Croquet Quotes

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

He was the sort of languid and elegant young man one would expect to find at a country house party, playing croquet with Bertie Wooster. Frightfully good fun, but not too many brains. ~ Rhys Bowen

Call it what you like,' said the Cat. 'Do you play croquet with the Queen to-day?' 'I should like it very much,' said Alice, 'but I haven't been invited yet.' 'You'll see me there,' said the Cat, and vanished. ~ Lewis Carroll

I had a momentary vision of Brooklands' entire middle class, its prosperous lawyers, doctors and senior managers, being confined to their own ghetto, with nothing to do all day except groom their ponies and swing their croquet mallets. ~ J.G. Ballard

She was a gardener of the ruthless type, and went for any small green thing that incautiously showed a timid spike above the earth, suspecting it of being a weed. She had had a slight difference with the professional gardener who had hitherto worked for her on three afternoons during the week, and had told him that his services were no longer required. She meant to do her gardening herself this year, and was confident that a profusion of beautiful flowers and a plethora of delicious vegetables would be the result. At the end of her garden path was a barrow of rich manure, which she proposed, when she had finished the slaughter of the innocents, to dig into the depopulated beds. On the other side of her paling her neighbour Georgie Pillson was rolling his strip of lawn, on which during the summer he often played croquet on a small scale. Occasionally they shouted remarks to each other, but as they got more and more out of breath with their exertions the remarks got fewer. Mrs. Quantock's last question had been "What do you do with slugs, Georgie?" and Georgie had panted out, "Pretend you don't see them. ~ E.F. Benson

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

He had a particular liking for olde England, especially if the olde was spelled with an e. He found things like croquet, cream teas and cricket both incomprehensible and irresistible and he would have been in his element here. ~ Anthony Horowitz

Sometimes I dream of revolution, a bloody coup d'etat by the second rank - troupes of actors slaughtered by their understudies, magicians sawn in half by indefatigably smiling glamour girls, cricket teams wiped out by marauding bands of twelfth men - I dream of champions chopped down by rabbit-punching sparring partners while eternal bridesmaids turn and rape the bridegrooms over the sausage rolls and parliamentary private secretaries plant bombs in the Minister's Humber - comedians die on provincial stages, robbed of their feeds by mutely triumphant stooges - - and - march - - an army of assistants and deputies, the seconds-in-command, the runners-up, the right-handmen - storming the palace gates wherein the second son has already mounted the throne having committed regicide with a croquet-mallet - stand-ins ~ Tom Stoppard

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

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

For a moment, I thought I heard laughter, the click of one croquet ball striking another, a dog barking.
I stared at the empty yard, trying hard to see what Great-grandfather saw, but nothing shifted, nothing changed. If the Tylers were playing croquet, they were visible to him and him alone. The only dog in sight was Binky. Running across the lawn to meet him, I took the stick he carried and threw it as hard as I could. It sailed across the sky, and Binky dashed after it.
As the dog disappeared into the bushes, I looked up at the attic window and remembered the flash of white I'd seen the day I arrived--my first glimpse of Andrew. Funny to think I'd been scared. Nothing stirred in the attic now. No one watched, no one waited.
Deep in my pocket, I touched the red bull's-eye, warm as blood and twice as lucky. The marbles were mine for keeps. They were safe, and so was Andrew. ~ Mary Downing Hahn

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,

I reached out for something else and found it: the red croquet mallet, just occurring there on the ground like some easy device, some plot element stashed there for the big finale. ~ Daniel Handler

Cricket was a manly game. Manly masters spoke of the 'discipline of the hard ball'. Schools preferred manly games. Games were only manly if it was possible while playing them to be killed or drowned or at the very least badly maimed. Cricket could be splendidly dangerous. Tennis was not manly, and if a boy had asked permission to spend the afternoon playing croquet he would have been instantly punished for his 'general attitude'. Athletics were admitted into the charmed lethal circle as a boy could, with a little ingenuity, get impaled during the pole-vault or be decapitated by a discus and did a manly death. Fives were thought to be rather tame until one boy ran his head into a stone buttress and got concussion and another fainted dead away from heat and fatigue. Then everybody cheered up about fives. ~ Arthur Marshall

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

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

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

Get me into the game, Izzy," Cameron said when he reached Isabella at the edge of Hart's well-groomed lawn. Pairs of ladies and gentlemen waited beyond, a few gentlemen swinging mallets and rolling shoulders to show off for the ladies.
Isabella turned to Cameron in surprise. "We're playing croquet."
"Yes, I know what the devil it is. Give me a damned mallet."
"But you hate croquet." Isabella continued to blink green eyes at him.
"I don't hate it today. I want you to pair me with Mrs. Douglas."
"Ah." Isabella's surprised look turned to one of interest. "Mrs. Douglas, is it? ~ Jennifer Ashley

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

It's a universal truth that nothing spoils a postlunch game of croquet like suspecting the other players of murder. ~ Shannon Hale

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