Croquet Quotes

• My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Attitude, Golf, Games

  Ernest Hemingway, Carlos Baker (2003). “Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961”, p.161, Simon and Schuster

  72 Copy quote

  Show source

• The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo.

  Lewis Carroll

  Flamingos, Firsts, Found

  Lewis Carroll (1972). “Alice in Wonderland”, p.55, Jeff Koo

  189 Copy quote

  Show source

• Croquet is tough. People play for months because the rules are so bizarre. Those crazy English.

  Jane Kaczmarek

  Crazy, Play, People

  37 Copy quote

• So they left the subject and played croquet, which is a very good game for people who are annoyed with one another, giving many opportunities for venting rancor.

  Rose Macaulay

  Sports, Opportunity, Games

  29 Copy quote

• The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Sports, Golf, Games

  Letter on May 15, 1925. "Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917 - 1961", book edited by Carlos Baker, 1981.

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• Here's a riddle: When is a croquet mallet like a billy club? I'll tell you: Whenever you want it to be!

  Cheshire Cat

  Clubs, Want, Riddle

  "Fictional character: Cheshire Cat". Video Game "Alice", www.imdb.com. 2000.

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• I say, Billy, what’s the use in playing croquet when you’re doomed? He says, Frankie, what’s the use of not playing croquet when you’re doomed?

  Frank McCourt

  Use, Doomed

  Frank McCourt (1999). “Angela's Ashes: A Memoir”, p.173, Simon and Schuster

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• A curse on this game. How can you stick at a game when the rules keep on changing? I shall call myself Alice and play croquet with the flamingos. In Wonderland everyone cheats and love is Wonderland, isn't it?

  Jeanette Winterson

  Love Is, Games, Play

  100 Copy quote

• Once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people.

  Lewis Carroll

  Children, Games, Two

  Lewis Carroll (2015). “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass: 150th-Anniversary Edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.26, Penguin

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Consider the many special delights a lawn affords: soft mattress for a creeping baby; worm hatchery for a robin; croquet or badminton court; baseball diamond; restful green perspectives leading the eye to a background of flower beds, shrubs, or hedge; green shadows - "This lawn, a carpet all alive/With shadows flung from leaves' - as changing and as spellbinding as the waves of the sea, whether flecked with sunlight under trees of light foliage, like elm and locust, or deep, dark, solid shade, moving slowly as the tide, under maple and oak. This carpet!

  Katharine Sergeant Angell White

  Leadership, Baseball, Baby

  37 Copy quote

• Long ago life was clean, sex was bad and obscene, and the rich were so mean. Stately homes for the Lords, croquet lawns, village greens, Victoria was my queen.

  Ray Davies

  Sex, Queens, Home

  Song: Victoria

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• So far rich people have been very quiet about the possibility of getting taxes raised on them, but that doesn't mean they won't get mad about it, it just means they don't know about it. Because it takes a while for bad news to reach a rich person. First their accountant has to tell the butler, who has to tell the servant, who wouldn't dare interrupt their game of croquet.

  Craig Ferguson

  Mean, Games, Mad

  7 Copy quote

• You're doing it again. Using reason to argue faith. Can't be done. Like playing croquet with a crochet hook. Sounds something like the right tool for the job, but isn't.

  K. J. Bishop

  Jobs, Sound, Tools

  K.J. Bishop (2004). “The Etched City”, p.99, Spectra

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• A Grand Design we couldn't see because we were part of it. A Grand Design we only got occasional, fleeting glimpses of. A Grand Design involving the entire course of history and all of time and space that, for some unfathomable reason, chose to work out its designs with cats and croquet mallets and penwipers, to say nothing of the dog. And a hideous piece of Victorian artwork. And us.

  Connie Willis

  Dog, Cat, Space

  Connie Willis (2009). “To Say Nothing of the Dog”, p.479, Bantam

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am not a Jew for Jesus but I am definitely a Jew for Christmas. Christmas is one of the best things you Christians have given us, along with mac and cheese, Bono, croquet and politeness.

  David Brooks

  Christian, Jesus, Cheese

  "The True Meaning of Christmas". Interview with Gail Collins, opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com. December 22, 2010.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It was a universal truth among males that anytime you saw a guy get it in the nuts, you experienced a shot of phantom pain in your own croquet set. As Lassiter crouched beside the Brother’s pretzel of a body, he was feeling a little nauseous himself, and he took a moment to cup what hung between his legs—just to reassure the boys downstairs that however much of an iconoclast he was, some things were sacred.

  J.R. Ward

  Brother, Pain, Boys

  18 Copy quote

• They were adored by the Germans, who thought they were exactly what Englishmen ought to be. They made war look stylish and reasonable, and fun... They were dressed half for battle, half for tennis or croquet.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Fun, War, Tennis

  7 Copy quote

• My attempts at a lawn. Twice have we had the ground carefully dug up, and prepared; twice it has been sown with the best English seed... at considerable expense; ...and the end of all the trouble has been that a strong nor'wester has blown away both seed and soil, leaving only the hard, un-dug ground. ...there are the croquet things, lying idle in the verandah... they are likely to remain unused for ever.

  Bee Dawson

  Strong, Lying, Leaving

  7 Copy quote

• If it turned out Brandon Stark also likes to dress up as Strwberry Shortcake while playing croquet with his miniture pony collection, I totally wouldn't be surprised anymore.

  Meg Cabot

  Dresses, Ponies, Likes

  7 Copy quote

• It was a universal truth among males that anytime you saw a guy get it in the nuts, you experienced a shot of phantom pain in your own croquet set.

  J.R. Ward

  Pain, Nuts, Guy

  J.R. Ward (2012). “Lover Reborn: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood”, p.149, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• This was an away-day for the deputy prime minister's staff, who've had a change of responsibilities [on John Prescott's scandalous playing habits... on the croquet lawn]

  Paul Clark

  Change, Responsibility, Habit

  4 Copy quote