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Athlete   Listen
noun
Athlete  n.  
1.
(Antiq.) One who contended for a prize in the public games of ancient Greece or Rome.
2.
Any one trained to contend in exercises requiring great physical agility and strength; one who has great activity and strength; a champion.
3.
One fitted for, or skilled in, intellectual contests; as, athletes of debate.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Athlete" Quotes from Famous Books



... not look on with delight. He lost no time. He did not even waste ten seconds in rushing to the little stairway which led downward from his place of vantage, but, with the wiry hand and arm of the trained college athlete to help him in the spring, he vaulted lightly clean across the barrier, and, with legs bent skilfully to break the force of the long drop, landed like a lithe and angry tiger on the deck below, within two feet of the utterly amazed and ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... Astronomy astronomio. Astute ruza. Asunder aparte. Asylum rifugxejo. At cxe, je. At (house of) cxe. At all events kio ajn okazos. At any time iam. Atheist ateisto. Atheism ateismo. Athletic atleta. Athlete atleto. Atlas landkartaro. Atmosphere atmosfero. Atom atomo. Atomism atomismo. At once tuj. Atone rebonigi. Atonement rebonigo. Atrocious kruelega. Atrocity kruelego. Atrophy atrofio. Attach ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... quick and kind-eyed Angelo at the office, or the courteous Jap in the tea garden, but for a baseball club she had no talent. She explained her needs and her deficiencies to the manager of the Recreation Center, and he finally agreed that the Bloodhounds needed a young virile athlete as their director. "And for his own sake," said Eveley almost tearfully, "he ought to be a pugilist. I say this for his good. We need all our assimilators and should not expose them to sudden and ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston

... their thoughts, it's true, but in a totally different way. Polly, for instance, quite frankly admired Bob Farwell. She endowed him with every virtue. He was tremendously clever. He was the most wonderful athlete, and he loved dogs—especially Polly's dogs—in fact he was altogether perfect in her eyes—but she couldn't imagine tying up his letters in baby blue ribbons and keeping ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill

... exercitatio expressit; idem certamini paratior. Nunquam vero species ab utilitate dividitur. Sed hoc quidem discernere, modici judicii est. Quinct. lib. 8. (A horse with narrow flanks looks more comely; It also moves faster. An athlete whose muscles have been developed by training presents a handsome appearance; he is also better prepared for the contest. Attractive appearance is invariably associated with efficient functioning. Yet it takes no outstanding ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... say, and then: "Those were the good old days of simple living, gone like the dodo!" To-day,—well, it reminds me of a joke I heard. One man meets another and says: 'By the way, I heard that your wife was the champion athlete at college.' 'Ah, yes,' said the husband; 'now she is too weak to ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... eloquence of a cafe chantant singer. The very balance and symmetry of the Chopin phraseology are internal; it must be delivered in a flowing, waving manner, never square or hard, yet with every accent showing like the supple muscles of an athlete beneath his skin. Without the skeleton a musical composition is flaccid, shapeless, weak and without character. Chopin's music needs a rhythmic sense that to us, fed upon the few simple forms of the West, seems almost abnormal. The Chopin rubato is rhythm ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... imagine that the tyrant, because he has more possessions than the private person, does for that reason derive greater pleasure from them, this is not so either, Simonides, but it is with tyrants as with athletes. Just as the athlete feels no glow of satisfaction in asserting his superiority over amateurs, (12) but annoyance rather when he sustains defeat at the hands of any real antagonist; so, too, the tyrant finds little consolation in the fact (13) that he is evidently richer than the private citizen. What he ...
— Hiero • Xenophon

... think so! On board a ship lately I saw a young Oxford athlete run four steps and spring into the air and squirm his hips by a side-twist over a bar that was five and one-half feet high; but he could not have stood still and cleared a bar that was four feet high. I know this, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... crowd, especially Dick Lee; and it was not until they were across the street that the tall form of Dr. Brandegee came slowly down past the ball-players. He seemed particularly interested in that game. It was currently reported, indeed, that he had been a first-class athlete in his younger days, and that he took a quiet half-hour in the morning with his dumb-bells now, before doing any thing at all ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard

... pleasure in life," said once a magnificent young athlete, a great pedestrian, to me, "is to rest when you are tired." And, I should add, to dry and warm yourself by a big fire when wet and cold, and to eat and drink when you are hungry and thirsty. All these pleasures were now ours, for very soon tea and chops were ready for us; and so strangely human, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... of the hills of the Housatonic, bade fair to equal Pittsfield as a trading-place. "The Deacon" was a local magistrate under the king, when laymen served as judges. John, his youngest son, is described as tall and powerful, an athlete able to kick a football over the elm-tree on the college green at New Haven when he entered at twenty-three years of age, older in years than most college students of the ...
— Colonel John Brown, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Brave Accuser of Benedict Arnold • Archibald Murray Howe

... the brown-skinned fighting man wise in ringcraft and champion of a hundred fights, and the white-fleshed athlete, each alike clean and bright of eye, light-poised of foot, quivering for swift action, while the Old Un looks needfully from one to the other, watch in one bony hand, the ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... guidance of the monkey, who had assumed the appearance of a strong and vigorous young athlete, Sam-Chaong proceeded on his journey—over mountains so high that they seemed to touch the very heavens, and through valleys which lay at their foot in perpetual shadow, except only at noon-tide when the sun stood directly overhead. Then again they travelled across ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan

... acquired in all ways a more formidable appearance. His eyes became piercing, his eyebrows grew bushy, and the muscles which knitted them lay finger thick above his nose. It showed now more plainly than before how the upper part of his athlete's brow projected over the lower. His lips closed more firmly than of old, his whole face was thinner, the hollows at the temples grew very deep, and his powerful jaw was much more prominent. His body was less well filled out ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... fingers, and bent forward. What he saw upon the ground made him feel a little sick. What he saw racing away down the passage prompted him to swift pursuit. Down the arched court into the open space he ran, himself an athlete, but mocked by the swiftness of the shadowlike form which he pursued. At the end was another street—empty. He looked up and down, seeking in vain for any signs of life. There was nothing to tell him which way to turn. Opposite was a very labyrinth of courts and turnings. There ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... he would himself have said, tremendously clever; but though there was a kind of appealing dullness in his eye, he looked thoroughly reasonable and competent, and his appearance proclaimed that to be a nobleman, an athlete, and an excellent fellow was a sufficiently brilliant combination of qualities. The young girl beside him, it may be attested without further delay, thought him the handsomest young man she had ever seen; and Bessie Alden's imagination, unlike that of her companion, was irritable. He, however, ...
— An International Episode • Henry James

... of this solemn suit, shone like a full moon rising above a mass of dark clouds. His shirt, buttoned with three large pearls worth five hundred francs apiece, gave a great idea of his thoracic capacity, and he was apt to say, "In me you see the coming athlete of the tribune!" His enormous vulgar hands were encased in yellow gloves even in the morning; his patent leather boots spoke of the chocolate-colored coupe with one horse in ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... lies with the people who will take exercise and not too much exercise. Athleticism may be hopeless as a career, but as a drug it is invaluable. No ordinary man can hope to succeed who does not work his body in moderation. The danger of the athlete is to believe that in kicking a goal he has won the game of life. His object is no longer to be fit for work, but to be superfit for play. He sees the means and the end through an inverted telescope. The story books always tell us that the Rowing ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook

... second line was drawled out they stood at the top of the stairs. Then when Hal said, "Jack fell down——" there was a terrific plunge and Philip tumbled, head over heels, all the way downstairs, with the big copper bucket rolling bumpety-bump down beside him. He was a trained athlete, and knew how to fall without hurting himself, but his mad pitching made it seem entirely an accidental fall. In the screams of laughter, the last line could scarcely be heard, but when Hal said, "And Jill came ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells

... seemed bursting with the desire to talk, and watching for her opportunity. On her lapel was an ivory button, bearing the words "Votes for Women." Ann Veronica sat at the foot of the sufferer's bed, while Teddy Widgett, being something of an athlete, occupied the only bed-room chair—a decadent piece, essentially a tripod and largely a formality—and smoked cigarettes, and tried to conceal the fact that he was looking all the time at Ann Veronica's eyebrows. Teddy was the hatless young man who had turned Ann Veronica aside from ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... very thought, and emulative of an athlete in distorted attitude and gaudy fleshings, proceeded to turn himself upside down and walk upon his hands, waving his bare feet fraternally at the pictured gymnasts. He found himself suddenly caught by the ankles, however, and slung roughly ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith

... faith in yourselves unless you are conscious that you are prepared for your work. If one is feeble in body, he cannot have the confidence in his physical strength that the athlete has, and, as physical strength is necessary, one is justified in devoting to exercise and to the strengthening of the body such time as may ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan

... for their lords in a feudal conspiracy, or cheated for their chieftains in a Highland feud. We may say that the vassal readily committed treason; but it is equally true that he readily endured torture. So does the American athlete endure torture. Not only the self-sacrifice but the solemnity of the American athlete is like that of the American Indian. The athletes in the States have the attitude of the athletes among the Spartans, the great historical nation without a sense of humour. They suffer an ascetic regime not to ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... as we looked around we saw a creature with tossing horns and waving tail making for us, head down, eyes flashing. Kitty gave a shriek. We chanced to be near a pair of low bars. I hadn't been a college athlete for nothing. I swung Kitty over the bars, and jumped after her. But she, not knowing in her fright where she was nor what she was doing, supposing also that the mad creature, like the villain in the play, would 'still pursue her,' flung ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... was as antithetical from the veteran detective as a man could well be. A noted athlete in his university, he possessed a society rating in New York, at Newport and Tuxedo, and on the Continent which was the envy of many a gilded youth born ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... the world," replied the writer, who had listened to the Marquis's tirade; with an unconvinced smile, he repeated: "Not the least in the world.... You have spoken of me as an acrobat or an athlete. I am not offended, because it is you, and because I know that you love me dearly. Let me at least have the suppleness of one. First, before passing judgment on a financial affair I shall wait until I understand it. Hafner was acquitted. That is enough, for one thing. Were he even the greatest ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... nature, that it looks a little repulsive; but it is beautiful for all that. Though it be a black foot and an unwashed foot, it shall be exalted. It is a thing of life amid leather, a free spirit amid cramped, a wild bird amid caged, an athlete amid consumptives. It is the symbol of my order, the Order of Walkers. That unhampered, vitally playing piece of anatomy is the type of the pedestrian, man returned to first principles, in direct contact ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... graduated from your Institute, even though it be with low rank, insures his possession of technical knowledge sufficient for our purpose. If, at the same time, he is a gentleman endowed with the faculty of making friends, as well as an athlete willing to meet and able to overcome physical difficulties, I would employ him in preference to a more studious person who lacked any of these qualifications. If you, for instance, had not already decided upon a plan for spending the ensuing year, I should ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe

... was nearly six feet in his stocking feet as he stood, and Christy whispered to him the next thing in his scheme. With the aid of his willing assistant, the midshipman was mounted on the shoulders of the former, where he stood up like an athlete in the gloom, though he almost instantly obtained a hold above with his hands. He unfastened the scuttle, and slid it off the aperture with the greatest care. Then he drew himself up with his strong hands, and was on the roof. Then Flint ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... a man's exterior gave promise of generous help, the features of this fellow by his side did. He was of about his own age, smooth shaven, with a frank, open face that gave him a clean and wholesome appearance. He had the lithe frame and red cheeks of an athlete in training—his eyes clear as night air, his teeth white as a hound's. But it was a trick of the eyes which decided Wilson—a bright eagerness tinged with humor and something of dreams, which suggested that he himself was alert for just such adventures ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... the great Yale athlete, who was killed in the war, left his Tennessee home to go to college, his father told him that he would not give him any advice as to morals or behavior; "but, Johnny, will you promise me that you will never go to sleep at night until you have said your ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... shadow that they cast, and the forest for its silence at noon. The vineyard-dresser wreathed his hair with ivy that he might keep off the rays of the sun as he stooped over the young shoots, and for the artist and the athlete, the two types that Greece gave us, they plaited with garlands the leaves of the bitter laurel and of the wild parsley, which else had been of no service ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde

... figure on the other side of the net, here, there, backward and forward, alert, accurate, bubbling with energy . . . Once, a mad rollicking impulse seized and urged him to vault the net and take her in his arms and hold her still for a moment. But he knew. She was using him as an athlete uses a ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... improvement in the physical condition of the individual, and (3) the increase of his vitality. In short, the objects of the manual are positive rather than negative. It aims to include every practical procedure that, according to the present state of our knowledge, an athlete needs in order to make himself superbly "fit," or that a mental worker needs in order to keep his wits sharpened to a razor-edge. For this reason some suggestions, which might otherwise be regarded as of minor importance, have ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk

... find a cave, a tree, or anything to temper the wind or keep off part of the rain, all right. If not, the Open. So I came to love him as well as revere. I had known many "scientists" and what happened when they really got Outdoors. He was in no way an athlete—nor even muscular. I was both—and not very long before had completed my thirty-five-hundred-mile "Tramp Across the Continent." But I never had to "slow down" for him. Sometimes it was necessary to use laughing force to detain him at dark where we had water and a leaning cliff, instead ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... self-advertisement. A woman's first thought is for that vague, but comprehensive trait "manliness. She drives straight home for the peg upon which to hang her judgment. That is why in feminine regard the bookworm goes to the wall to make room for the athlete. Possibly Jacky and Mrs. Abbot had probed beneath "Lord" Bill's superficial weariness and discovered there a nature worthy of their regard. They were both, in their several ways, fond of this scion of ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... his creed more decidedly, perhaps, than any of the Professors. He had the firm fibre of a theological athlete, and lived to be old without ever mellowing, I think, into a kind of half-heterodoxy, as old ministers of stern creed are said to do now and then,—just as old doctors grow to be sparing of the more exasperating ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the ardour of youth, and the training of an athlete, proposed to himself to hear what SEXTON had to say. Accordingly took up convenient seat below Gangway. Stayed there an hour. Then walked back an altered man; shattered; aged; almost in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various

... electric in its effect, sending a thrill through nerve and muscle, though the brain remained still drowsily inert, while the natural instinct of desire for life chased away the helpless state of collapse; and Mark Heath, old athlete, expert swimmer, man hardened by his life in the southern colony, rose to the surface, and struck out, swimming slowly and mechanically, as if it were the natural action of his muscles. On and on, breasting the icy water, keeping ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... like birds around a light. If he had been allowed to follow the pull of his inclination, they would have held a subsidiary place in his existence. For he was practical, balanced, sane. He had, moreover, the tendency towards temperance of the born athlete. Besides all this, his main interests were man-interests. But women would not let him alone. He had but to look and the thing was done. Wreaths hung on every balcony for Honey Smith and, always at his approach, the door of the harem swung wide. He was a little lazy, ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... Freddy, I am no athlete. As you well remarked this very morning, 'There are some chaps who are no good for anything but books'; I plead guilty to being such a chap, and will not inflict myself ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster

... anxious to acquire knowledge on the practical methods of Mr. Squeers, or to the athlete who loves to skip like a goat from crag to crag, I fearlessly recommend No. 8 beat of the Mandal river. He may take choice of rocks of every sort and size. The convulsion of nature that transformed this peaceful valley of Southern Norway did it with a will that left stupendous ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... cousin Arthur, and W. J. Beamont (1828-1868), who at his death was a Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, he had hardly any intimates. Chitty, afterwards his colleague on the Bench, was then famous as an athlete; but with athletics my brother had nothing to do. His only amusement of that kind was the solitary sport of fishing. He caught a few roach and dace, and vainly endeavoured to inveigle pike. His failure was caused, perhaps, by ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... measure of the world: he studies its humors. He gives up the boyish notion of a sincerity among men like that of youth: he lives to seem. He conquers such annoyances as the world may thrust upon him, in the shape of grief or losses, like a practical athlete of the ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... known from "Glentuck to the Rutton-Ley" as the best man for "putting the stone," or for a "hop, step, and leap," contrived the self-cleaning ploughs (with circular beam) and harrows which bore his name. He was also—besides being the athlete of Ayrshire—the author of sundry creditable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... Cocceji, and threw a threatening, scornful glance upon a thin, wan young man who sat near him, and who dared, in a small, weak voice to repeat the "wondrous" of the young athlete. "I pray you, sir, to refrain from the expression of your applause, or, if that is impossible, choose your own words, and not mine to convey your approbation," said the six-footed giant, Cocceji, to ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... they determined on a vigorous conduct of the war, and welcomed Brasidas with all possible honours, publicly crowning him with a crown of gold as the liberator of Hellas; while private persons crowded round him and decked him with garlands as though he had been an athlete. Meanwhile Brasidas left them a small garrison for the present and crossed back again, and not long afterwards sent over a larger force, intending with the help of the Scionaeans to attempt Mende and Potidaea before the Athenians should arrive; Scione, he felt, ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... girl disappeared from the office, after her interview with him, the detective executed a number of antics which would have done credit to a practiced athlete. ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... gold: from the cheek-piece of his helmet, from his pilum and his spear hung purple pennants; his whole equipment was magnificent and kingly. Bestriding a very tall war-horse he played the game of a military athlete with accomplished skill. He wheeled his horse first to the right, then to the left, in graceful curves; then he tossed his spear on high to the morning breezes and caught it in the middle as it descended with quivering fall; then he threw it deftly from one hand to another, ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... frosty night, The rustic party, with its rough Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff, And whirling plate, and forfeits paid, His winter task a pastime made. Happy the snow-locked homes wherein He tuned his merry violin, Or played the athlete in the barn, Or held the good dame's winding yarn, Of mirth-provoking versions told Of classic legends rare and old, Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome Had all the commonplace of home, And little seemed at best the odds 'Twixt Yankee peddlers and old ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... fit at six in the morning. Died screaming!" A burst of laughter hailed the climax, and then one appreciative friend remarked, "He was a fool—I suppose he was drunk eleven months out of the last twelve." This was the epitaph of a bright young athlete who had been possessed of health, riches, and all fair prospects. No one warned him; none of those who swilled expensive poisons for which he paid ever refused to accept his mad generosity; he was cheered down the road to the gulf by the inane plaudits of the lowest of men; and one who was ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... individual institutions there are some common to all, generally used to compliment some successful athlete or popular professor. One of the oldest examples of these ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... than ever the powerful personality of Father Rowley when he found that these noble young animals accorded to him the same quality of respect that they gave to a popular master or even to a popular athlete. The Missioner seemed able to understand their intimate and allusive conversation, so characteristic of a small and highly developed society; he seemed able to chaff them at the right moment; to take them seriously when they ought to be ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... displays a stoicism that has in it an undertone of Christian endurance. A lad of the Connaughts at Colenso, whom a bullet had horribly crippled in both legs, shouted with defiant cheerfulness to his comrades—"Bring me a tin whistle and I will play you any tune you like"; and a naval athlete at Ladysmith, when a shell carried away one of his legs and his other foot, simply sighed, "There's an end of my cricket." Pious readers would doubtless in all such cases much prefer some pious reference to Christ and His Cross in place ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... summer experiences with his boy friends make him into a sturdy young athlete through swimming, boating and baseball contests, and a tramp through the Everglades, is the ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton

... Physically he was an athlete. With his sling he could throw stones straight, as Goliath, the Philistine giant, discovered to his sorrow. He had the gift of winning friends, even among those who might naturally have been his enemies, for example Jonathan and Michal, son and daughter of Saul, and Achish, the Philistine king. ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... "'Honor bright! Fair play is a jewel! If you and I, who have seen Black Donald before, failed to recognize that stalwart athlete in a seemingly old and sickly man, how could you expect Mrs. Condiment to do so, who never saw him but once in her life, and then was so much frightened that she ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... He was not used to it. His books were beautiful. He would have rather had them less beautiful and more alive. He was like an athlete resting, not knowing to what use to turn his muscles, and, yawning in boredom like a caged wild beast, he sat looking ahead at the years and years of peaceful work that awaited him. And as, with his old German capacity for optimism, he had no difficulty in persuading himself ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... James Otis' and Sam Adams' influence," as Governor Hutchinson wrote to Lord Dartmouth, "was the town meeting, that Olympian race-course of the Yankee athlete." ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... those of noble birth; Genteel in manner, but with athlete frames, They do full honor to their ancient names, And prove ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... in a race, though all run, only one wins the prize? So run that you may win the prize. Every athlete exercises self-restraint in every way; but while they do this to win a crown that perishes, we do it to secure one that is eternal. So then I run as one who is sure of his goal. I do not plant my blows as a boxer who beats the air; rather I constantly ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman

... some wonder. He was a short, wiry man, and arrayed in a close-fitting costume resembling that of the circus athlete on duty. ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman

... manly sports and exercises, so as, if possible, to beat the actual professors of each game, or feat of skill on their own ground. Yet here also he should avoid mere habits of display, which are unworthy of a man who aspires to be a gentleman and not an athlete. Another indispensable quality is gracefulness in all he does and says. In order to secure this elegance, he must beware of every form of affectation: 'Let him shun affectation, as though it were a most perilous rock; and let him seek in everything a certain carelessness, to hide his art, and show ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... retirement from office that O'Connell, too, made his last speech in the House of Commons, not as formerly in trumpet tones, but with enfeebled voice. "I am afraid," said the fainting athlete, "that the House is not sufficiently aware of the extent of the misery in Ireland. I do not think that members understand the accumulated miseries under which the people are at present suffering. It has been estimated that five thousand adults and ten thousand children have already perished ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... the heart of a boy, the presence of an athlete. He was at his prime of robust manhood, and his ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland

... stink!" Ramos once laughed. "They must be rotten. They're sore, and they itch something awful, and I can't scratch them, or change my socks, even. The fungus, I guess. Just old athlete's foot." ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... the corner as he spoke, and the two patients came in sight. Agnes was leaning over the creosoted garden-gate, and behind her there stood a young man who had the figure of a Greek athlete and the face of an English one. He was fair and cleanshaven, and his colourless hair was cut rather short. The sun was in his eyes, and they, like his mouth, seemed scarcely more than slits in his healthy skin. Just where he began to be beautiful the clothes started. ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... her to be broken to pieces. As he leans over, the boat sheers again into the stream, the stem-post breaks away, and she is loose. With perfect composure Bradley seizes the great scull oar, places it in the stern rowlock, and pulls with all his power (and he is an athlete) to turn the bow of the boat downstream, for he wishes to go bow down, rather than to drift broadside on. One, two strokes he makes, and a third just as she goes over, and the boat is fairly turned, and she goes ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various

... for this, and he was taken aback for a moment. Still, although he knew Merriwell was a far better all-round athlete, he believed he could more than match him in boxing, so he ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish

... life. Behavior was a fine art with him, cultivated partly from motives of prudence but more for its own sake. From early morning till bed-time he was always the same, always self-possessed. There was no relaxation of it; he was like an athlete in full training. It was difficult to place him in a position where he did not appear to advantage. But he expected nearly as much from others, and had small patience with those who from ignorance or carelessness infringed ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... it six miles high on the moon. The giant cannon that we have placed in one of our coast forts, which is said to be able to hurl a projectile to a distance of fifteen miles, could send the same projectile ninety miles on the moon. An athlete who can clear a horizontal bar at a height of six feet on the earth could clear the same bar at a height of thirty-six feet on the moon. In other words, he could jump over a house, unless, indeed, the lunarians really ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... believe, of all those whom we used to meet. She was the daughter of wealthy parents, and she did as she liked with them; very beautiful, well educated, very good at games—what they call a woman-athlete—and caring for nothing on earth but her own amusement. She was one of the most unprincipled flirts I ever knew, and quite the cleverest. Every one knew it, and Mr Marlowe must have heard it; but she made a complete fool of ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... his fists and the stranger, without giving back an inch or exhibiting the slightest suggestion of fear, but rather with the calm self-confidence of a trained athlete, squared himself ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... give him up even to their British allies. In no quality of wise woodcraft was he wanting. He could outrun a dog or a deer; he could thread the woods without food day and night; he could find his way as easily as the panther could. Although a great athlete and a tireless warrior, he hated fighting and only fought for peace. In council and in war he was equally valuable. His advice was never rejected without disaster, nor followed but with advantage; and when the fighting once ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... races between the best runners in each class of the different schools; and the best runner of all proved to be Sakane, of our own fifth class, who came in first by nearly forty yards without seeming even to make an effort. He is our champion athlete, and as good as he is strong—so that it made me very happy to see him with his arms full of prize books. He won also a fencing contest decided by the breaking of a little earthenware saucer tied to the left arm of each combatant. And he also won ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... one goes, the more one learns to hold in check that unnatural propensity. (Mankind has a natural love of the lie itself. Bacon.) Which means nothing more than that one will do well to take account of national psychology. An English functionary, athlete or mountaineer, might have glimpsed the state of affairs. But to climb in war-time, without any object save that of exercising one's limbs and verifying a questionable legend, a high and remote mountain—Muretta happens ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... judgment was indeed verified by "Davie's" whole life; but one might seek in vain for signs of what is commonly understood as "weakness of mind" in a man who not only showed himself to be an intellectual athlete, but who had an eminent share of practical wisdom and tenacity of purpose. One would like to know, however, when it was that Mrs. Hume committed herself to this not too flattering judgment of her younger ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... emotion is one of surprise and incredulity. That so many and such various notes should proceed from one throat is a marvel, and we regard the performance with feelings akin to those we experience on witnessing the astounding feats of the athlete or gymnast,—and this, notwithstanding many of the notes imitated have all the freshness and sweetness of the originals. The emotions excited by the songs of these thrushes belong to a higher order, springing as they do from ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... English visitors: 'A somewhat grotesque costume of four yards of blue calico over his shoulders and a string of tigers' tails round his waist could not make his imposing figure ridiculous. In early days he was an athlete and a fine shot; and though, as years went on, his voracious appetite rendered him conspicuously obese, he was every inch a ruler.... Visitors were much struck by his capacity for government: very little went on in his wide dominions of which he was not instantly and accurately ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... chasm's edge away and back again, in maniac strides, until he had almost beaten where he paced a pathway. There was not the slightest necessity for Ahpilus to guard Lilama, for the awful chasm was more than twice the width that any sane and normal man, even an athlete, would dare attempt to leap, even to preserve his own life; and the distance to be traversed to gain a point in the chasm so narrow that an ordinary man would dare attempt to leap it, was several miles down the mountain-side; so ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... discussion, grew ever more entranced with the possibilities of the new pastor's ministry, and the Doctor sat alone at the farther end of the porch. The Elder finished with: "Well, well, Brother Matthews, you are young, strong, unmarried, and with your reputation as a college man and an athlete you ought to do great things for Memorial Church. We are counting on you to build us up wonderfully. And let me say too, that we are one of the oldest and best known congregations in our brotherhood here in the state. We have had some great preachers here. ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... and gentler demeanor. It seems a brutal thing that a big strong man should waste his years in a dental establishment when the world is clamoring for strong men to do the heavy lifting jobs. But before you can say anything, this muscular athlete has laid violent hands on your palpitating form and wadded it abruptly into the hideous embraces of a red plush chair, which looks something like the one they use up at Sing Sing, only it's done more quickly up there and with less suffering on the ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb

... I looked at such monuments as were near; chiefly those erected to military or naval men,—Picton, General Ponsonby, Lord St. Vincent, and others; but against one of the pillars stands a statue of Dr. Johnson,—a noble and thoughtful figure, with a development of muscle befitting an athlete. I doubt whether sculptors do not err in point of taste, by making all their statues models of physical perfection, instead of expressing by them the individual character and habits of the man. The statue in the market-place at ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... thick-set, sturdy fellow with the clear brown tan and clear brown eyes of the Californian. Brewer was from South Carolina, a lean, lanky Southerner, with deep-set dark eyes. Dixon hailed from Massachusetts, from a fighting family, and from Harvard, where he had been a noted athlete. He was a big, lithe, handsome boy, red-faced and curly-haired. Purcell was a New-Yorker, of rich family, highly connected, and his easy, clean, fine ways, with the elegance of his person, his blond distinction, made him stand out from his ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... enervated by pleasures and broke down under labours, he on the other hand seemed unaffected by either, and that too, not only while he was young and eager for fame: but even when he was an old grey-headed man, after he had been consul and had triumphed, he yet, like a victorious athlete, still kept himself in training, and never relaxed his severe discipline. He himself tells us that he never wore a garment worth more than a hundred drachmas, that when he was general and consul he still drank the same wine as his servants, that his dinner ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... I shall take up classics. Of course I must take the highest classical honours. I shall carry off all the University scholarships, and the medals, and the prizes. Oh! and I must speak at the Union. I must lead at the Union, and I must be an athlete." He was tall and thin, and he stretched out his long arms. "I shall row in the boat—the 'Varsity boat, of course. I ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... Bear. A bear-trainer-athlete and "bear-wrestler" named Jacob Glass once taught me a lesson that astounded me. It related to the training of a bear that I thought was too ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... foundations of two utterly opposite characters—it is necessary to say that their friendship had been formed at school, after which, a train of circumstances had nursed it to maturity. At school, Devenish had been an athlete, superior to Traill in every sport that he took up. You have there the ground for approval and a certain strain of sympathy between the two men. The fact that at the 'Varsity Devenish had developed taste for dress was outweighed by the fact that he was a double blue, holding place in the fifteen ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... me to become a duchess; so mamma made me out a list of all possible husbands for me, and there was no other duke in the list but M. de Courtalin. There was, of course, the little Count of Limiers, who would be duke some day. But when? His father is forty-five and an athlete, and has an iron constitution. So I was obliged to admit it when I talked it over with mamma in the evening. To be duchess it was necessary to agree on M. de Courtalin. Mamma, however, was perfect, and delightfully gentle. She ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy

... heavy muscular arms and legs, a small head, a bull-neck. He looked like the mate of a deep-sea ship rather than a literary man. Add to this a craze for rowing, canoeing, swimming, boxing, fencing, and running. An all-round athlete, as the phrase goes, Guy, it is related, once paid a hulking chap to let himself be kicked. So hard was Guy's kick, done in an experimental humour, that the victim became enraged and knocked the kicker off his pins. Flaubert, the apostle of the immobile, objected. Too ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... stripping, diving, swimming, drying and dressing in the evening sun, all full of life and health. At one period, Joffroy, a very good French artist, who had lost a leg, right up to his trunk, early in the War, used to swim there with me. He had been a great athlete, and had a very strong arm-stroke, and possessed one of the most beautifully-developed bodies I have ever seen. One evening, after bathing, as we were driving back to Amiens in the car, he stretched out his arms and said, "Orpen, I feel like a young ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen

... respiration Edwin said to himself that the next one could not be worse. But it was worse. Darius breathed like a blown dog that has fallen. He snatched furiously at breath like a tiger snatching at meat. He accomplished exertions that would have exhausted an athlete, and when he had saved his life in the very instant of its loss, calling on Clara as on God, he would look at Edwin for confirmation of his hope that he had escaped again. The paroxysms continued, still growing more critical. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... had been here to see my boy," exclaimed the old gentleman, with sparkling eyes; "I might have helped him a bit." He stretched out a handsome fist and looked at it as admiringly as any college athlete could view his own. "Well," dropping his arm, "I am interrupting you, ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney

... through some rapid evolutions, first hanging head downward, and then, after developing speed, raising himself and turning over the crossbar. It was really work of which any athlete might ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock

... So the athlete of the day before was obliged to submit to having his tea-cup carried to his lips and tipped for him by a woman, and the chop administered bit by bit on a fork. It was very degrading; but once in a while Cornelia accidentally touched him, or her face, lit up by interest in her occupation, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... the second potion was successfully placed inside him. But by the time this feat was finally accomplished, Mr. Schofield had proved that, in spite of middle age, he was entitled to substantial claims and honours both as athlete and orator—his oratory being founded less upon the school of Webster and more upon that ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington

... believe they called an electuary. I don't know whether it is an obsolete abomination now, but it looked like brick-dust and treacle, and what it was made of even Puddock could not divine. O'Flaherty, that great Hibernian athlete, unconsciously winced and shuddered like a child at sight of it. Puddock stirred it with the tip of a tea-spoon, and looked into it with inquisitive disgust, and seemed to smell it from a distance, lost for a minute in inward conjecture, and then with a slight bow, pushed it ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... decorative value of the details themselves. There are occasional flashes of brilliancy in his imagery, when it is lit up by his keen sense of beauty or splendour in external nature. A radiance, "as of fire," streams from the forms of the Nereids (xvi. 103 ff.). An athlete shines out among his fellows like "the bright moon of the mid-month night" among the stars (viii. 27 ff.). The sudden gleam of hope which comes to the Trojans by the withdrawal of Achilles is like a ray ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... great for Indian eyes to gaze upon. Tall as was the woman, comely in her maturing years, she was left dwarfed beside the youthful manhood she had watched grow from its earliest days. The young man had the erect, supple, muscular body of a trained athlete and the face of the mother who had long since been laid to rest in the woods of the Sleeper Indians. He had moreover the strength of the father's unspoiled character, and all the purposeful method which ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... easy, like a released spring, the unconscious trick of a born athlete, and Ellis was upon his feet. Involuntarily, Clayton squared himself, as if an attack ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... little; let them contract their chests, and injure their digestion and their eyesight, by sitting at desks, poring over books. Intellect is what we want. Intellect makes money. Intellect makes the world. We would rather see our son a genius than an athlete." Well: and so would I. But what if intellect alone does not even make money, save as Messrs. Dodson & Fogg, Sampson Brass, and Montagu Tigg were wont to make it, unless backed by an able, enduring, healthy physique, such as I have seen, almost ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... generally delight in. I suppose you are one of those grasping traders that go about in ships as captains or merchants, and who think of nothing but of their outward freights and homeward cargoes. There does not seem to be much of the athlete about you." ...
— The Odyssey • Homer

... conveyed the same impression of something perfectly contrived and wholly successful. Netta thought at first that she was "made up," so dazzling was the white and pink, and then doubted. The beauty of the face reminded one, perhaps, of the beauty of a boy—of some clear-eyed, long-chinned athlete—masterfully simple—a careless conqueror. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... coat and knee breeches, white waistcoat and ruffles of finest linen, black silk stockings and silver-buckled shoes, was energetic, graceful, and well proportioned. With such a physique it was not wonderful that Mr. Jefferson was famous as shot, horseman, and athlete, even among such noted sportsmen as Virginia could boast of by the score in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Suddenly he lowered his head and, withdrawing his gaze from the mountains, looked about him ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... make their way, but it was a most disheartening experience. Giles Murdaugh's influence was far-reaching and all doors were closed to them. They changed their name and went on, but Ralph had been a student rather than an athlete; he was not strong enough to attempt the rough work which was all that presented itself, and ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... whistled out. He lifted his beer, checked himself, then set it down gently by the figurine of the athlete. He went to the place where Paresi had disappeared, bent and picked up a small object. He swore, and came ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn

... down in detail. It is sufficient to note the result. In the course of a short time after she had entered the bower, a loud shout was heard, and next moment Laronde was seen rushing towards the house with a flushed countenance and the vigour of an athlete! ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne

... a horse is unable to attain his greatest speed apart from a pacemaker. The horse needs the stimulus of an equal to get under way quickly, to strike his fastest gait and to keep it up. In this particular an athlete in sprinting is like the horse. He is unable by sheer force of will to run a hundred yards in ten seconds. To achieve it he needs a competitor who will push him to ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... it is stuffed with the crackers and milk of the spirit; that your spiritual bread is buttered with the oleomargerine of lofty ideals, and sugared with the saccharin of your granulated meditations, and you will grow strong. You will become an intellectual athlete, like the great King Ptush of Egypt; a winner in ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... with his birthright. I knew that the railway of railways was no school for the humanities; but this university graduate, Chancellor of Queen's, distinguished counsel and potential eminent judge, bachelor, Canadian born, every inch an athlete and as rugged as Carpentier, seemed to my aroused imagination one who would be as much bigger than the stodgy C.P.R. as that system was greater than ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... in the matter. There are some boys to whom Alene's timidity would have appealed, but he was not one of that kind. He was the most outspoken and the least gentle of all the boys with whom the Happy-Go-Luckys associated. But his downright honesty and fearlessness, his renown among the boys as an athlete, and especially his devotion to his little sister which Laura dilated upon, and of which new proofs were daily shown, had awakened Alene's admiration, and made her the more resent ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne

... his imitation of Nature was carried out in the minutest details. None of his works are extant; but as he alone was permitted to make the statue of Alexander, we infer that he had no equals. The Emperor Tiberius transferred one of his statues (that of an athlete) from the baths of Agrippa to his own chamber, which so incensed the people that he was obliged to restore it. His favorite subject was Hercules, and a colossal statue of this god was carried to Rome by Fabius Maximus, when he took Tarentum, and afterward was transferred to Constantinople; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... at his buckskin-gloved hands holding the reins against the steady pull of the big chestnuts; downward over the dashboard at their hoofs falling with the forceful impact of hammers and yet rising with the light springiness of an athlete's foot, throwing the miles behind them scornfully. And she was ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... what our soldiers won upon the field; a year in which they call for the man who has torn from the throat of treason the tongue of slander—for the man who has snatched the mask of Democracy from the hideous face of rebellion; for the man who, like an intellectual athlete, has stood in the arena of debate and challenged all comers, and who is still a ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll

... upwards and away from them so as not to hide his mouth at all. He had an even olive complexion, and any judge of men would have seen at a glance that he was thoroughly sound and as strong as a professional athlete. His coat had a velvet collar; a single emerald stud, worth several thousand pounds, diffused a green refulgence round itself in the middle of his very shiny shirt front; his waistcoat was embroidered and adorned with diamond buttons, his trousers were ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford

... MacLean, with whom the Indian had engaged, had great confidence in him, and frequently trusted him to carry important messages. The Colonel found him to be a most trusty fellow, and occasionally sent him alone to observe the enemy's movements. Paul was as straight as an athlete and had an eye keen as an eagle's. He scarcely ever failed in reporting to the Colonel something ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith

... with every shelf in a litter, filled the better part of one wall; and where I looked for cricketing groups, I found reproductions of such works as "Love and Death" and "The Blessed Damozel," in dusty frames and different parallels. The man might have been a minor poet instead of an athlete of the first water. But there had always been a fine streak of aestheticism in his complex composition; some of these very pictures I had myself dusted in his study at school; and they set me thinking of yet another of his many sides—and ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... a half-hour earlier, but she accepted a cup of coffee. Mihul, all athlete, declined. She went over to Plemponi's desk and stood leaning against it, arms folded across her chest, calm blue eyes fixed thoughtfully on Trigger. With her lithe length of body, Mihul sometimes reminded Trigger of a ferret, but the tanned face was a pleasant ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... appreciated and then, with his mastery of English, so ably described. His own experience of poverty and struggle after leaving the university opened to him channels for his sympathetic portrayal of humble life. Physically he was never a fighter or an athlete; but he proved himself possessed of singular personal courage. He fought his best fights, however, on fields to which gladiators have no entry and in battles which, unlike our physical contests, are not spasmodic, but ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... is never pictured by artists, although regularly occurring, and seems to have been as little known before instantaneous photography was introduced as were most of the phases of the horse's gallop. The positions assumed when in the air by a high-jump athlete are almost incredible as revealed by the camera. He appears to be sitting in a most uncomfortable way on the rope over which ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... arose between the two cities, and Sybaris was conquered and destroyed. Milo, the celebrated athlete, led the army of Crotona. Many stories are told of Milo's vast strength, such as his carrying a heifer of four years old upon his shoulders and afterwards eating the whole of it in a single day. The mode of his death is thus related: ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... was to dismount and examine his saddle girth. Always your real king of the cattle range is careful for the foundation of his throne. But there was no awkwardness, now, when he again swung to his seat. The young man was in reality a natural athlete. His work had already taken the soreness and stiffness out of his unaccustomed muscles, and he seemed, as the Dean had said, a born horseman. And as he rode, he looked about over the surrounding country with ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright



Words linked to "Athlete" :   footballer, pole jumper, Mildred Ella Didrikson Zaharias, weightlifter, skater, pentathlete, Owens, sportswoman, runner, James Cleveland Owens, hooker, athlete's heart, reserve, jock, swinger, skier, climber, Jim Thorpe, Mildred Ella Didrikson, Zaharias, Jesse Owens, cricketer, letterman, acrobat, Mathias, sport, lifter, hurdler, pole vaulter, winger, ball hawk, pro, soccer player, shot putter, Babe Didrikson, swimmer, ice-hockey player, Bob Mathias, Babe Zaharias, striker



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