sporting travel. If he didn't have "tire trouble," said she, he had the nearest equivalent ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... our sporting exploits, three days taken almost at random will suffice. The season was so far advanced that, unless we were to winter at Fort Laramie, it was necessary to keep going. It was therefore agreed that whoever left the line of march - that ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... There are two galleries connected with the room, one for the use of visitors provided with tickets, and the other free to all comers. There is an indicator on the outer wall of the building on New street, from which the price of gold is announced to the crowd without. It is a common habit with sporting men of the lower class to frequent New street and ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... Merry little baa-lambs sporting on the grass, Playing ring-a-roses, dancing as you pass, Crying, "Jones has topped his brassie shot! What a way to play! Now then, all together, boys—Me-e-eh!" Pretty little woollies, white as driven snow, Following your mothers, skipping as you go, Crying, "Jones is in the bunker! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various

... to turn up, you lose the whole of your stake; if they do, you are docked of more than seventy-five per cent. of your winnings. For my part, I would sooner play at thimble-rig on Epsom Downs, or dominoes with Greek merchants, or at "three-cards" with a casual and communicative fellow-passenger of sporting cast: I should infallibly be legged, but I should hardly be plundered so ruthlessly or remorselessly. Still the Vatican, like all gentlemen who play with loaded dice or marked cards, may have a run of luck against it. Spiritual infallibility itself cannot determine whether a halfpenny tossed ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey

... Rosinante the poet mounted, in his accustomed dress, namely, a black coat, black breeches, with black silk stockings and shoes. His friends being trusted with more active steeds, soon outstripped him. Jogging on leisurely he was met by a long-nosed knowing-looking man, attired in a 'sporting' dress, and an excellent equestrian. Seeing this whimsical horseman in shoes, he writhed, as Coleridge observed, his lithe proboscis, and thus ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... rivers gently flow, and a still sound From mossie Rocks doth bound. The sporting fish dance in the christall Mayne, The Birds sweetly complaine, The ayre, if dolefull comforts please, doth ring With mournfull murmuring. For when the Doves eccho each others cry That sound doth hither fly. As they with ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski

... second cocktail. Mr. Gianapolis, in true sporting fashion, kept pace with him and ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... eyes. Of Champion Nizam (now dead) that well-known English authority on cats, Mr. A.A. Clark, said his was the grandest head of any cat he had ever seen. Nizam was a perfect specimen of that rare and delicate breed of cats, a pure chinchilla. The numberless kittens sporting all day long are worthy of the art of Madame Henriette Ronner, and one could linger for hours in these delightful and most comfortable catteries watching their gambols. The gentle mistress of this fair and most interesting domain, ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... year or eighteen mouths after my return to Philadelphia there was any incident of note in my life, or that I read anything unless it was Shakespeare, and reviews which much influenced me. However, I was very wisely allowed to attend a gymnasium, kept by a man named Hudson. Here there was a sporting tone, much pistol-shooting at a mark, boxing and fencing, prints of prize-fighters on the wall, and cuts from Life in London, with copious cigar-smoke. It was a wholesome, healthy place for me. Unfortunately, I could not afford the shooting, boxing, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... overhanging curse; he will subscribe to any good or bad cause with a liberality excelled only by the digger; he will pay gambling debts with the easy, careless grace which makes every P. of W. so popular in English sporting circles—in a word, the smallest of his many sins is parsimony. But the penal suggestiveness of trespass— penalty touches the sullen dignity of his nature; and the vague, but well-grounded fear of a law made and administered solely by his ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... if the margins of the lakes had not been flooded by dams at the outlets, which have killed the trees, and left a rim of ghastly deadwood like the swamps of the under-world pictured by Dore's bizarre pencil,—and if the pianos at the hotels were in tune. It would be an excellent sporting region also (for there is water enough) if the fish commissioners would stock the waters, and if previous hunters had not pulled all the hair and skin off from the deers' tails. Formerly sportsmen had a habit of catching the deer by the tails, and of being dragged ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... you seem very well posted on sporting matters. What I wish to ask you is whether you think Dvorak's later, or American manner, may be compared to Brahms' second or D minor piano ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... see that you are a spook of spirit. If you had veins, I believe there'd be sporting ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... procession, joined here and there by soldiers and marines, and now and then by civilians, who came up with the inevitable cry that they were just out of the army themselves, as if presenting it as a card of admission to a newly formed Sporting ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... a displacement of a bone, which had baffled the skill of the most famous surgeons in the country for three years, and effected a complete cure in one minute. Hunters, cricket players, rowing men, and athletes in all parts of Great Britain consulted Hutton when they met with accidents. A sporting paper, in a notice of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various

... Georgian. Oh, how nice he is. I'd just love never to let him go away from me. Do you know what he told me the last time? 'If you'll go on living in a sporting house, then I'll make both you dead, and make me dead.' And he flashed his eyes at ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... night, and most of the French Cabinet, as well as Generals Joffre and Gallieni, were likewise invited. Our Big Four were in some doubt as to what garb to appear in, seeing that it was not to be a full-dress function, sporting trinkets; and they eventually hit upon dinner-jackets with black ties. So Sir W. Robertson and I decided to doff breeches, boots and spurs, and to don what military tailors refer to as "slacks" but what in non-sartorial circles are commonly called trousers. The French civilians all wore frock-coats, ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... it was a pretty place? Whether he was a hunting-man, and whether he liked women to hunt? (in which case she was prepared to say that she adored hunting)—but Mr. Foker expressing his opinion against sporting females, and pointing out Lady Bullfinch, who happened to pass by, as a horse god-mother, whom he had seen at cover with a cigar in her face, Blanche too expressed her detestation of the sports of the field, and said it would make her shudder to think of a dear, sweet little ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... for grown people. The restraint is felt no less on the one side, than on the other.—Even a child, that "plaything for an hour," tires always. The noises of children, playing their own fancies—as I now hearken to them by fits, sporting on the green before my window, while I am engaged in these grave speculations at my neat suburban retreat at Shacklewell—by distance made more sweet—inexpressibly take from the labour of my task. It is like writing to music. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... feet, and a hare's tail, or putting on a raven's head, and mounted on a strong wolf. Other forms made use of by demons were those of fierce warriors, or old men riding upon crocodiles, with hooks in hand. A human figure would arise, having the wings of a griffin; or sporting three heads, one of them being like that of a toad, the other resembling that of a cat; or defended with huge teeth and horns, and adorned with a sword; or displaying a dog's teeth, and a large raven's head; ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... "You have the true sporting spirit, sir," cried the voice of Jeems. "I honour you for it. But so philosophical a resignation, while it inclines our souls to know more of you personally, nevertheless renders you much less interesting in such ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... was one of the family jewels. Viking, so say they, returning triumphant from venturesome journeys, Sailed along coasting near Framness. There he espied on a shipwreck, Carelessly swinging, a sailor, sporting as 'twere with the billows. Noble of figure, tall in his stature, joyful his visage, Changeable too, like the waves of the sea when they sport ill the sunshine,— Blue was his mantle, golden his girdle and studded with corals; Sea-green his hair, ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner

... wrote to Trevanion, begging him to get the young gentleman who was to join me, and whose capital I was to administer, to come and visit us. Trevanion complied; and there arrived a tall fellow, somewhat more than six feet high, answering to the name of Guy Bolding, in a cut-away sporting-coat, with a dog whistle tied to the button-hole, drab shorts and gaiters, and a waistcoat with all manner of strange furtive pockets. Guy Bolding had lived a year and a half at Oxford as a "fast man,"—so "fast" had he lived that there was ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... 1723, Low took a new ship for himself, naming himself Admiral, and sporting a new black flag with a red skeleton upon it. He again cruised off the Azores, the Canaries, and the Guinea coast, but what the end was of this repulsive, uninteresting, and bloody pirate has never ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... one we cared for at Abertewey,' she said. 'Sometimes it was an English family who came to ruin themselves in mining speculations; sometimes a sporting man who came for the hunting, shooting, and fishing; and now, if you don't stay, I daresay it will be a Manchester mill owner ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... last words I should have expected from him, for he looked absolutely the type that reads only a half-penny daily and a sporting sheet and puts in the rest of its leisure at gossip or cards, and as I am interested in people's taste in literature, I determined to improve his acquaintance and discover something as to his favourite authors; and again, as I made this resolve, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various

... lonely American forests, resembling at times the last struggling scream of a person being throttled. Owls will eat raw meat, but their favourite food consists in young mice, and they may often be seen at twilight, hunting like sporting dogs round the meadow paths for field-mice which come out at that hour, and going back every five minutes or so to their nests, to see that all ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")

... several courts of Europe, amongst others Prince Ernest of Cobourg, and noticing the names of several of the English nobility, in a list which he showed me to prove the encouragement he received from my compatriots, I remarked that of a noble lord of sporting notoriety whose shirts were at the price of only 150 fr. (6l.) each. However, it must not be supposed that M. Demarne is dearer than other people, the price of all his articles are proportioned to the nature of the materials of which they are composed, and ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... would not be a Dolphin, merry and free, whisking through deep, still water, coasting over coral sands, and diving and sporting through coral groves! ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever

... dwellings of the American people, was an apprehension not so entirely unsupported by appearances as to be pronounced chimerical. With a blind infatuation, which treated reason as a criminal, immense numbers applauded a furious despotism, trampling on every right, and sporting with life as the essence of liberty; and the few who conceived freedom to be a plant which did not flourish the better for being nourished with human blood, and who ventured to disapprove the ravages ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... the ruler of the Sindhus, checked, with all their followers, the Parthas, desirous of rescuing their son. That fierce and great bowman, viz. the son of Vriddhakshatra, invoking into existence celestial weapons resisted the Pandavas, like an elephant sporting in a ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... I found myself alone in a wide plain, neither bulls nor fellow-rider to be seen. His horse had bolted in another direction from mine, and we heard afterwards that the picadores had galloped in between me and the sporting bull and turned him back. Eventually, the cabestros appeared on the scene, and the poor misguided bulls were inveigled into the shambles for the fiesta of the morrow. How they had ever managed to break away or gain the public ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... home-sickness, has persisted for centuries, and may be so bred in the bone, fibre, and soul of the race as to persist forever. It may have made his legs and his spine so straight that he can't unbend. He has his own kind of fun, but it's mostly of the sporting sort. He will, I imagine, hardly contract the Frenchman's sort, which is so largely on his lips, and in his mentality, and has given the race the most mobile faces ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich

... in her sporting speech, her heroic speech, has not cleared the question. She has appealed to us to come in, without counting the cost; but she has said nothing to convince us that when our account at our bank is overdrawn, and we have declared ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... itself, and to judge by the names and addresses in the visitors' book, it is nearly as well known in America as in England. The Saxon Cross Hotel is not really a hotel at all, being a hunting inn. But it is very comfortable, with brushes hung all round the walls and fine old engravings of sporting scenes in ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... at his own disposal. It was a day of great excitement for me, who had never before seen a race-course. The flags, the grand stand (a rude erection of planks, which came down, by-the-bye, the next year during the race for the cup, and reduced the sporting population), the insinuating gipsies, the bawling card-sellers, and especially the shining horses with their twisted manes, all excited ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various

... oysters; there can be an indication of heartiness in the melody that ushers in the soup, as though giving it a warm welcome. There should be a mincing minuet-like movement for the entrees, a sparkling air for the champagne, and something robust for the joint. A sporting tune for the game: sweet melody for the sweets, and a grand and grateful Chorale—a kind of thanksgiving service as it were—when the last crumb and the last bit of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various

... on board, drinking, gambling, nightly orgies and hourly brawls. It seemed as if we had shipped all the human dregs of the San Francisco deadline. Never, I believe, in those times when almost daily the Argonaut-laden boats were sailing for the Golden North, was there one in which the sporting element was so dominant. The social hall reeked with patchouli and stale whiskey. From the staterooms came shrill outbursts of popular melody, punctuated with the popping of champagne corks. Dance-hall girls, babbling incoherently, reeled in the passageways, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... as well as we could, the external appearance of the robbers' domicile, which was an old half-ruined house, standing alone on the plain, with no tree near it. Several men, with guns, were walking up and down before the house—sporting-looking characters, but rather dirty—apparently either waiting for some expected game, or going in search of it. Women with rebosos, were carrying water, and walking amongst them. There were also a number of dogs. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... fall,—Mr and Mrs Claxton, and Dora their daughter, a very nice girl of my age, and a great friend of mine. Dora has a brother called Reuben, and I think you will like him. Although he is younger than you are, he seems to be a fine fellow, and has your taste for natural history and sporting." ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston

... around with pistols in their belts, and pride themselves on the use of them, ought not to be afraid to take a chance against a man who has never but once fired one!" There was an awkward pause and the pilgrim laughed harshly: "There isn't an ounce of sporting blood among you! You hunt in packs like the wolves you are—twenty to one—and that one with a rope around his neck and ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx

... Shot.—A thief was caught in the act of stealing a horse on Friday last, on the opposite side of the river, by a company of persons out sporting. Mr. Kremer, who was in the company, levelled his rifle and ordered him to stop; which he refused; he then fired and lodged the contents in the thief's body, of which he died soon afterwards. Mr. K. went ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... They are an established article of trade, and as the details of their manufacture would be of little practical use to the reader, we will leave them without further consideration. They can be had at almost any sporting ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... in an old-fashioned hotel in a small country town. An air of old-fashioned comfort is in evidence everywhere. Old sporting ...
— The Ghost of Jerry Bundler • W. W. Jacobs and Charles Rock

... in Edinburgh, my father perceived, or he heard from my sisters, that I did not like the thought of being a physician, so he proposed that I should become a clergyman. He was very properly vehement against my turning into an idle sporting man, which then seemed my probable destination. I asked for some time to consider, as from what little I had heard or thought on the subject I had scruples about declaring my belief in all the dogmas of the Church of England; though otherwise I liked the thought of being a ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... mustard and demand a flood of philosophical eloquence; but the greater the man is the more likely he will be to give it to you. So it was proved, not for the first time, in this great experiment of the early employment of Dickens. Messrs. Chapman and Hall came to him with a scheme for a string of sporting stories to serve as the context, and one might almost say the excuse, for a string of sketches by Seymour, the sporting artist. Dickens made some modifications in the plan, but he adopted its main feature; and its main feature was Mr. Winkle. To think of what Mr. Winkle might ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... the right led to the bar, and a door on the left to the coffee-room. To this latter more aristocratic quarter Miss Strong conducted her pupils. Some of them had never before been in a small village hostelry, and were much amused at the quaint old parlor with its sporting prints, its glass cases of stuffed squirrels and badgers, and its horsehair-seated chairs with crochet antimacassars hung over the backs. The atmosphere was certainly rather redolent of stale beer and tobacco, but a bunch ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... becomes the temple of a living hope. And it is all right. Bless your hearts, there are few things finer than that self-mastery which enables a boy to deny his natural appetite for the sake of an ideal—even though it be a sporting ideal. ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... while the physician sleeps; The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds; Justice is feasting while the widow weeps; Advice is sporting while infection breeds; Thou grant'st no time for charitable deeds: Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder's rages, Thy heinous hours wait on them as ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... the ante-rooms where sat the mayor's court in; He found a pack of drunken grooms a-dicing and a-sporting; The horrid wine and 'bacco fumes, they set the prior a-snorting! The prior thought he'd speak about their sins before he went hence, And lustily began to shout of sin and of repentance; The rogues, they kicked the prior out before he'd done ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... wife—short and fat; and his favourite attitude was standing with his legs wide apart and his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat. Strong men had been known to burst into tears on seeing him for the first time arrayed as the sporting squire; but the role was one which he persistently tried to fill, with the help of a yellow hunting waistcoat and check stockings. And when it is said that he invariably bullied the servants, if possible in front of a third person, the picture of Sir John is tolerably complete. He was, in short, ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... shower of rain, about one o'clock, p.m. prevented the races from being so well attended by spectators as they were yesterdy, yet the attendance was numerous in the afternoon, and great interest existed amongst the officers of the garrison, and many sporting ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... mind back to the immediate objective. He wondered why Isabel Joy should wear a bowler hat and a mustard-coloured jacket that resembled a sporting man's overcoat; and why these garments suited her. With a whip in her hand she could have sat for a jockey. And yet she was a woman, and very feminine, and probably old enough to be Elsie April's mother! A disconcerting world, ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... Lady's Face might pass for young, and in its Bloom, that discover'd no more Wrinkles; Yet scarce had we sail'd three Leagues, before a prodigious Fish presented it self to our View. As near as we could guess, it might be twenty Yards in Length; and it lay sporting it self on the surface of the Sea, a great Part appearing out of the Water. The Sailors, one and all, as soon as they saw it, declar'd it the certain Forerunner of a Storm. However, our Ship kept on its Course, before a fine Gale, till we had near passed over half the Bay; ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe

... officials, with dignified and placid expressions on their features; others, like fighting warriors, with fierce eyes and a ferocious look about them; but all covered with a good coating of dust and dirt, and all lending themselves as a sporting-ground to the industrious spider. The latter, disrespecting the high standing of these imperturbable deities, had stretched its webs across from nose to nose, and produced the appearance of a regular field of sporting operations, bestrewn with the spoils of its victims, which ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor

... has something of a special dialect. Even where there is, one would think, no necessity for it, as in the conversation of Sophomores, sporting men, and reporters for the press, a dialect is forthwith partly invented, partly suffered to grow, and the sturdy stem of original English exhibits a new crop of parasitic weeds which often partake of the nature of fungi and betoken the decay of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... the prairie, sometimes partly concealed by tall, rank grass and sweet-scented shrubs, until we were forty rods from the tree under which the kangaroo was sporting. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... of the Signora Laura mentioned by Vasari. A comparison of the Madrid portrait with the so-called Giorgio Cornaro of Castle Howard—a famous portrait by Titian of a gentleman holding a hawk, and having a sporting dog as his companion, which was seen at the recent Venetian exhibition of the New Gallery—results in something like certainty that in both is the same personage portrayed. It is not only that the quality and cast of the close curling hair and beard are ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips

... the circle of the ear foreshortened and moved past his sights, and they were centred straight between the staring eyes. His finger contracted on the trigger, but a sudden qualm stayed him. It wasn't fair, it wasn't sporting, it was too like shooting a sitting hare. And the man hadn't seen him even yet. Man? This was no man; a lad rather, a youth, a mere boy, with childish wondering eyes, a smooth oval chin, the mouth of a pretty girl. The ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... puzzles me," said Coleman. "I should have thought he had seen the sporting togs, but that's impossible; he must have a penetrating glance indeed if he could see through ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... affluence, who lavishes away his substance, may aptly enough be likened to a porpoise sporting in the ocean—the smaller fry play around him, admire his dexterity, fan his follies, glory in his gambols; but let him once be enmeshed in the net of misfortune, and they who foremost fawned under his fins, will ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various

... clear day, to go out of the city betimes in the morning, either towards Gentilly, or Boulogne, or to Montrouge, or Charanton bridge, or to Vanves, or St. Clou, and there spend all the day long in making the greatest cheer that could be devised, sporting, making merry, drinking healths, playing, singing, dancing, tumbling in some fair meadow, unnestling of sparrows, taking of quails, and fishing for frogs and crabs. But although that day was passed without books or lecture, yet ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... shooting-competition, and won a handsome cigarette case inlaid with Damascene work. But he thought that it was a poor game; nor did he ever realize that this entertainment had been specially organized with a view to flattering his military and sporting tastes. ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... of gaiety so lavishly furnished. The sportsmen of Fredericton lamented the fact with deep regret. We cannot let this opportunity pass to relate an incident showing to what excess horse racing was carried in those days. Captain H——, an officer of the above named regiment, a true sporting character, owned a stud of the best thorough-breds in America. He annually spent an immense income in horse racing and various sports. In the meantime there lived in the city of St. John a coachman named Larry Stivers. ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour

... a sporting offer. If you'll drop it and come home at once I'll promise never to tell Aunt Caroline. Come the moment you can put foot to the ground. And, until then, I recommend strict seclusion and no nursing. Nursing might well be fatal. Stick to Li Ho. ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... daughter's manners.' Otherwise he took little notice of Ursula, viewing her perhaps, as did the neighbourhood, as a poor imitation of May, without her style, or it may be with a sense that her tongue might become inconvenient if not repressed. When he began to collect sporting guests of his own calibre in the shooting season, the Canoness quietly advised her sister-in-law to regard them as gentlemen's parties, and send Ursula down to spend the evening with her cousins; and to this no objection was made. Mr. Egremont wanted his beautiful wife ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... fine sporting neighbourhood, Epsom, is represented by a big cheque from the town ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various

... in the woods or in the house when there were no guests about; and she often whistled softly over her work. Perhaps you don't think that's a womanly thing to do—but it's better, from my point of view—it's sporting. For Mother's got something of a temper—you'd know anybody with so much grit must have a temper—and lots of times when she wanted to be angry, suddenly she'd break out in a regular rag-time whistle, and then laugh, and everything would ...
— The Whistling Mother • Grace S. Richmond

... strongly marked both in the looks and attitudes is the joyous character of the licentious votaries of Bacchus—the roundness and correct drawing of the man entwined with snakes, the magnificence of the sky and landscape, the sporting play of the leaves and branches of the most vivid tints, and the detailed herbage on the ground tending to enliven the scene, and the rich tone of colour throughout, form altogether such a whole that hardly any other work of Titian can stand in ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... dismounted before the dancing began, in general against the sun, as elsewhere. Each rancheria of the many present had its dancers, and all made a display. One event, if the sporting term be permissible, seemed to be a sort of "follow-my-leader"; the motions, however, being confined to the circle, across which the file would go from time to time, thus differing from any other dance seen. In ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... lips caused him to sit upright, and survey me. I found him to be a good-looking little man of about fifty, with a shining face, a tight head, a bright eye, a moist wink, a quick speech, and a ready air. He had something of a sporting way with him. ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... of the water and watched it flowing. Some fishes were sporting briskly in the clear stream and occasionally made a little bound and caught the flies flying on the surface. He stopped crying in order to watch them, for their housewifery interested him vastly. But, at intervals, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... give them many columns of financial news, but that would not interest tired laborers. An extended account of the doings of a Presbyterian convention would not attract the great class of men with sporting inclinations, and a story of a very pretty exhibition of scientific boxing would not appeal to the wife at home. They all buy the paper, and they all want to be interested, and the paper must, therefore, print stories ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde

... Tom Barton?" said Edith, pointing to the figure of a man, dressed in sporting costume, seated on the step of a stile, engaged in lighting a small German pipe, his gun leaning against one of the uprights and some half dozen partridges lying on the grass at his feet. As they rode up, Tom advanced to meet them, raised his hat politely to Edith, and shouted ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest

... had felt no sensation like it, except on one of his lion hunts in Africa when the news had come into camp that an exceptionally fine beast had been discovered near and might be stalked on the morrow. His sporting instincts seemed to ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn

... that I was puzzled; but, if you think so, you must have misunderstood the nature of the inductions. To use a sporting phrase, I had not been once 'at fault.' The scent had never for an instant been lost. There was no flaw in any link of the chain. I had traced the secret to its ultimate result,—and that result was the nail. It had, I say, in every respect, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... one occasion through sand and forest into the very study of the baron. He was an audacious fellow, with a great gift of the gab, and a devoted lover of races and steeple-chases. He brought with him a whole budget of the latest sporting intelligence, and bamboozled the baron into ordering a pipe of port wine. Anton looked at the empty purse, cursed the pipe, and hurried into the audience-chamber of the baroness. It required a long feminine intrigue to effect the ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... and eddies and dances and sports by the way, and yet keeps on to the sea, it was in Ruth's nature to give back cheerful answer to the solicitations of friendliness and pleasure, to appear idly delaying even, and sporting in the sunshine, while the current of her resolution flowed ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... helmet," he said. "Yes, I was there. I'd been on the brute's track since daybreak. I'm told that it's the proper thing to let natives do all the stalking in this country. But to my mind that's half the fun. Gives the tiger a sporting chance, too." ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... with tresses all curling bright, Sporting and frisking like lambkin or kid, Foot it so sprightly, and dance it all down aright— Never for languor shall Annette be chid. Right hand and left again, Round about set amain, Jokingly, laughingly, just as ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... Tabard for a-while, I like to think the Father of us all, The old Adam of English minstrelsy caroused Here in the Mermaid Tavern. I like to think Jolly Dan Chaucer, with his kind shrewd face Fresh as an apple above his fur-fringed gown, One plump hand sporting with his golden chain, Looked out from that old casement over the sign, And saw the pageant, and the shaggy nags, With Whittington, and his green-gowned maid, go by. "O, very like," said Clopton, "for the bells Left not a head indoors that night." He drank ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... whites believed. They said that a cry which had been heard just before dusk and just after, skittering across the darkened waters, was his calling cry to the big cats, and at his bidding they came trooping in, and that in their company he swam in the lake on moonlight nights, sporting with them, diving with them, even feeding with them on what manner of unclean things they fed. The cry had been heard many times, that much was certain, and it was certain also that the big fish were noticeably thick at the mouth of Fishhead's slough. No native Reelfooter, white or ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... standing now in a simply but handsomely furnished hall, whose principal decorations caught the lad's eyes at once, being, as they were, sporting and defensive weapons of all kinds, and of the best manufacture, hung about the walls; but for the moment Murray had no opportunity for inspecting these objects of interest, his attention being taken up by the planter, who availed himself of his guardian's help to pass ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... indeed in a wretched plight. She was standing in a ditch, covered quite to her neck in the muddy water, and holding up her arms above her head, in an effort to protect it from the many little green frogs that were sporting about her. Aunty reached her first, and, taking the little girl by the arm, she quickly rescued her from her uncomfortable position. As soon as Rikli found herself ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri

... scaffold, unable longer to endure the horrors of lingering death. Flocks of sea-fowl hovered over them; the hull of the Perle was crusted with barnacles; long skeins of sea-grass knotted themselves in her gaping seams; myriads of fish darted in and out among the clinging weeds, sporting gleefully; schools of porpoises leaped about them, lashing the sea into foam; sometimes a whale blew his long breath close under them. Everywhere was the stir of jubilant life—everywhere but under the tattered awning stretched in the foretop ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... about that, Reginald," said Captain Burnett. "If you have nothing better to do, come to my quarters and inspect my sporting gear. We may get some shooting on the way; I always try to combine ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston

... this the angelic spirits replied, with a smile, "The angelic love of the sex, such as exists in heaven, is nevertheless full of the inmost delights: it is the most agreeable expansion of all the principles of the mind, and thence of all the parts of the breast, existing inwardly in the breast, and sporting therein as the heart sports with the lungs, giving birth thereby to respiration, tone of voice, and speech; so that the intercourse between the sexes, or between youths and virgins, is an intercourse ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... calling into an attitude of doubt and suspicion towards his fellow-citizens, Chief Inspector Heat relieved the instinct of credulity implanted in the human breast by putting unbounded faith in the sporting prophets of that particular evening publication. Dropping the extra special on to the counter, he plunged his hand again into his pocket, and pulling out the piece of cloth fate had presented him with out of a heap of things that seemed to have been collected in ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... of varied hue flew around her, and an eagle, sporting in the air and clapping its wings, swooped down and sailed from right to left, fairest of omens the gods could give. This she saw, and recognised its import, but the flowers and murmuring pines ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... these people might be made to give themselves away. Suppose they had one of their private meetings to discuss the affairs of the syndicate, and that, unknown to them, witnesses could be present to overhear what was said. Would there not at least be a sporting chance that they ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... Colonel C.'s gross and infamous reflections on my conduct last spring, it will be needless, I dare say, to observe further at this time than that the liberty which he has been pleased to allow himself in sporting with my character is little else than a comic entertainment, discovering at one view his passionate fondness for your friend, his inviolable love of truth, his unfathomable knowledge, and the masterly strokes of his wisdom in displaying it. You are heartily welcome ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... Barrow and French secured it. About John French the subaltern, as about John French the midshipman, history is silent. No fabulous legends have accumulated about him. Presumably the short, firmly-built young officer was regarded as normal and entirely de rigeur in his sporting propensities. ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm

... does appear to me most strange, that time should not have obliterated the effects which I thought would have ceased with their cause. You are no more the man that in my recollection you once were, than I am like a sporting child." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... old country-houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages nor ivied ruins; no cathedrals, nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches; no great Universities nor public schools—no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow; no literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class—no Epsom nor Ascot! Some such list as that might be drawn up of the absent things in American life—especially in the American life of forty years ago, the effect of which, upon an English or a French imagination, would probably ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... rest; but Countess Ammiani disdained to be servile to the pleasure, even as she had strengthened herself to endure the shocks of pain. It was a conquered heart that she and every Venetian and Lombard mother had to carry; one that played its tune according to its nature, shaping no action, sporting no mask. If you know what is meant by that phrase, a conquered heart, you will at least respect them whom you call weak women for having gone through the harshest schooling which this world can show example ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... there are fashion notes, society and sporting notes, architectural news, and receipts. Among the latter is a receipt for making Welsh rare-bits that should be in the possession of every one addicted ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, No. 10, October 1895. - French Farmhouses. • Various

... was just what Mortlake was afraid of. But, as has been said, he was the sort of man who, in sporting parlance, was willing always "to take a chance" to beat any one he considered his rival. He was taking a desperate chance now. Under the artificial means he had used to increase the speed of his engines, the motor was "turning up" several hundred more revolutions ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham

... had sporting instincts to which I could appeal because, a few days before, he had taken me into his room and shown me the cups he had won. Some of them were English, for when in London he was not occupied as a waiter without intermission; his recreation was to retire from business occasionally for a few weeks, ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones

... parting glance at the poor vessel, our party proceeded on their way across the common back to The Moorings, Miss Nell, as aforesaid, carrying the bouquet of wild-flowers, and Bob the tin bucket of sea-anemones, their "spoil" of the day, in sporting parlance; while Hellyer and Dick brought up the rear of the procession with the hamper and empty water-jar, representing the relics ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson

... I must mention, had a most extensive and costly sporting outfit—all of it was certainly good, but much of it quite useless for such places as Samoa and other Polynesian Islands. Of rifles and guns he had about a dozen, with an enormous quantity of ammunition ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke

... whence the Mexican line is in plain sight, but drove to the bay, where Wampus guided the limousine on to the big ferryboat bound for Coronado. They all left the car during the brief voyage and watched the porpoises sporting in the clear water of the bay and gazed abstractedly at the waving palms on the opposite shore, where lies nestled "the Crown ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne

... father, that he intimated to the doctor that it would not be amiss to get him home. Being something of a wag, the doctor intended to vanquish the parson with the cider, and then perform certain mischievous tricks with his features. But this my father, who was not given to sporting with the weaknesses of others, prevented, by ordering my mother to lock up the six remaining bottles. "We might debate the question until daylight, but I could not convince you," spake the parson, rising from his ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... destinies of men and nations; and hard at hand that day-star, waning into space, looked with impartial eye on the church tower and the guillotine. Up springs the blithesome morn. In yon gardens the birds renew their familiar song. The fishes are sporting through the freshening waters of the Seine. The gladness of divine nature, the roar and dissonance of mortal life, awake again: the trader unbars his windows; the flower-girls troop gayly to their haunts; busy feet are ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... According to a sporting paper there is a great shortage of referees this season. The offer to receive any member of this profession into the ranks of the Royal Irish Constabulary without further qualifications is no doubt responsible for fifty per cent. of the loss, whilst fair ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various

... The race of Jove, Bacchus whose happy smiles approve; The Cyprian Queen, whose gentle hand Is quick to tye the nuptial band; The sporting Loves unarm'd appear, The ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie

... the prevailing hair-cloth covered furniture, the visitor had the satisfaction of seating himself upon a chair covered with some of the Widow's embroidery, or a sofa luxurious with soft caressing plush. The sporting tastes of the late Major showed in various prints on the wall: Herring's "Plenipotentiary," the "red bullock" of the '34 Derby; "Cadland" and "The Colonel;" "Crucifix;" "West-Australian," fastest of modern racers; and among native celebrities, ugly, game old "Boston," with his ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... eighty thousand six hundred and forty; and a female sturgeon seven millions six hundred and fifty-three thousand two hundred. The viviparous species are by no means so prolific; yet the blenny brings forth two or three hundred at a time, which commence sporting together round their parent the moment they ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... accompanies an energetic use of our faculties. Still it suffers in some degree from this undeniable characteristic, and especially from the tinge which has consequently been communicated to narratives of mountain adventures. There are two ways which have been appropriated to the description of all sporting exploits. One is to indulge in fine writing about them, to burst out in sentences which swell to paragraphs, and in paragraphs which spread over pages; to plunge into ecstasies about infinite abysses and overpowering splendours, to compare mountains to archangels lying down in eternal winding-sheets ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... mammiferous animals.* (* I may observe, that I have never heard of an instance in which a picture, representing, in the greatest perfection, hares or deer of their natural size, has made the least impression even on sporting dogs, the intelligence of which appears the most improved. Is there any authenticated instance of a dog having recognized a full length picture of his master? In all these cases, the sight is not assisted by the smell.) When several of these little monkeys, shut up in the same cage, are exposed ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... But the intellectual tone of schools is low, and the conventionality is great. I don't want Alec to be a conventional man, and yet I want him to accept current conventions instinctively about matters of indifference. I have a horror of the sporting public-school type, the good-humoured, robust fellow, who does his work and fills his spare time with games, and thinks intellectual things, and artistic interests, and emotion, and sympathy, moonshine and rot. Such people live a wholesome enough life; they ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Robert was never distinctly ascertained, was the only person to whom he seemed to speak unnecessarily; it was observed that while with the country gentry he exchanged no further communication than what was unavoidable in arranging his sporting transactions, with this person he would converse earnestly and frequently. Tradition asserts that, to enhance the curiosity which this unaccountable and exclusive preference excited, the stranger possessed some striking and unpleasant peculiarities ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... that is no more than just to the memory of Lord George, and his book affords material for an impartial judgment. At that period the noble lord was a distinguished patron of the turf: all England knew him as a sporting gentleman, a first-rate judge of horses, and an extensive winner on the course. In allusion to his habits in these respects, it became a popular sneer that the Conservatives required "a stable mind," after the versatile performances of Sir Robert Peel, and they had at last found such ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... his Recollections of Washington, has given some interesting incidents of his life as a sportsman. "During the season," he says, "Mount Vernon had many sporting guests from the neighborhood, from Maryland, and elsewhere. Their visits were not of days, but weeks; and they were entertained in the good old style of Virginia's ancient hospitality. Washington, always superbly mounted, in true sporting costume, of blue coat, scarlet ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... the livelier of the two, and affected a slanginess of dress and talk and manner, a certain "horsey" style, very different from his elder brother's studied respectability of costume and bearing. His clothes were of a loose sporting cut, and always odorous with stale tobacco. He wore a good deal of finery in the shape of studs and pins and dangling lockets and fusee-boxes; his whiskers were more obtrusive than his brother's, and he wore a moustache in addition—a thick ragged black moustache, ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... holding opinions which, if not peculiar, were at any rate advanced, and never being afraid of the opinions which he held. His bishop had not loved him, nor had he made himself dear to the bench of bishops generally. He had the reputation of having been in early life a sporting parson. He had written a book which had been characterised as tending to infidelity, and had more than once been invited to state dogmatically what was his own belief. He had never quite done so, and had then been made ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope



Words linked to "Sporting" :   fair, just, indulgent, adventurous, sport, adventuresome



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