Foul Play Quotes

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Lee Jordan was finding it difficult not to take sides. 'So — after that obvious and disgusting bit of cheating —' 'Jordan!' growled Professor McGonagall. 'I mean after that open and revolting foul —' 'Jordan, I'm warning you —' 'All right, all right. Flint nearly kills the Gryffindor Seeker, which could happen to anyone, I'm sure, so a penalty to Gryffindor, taken by Spinnet, who puts it away, no trouble, and we continue play, Gryffindor still in possession.
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
It takes a whole lot longer to dispose of a body than to dispose of a soul, especially if you don’t want to leave any evidence of foul play.
Oyinkan Braithwaite (My Sister, the Serial Killer)
Lady Fortune, you play foul.
Chloe Gong (Foul Lady Fortune (Foul Lady Fortune, #1))
Faeries began calling foul play, demanding Tamlin be released from the curse, calling her a liar. Through the haze, I saw Rhysand crouching by Tamlin. Not to help him, but to grab the- "You are all pigs - all scheming, filthy pigs." Then Rhysand was on his feet, my bloody knife in his hands. He launched himself at Amarantha, swift as a shadow, the ash dagger aimed at her throat. She lifted a hand - not even bothering to look - and he was blasted back by a wall of white light. But the pain paused for a second, long enough for me to see him hit the ground and rise again and lunge for her - with hands that now ended in talons. He slammed into the invisible wall Amarantha had raised around herself, and my pain flickered as she turned to him. "You traitorous piece of filth," she seethed at Rhysand. "You're just as bad as the human beasts." One by one, as if a hand were shoving them in, his talons pushed back into his skin, leaving blood in their wake. He swore, low and vicious. "You were planning this all along.
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1))
My father's spirit in arms! all is not well; I doubt some foul play: would the night were come! Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.
William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
I know you all, and will awhile uphold The unyoked humour of your idleness. Yet herein will I imitate the sun, Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world, That when he please again to be himself, Being wanted, he may be more wondered at By breaking through the foul and ugly mists Of vapours that did seem to strangle him. If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work; But when they seldom come, they wished-for come, And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents. So, when this loose behaviour I throw off And pay the debt I never promisèd, By how much better than my word I am, By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes; And like bright metal on a sullen ground, My reformation, glitt’ring o’er my fault, Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes Than that which hath no foil to set it off. I’ll so offend to make offence a skill, Redeeming time when men think least I will.
William Shakespeare (King Henry IV, Part 1)
This is not a Scooby-Doo episode, Gus said. Granted, our current adventure may lack the mastery and grace of classic stories like 'Hassle in the Castle' or 'Foul Play in Funland', Shawn said. But as I've always said, aim high.
William Rabkin
Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful. And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain. Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your skin and less of your rainment. For the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind. Some of you say 'It is the north wind who has woven the clothes we wear.' And I say, 'Ay, it was the north wind, but shame was his loom, and the softening of the sinews was his thread.' And when his work was done he laughed in the forest. Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean. And when the unclean shall be no more, what were modesty but a fetter and a fouling of the mind? And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Kahlil Gibran
If you cannot understand my argument, and declare "It's Greek to me", you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger; if your wish is farther to the thought; if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise -why, be that as it may, the more fool you , for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut tut! For goodness' sake! What the dickens! But me no buts! - it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.
Bernard Levin
God! I hated this business of being grown-up. I hated having to make decisions where I didn't know what was behind the door. I wanted a world where heroes and villains were clearly labeled. Where ominous music comes on-screen so you can't possibly mistake him. Where someone asks you to choose between playing with the beautiful princess in the fragrant garden and being eaten by the hideous monster in the foul-smelling pit. Not exactly a difficult one, now is it? Not something that you would agonize over, or that would make you lose a night's sleep?
Marian Keyes (Watermelon (Walsh Family, #1))
The police, finding a corpse with twenty-eight stab wounds in a bathtub, suspected foul play.
Tim Kreider (We Learn Nothing)
It is funny how public the English are about disliking their families, even when it is not really true. Love is a secret to them, hate, far less so.
Robin Stevens (Jolly Foul Play (Murder Most Unladylike, #4))
First the mania for confession, then the mania for clarity, issued from you, dark, hypocritical sentiment! Let them now condemn my every passion, let them drag me through the mud, call me twisted, foul pervert, dilettante, perjurer; you keep me apart, give me life’s assurance: I burn at the stake, play the card of fire and win: I win this small, vast possession, my infinite, miserable pity which makes even righteous anger my friend. And I can do this because I’ve endured you too long!
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Selected Poems)
Music social foul: no singing a song when another song is playing. Double music social foul: don't ever fucking sing anything while Pink Floyd is playing. What's wrong with you?
Roan Parrish (In the Middle of Somewhere (Middle of Somewhere, #1))
From the primary school till he leaves the university a young man does nothing but acquire books by heart without his judgment or personal initiative being ever called into play.
Gustave Le Bon (Psychologie Des Foules)
It's very tragic," Louisa said. "They had just moved to a new mansion in Bath with fifty-nine bedrooms. Unfortunately, the two of them got lost on their way to breakfast. Their servants didn't find them until it was too late - they had wasted away." "How awful," Beatrice said, leaning forward. "Do the inspectors suspect foul play?" "No birds were involved. The Croaksworths were simply terrible with directions," Louisa replied.
Julia Seales (A Most Agreeable Murder (Beatrice Steele, #1))
The people who manipulate information to pursue their dirty hidden evil agenda, always cry foul when being confronted. They always play a victim card and they try to get everyone involved, so that they can fight fight for them.
D.J. Kyos
Bullock, Sam, died at the age of one-twelve. They’d been married five years. She was forty-six.” “Isn’t that romantic?” “Heart-tugging. First husband was younger, a callow seventy-three to her twenty-two.” “Wealthy?” “Was—not Sam Bullock wealthy, but well-stocked. Got eaten by a shark.” “Step off.” “Seriously. Scuba diving out in the Great Barrier Reef. He was eighty-eight. And this shark cruises along and chomp, chomp.” She gave Eve a thoughtful look. “Ending as shark snacks is in my top-ten list of ways I don’t want to go out. How about you?” “It may rank as number one, now that I’ve considered it a possibility. Any hint of foul play?” “They weren’t able to interview the shark, but it was put down as death by misadventure.
J.D. Robb
And what happens when you stop innovating? Everyone else catches up, your jobs go overseas, and then you cry foul: Ooohh, they’re paying them less over there, and the playing field is not level. Well, stop whining and start innovating.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier)
a few rungs short in the ladder leading to logic land.
Christy Barritt (Foul Play (Squeaky Clean Mysteries, #8))
Study your prey, learn her habits, accustom her to your presence by seeming harmless and kind. And then, when she is tame and off-guard, you pounce!
Mary Hoffman (The Falconer's Knot: A Story of Friars, Flirtation and Foul Play)
The only problem with the Angels' new image was that the outlaws themselves didn't understand it. It puzzled them to be treated as symbolic heroes by people with whom they had almost nothing in common. Yet they were gaining access to a whole reservoir of women, booze, drugs and new action -- which they were eager to get their hands on, and symbolism be damned. But they could never get the hang of the role they were expected to play, and insisted on ad-libbing the lines. This fouled their channels of communication, which made them nervous ... and after a brief whirl on the hipster party circuit, all but a few decided it was both cheaper and easier, in the long run, to buy their own booze and hustle a less complicated breed of pussy.
Hunter S. Thompson (Hell's Angels)
His real gift was as a phrasemaker. “Shakespeare’s language,” says Stanley Wells, “has a quality, difficult to define, of memorability that has caused many phrases to enter the common language.” Among them: one fell swoop, vanish into thin air, bag and baggage, play fast and loose, go down the primrose path, be in a pickle, budge an inch, the milk of human kindness, more sinned against than sinning, remembrance of things past, beggar all description, cold comfort, to thine own self be true, more in sorrow than in anger, the wish is father to the thought, salad days, flesh and blood, foul play, tower of strength, be cruel to be kind, blinking idiot, with bated breath, tower of strength, pomp and circumstance, foregone conclusion—and many others so repetitiously irresistible that we have debased them into clichés. He was so prolific that he could (in Hamlet) put two in a single sentence: “Though I am native here and to the manner born, it is a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance.” If
Bill Bryson (Shakespeare: The World as Stage)
At the Theatre: To the Lady Behind Me Dear Madam, you have seen this play; I never saw it till today. You know the details of the plot, But, let me tell you, I do not. The author seeks to keep from me The murderer's identity, And you are not a friend of his If you keep shouting who it is. The actors in their funny way Have several funny things to say, But they do not amuse me more If you have said them just before; The merit of the drama lies, I understand, in some surprise; But the surprise must now be small Since you have just foretold it all. The lady you have brought with you Is, I infer, a half-wit too, But I can understand the piece Without assistance from your niece. In short, foul woman, it would suit Me just as well if you were mute; In fact, to make my meaning plain, I trust you will not speak again. And—may I add one human touch?— Don't breathe upon my neck so much.
A.P. Herbert
(you see, not all of our Big Girls go to university. Most are only presented at Court and go on to marry Lords with no chins).
Robin Stevens (Jolly Foul Play (Murder Most Unladylike, #4))
Challenge is a sport we all play daily without knowing the rules and the fouls.
Twinkle Sharma
They made us all so miserable that even the nicest girls began to argue and snipe at each other horribly
Robin Stevens (Jolly Foul Play (Murder Most Unladylike, #4))
I was so angry that I only thought about the sticky toffee pudding twice on the way out.
Robin Stevens (Jolly Foul Play (Murder Most Unladylike, #4))
He started to draw. He drew from memory. He had a good memory, something which, all things considered, was far from a blessing. The pencils moved quickly across the paper, scratching back and forth in deepening shades of grey. He leaned low over the paper, concentrating all his energy on his work. The candles flickered and dripped wax, having nothing better to do. Eventually he lifted his head and looked at his creation. The face of a young woman stared back at him from the paper, a slight smile playing on her lips. She looked as if she was about to say something, and that once she had you would laugh. She looked happy. Seven stared at the picture, his strange eyes unreadable – eyes that, now he made no effort to mask them, were from edge to edge only the deep blue of the dead ocean. He swallowed hard, as if he was trying to imbibe something foul tasting but necessary, like a child sipping medicine, and pulled another sheet of paper from his desk.
F.D. Lee (The Fairy's Tale (The Pathways Tree, #1))
I don’t even think he knows any more when he’s playing right or not. It isn’t all his fault. I partly blame all those dopes that clap their heads off—they’d foul up anybody, if you gave them a chance.
J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)
Drums rumbled, cymbals clanged, and somewhere a fiddle was playing. The aroma of deep-fried doughnuts and roasted meat drifted down to the foul-smelling tanners’ quarter. Yes, it was going to be a lovely execution.
Oliver Pötzsch (The Hangman's Daughter (The Hangman's Daughter, #1))
I’m surprised you haven’t cried foul before. I won a hundred and twenty-three games in a row. You had to know something wasn’t right." Her eyes narrowed. "You’ve been cheating?" "Of course," he said. "Come on. You really think I play fair? If I want something, I get it. I told you—I make all the rules here." "You . . . you . . . you. . ." Anger clouded her expression. "You asshole!" Lucifer’s eyes widened. "Tell me how you really feel, angel.
J.M. Darhower (Extinguish (Extinguish #1))
Notes from the Field   INSIGHTS FROM AN OWL ›  Keep only what is useful. Regurgitate the rest. ›  Be patient. Eventually something will move. ›  Learn through play. ›  Only one out of four or five tries yields a mouse. Never give up. ›  Accept help when it is offered. ›  Adapt to stay resilient. ›  Travel every four to six months. ›  Take time to sit and observe. ›  Death is a necessary ingredient in life. Accept the transformation. ›  Never foul your own nest. ›  Parenthood is temporary. ›  The Great Gray Owl does not see what the Great Horned Owl sees. Perspective is everything. ›  Withhold judgment. Nature does not take sides. ›  Where you live is not nearly as important as where you are alive.
Leigh Calvez (The Hidden Lives of Owls: The Science and Spirit of Nature's Most Elusive Birds)
Among them: one fell swoop, vanish into thin air, bag and baggage, play fast and loose, go down the primrose path, be in a pickle, budge an inch, the milk of human kindness, more sinned against than sinning, remembrance of things past, beggar all description, cold comfort, to thine own self be true, more in sorrow than in anger, the wish is father to the thought, salad days, flesh and blood, foul play, tower of strength, be cruel to be kind, blinking idiot, with bated breath,
Bill Bryson (Shakespeare: The World as a Stage)
I’m not too sure what the name of the song was that he was playing when I came in, but whatever it was, he was really stinking it up. He was putting all these dumb, show-offy ripples in the high notes, and a lot of other very tricky stuff that gives me a pain in the ass. You should’ve heard the crowd, though, when he was finished. You would’ve puked. They went mad. They were exactly the same morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn’t funny. I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes though I was terrific, I’d hate it. I wouldn’t even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player, I’d play it in the goddam closet. Anyway, when he was finished, and everybody was clapping their heads off, old Ernie turned around on his stool and gave this very phony, humble bow. Like as if he was a helluva humble guy, besides being a terrific piano player. It was very phony—I mean him being such a big snob and all. In a funny way, though, I felt sort of sorry for him when he was finished. I don’t even think he knows any more when he’s playing right or not. It isn’t all his fault. I partly blame all those dopes that clap their heads off—they’d foul up anybody, if you gave them a chance.
J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)
One day, soon after her disappearance, an attack of abominable nausea forced me to pull up on the ghost of an old mountain road that now accompanied, now traversed a brand new highway, with its population of asters bathing in the detached warmth of a pale-blue afternoon in late summer. After coughing myself inside out I rested a while on a boulder and then thinking the sweet air might do me good, walked a little way toward a low stone parapet on the precipice side of the highway. Small grasshoppers spurted out of the withered roadside weeds. A very light cloud was opening its arms and moving toward a slightly more substantial one belonging to another, more sluggish, heavenlogged system. As I approached the friendly abyss, I grew aware of a melodious unity of sounds rising like vapor from a small mining town that lay at my feet, in a fold of the valley. One could make out the geometry of the streets between blocks of red and gray roofs, and green puffs of trees, and a serpentine stream, and the rich, ore-like glitter of the city dump, and beyond the town, roads crisscrossing the crazy quilt of dark and pale fields, and behind it all, great timbered mountains. But even brighter than those quietly rejoicing colors - for there are colors and shades that seem to enjoy themselves in good company - both brighter and dreamier to the ear than they were to the eye, was that vapory vibration of accumulated sounds that never ceased for a moment, as it rose to the lip of granite where I stood wiping my foul mouth. And soon I realized that all these sounds were of one nature, that no other sounds but these came from the streets of the transparent town, with the women at home and the men away. Reader! What I heard was but the melody of children at play, nothing but that, and so limpid was the air that within this vapor of blended voices, majestic and minute, remote and magically near, frank and divinely enigmatic - one could hear now and then, as if released, an almost articulate spurt of vivid laughter, or the crack of a bat, or the clatter of a toy wagon, but it was all really too far for the eye to distinguish any movement in the lightly etched streets. I stood listening to that musical vibration from my lofty slope, to those flashes of separate cries with a kind of demure murmur for background, and then I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita's absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord.
Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)
You’re squiffy, dear,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Soaked. Spiffed. Three sheets in the wind. All mops and brooms. You are in Liquorpond Street with more than a touch of boskiness about you. You are wet-handed, what-nosed and whittled. You are, in short, as tight as a boiled owl.
T.E. Kinsey (An Act of Foul Play (Lady Hardcastle, #9))
The face that Moses had begged to see – was forbidden to see – was slapped bloody (Exodus 33:19-20) The thorns that God had sent to curse the earth’s rebellion now twisted around his brow… “On your back with you!” One raises a mallet to sink the spike. But the soldier’s heart must continue pumping as he readies the prisoner’s wrist. Someone must sustain the soldier’s life minute by minute, for no man has this power on his own. Who supplies breath to his lungs? Who gives energy to his cells? Who holds his molecules together? Only by the Son do “all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). The victim wills that the soldier live on – he grants the warrior’s continued existence. The man swings. As the man swings, the Son recalls how he and the Father first designed the medial nerve of the human forearm – the sensations it would be capable of. The design proves flawless – the nerves perform exquisitely. “Up you go!” They lift the cross. God is on display in his underwear and can scarcely breathe. But these pains are a mere warm-up to his other and growing dread. He begins to feel a foreign sensation. Somewhere during this day an unearthly foul odor began to waft, not around his nose, but his heart. He feels dirty. Human wickedness starts to crawl upon his spotless being – the living excrement from our souls. The apple of his Father’s eye turns brown with rot. His Father! He must face his Father like this! From heaven the Father now rouses himself like a lion disturbed, shakes His mane, and roars against the shriveling remnant of a man hanging on a cross.Never has the Son seen the Father look at him so, never felt even the least of his hot breath. But the roar shakes the unseen world and darkens the visible sky. The Son does not recognize these eyes. “Son of Man! Why have you behaved so? You have cheated, lusted, stolen, gossiped – murdered, envied, hated, lied. You have cursed, robbed, over-spent, overeaten – fornicated, disobeyed, embezzled, and blasphemed. Oh the duties you have shirked, the children you have abandoned! Who has ever so ignored the poor, so played the coward, so belittled my name? Have you ever held a razor tongue? What a self-righteous, pitiful drunk – you, who moles young boys, peddle killer drugs, travel in cliques, and mock your parents. Who gave you the boldness to rig elections, foment revolutions, torture animals, and worship demons? Does the list never end! Splitting families, raping virgins, acting smugly, playing the pimp – buying politicians, practicing exhortation, filming pornography, accepting bribes. You have burned down buildings, perfected terrorist tactics, founded false religions, traded in slaves – relishing each morsel and bragging about it all. I hate, loathe these things in you! Disgust for everything about you consumes me! Can you not feel my wrath? Of course the Son is innocent He is blamelessness itself. The Father knows this. But the divine pair have an agreement, and the unthinkable must now take place. Jesus will be treated as if personally responsible for every sin ever committed. The Father watches as his heart’s treasure, the mirror image of himself, sinks drowning into raw, liquid sin. Jehovah’s stored rage against humankind from every century explodes in a single direction. “Father! Father! Why have you forsaken me?!” But heaven stops its ears. The Son stares up at the One who cannot, who will not, reach down or reply. The Trinity had planned it. The Son had endured it. The Spirit enabled Him. The Father rejected the Son whom He loved. Jesus, the God-man from Nazareth, perished. The Father accepted His sacrifice for sin and was satisfied. The Rescue was accomplished.
Joni Eareckson Tada (When God Weeps Kit: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty)
It is deplorable, Agamemnon, that men's words should ever seem to speak more loudly than their deeds. Good deeds alone should make the doer eloquent, and bad deeds dress themselves in rotten arguments, not gloze their foulness with fair colours. There are men who make this practice a fine art. Their cleverness, so-called, cannot last long; they all, without exception, come to a bad end.
Euripides (Medea & Other Plays)
What is it about the ancients,’ Pinker asks at one point, ‘that they couldn’t leave us an interesting corpse without resorting to foul play?’ There is an obvious response to this: doesn’t it rather depend on which corpse you consider interesting in the first place? Yes, a little over 5,000 years ago someone walking through the Alps left the world of the living with an arrow in his side; but there’s no particular reason to treat Ötzi as a poster child for humanity in its original condition, other than, perhaps, Ötzi suiting Pinker’s argument. But if all we’re doing is cherry-picking, we could just as easily have chosen the much earlier burial known to archaeologists as Romito 2 (after the Calabrian rock-shelter where it was found). Let’s take a moment to consider what it would mean if we did this. Romito 2 is the 10,000-year-old burial of a male with a rare genetic disorder (acromesomelic dysplasia): a severe type of dwarfism, which in life would have rendered him both anomalous in his community and unable to participate in the kind of high-altitude hunting that was necessary for their survival. Studies of his pathology show that, despite generally poor levels of health and nutrition, that same community of hunter-gatherers still took pains to support this individual through infancy and into early adulthood, granting him the same share of meat as everyone else, and ultimately according him a careful, sheltered burial.15 Neither is Romito 2 an isolated case. When archaeologists undertake balanced appraisals of hunter-gatherer burials from the Palaeolithic, they find high frequencies of health-related disabilities – but also surprisingly high levels of care until the time of death (and beyond, since some of these funerals were remarkably lavish).16 If we did want to reach a general conclusion about what form human societies originally took, based on statistical frequencies of health indicators from ancient burials, we would have to reach the exact opposite conclusion to Hobbes (and Pinker): in origin, it might be claimed, our species is a nurturing and care-giving species, and there was simply no need for life to be nasty, brutish or short. We’re not suggesting we actually do this. As we’ll see, there is reason to believe that during the Palaeolithic, only rather unusual individuals were buried at all. We just want to point out how easy it would be to play the same game in the other direction – easy, but frankly not too enlightening.
David Graeber (The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity)
You’d think that after two teenage boys admitted a long-kept secret about their sexuality to each other there would be some sort of tentative period, a span of time in which they’d be cautiously honest and play it cool. Nothing could’ve been farther from the truth. Our coming out to each other was like opening a backed-up fire hydrant, releasing an unwieldy torrent of foul language, sex talk, and fashion experimentation.
David Crabb (Bad Kid: A Memoir)
Annie surveyed the boxes of board games stacked on the table. They had everything from Battleship to Cranium to Settlers of Catan, and even a game called Exploding Kittens. If this was a test, she wanted to pass, but she also didn’t want to risk life and limb, knowing how competitive Darcy and Brendon could get. “How about Scruples?” That sounded low risk. Margot grinned. “I like you.” Darcy shook her head. “We should finish with Scruples. I need more wine before I play that game.” Elle laughed. “Charades first?” “Fine.” Darcy dropped her head back against Elle’s thigh. “But we have to pick new teams.” “Normally Brendon and I partner up,” Margot explained. “It’s not safe to put those two”—she nodded at Darcy and Brendon—“on a team together. They’re ruthless.” “I replaced your coffee table, didn’t I?” Darcy arched a brow. “No harm, no foul.” “Brendon fell through the coffee table. It was scarring.” Margot shivered. “I thought we were going to have to drive him to the emergency room.
Alexandria Bellefleur (Hang the Moon (Written in the Stars, #2))
One night, he left Stephen and me in the arcade and rushed off to a – this hurt my feelings – “real” game. That night, he missed a foul shot by two feet and made the mistake of admitting to the other players that his arms were tired from throwing miniature balls at a shortened hoop all afternoon. They laughed and laughed. ‘In the second overtime,’ Joel told me, ‘when the opposing team fouled me with four seconds left and gave me the opportunity to shoot from the line for the game, they looked mighty smug as they took their positions along the key. Oh, Pop-A-Shot guy, I could hear them thinking to their smug selves. He’ll never make a foul shot. He plays baby games. Wa-wa-wa, little Pop-A-Shot baby, would you like a zwieback biscuit? But you know what? I made those shots, and those songs of bitches had to wipe their smug grins off their smug faces and go home thinking that maybe Pop-A-Shot wasn’t such a baby game after all.” I think Pop-A-Shot’s a baby game. That’s why I love it. Unlike the game of basketball itself, Pop-A-Shot has no standard socially redeeming value whatsoever. Pop-A-Shot is not about teamwork or getting along or working together. Pop-A-Shot is not about getting exercise or fresh air. It takes place in fluorescent-lit bowling alleys or darkened bars. It costs money. At the end of a game, one does not swig Gatorade. One sips bourbon or margaritas or munches cupcakes. Unless one is playing the Super Shot version at the ESPN Zone in Times Square, in which case, one orders the greatest appetizer ever invented on this continent – a plate of cheeseburgers.
Sarah Vowell (The Partly Cloudy Patriot)
Wilbury, my dear,” Caroline said, “would you mind taking the children and keeping them occupied for a bit?” "Twould be the high point of my golden years, my lady,” he replied with frigid politeness. “The culmination of a lifelong dream I had nearly abandoned in favour of waiting peacefully for the Grim Reaper to come and relieve me of my earthly duties.” Immune to his sarcasm, Caroline beamed fondly at him. “Thank you, Wilbury. I thought that’s what you would say.” Shuffling toward the hearth, the butler muttered under his breath, “I just love children, you know. I simply dote upon the overindulged little darlings with their grasping little hands and their sticky little fingers that foul up every freshly polished surface in the house”. As he leaned toward the hearth, the twins paused in play to gape at him. Baring his pointed yellowing teeth in a grimace of a smile, he rasped, “Come now, lads. I’ll take you to the kitchen for some nice hot chocolate.” Eyes widening in terror, the two boys leapt to their feet and ran shrieking from the room. Wilbury straightened as much as his hunched back would allow, rolling his eyes. “Wilbuwy!” Eloisa crowed, scrambling from her mother’s lap and toddling across the room. Wrapping her arms around one of the butler’s scrawny legs, she looked up and batted her long eyelashes at him. “Me want cocoa!” With a long-suffering sigh, he scooped the plump child into his arms, every one of his ancient bones creaking in protest. She joyfully tugged at his misshapen ears as he carried her toward the door. His curdled expression never varied, but as he passed Portia he gave her a nearly imperceptible wink.
Teresa Medeiros (The Vampire Who Loved Me (Cabot, #2))
Tonight: I remind myself that it will require iron discipline to cope with these forces, and whatever else comes my way. Back pain, bad shots, foul weather, self-loathing. It’s a form of worry, this reminder, but also a meditation. One thing I’ve learned in twenty-nine years of playing tennis: Life will throw everything but the kitchen sink in your path, and then it will throw the kitchen sink. It’s your job to avoid the obstacles. If you let them stop you or distract you, you’re not doing your job, and failing to do your job will cause regrets that paralyze you more than a bad back.
Andre Agassi (Open)
Teaching leaders at all levels to live with friction. Friction is the inherent condition of war. It is caused by the enemy, by terrain and weather, and by the foul-ups that occur in your own force. The only way to learn how to deal with it is to train with it. Again, this means conducting aggressed, free-play exercises. And it means taking the whole unit to the field. CPXs have great value, but whenever troops are not involved, the level of friction is unrealistically low. Units must get plenty of time in the field as units if they are to learn how to accomplish their missions despite friction.
William S. Lind (Maneuver Warfare Handbook)
I had tracked down a little cafe in the next village, with a television set that was going to show the World Cup Final on the Saturday. I arrived there mid-morning when it was still deserted, had a couple of beers, ordered a sensational conejo au Franco, and then sat, drinking coffee, and watching the room fill up. With Germans. I was expecting plenty of locals and a sprinkling of tourists, even in an obscure little outpost like this, but not half the population of Dortmund. In fact, I came to the slow realisation as they poured in and sat around me . . . that I was the only Englishman there. They were very friendly, but there were many of them, and all my exits were cut off. What strategy could I employ? It was too late to pretend that I was German. I’d greeted the early arrivals with ‘Guten Tag! Ich liebe Deutschland’, but within a few seconds found myself conversing in English, in which they were all fluent. Perhaps, I hoped, they would think that I was an English-speaker but not actually English. A Rhodesian, possibly, or a Canadian, there just out of curiosity, to try to pick up the rules of this so-called ‘Beautiful Game’. But I knew that I lacked the self-control to fake an attitude of benevolent detachment while watching what was arguably the most important event since the Crucifixion, so I plumped for the role of the ultra-sporting, frightfully decent Upper-Class Twit, and consequently found myself shouting ‘Oh, well played, Germany!’ when Helmut Haller opened the scoring in the twelfth minute, and managing to restrain myself, when Geoff Hurst equalised, to ‘Good show! Bit lucky though!’ My fixed grin and easy manner did not betray the writhing contortions of my hands and legs beneath the table, however, and when Martin Peters put us ahead twelve minutes from the end, I clapped a little too violently; I tried to compensate with ‘Come on Germany! Give us a game!’ but that seemed to strike the wrong note. The most testing moment, though, came in the last minute of normal time when Uwe Seeler fouled Jackie Charlton, and the pig-dog dolt of a Swiss referee, finally revealing his Nazi credentials, had the gall to penalise England, and then ignored Schnellinger’s blatant handball, allowing a Prussian swine named Weber to draw the game. I sat there applauding warmly, as a horde of fat, arrogant, sausage-eating Krauts capered around me, spilling beer and celebrating their racial superiority.
John Cleese (So, Anyway...: The Autobiography)
For too often with these very powerful individuals, their true gift is a curse: they are simply not bounded by decency, and their ruthlessness that so many praise is to the detriment of them and—most important—of those around them. They are foul beyond the expectations of those they dupe. Coercing a populace to get behind you by lying to them isn’t brilliant. Great orators playing an audience based on their predisposed beliefs—or, worse, fears—by making promises they know they cannot keep isn’t a sign of brilliance or intelligence. Nay, it’s merely a clear indication of a lack of ethics and character.
R.A. Salvatore (Lolth's Warrior (The Way of the Drow, #3; The Legend of Drizzt, #39))
Speaking of Vaughan, his claim in the Daily Telegraph last week that the story of a senior county pro being offered money to fix domestic matches was 'the tip of the iceberg' did not go down well with one former England captain contacted by the Top Spin. 'I played the game for almost 20 years,' he seethed, 'and I don't know a single player who has been offered money, either for information or to fix a game. To say it's the tip of the iceberg is absolute rubbish.' The fact that the player in question had just registered a mediocre Stableford score of 20 playing off a handicap of 14 had nothing to do, I was assured, with his foul mood.
Lawrence Booth
also by the same author ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD THE REAL INSPECTOR HOUND ENTER A FREE MAN AFTER MAGRITTE JUMPERS TRAVESTIES DIRTY LINEN AND NEW-FOUND-LAND NIGHT AND DAY DOGG’S HAMLET, CAHOOT’S MACBETH ROUGH CROSSING and ON THE RAZZLE (adapted from Ferenc Molnár’s Play at the Castle and Johann Nestroy’s Einen Jux will er sich machen) THE REAL THING THE DOG IT WAS THAT DIED AND OTHER PLAYS SQUARING THE CIRCLE with EVERY GOOD BOY DESERVES FAVOUR and PROFESSIONAL FOUL HAPGOOD DALLIANCE AND UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (a version of Arthur Schintzler’s Das weite Land) ARCADIA INDIAN INK (an adaptation of In the Native State) THE INVENTION OF LOVE
Tom Stoppard (The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays (Tom Stoppard))
There was enough intimidation, witness tampering and foul play to go around. Many books have been published about this subject, witnesses have died, some violently, under very suspicious conditions. Over the years, evidence has been tampered with, and fearing for their lives, most other people have decided to clam up and withdraw into the shadows. Personally I still retain a list of convenient deaths after the Kennedy Assassination that happened rounding the Dealey Plaza in Dallas on November 22, 1963! In February 1996, Robert Kennedy, Jr. and his brother, Michael, flew to Havana for a meeting with Fidel Castro. As a gesture of goodwill, they brought with them a file of formerly top-secret U.S. documents. These documents were specifically about the Kennedy administration’s attempt to find a peaceful settlement with Cuba. Castro thanked them for the file and shared the impression that it was President Kennedy’s desire to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba. “It’s unfortunate,” Castro said, “that things happened as they did.” Castro also indicated that normalization might have been possible, had it not been for President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. Although numerous attempts at normalization between the two countries have been attempted since this meeting, powerful anti-Castro factions continued to thwart all of these efforts. Perhaps we are now witnessing the time when ways will be found to improve the relations between the United States and Cuba and then again perhaps not!
Hank Bracker
And what could Billy know of man except of man as a mere sailor? And the old-fashioned sailor, the veritable man before the mast, the sailor from boyhood up, he, though indeed of the same species as a landsman, is in some respects singularly distinct from him. The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head—no intricate games of chess where few moves are made in straight-forwardness and ends are attained by indirection, an oblique, tedious, barren game hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing it. Yes, as a class, sailors are in character a juvenile race. Even their deviations are marked by juvenility, this more especially holding true with the sailors of Billy’s time. Then too, certain things which apply to all sailors do more pointedly operate here and there upon the junior one. Every sailor, too, is accustomed to obey orders without debating them; his life afloat is externally ruled for him; he is not brought into that promiscuous commerce with mankind where unobstructed free agency on equal terms—equal superficially, at least—soon teaches one that unless upon occasion he exercise a distrust keen in proportion to the fairness of the appearance, some foul turn may be served him. A ruled undemonstrative distrustfulness is so habitual, not with businessmen so much as with men who know their kind in less shallow relations than business, namely, certain men of the world, that they come at last to employ it all but unconsciously; and some of them would very likely feel real surprise at being charged with it as one of their general characteristics. 17
Herman Melville (Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories)
Faith and troth now, master," quoth Sancho, "you did ill to talk of death, Heaven bless us, it is no child's play; you have e'en spoiled my dinner; the very thought of raw bones and lanthorn jaws make me sick. Death eats up all things, both the young lamb and old sheep; and I have heard our parson say, death values a prince no more than a clown; all is fish that comes to his net; he throws at all, and sweeps stakes; he is no mower that takes a nap at noon-day, but drives on, fair weather or foul, and cuts down the green grass as well as the ripe corn: he is neither squeamish nor queasy-stomached, for he swallows without chewing, and crams down all things into his ungracious maw; and though you can see no belly he has, he has a confounded dropsy, and thirsts after men's lives, which he guzzles down like mother's milk.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Don Quixote)
Martin looked at Alejandra with a pained expression. How he detested that face of hers, her boutique-face, the one that she seemed to put on deliberately in order to play her role in that frivolous world; a face that seemed to linger on once she found herself alone with him, its abominable features fading away only very slowly, as there gradually emerged one or another of the faces that belonged to him alone, a face he waited for as one awaits a beloved traveler amid a repulsive crowd. But as Bruno said, the word person means "mask", and each of us has many masks; that of father, professor, lover....But which is the real one? And is there in fact one that is the real one? At certain moments Martin thought that the Alejandra that he was now seeing there before him, laughing at Bobby's jokes, was not, could not be the same Alejandra that he knew, and above all could not be the more profound, the marvelous and fearsome Alejandra that he loved. But at other times (and as the weeks went by the more he began to be convinced of it), he was inclined to think, as Bruno did, that all these Alejandras were real and that that boutique-face was genuine too and in some way or other expressed a sort of reality inherent in Alejandra's soul: a reality--and heaven only knew how many others there were!---that was foreign to him, that did not belong to him and never would. And then, when she came to him still bearing the faint traces of those other personalities, as though she had not had the time (or the desire?) to transform herself, Martin discovered--in a certain sarcastic grin on her lips, in a certain way of moving her hands, in a certain glint in her eyes--the lingering signs of a strange existence: like someone who has been around a garbage dump and still retains something of its foul stench in our presence.
Ernesto Sabato
EVOLUTION DID NOT ENDOW HUMANS with the ability to play pick-up basketball. True, it produced legs for running, hands for dribbling, and shoulders for fouling, but all that this enables us to do is shoot hoops by ourselves. To get into a game with the strangers we find in the schoolyard on any given afternoon, we not only have to work in concert with four teammates we may never have met before—we also need to know that the five players on the opposing team are playing by the same rules. Other animals that engage strangers in ritualized aggression do so largely by instinct—puppies throughout the world have the rules for rough-and-tumble play hard-wired into their genes. But American teenagers have no genes for pick-up basketball. They can nevertheless play the game with complete strangers because they have all learned an identical set of ideas about basketball. These ideas are entirely imaginary, but if everyone
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
For, by the disaster of his charity, God plays out at last the Game that began with the dawn of history. In the Garden of Eden - in the paradise of pleasure - where God laid out his court and first served the hint of meaning to humankind - Adam strove with God over the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But God does not accept thrown-down racquets. He refuses, at any cost, to take seriously, our declination of the game; if Adam will not have God's rules, God will play by Adam's. In another and darker garden he accepts the tree of our choosing, and with nails through his hands and feet he volleys back meaning for unmeaning. As the darkness descends, at the last foul drive of a desperate day, he turns to the thief on the right and brings off the dazzling backhand return that fetches history home in triumph: Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise. God has Gardens to give away! He has cities to spare! He has history he hasn't even used! The last of all the mercies is that God is lighter than we are, that in the heart of the Passion lies the divine mirth, and that even in the cities of our exile he still calls to Adam only to catch the Glory, to offer the world, and return the service that shapes the City of God.
Robert Farrar Capon (The Romance of the Word: One Man's Love Affair With Theology)
Thou Melko shalt see that no theme can be played save it come in the end of Ilúvatar’s self, nor can any alter the music in Ilúvatar’s despite. He that attempts this finds himself in the end but aiding me in devising a thing of still greater grandeur and more complex wonder:–for lo! through Melko have terror as fire, and sorrow like dark waters, wrath like thunder, and evil as far from the light as the depths of the uttermost of the dark places, come into the design that I laid before you. Through him has pain and misery been made in the clash of overwhelming musics; and with confusion of sound have cruelty, and ravening, and darkness, loathly mire and all putrescence of thought or thing, foul mists and violent flame, cold without mercy, been born, and death without hope. Yet is this through him and not by him; and he shall see, and ye all likewise, and even shall those beings, who must now dwell among his evil and endure through Melko misery and sorrow, terror and wickedness, declare in the end that it redoundeth only to my great glory, and doth but make the theme more worth the hearing, Life more worth the living, and the World so much the more wonderful and marvellous, that of all the deeds of Ilúvatar it shall be called his mightiest and his loveliest.
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Book of Lost Tales 1 (The History of Middle-Earth, #1))
n 1985, Bob Munro volunteered his time to go and serve in the poorest slums of Africa on behalf of the United Nations. He loved football. One day, he was passing through the Mathare slums in Nairobi, Kenya, which happens to be one of the poorest areas in the world, and where more than a quarter million people live in abject poverty and filth. He saw some children playing football, bare feet, in total grime— they weren’t actually playing football, but kicking each other. As he saw one of the children kick the other, he immediately shouted, ‘Foul’, and the game stopped. He got out of his car and being the white man, obviously stood out. As an ardent lover of football, he said, ‘This is not the way to play football.’ He took the ball and told the boys, ‘Tomorrow I will bring another ball and teach you how to play football.’ The next day, 600 children were there to play football. He made a rule that only those children who clean up the place be allowed to play. He started a volunteers’ group for self-help and said, ‘Those who want to play football as part of my team must clean up.’ The children got involved and started cleaning the slums, and out of love for football, slowly the entire area was cleaned. As time went by, he developed teams to play. He developed referees from within. Guess what was the result in four years? The Kenyan football eleven national team emerged from the same Mathare slums. Bob Munro has created thousands of football teams from there, but the rules are very unique. The rules are very clear that every player in those football teams must contribute 60 hours to social work and community service per month. Only then can they play football. They get additional points not for winning a game, but for completing a community service project such as cleaning, counselling and helping others. He has created 8,000 volunteers out of this system of community service through the love of football.
Shiv Khera (You Can Achieve More: Live By Design, Not By Default)
So, what did you want to watch?’ ‘Thought we might play a game instead,’ he said, holding up a familiar dark green box. ‘Found this on the bottom shelf of your DVD cupboard … if you tilt the glass, the champagne won’t froth like that.’ Neve finished pouring champagne into the 50p champagne flutes she’d got from the discount store and waited until Max had drunk a good half of his in two swift swallows. ‘The thing is, you might find it hard to believe but I can be very competitive and I have an astonishing vocabulary from years spent having no life and reading a lot – and well, if you play Scrabble with me, I’ll totally kick your arse.’ Max was about to eat his first bite of molten mug cake but he paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth. ‘You’re gonna kick my arse?’ ‘Until it’s black and blue and you won’t be able to sit down for a week.’ That sounded very arrogant. ‘Really, Max, Mum stopped me from playing when I was thirteen after I got a score of four hundred and twenty-seven, and when I was at Oxford, I used to play with two Linguistics post-grads and an English don.’ ‘Well, my little pancake girlfriend, I played Scrabble against Carol Vorderman for a Guardian feature and I kicked her arse because Scrabble has got nothing to do with vocabulary; it’s logic and tactics,’ Max informed her loftily, taking a huge bite of the cake. For a second, Neve hoped that it was as foul-tasting as she suspected just to get Max back for that snide little speech, but he just licked the back of the spoon thoughtfully. ‘This is surprisingly more-ish, do you want some?’ ‘I think I’ll pass.’ ‘Well, you’re not getting out of Scrabble that easily.’ Max leaned back against the cushions, the mug cradled to his chest, and propped his feet up on the table so he could poke the Scrabble box nearer to Neve. ‘Come on, set ’em up. Unless you’re too scared.’ ‘Max, I have all the two-letter words memorised, and as for Carol Vorderman – well, she might be good at maths but there was a reason why she wasn’t in Dictionary Corner on Countdown so I’m not surprised you beat her at Scrabble.’ ‘Fighting talk.’ Max rapped his knuckles gently against Neve’s head, which made her furious. ‘I’ll remind you of that little speech once I’m done making you eat every single one of those high-scoring words you seem to think you’re so good at.’ ‘Right, that does it.’ Neve snatched up the box and practically tore off the lid, so she could bang the board down on the coffee table. ‘You can’t be that good at Scrabble if you keep your letters in a crumpled paper bag,’ Max noted, actually daring to nudge her arm with his foot. Neve knew he was only doing it to get a rise out of her, but God, it was working. ‘Game on, Pancake Boy,’ she snarled, throwing a letter rack at Max, which just made him laugh. ‘And don’t think I’m going to let you win just because it’s your birthday.’ It was the most fun Neve had ever had playing Scrabble. It might even have been the most fun she had ever had. For every obscure word she tried to play in the highest scoring place, Max would put down three tiles to make three different words and block off huge sections of the board. Every time she tried to flounce or throw a strop because ‘you’re going against the whole spirit of the game’, Max would pop another Quality Street into her mouth because, as he said, ‘It is Treat Sunday and you only had one roast potato.’ When there were no more Quality Street left and they’d drunk all the champagne, he stopped each one of her snits with a slow, devastating kiss so there were long pauses between each round. It was a point of honour to Neve that she won in the most satisfying way possible; finally getting to use her ‘q’ on a triple word score by turning Max’s ‘hogs’ into ‘quahogs’ and waving the Oxford English Dictionary in his face when he dared to challenge her.
Sarra Manning (You Don't Have to Say You Love Me)
From the decks of the warships the foreign sailors watched the massacre through binoculars and took pictures. The navy bands played late and phonographs were set up on the ships and aimed at the quay. Caruso sang from Pagliacci all night across a harbor filled with bloated corpses. An admiral going to dine on another ship was late because a woman’s body fouled his propeller.
Edward Whittemore (Sinai Tapestry (The Jerusalem Quartet, #1))
Just as divine-right monarchies required forbearance, so do democracies. Think of democracy as a game that we want to keep playing indefinitely. To ensure future rounds of the game, players must refrain from either incapacitating the other team or antagonizing them to such a degree, that they refuse to play again tomorrow. If one's rivals quit, there can be no future games. This means that although individuals play to win, they must do so with a degree of restraint. In a pickup basketball game, we play aggressively, but we know not to foul excessively - and to call a foul only when it is egregious. After all, you show up at the park to play a basketball game, not to fight. In politics, this often means eschewing dirty tricks or hardball tactics in the name of civility and fair play.
Steven Levitsky (How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future)
If the player who has the ball in the air does not lower the ball to the ground before the opponent is within marking distance, or does not attempt to go around the opponent, the foul is on the air dribbler for dangerous play. Officials should not be waiting to see if the air dribbler “runs into a defender.” When the opponent has established a proper defensive position and the air dribbler has approached within marking distance, the air dribbler has an obligation to either go around the opponent or put the ball to the ground. There is no requirement that a defensive player who has established position on the field play a ball in the air within “marking distance.
N.F.H.S. (2018 NFHS Field Hockey Rules Book)
bonfire, the field was dark, little tendrils of fog drifting through the crowd. I could only dimly make out the shadow of the pavilion behind the fire, and the girls crowding in front of it looked like scribbles on a page. I could not even see the trees on the far edge of the pitch that led into Oakeshott Woods, although I knew they were there. I breathed out and my breath misted in front of me.
Robin Stevens (Jolly Foul Play (Murder Most Unladylike, #4))
We’re also men of the vine. ‘In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.
Jean-Pierre Alaux (Foul Play in Vouvray (The Winemaker Detective Series Book 14))
Orchid hunting is a mortal occupation. That has always been part of its charm. Laroche loved orchids, but I came to believe he loved the difficulty and fatality of getting them almost as much as the flowers themselves. The worse a time he had in the swamp the more enthusiastic he would be about the plants he'd come out with. Laroche's perverse pleasure in misery was traditional among orchid hunters. An article published in a 1906 magazine explained: "Most of the romance in connection with the cult of the orchid is in the collecting of specimens from the localities in which they grow, perhaps in a fever swamp or possibly in a country full of hostile natives ready and eager to kill and very likely eat the enterprising collector." In 1901 eight orchid hunters went on an expedition to the Philippines. Within a month one of them had been eaten by a tiger; another had been drenched with oil and burned alive; five had vanished into thin air; and one had managed to stay alive and walk out of the woods carrying forty-seven thousand Phalaenopsis plants. A young man commissioned in 1889 to find cattleyas for the English collector Sir Trevor Lawrence walked of fourteen days through jungle mud and never was seen again. Dozens of hunters were killed by fever or accidents or malaria or foul play. Others became trophies for headhunters or prey for horrible creatures such as flying yellow lizards and diamondback snakes and jaguars and ticks and stinging marabuntas. Some orchid hunters were killed by other orchid hunters. All of them traveled ready for violence. Albert Millican, who went on an expedition in the northern Andes in 1891, wrote in his diary that the most important supplies he was carrying were his knives, cutlasses, revolvers, daggers, rifles, pistols, and a year's worth of tobacco. Being an orchid hunter has always meant pursuing beautiful things in terrible places. From the mid-1800s to the early 1900s, when orchid hunting was at its prime, terrible places were really terrible places, and any man advertising himself as a hunter needed to be hardy, sharp, and willing to die far from home.
Susan Orlean (The Orchid Thief)
Chivonne, his innocent, sweet wife had absolutely no idea regarding the difficult dilemma's he now faced and was implicated in and as the tentacles of complexity and foul play wrapped themselves around his neck they attempted to strangle him.
Jill Thrussell (Mindplant: Trimorphia (Glitches #3))
It’s a simple and generous rule of life that whatever you practice, you will improve at. For instance: If I had spent my twenties playing basketball every single day, or making pastry dough every single day, or studying auto mechanics every single day, I’d probably be pretty good at foul shots and croissants and transmissions by now.
Elizabeth Gilbert (Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
Pfaffenwinkel—the priests’ corner—and merry noise and laughter could be heard from the town. Drums rumbled, cymbals clanged, and somewhere a fiddle was playing. The aroma of deep-fried doughnuts and roasted meat drifted down to the foul-smelling tanners’ quarter. Yes, it was going to be a lovely execution
Oliver Pötzsch (The Hangman's Daughter (The Hangman's Daughter, #1))
His department has so many wild notions about conspiracies, about the secret plans and machinations of the country’s enemies, but he never manages to convincingly explain how the sort of nincompoops who run the governments of the world could manage to concoct such elaborate schemes while still being incapable of feeding and housing their own populations.
T.E. Kinsey (An Act of Foul Play (Lady Hardcastle, #9))
Appearances can be deceptive, dear. I grudgingly allow that my darling brother is a very capable chap – we’ve trusted our lives to his abilities more than once – but don’t let his bluff confidence fool you into thinking he knows it all. He was taught Bluff Confidence at school along with Latin and Greek, and the principal purpose of all three is to make him and his kind appear much cleverer than they really are.
T.E. Kinsey (An Act of Foul Play (Lady Hardcastle, #9))
We are all starting life in commonplace. Their arrangement literally is divine, faithful, upright, and bravest with being revolutionized in this freshness nature of essence. When the manifesto of all spirits crystallizes and istils inside the truth, sincere, and veracious, their contemplation donates provision of fundamental view and rights; they search for excellence and practical nature, not dishonesty and detriment. At that point, their outside energy does not fade with faults. This vividness could not intimidate and abeyance someone because the devil will not stay in their hearts. In this planetary system, everyone competes and seeks prolific forces in the debacle of apathy; it is absolutely imposed on everyone. If you follow honest, and serious ideals, at any cost, you will be received by your almighty; then there will be no requirement for brutality to be instilled, and questions of abet are not returned to one's physicality. Dignified, veridical, and conscientious power and its answers are never the cause of the debacle, aberrant, and rampant, rather, they close and burn play foul, inauspiciousness, mischief, impairment, evil, disaster riots, and all the ill of mind.
Viraaj Sisodiya
I know why you are here.” She knew! “We receive extensive financial statements, and I know you did not pay your own way, so let us put that drama out of the way, shall we?” “Is it a drama?” Jane said with a laugh, relieved the woman was just referring to Carolyn’s bequest. “Hm?” Mrs. Wattlesbrook would not budge from her intended course of conversation. Jane sighed. “Yes, my great-aunt left me this vacation in her will, but I don’t know what you mean by drama. I never intended to hide--” “No need to make a fuss.” She waved her arms as if wafting Jane’s exclamations out the window like a foul odor. “You are here, you are paid in full. I would not have you worry that we will not take care of you just because you are not our usual type of guest and there is no chance, given your economic conditions, that you would ever be a repeat client or likely to associate with and recommend us to potential clients. Let me assure you that we will still do all in our power to make your visit, such as it is, enjoyable.” Mrs. Wattlesbrook smiled, showing both rows of yellowing teeth. Jane blinked. Economic conditions? Usual type of guest? She made herself take two deep-rooted yoga breaths, smiled back, and thought of men in breeches. “Okay then.” “Good, good.” Mrs. Wattlesbrook patted Jane’s arm, suddenly the picture of hospitality and maternal tenderness. “Now, do have some tea. You must be quite chilled from your journey.” In fact, the temperature of the limo, unlike this pseudo-inn, had been quite comfortable, and in the blazing heat the last thing Jane wanted was hot tea, but she reminded herself to play along, so she sweated and drank.
Shannon Hale (Austenland (Austenland, #1))
Max was fascinated by the woman and more than a little curious about what she might be up to. Sarah Johnson had come from a two-parent, affluent home with a squeaky-clean past. She'd been the golden girl, high school cheerleader, valedictorian and had apparently glided through college without making a ripple, coming out with a bachelor of arts degree in literature. She'd married well, had six children and then one winter night, for some unknown reason, she'd driven her car into the Yellowstone River. Her body was never found. Because there were no skid marks on the highway, it had looked like a suicide. Foul play had never been suspected. That was twenty-two years ago. Now she was back - with no memory of those years or why she'd apparently tried to take her own life. Max wanted this story more than he wanted a hot cup of coffee this morning.
B.J. Daniels (Lucky Shot (The Montana Hamiltons, #3))
Every time she allowed her gaze to wander to the group at the piano, she found Lord Wentworth’s eyes on her. In the end it was easier to study the patterns in the ornate rug on which her chair sat. She was glad when the evening ended.
Susan Leona Fisher (Fair Play and Foul: A Society Romance Set in 1890)
The resulting Fitzgerald Report’s conclusions, which were officially published in the Congressional Record on August 3, 1953,12 shook the very foundations of the medical establishment’s encroachments. Its purpose was to assess the state of cancer medicine during this critical time in American history, and more specifically to uncover any foul play in the free flow of medical knowledge and therapeutics: foul play that Fitzgerald both affirmed as true and disclosed with remarkable boldness. In his report to Senator William Langer of North Dakota, Fitzgerald offered a damning indictment of the ruling medical class, which he pegged as engaging in an active conspiracy to suppress natural treatments and cures. He looked at a number of controversial cancer treatments, including the Hoxsey Tonic, and determined that the AMA in its witch hunt had been “hasty, capricious, arbitrary, and outright dishonest” in declaring these treatments ineffective. Fitzgerald
Ty M. Bollinger (The Truth about Cancer: What You Need to Know about Cancer's History, Treatment, and Prevention)
It was the foul play of the tenderness of the heart.
Anusha Devi Harish (A Bizarre Captive's Diary)
The way you’ll “watch” the game is through a score sheet that follows the passes, the dribbles, the shots, the rebounds, the steals, the fouls—most everything that happens with the ball. By following these most basic elements of offense, the score sheet will highlight the important aspects of the ebb and flow of the game. It will be like a broadcaster’s play-by-play transcript of the game. The
Dean Oliver (Basketball on Paper: Rules and Tools for Performance Analysis)
We’re from far West Texas.” I let that linger for a moment before turning and shooting him a grin. “Otherwise known as California.” “Smart-ass.” He smiled wide and I forced my eyes back on the road. Oh Lord, that smile was perfect. “Let me guess. College?” “Yep.” “Isn’t it summer? Wouldn’t you want to go home during vacation?” “Uh, yeah. It is . . . but Candice has a cheer camp for elementary-school girls she’s working at this summer. And where Candice goes, I go.” He huffed softly and looked back at Candice and Mason. “Cheerleader. Yeah, I’d already kinda pegged her as one; she looks like it.” At barely over five feet, with bleached blond hair, bright green eyes, and an ever-present smile and bounce in her step, yeah, she definitely looked like it. “So you’re a cheerleader too?” “Ha! Um, no. Definitely not.” Candice usually had to drag me to games and was always getting on me about my lack of enthusiasm for sports. Not my fault they reminded me of my dad. I would always sit on the couch with him while he watched whatever games were playing. He’d taught me everything there was to know about each sport, and watching them now, I could still hear him calling out fouls, flags, and strikes before the refs or umps did it themselves. “So . . .” Kash drew out the word and turned his body so his back was against the door and he was facing me. “So, what?” “You’re not a cheerleader; what are you?” For such an innocent question, it hit me deep. I felt like I was walking around lost half the time, and the other half I was just following Candice to be near someone I considered family so I wouldn’t break down. I’d only majored in athletic training because it was close to Candice’s major. I didn’t want to do anything with it when I graduated—to be honest, I had no idea what I wanted to do when I graduated. I didn’t know who I was, let alone who, and what, I wanted to be. “I’m just Rachel,” I finally answered, and flickered a glance toward Kash to see his brow furrow as he studied me. We
Molly McAdams (Forgiving Lies (Forgiving Lies, #1))
Prince. I know you all, and will awhile uphold The unyok'd humour of your idleness. Yet herein will I imitate the sun, Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world, That, when he please again to lie himself, Being wanted, he may be more wond'red at By breaking through the foul and ugly mists Of vapours that did seem to strangle him. If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work; But when they seldom come, they wish'd-for come, And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents. So, when this loose behaviour I throw off And pay the debt I never promised, By how much better than my word I am, By so much shall I falsify men's hopes; And, like bright metal on a sullen ground, My reformation, glitt'ring o'er my fault, Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes Than that which hath no foil to set it off. I'll so offend to make offence a skill, Redeeming time when men think least I will
Anonymous
they don’t talk at all only fight, the mother’s will was unclear, Edward got a field up the Commons that William wanted to build on for the remarkable view and there followed dispute and foul play, a stream de-routed, a stream that animals drank from, Edward concluded it was his brother’s dirty work
Edna O'Brien (The Light of Evening)
In the locker room had been posted a phrase uttered by Theodore Roosevelt, saying, “Don’t flinch, don’t foul, but hit the line hard.” Though intended for football, it was a motto that Nixon adopted as his own. He was far from the best player on the field, but he showed up to play every day and always gave it his full effort.
Calvin Murphy (The Rise and Fall of Nixon: A Scandalous Legacy on the American Presidency)
Keri answered the door, looking frazzled and not having the best hair day he’d ever seen. “Hi, Sean. I was just thinking, gee, I need more Kowalskis in my life right now.” He laughed and stepped into the big foyer. “Baby acting up?” “I thought the Kowalski men were royal pains in the ass—no offense—but you guys have nothing on the girls.” “Joe writing?” She blew out a sharp breath and put her hands on her hips. “No. Joe is pretending to write so I won’t dump Brianna in his lap, but he’s probably playing some stupid game.” From the other room came a pissed-off howl that Sean hoped was their daughter and not a wild animal foraging for table scraps. “So he’s in his office?” Keri nodded and waved a hand in that direction before making a growling sound and heading off to appease her daughter. Welcome to the jungle, he mused before heading to Joe’s office. He rapped twice on the door, then let himself in. Joe looked up with a guilty start and Sean knew his wife had him all figured out. “She knows you’re only pretending to write so you don’t have to deal with the kid.” “You know what really sucks? Everybody keeps saying to just wait till she’s older. Like it gets worse. How can it get worse?” Sean lifted his hands in a “don’t ask me” gesture. “For years I’ve been writing about boogeymen and the evil that lurks in the hearts of men. I had no idea there’s nothing scarier than a baby girl.” Sean laughed. “She can’t be that bad. What does she weigh? Ten pounds?” “Fifteen. But it’s fifteen pounds of foul temper and fouler smells. Trust me.” “I’ll take your word for it.” Joe leaned back in his leather office chair and sighed. “Let’s talk about your life. She still on the couch?” “Yes, she is.” “Good. I said you’d last three weeks.” Maybe, but Sean wouldn’t bet on it. Or he shouldn’t have bet on it, anyway. Especially a whole month. His balls ached just thinking about it. “You guys come up with a plan for the kids for Saturday yet?” “Yeah, but it’s going to cost you.” “Not a problem. I’ll just take it out of all the money I’m going to collect from you idiots at the end of the month.” Joe grinned. “You keep telling yourself that, buddy.” He was. With as much oomph as he could muster. And he’d probably keep telling himself that up to the minute he got Emma naked.
Shannon Stacey (Yours to Keep (Kowalski Family, #3))
...Lonely people often have great ideas but no support. People with support too often have bad ideas but power. And you don't give up power. No one does, regardless of whether they have good ideas or not. No one gives up power without a long, bloody fight - one that usually involves foul play. Lonely people typically can't stomach treachery, and that's another problem. They tend to tell the truth and fight fair. So we need art and music and poetry for the lonely people to rally around.
Matthew Quick (Every Exquisite Thing)
What is the matter with people?” Sam fumed. “I said we needed a hundred kids and we get thirteen? Fifteen, maybe?” “They’re just kids,” Astrid said. “We’re all just kids. We’re all going to be very hungry kids.” “They’re used to being told what to do by their parents or teachers. You need to be more direct. As in, Hey, kid, get to work. Now.” She thought for a moment then added, “Or else.” “Or else what?” Sam asked. “Or else…I don’t know. We’re not going to let anyone starve. If we can help it. I don’t know the ‘or else.’ All I know is you can’t expect kids to just automatically behave the right way. I mean, when I was little my mom would give me a gold star when I was good and take away a privilege when I wasn’t.” “What am I supposed to do? Tell three hundred kids spread out in seventy or eighty different homes that they can’t watch DVDs? Confiscate iPods?” “It’s not easy playing daddy to three hundred kids,” Astrid admitted. “I’m not anyone’s daddy,” Sam practically snarled. Another sleepless night, in a long string of them, had left him in a foul mood. “I’m supposed to be the mayor, not the father.” “These kids don’t know the difference,” Astrid pointed out. “They need parents. So they look to you. And Mother Mary. Me, even, to some extent.
Michael Grant (Hunger (Gone, #2))
Welcome joy and welcome sorrow Come today and come tomorrow. I do love both of you together. I love to mark sad faces in fair weather. And hear a merry laugh amid the thunder. Fair and foul i love together. Meadows sweet where flames burn under. Infant playing with a skull. Serpents in red roses hissing. Cleopatra regal- dressed.
sagala ibrahim
The victims in all this are regular people: the workers who lose their factory jobs in Juárez and Windsor; the workers who get the factory jobs in Shenzhen and Dhaka, jobs that are by this point so degraded that some employers install nets along the perimeters of roofs to catch employees when they jump, or where safety codes are so lax that workers are killed in the hundreds when buildings collapse. The victims are also the toddlers mouthing lead-laden toys; the Walmart employee expected to work over the Thanksgiving holiday only to be trampled by a stampede of frenzied customers, while still not earning a living wage. And the Chinese villagers whose water is contaminated by one of those coal plants we use as our excuse for inaction, as well as the middle class of Beijing and Shanghai whose kids are forced to play inside because the air is so foul.
Naomi Klein (This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate)
Corruption. Everywhere else we call in the IMF; in Italy they call it family values. And northern Europeans, whose countries don’t allow politicians to accept a doughnut, happily pay endless bribes to get electricity put into their holiday homes in Tuscany. And what’s more, they feel happy and privileged to be allowed to join in the rustic corruption of Italian politics and pay the mayor. Italy is a trough of special interests, fixing, foul play, pay-offs and excommunications. Italians wave their hands in mock exasperation, and the rest of the world smiles benignly, and goes, aww, those Italian scallywags. If Italy happened to be in the Middle East, there’d be a Yankee aircraft carrier in the Venice lagoon and sanctions. But Italians get away with it simply by being Italians, and we all know what they’re like – and they know we know. Every other nation in the world tries to make life be as it should be; the Italians make the most of how it is. We all say corruption is a bad thing; we must stop it. The Italians say we are all fallible; to pretend otherwise is arrogance. Everywhere else has crime, but in Italy, it’s organised by professionals. All men are lecherous bastards who only want one thing; surely, say the Italians, it’s better to be seduced by Casanova than Attila the Drunk. Instead of pitting virtue against vice in an eternal war of abstinence, failure and guilt like the rest of us, Italy has made the vices virtues, and vice versa. If you come from a prescriptive, prudent, parsimonious society, this seems hypnotically attractive, and I am as mesmerised and seduced as any gap-year convent girl. Most years I try to find myself in Siena for the Palio. The Palio is a horserace held twice a year. But
A.A. Gill (Here & There: Collected travel writing)
He continues in a softer tone. “And her zia will explain to her how this is all for the best, and how family comes first, and how, if her new husband proves to be anything like her zia’s late husband Enzo, he’ll find himself the victim of an untimely death, too.” He pauses. “A meticulously planned death with no witnesses or evidence of foul play. An ‘accidental’ death so well executed, it even fooled the police.” Without missing a beat, I say, “I didn’t kill my husband.” He smiles. “I’ve never met anyone who can lie as well as you do.” “It’s a gift.
J.T. Geissinger (Brutal Vows (Queens & Monsters #4))
I've got a pint of black coffee with two sugars in the BA lounge, and I look like I've been exhumed by detectives who want to run toxicology tests to prove foul play. In a hailstorm. I wouldn't change a thing. Be mine forever? x
Mhairi McFarlane (You Belong with Me)
It was quite possible I was to be handed off to Astrum Force Command to torture, and the “I’m getting space- married, byeeee” note I’d left for Zion meant no one would suspect foul play.
C. Rochelle (Earth Boys Are Easy (Villains in Space, #1))
Better to play at being a soldier, doing what you were asked, and if the government decided to switch who was an ally and who was an adversary at the expense of the people, there would be no hurt cut deep into your heart.
Chloe Gong (Foul Lady Fortune (Foul Lady Fortune, #1))
In one Globetrotter’s skit, it involved Globetrotter’s Captain Meadowlark Lemon collapsing on the ground, and Wilt threw him up in the air several feet high and caught him like a baby. Lemon weighed 210 lbs. Lemon, and other people including Arnold Schwarzenegger, said that Wilt was the strongest athlete that ever lived. On March 9, 2000, his number 13 was retired by the Globetrotters. Wilt’s NBA Career Accomplishments On October 24, 1959 Wilt finally made his NBA debut. Wilt played for the then, “Philadelphia Warriors.” Wilt immediately became the league’s top earner making $30,000 topping Bob Cousy who was making $25,000. The $30,000 is equivalent to $263,000 in today’s currency as per the year 2019. In Wilt’s 1959-1960 season, which was his rookie year, his team made the playoffs. The Warriors beat the Syracuse Nationals then had to go on to play the Eastern Conference Champions, the Boston Celtics. Coach Red Auerbach strategized his forward Tom Heinsohn to commit fouls on Wilt. When the Warriors shot free throws, Heinsohn grabbed and pushed Wilt to stop him from getting back on defense, so quickly. Wilt was a prolific shot blocker, and this allowed Celtics to score quickly without Wilt protecting the basket. The Warriors lost the series 4 games to two after Tom Heinsohn got a last second tip in to seal the win of the series for the Celtics. As a rookie Wilt shocked Warriors' fans by saying he was thinking of retiring from basketball. He was tired of being double- and triple-teamed, and of teams fouling him very hard. Wilt was afraid that he would lose his temper one day which he did in the playoff series versus Boston. Wilt punched Heinsohn and injured his hand. Wilt played for The Philadelphia Warriors, who then relocated to San Francisco, The Philadelphia 76ers, and The Los Angeles Lakers. He won one title with the 76ers then one with the Lakers. First NBA game Wilt scored 43 points and snatched 28 rebounds. Grabbed his rookie career high of 43 rebounds in a win over the New York Knicks.
Akeem Smith (Who's Really The Absolute Greatest NBA Player of All- Times? + The Top Ten Greatest NBA Players of All- Times: Rings Don't Make A Player)
My job in my marriage was to choose houses and decorate them,” she said. “My husband’s job was to pay for them. Making money was the only thing that interested him, and he didn’t care what I spent.
Stuart Woods (Foul Play (Stone Barrington, #59))
IN THE GAME OF GENIUS, PLAY THE FOUL OF WISDOM
P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar
Given Loreti's position in society, the press had followed, panting. But they were to be disappointed by the police's failure to find any sign of what the English call "foul play," and so the investigation had been downsized to "missing person," whereupon the articles began to grow shorter and the pages on which they were printed further to the back of the newspapers. After a month or two, the articles followed the person into obscurity. Brunetti, who often saw things in a literary way, thought of this as a transposed simile. In the first days, the Loreti case was compared to some crime from the past. After a year, a new crime was compared to the Loreti disappearance. Over the years and generations, it had drifted into the distant past, Brunetti realized: from sensation to footnote.
Donna Leon (So Shall You Reap (Commissario Brunetti #32))
Hammerschmidt-Hummel cried foul play, and it’s interesting to observe how the scholarly world reacted to a respected professor’s accusations against London’s vaulted curatorial world. Her evidence that the portrait had been switched continued to be ignored; instead, certain scholars went schoolyard on the professor. Professor Stanley Wells, as quoted in The Times, even described Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s claim as “disgraceful” and added that many books written on Shakespeare contained similar
Lee Durkee (Stalking Shakespeare: A Memoir of Madness, Murder, and My Search for the Poet Beneath the Paint)
So you do as rote, afeared of shadows and foul phantoms that have never existed, nor play any role in Natures theatre, but that are wielded as a brutal weapon by the Church of men. Priests have turned Nature into some devil, some evil snipe who will, if given leave, lead you all to cold Hell. But these Spirits, these old gods, are far older than the hills beneath which they now live and despite Mans modern scorn they love you still, yet weep for your return.
A. Hanson (A Dream of Unknowing: Tales from a Carpathian Witch)
Hammerschmidt-Hummel cried foul play, and it’s interesting to observe how the scholarly world reacted to a respected professor’s accusations against London’s vaulted curatorial world. Her evidence that the portrait had been switched continued to be ignored; instead, certain scholars went schoolyard on the professor. Professor Stanley Wells, as quoted in The Times, even described Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s claim as “disgraceful” and added that many books written on Shakespeare contained similar “lunatic theories.
Lee Durkee (Stalking Shakespeare: A Memoir of Madness, Murder, and My Search for the Poet Beneath the Paint)
We pride ourselves on the technological advancements made through ‘modern’ science and promote our achievements at every opportunity through a communication system called ‘the media’. Ignoring the voices of individuals who cry ‘foul play’ while simultaneously and systematically saturating the airwaves with disinformation to manipulate and control the masses.
Valton Brown (The Hidden Tree)
of Wartortle’s office.  The walls still somewhat stood.  The windows were blown off, they were punctured with way more holes than one could count and the ground was littered with fragments of cement. Pikachu recalled that time that seemed so distant now when he finally started putting the dots together. …when he realized that Phione’s parentage was the center point of this missing person case. Sure, Phione’s mother was a Cubone and a mighty nice one too, but it was the missing dad that ended up making this case spiral out of control.  After getting as much information as possible from Cubone and tracking some records, Pikachu uncovered that Phione’s birth father had gone missing many years ago and some suggested foul play.  They say that he might have been involved with the wrong teams and they found a rather permanent way to make him disappear.
K.T. Coolbricks (The Great Detective Pikachu: Episode 1 - A Mother’s Lament, A Pokémon’s Torments (A Pokemon Story) (The Great Detective Pikachu - Chapters))