"Clown" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the former army man. "We were making a landing, but we did not intend to come clown just in that spot. We are sorry the tree is broken, but accidents will ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... know the origin of theatrical exhibitions. According to the best authorities, when theatrical exhibitions were first given, an old cart was the stage, the chief actor was a coarse mimic or clown, the music was discoursed by itinerant singers, and the poem itself was a motley combination of serious and ludicrous ideas. These performances were first given in honor of the god of wine, Bacchus, which accounts, I suppose, for the ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... "infamous piece of good breeding," because "men of the town, and particularly those who have been polished in France, make use of the most coarse and uncivilised words in our language and utter themselves often in such a manner as a clown ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... "The clown costumes on all you men," I told him, for now I'd noticed that the others were in rainbow hues, Bruce a real eye-buster in yellow tights and violet doublet as he furiously bushed out and clipped crosswise sections of ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... fellow, and now his family rather surprised him; he seemed to think it a joke that all these children should belong to him. As the younger ones slipped up to him in his retreat, he kept taking things out of his pockets; penny dolls, a wooden clown, a balloon pig that was inflated by a whistle. He beckoned to the little boy they called Jan, whispered to him, and presented him with a paper snake, gently, so as not to startle him. Looking over the boy's head he said to me, "This one is bashful. ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... little hands and fingers, and the mould of her dainty limbs. No Scottish fisher clown was her father, I dare be sworn. Her skin is as fair and fine as my Humfrey's, and moreover she has always been in hands that knew how a babe should be tended. Any woman can tell ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Review, on the occasion of the Emperor of Russia's visit, and clapped his hands and shouted at the splendid spectacle. On March 24, 1846, he was given that first and greatest pleasure of all children, a visit to the circus (Astley's). He applauded liberally and when the clown was brought to the Royal box at his request, the little Prince gravely shook hands with him and thanked him "for making me laugh so much." Similar stories might be multiplied in many pages. Every trifling incident of the Royal childhood seems, indeed, to have been ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... Sometimes small bees, despairing of getting into the tube through the mouth, suck at holes in the flower's sides, because legitimate feasting was made too difficult for the poor little things. The ruby-throated hummingbird, hovering a second above the tube, drains it with none of the clown-like performances exacted from the bumblebee. Pilfering ants find death as speedy on the sticky surfaces ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... part in peace] [After these words the folio adds, the clown shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickled o' th' sere. WARBURTON.] This passage I have omitted, for the same reason, I suppose, as the other editors: I do ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... coarse or fine, and it seems a mere piece of luck that the smooth stream of his activity reflected with such ravishing clearness every changing mood of heaven and earth, every stick and stone, every dog and clown and courtier that stood upon its brink. It is a curious illustration of the friendly manner in which Shakespeare received everything that came along,—of what a present man he was,—that in the very same year that the mulberry-tree ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Worse, most of them are still so barbarous that they regard such recreations as immoral. The dominating opinion of the South is thus against most of the devices that would diminish lynching by providing substitutes for it. In every Southern town some noisy clown of a Methodist or Presbyterian clergyman exercises a local tyranny. These men are firmly against all the divertissements of more cultured regions. They oppose prize-fighting, horse-racing, Sunday baseball and games of chance. They are bitter prohibitionists. By ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... a buffoon appears on the stage with head shaved close. "Why is the clown mourning?" "Because oil is so dear." "Why is oil dear?" "On account of the Jews. On the Sabbath day they consume everything they earn during the week. Not a stick of wood is left to make fire whereby to cook their meals. They are forced to burn their beds for fuel, and sleep on the floor at ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... and out from a side place, back of a big screen, came Jack Hopkins dressed like a real clown, leading our old friend ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... send the postcard, and in the last hour of that hired bedroom in Brussels, with the bottle of chloroform before him, he traced across the card's surface "a broken and a contrite spirit thou wilt not despise." So there was humility at the last. One remembers rather grimly what the clown ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... hates and dreads him as our parish schoolmaster, a most worthy King Log, whom Ben dumbfounds twenty times a day. He is a great ornament of the cricket-ground, has a real genius for the game, and displays it after a very original manner, under the disguise of awkwardness—as the clown shows off his agility in a pantomime. Nothing comes amiss to him. By the bye, he would have been the very lad for us in our present dilemma; not a horse in England could master Ben Kirby. But we are too far from him now—and ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... do you think you are made of—india-rubber? Did you suppose that you would drop on to the deck and bounce up again, to come down then on your feet and strike an attitude like a clown in a pantomime? ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... a fugitive and an outcast, the clown's wife and the Irish girl who rode in the circus wept for her, stranger though she was, as they followed her coffin to the poor corner of the churchyard. When Joanna Grice died in the place of her birth, among the townspeople ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... broad, or cathedral-beard, because bishops, and grave men of the church, anciently did wear such beards." "The beard of King Harry may be seen in any portrait of Henry VIII. and the amusing accuracy of the description tested. The clown's beard, busy and not subject to any fashionable trimming, is sufficiently described in the words of the song." We quote nearly the whole of this old ballad, in fact all that has a real bearing on the ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... the story of the nameless clown, the mysterious holder of the ploughshare, is not less inspiring. The unknown champion, so plain in his heroic magnitude of mind, so brilliant as he flashes in the van, in the rear, is like the incarnated genius of the soil, which hides itself in the furrow and flashes into the harvest; ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... excitement, returned a timid salute, while Juanito bowed profoundly, took off his hat, and made the same gesture as the celebrated clown and caricaturist Panza ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... dark mass, that glows dully. We can hardly believe that here is the origin of the explosions that shake the island, and are inclined to consider the demon of the volcano rather as a mischievous clown than a ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... English clown, son of an Italian dancing-master, born in London; was bred to the stage from his infancy, appearing on the boards when not yet two years old; his Memoirs were edited by Dickens, who describes him as "the genuine droll, the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... and surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it killed the doctrine of infant damnation.... But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the barber-surgeons laughed at Harvey—and how vainly! What clown ever brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? Or Jenner? Or Lincoln? Or Darwin?... They are laughing at ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... and tumbling out in the dead of night with frightful caterwaulings. Hereupon French, the footman, borrows a gun, loads it to the muzzle, discharges it twice in vain, and throws himself over with the recoil exactly like a clown. But at last, while I was in town, he aims at the more amiable cat of the two and shoots that animal dead. Insufferably elated by this victory he is now engaged from morning to night in hiding behind bushes to get aim at the other. He does nothing else whatever. ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... bloody bones eloquence, as he put it, of Vetch's speech had been as offensive to his taste as it had been unconvincing to his intelligence. The man was a mountebank, nothing more, Stephen had decided, and his strange power was simply the reaction of mob hysteria to the stage tricks of the political clown. ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... skin-winged creature that flies by night, and had disappeared in the darkness! Of all possible mockeries, for her to steal out at night to the embraces of a fool! a wretched, weak- headed, idle fellow, whom every clown called by his Christian name! an ass that did nothing but ride the country on a horse too good for him, and quarrel with his mother from Sunday to Saturday! For such a man she had left him, Godfrey Wardour! ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... stress put on the name "Razumov—Mr. Razumov" pierced the ear ridiculously, like the falsetto of a circus clown beginning an elaborate joke. Astonishment was Razumov's first ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... sad-looking little girl, painted by WILLIAM CARTER. She has an unsettled expression. Is she suffering from what the Clown calls "teezy-weezies-in-the-pandenoodles," and, as Sir JOHN MILLAIS'S "Bubbles" served P**RS for an advertisement, is it beyond the range of probability that this, being associated with the name of "CARTER," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... pasturage. Their costume is most primitive both in style and material; the trousers and caps being made of sheepskin and the tunic of plaited wheat-straw. In contradistinction to the Yuraks the settled inhabitants of the country are called Turks. That term, however, which means rustic or clown, is never used by the Turks themselves except in derision or disdain; they always ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... passes all patience!" he cried wrathfully. "If this ship of yours must needs dance and skip like a clown at a kermesse, then I pray you that you will put me into one of these galeasses. I had but sat down to a flask of malvoisie and a mortress of brawn, as is my use about this hour, when there comes a cherking, and I find my wine over my legs and the flask in my lap, and then as I stoop to clip it there ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the two black waiters tried to sing "I love Little Pussy;" but the tall one in a brigand hat opened his mouth wide, that the small dollies were afraid they might fall into it. The clown raised both arms in wonder, and Jack in the Box sprang up as high as me could to look down into ...
— The Night Before Christmas and Other Popular Stories For Children • Various
... sister. I'll give you, by hook or by crook, the very best food I can get, and the prettiest dresses to wear, and I'll see that my husband, Ben Holt, aint rough to you, and I'll see, also, that Molly and Kitty and Susan, the circus girls, are kind to you, and that Tom, the clown, behaves as he ought; but I can do nothing if you won't obey me. And if you begin by angering Uncle Ben, why, it'll be all up with ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... any of the other boys and of knowing more about horses than all of them put together. An opportunity to prove this came when he was about eleven, for a circus appeared in the village with a trick pony, and during the performance the clown offered five dollars to any boy who could ride him. Several of Ulysses' friends immediately volunteered, but he sat quietly watching the fun while one after another of the boys fell victim to the pony's powers. Finally, when the little animal's triumph seemed complete, Grant stepped ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... the department but us toys," said a Calico Clown, and he banged together some shiny cymbals on the ends of his arms. "The Jack is right—we are ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... old bum of a Tavender writes some lunatic nonsense or other to Gafferson, and he's a worse idiot even than Tavender is, and on the strength of what one of these clowns thinks he surmises the other clown means, you go and spend your money,—money I gave you, by the way,—in bringing Tavender over here. You do this on the double chance, we'll say, of using him against me for revenge and profit combined, or of peddling ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... The long wild whillaloo That oft smacked of "Killaloe," The contagious wrath of Buskin and of Sock Hath abated for awhile, And no more the Emerald Isle On the stage and in the green-room seems to shock. The curtain is rung down, The comedian and the clown, With the sombre putter-on of tragic airs, Are gone, with all the cast, And the Theatre, at last, Is "Closed for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... dusty. Yet but a few days, Bob, and flakes of paint will have cracked off the fairy flower-bowers, and the revolving temples of adamantine lustre will be as shabby as the city of Pekin. When you read this, will Clown still be going on lolling his tongue out of his month, and saying, "How are you to-morrow?" Tomorrow, indeed! He must be almost ashamed of himself (if that cheek is still capable of the blush of shame) for asking the absurd question. To-morrow, indeed! To-morrow ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the North Hall scene, was new to the Court. He must soon have discovered that Ralegh was not to be spurned as a clown, or to be stormed out of the Queen's graces by insolence. He did not grow therefore the less hostile. He rejected Elizabeth's inducements to him to live on terms of amity with a rival in all essential respects infinitely his superior. Persuaded that she could not dispense with himself, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... the stately form of Widdicomb, cased in martial apparel, advancing towards the centre of the ring, and commanding—with imperious gesture, and some slight flagellation in return for dubious compliment—the double-jointed clown to assist the Signora Cavalcanti to her seat upon the celebrated Arabian. How lovely looks the lady, as she vaults to her feet upon the breadth of the yielding saddle! With what inimitable grace does she whirl these tiny banners around her head, as winningly as a Titania performing ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... the cover channel. Now turn right side up and insert in the jar, taking care that the jar walls enter the cover channels at all points. Apply heat carefully to the edges of the cover and gently force cover clown. If too much compound has been used, so that it squeezes out around the cover, scrape off the excess with a hot knife while ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... that you were an English lady. I asked myself what was the right thing to do, and I decided that though you would consider me an ill-mannered, churlish clown, I would refuse those gracious, charming advances which you in your charity made. Our paths in life were destined to be utterly apart and divided, and what could it matter to you—the behavior of an insignificant fiddler? You would forget him ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... us to remain with her over Christmas. I longed to see the pantomime, having heard much from my cousins and from Leo of its delights—and of the harlequin, columbine, and clown. But my father wanted to be at home again, and he took me and Rubens and Nurse Bundle with him at the ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... last twenty years have set many houses among the boscage. They have built, too, two new churches, one of them set very finely on a hill; the old church is disused, or used, rather, only for a Sunday school. Upon Sunday scholars, from a Norman wall, looks down a hideous stone corbel. A clown's face stretches a devil's mouth wide open with hands like rat's paws; the sharp teeth grin like rat's teeth; perhaps in the Sunday school they make their own ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... fabulous, glittering chandelier, the crimson draperies and great curtain with its equestrienne on a curvetting steed. The orchestra, with a blare of trombones, announced the raising of the curtain and appearance of Mr. John Mays, the celebrated clown. He was followed by Chinese sports, the Vision of Cupid and Zephyr, and the songs, the programme stated, of Lowrie and Williams. These gentlemen, in superb yellow satin, emphasized ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... His eyes began to flash, his voice to grow resonant and fill the room; in the words of William Wirt, his biographer, "As his mind rolled along and began to glow from its own action, all the exuviae of the clown ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... she wrecked us," suggested the other. He was a stunted, wiry little man of thirty-five. His head seemed slightly too large; he had a pasty face with the sloe-black eyes, button nose, and the widely chiselled mouth of a circus clown. ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... been known to notice any other), and, shaking him cordially by the hand, he attempted to place him on the saddle behind him, but the uncourteous dog declined the honour. Ewen struggled hard, but the clown was a great, strong, clumsy fellow, and stuck to the earth with all his might. He candidly acknowledged, however, that his chief would have prevailed, had it not been for a birch-tree which stood by, and which he got within the fold of his left arm. The contest became very warm indeed, and ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... for many years, to have survived only in the performances of circuses and menageries. Between acts the extravaganzaist in cork and wool would appear, and to the song of "Coal-Black Rose," or "Jim along Joe," or "Sittin' on a Rail," command, with the clown and monkey, full share of admiration in the arena. At first he performed solus, and to the accompaniment of the "show" band; but the school was progressive; couples presently appeared, and, dispensing with the aid of foreign instruments, delivered their melodies to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... thinking face Like the yellow moon. This one has a face with white blots: I call him the clown. Here goes one down the grass With a pretty look of plumpness; She is a little girl going to school With her hands in the pockets of her pinafore. Her name is Sue. I like this one, in ...
— Poems By a Little Girl • Hilda Conkling
... a clown, Hezekiah," scolded Aunt Squeaky. "Give us a little more music. We shall not hear our band ...
— Grand-Daddy Whiskers, M.D. • Nellie M. Leonard
... these nine years, to Rousseau, Goethe, Young, Aretin, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, an Alabaster Vase lighted up within, Satan, Shakspeare, Bonaparte, Tiberius, AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Harlequin the clown, Sternhold and Hopkins, to the Phantasmagoria, to Henry the Eighth, to Chenier, to Mirabeau, to Young, R. Dallas (the schoolboy), to Michael Angelo, to Raphael, to a petit maitre, to Diogenes, to Childe Harold, to ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... make a quick change, you know. I came back—in tights, playing a big trombone, prancing round and making an awful noise. Lady Webling gave a little scream; nobody heard her because I made a loud blat on the trombone in the ear of the black-face clown, and he gave a shriek and did a funny ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... the clown's absurd story, with the still more ridiculous application, made me sick at heart a second time. It was not because I thought my illustrious friend was the Devil, or that I took a fool's idle tale as a counterbalance to Divine revelation that had ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... the common black hear is a study for the naturalist, and the hunter. He is fierce or good natured, sullen or playful, lazy or energetic, bold or cowardly, "all by turns and nothing long." He is the clown of the menagerie, the laughing stock rather than the dread of the hunter, and the abhorrence of border house-wives, owing to his intrusive manners, his fondness for overturning beehives, and his playful familiarity with ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... sums covered the number of yards a clown could cover in a given time on a handspring basis. He had shocked the schoolmaster by handing in an essay on ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... Sheila, had some of these thoughts. A teamster is either philosopher or clown. One cannot move, day after day, all day for a thousand days, under a changeless, changeful sky, inch by inch, across the surface of a changeless, changeful earth and not come very near to some of the locked doors of the temple where ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... quiet man, and can let pass any injury whatever, for I have a wife and children to take care of. Therefore, let me also say a word to your worship, that by no manner of means shall I put hand to sword either against clown or against knight. And from this time forth I forgive whatever insults are paid to me, whether they are or shall be paid by persons high or low, rich or ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... still sleeping, and Oberon seeing a clown near her, who had lost his way in the wood, and was likewise asleep: 'This fellow,' said he, 'shall be my Titania's true love'; and clapping an ass's head over the clown's, it seemed to fit him as well as if it had grown upon his own shoulders. Though Oberon fixed the ass's ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... friend!" shouted Tom, waving his hand at the man. "How are we to-morrow, as the clown in the ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... in. His usual walk is by pauses, as if (from the same vacuity of thought which made Dryden's clown whistle) he was telling his steps: and first paid his clumsy respects to my mother; then to my sister; next to me, as if I was already his wife, and therefore to be last in his notice; and sitting down by me, told ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... pockets. He was very tired, very miserable. A shocking thing had happened, and, in some degree, he held himself responsible for that happening. For was it not he who had been so besotted with the Clown, and keen about its training? Therefore the young man cursed himself, after the manner of his kind; and cursed his luck, in that, if this thing was to happen, it had not happened to him instead of to ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... and tumbling men, and the Bounding Brothers of Borneo, and a clown and monkeys, and a little mite of a pony with blue eyes. Was he any of them?" answered ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... said here that he was a boy who had always had a leaning to the kind of practical fun which he saw carried out by the clown to a pitch of perfection which at once enchanted and humbled him. Till that harlequinade, he had thought himself a funny boy in his way, and it had surprised him that his family had not found him more amusing than they did; but now he felt ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... not far away. He will spend the next five years in the fine prison at Mustapha. The clown was foolish enough to be caught stealing... and anyway this is not the first time His Highness has been inside, he has already done three years in gaol somewhere, and... hang on!... I believe it ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... these—neither the ironical schoolmaster nor the farcical clown of our Renaissance of intelligence—could exchange ideas with Pericles, say, or Caesar, without betraying a puritanical fussiness that would grievously bewilder the lucid minds of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... up. The Swedish giantess went over to an opposition troupe; the German ventriloquist and conjurer had died of apoplexy; their leading lady, who so airily executed the tight-rope performances as well, went off one fine day without saying good-bye, and married the clown, with whom she had serious thoughts of setting up a select show on her own account. The roomy, comfortable caravan was sold, and an old lumbering machine hired each summer instead; while in winter the party lived from hand to mouth on their wits, putting up here, there, and anyhow. The animals ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... Nature's simple face Perennial youth possessed and winning grace; But who shall dare, in this refining age, With Nature's praise to soil his snowy page? What polish'd lover, unappall'd by sneers Dare court a beldame of six thousand years, When every clown with microscopick eyes The gaping furrows on her forehead spies?— 'Good sir, your pardon: In her naked state, Her wither'd form we cannot chuse but hate; But fashion's art the waste of time repairs, Each wrinkle fills, and dies ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... in their places. I inquired after them among readers and booksellers, but I inquired in vain; the memorial of them was lost among men, their place was no more to be found; and I was laughed to scorn for a clown and a pedant, devoid of all taste and refinement, little versed in the course of present affairs, and that knew nothing of what had passed in the best companies of court and town. So that I can only avow in general to your Highness that we do abound in learning and wit, but to fix upon particulars ...
— English Satires • Various
... fighting it is resolved to decide the issue by single combat, in the course of which explanations ensue which lead to a general recognition and reconciliation. The pastoral element is represented by old Antimon an antic shepherd, a clown his son, his daughter a careless shepherdess and her despised lover, and ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... subjected. But he is worth a million pounds, there can be no doubt of the fact—he has not made people's fortunes, at least those whose fortunes it was said he would make; he has made them away: but his own he has made, emphatically made it; he is worth a million pounds. Hurrah for the millionaire! The clown who views the pandemonium of red brick which he has built on the estate which he has purchased in the neighbourhood of the place of his grand debut, in which every species of architecture, Greek, Indian, and Chinese, is employed in caricature—who hears ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... disproportionately powerful influence. The Bible was paramount. Aristotle dominated the whole mental horizon of the schoolmen. Alfred of Beverley tells us that Geoffrey of Monmouth's book "was so universally talked of that to confess ignorance of its stories was the mark of a clown."[1] So great was the influence of Piers Plowman, that from it were taken watchwords at the great rising of the peasants.[2] The power of such works could not be wholly hemmed in by the barrier of manuscript: like a spring torrent it would burst forth and carry all before ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... nimble, freckled jackanapes is Harlequin; not your spangled Harlequin into which modern degeneracy has debased that first-born of Momus, but the genuine original zany of the Commedia, ragged and patched, an impudent, cowardly, blackguardly clown." ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... tiny appareil de chasse shot upward like a swallow. "A Nieuport," shouted the crowd as one voice. Eager to atone for his copain's failure, and impatient at his delay in getting out of the way, the tiny biplane tossed and tumbled about in the air like a clown ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... two thousand years or so; at first earlier myths gathered around him, and then from time to time any unusual feats of skill or cunning shown off on one or another countryside, till many of the stories make him at the last grotesque, little more than a clown. So in Bible History, while lesser kings keep their dignity, great Solomon's wit is outwitted by the riddles of some countryman; and Lucifer himself, known in Kiltartan as "the proudest of the angels, thinking himself ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... seemed not only seriously excusable, but even comically excusable. Who were all these pompous preposterous people with their footmen and their foot-scrapers, their chimney-pots and their chimney-pot hats, that they should prevent a poor clown from getting sausages if he wanted them? One would suppose that property was a serious thing. I had reached, as it were, a higher level of that mountainous and vapourous visions, the ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... No one, says Fitzjames, 'can fail to be touched' when he sees an eminent lawyer 'bending the whole force of his mind to understand the confused, bewildered, wearisome, and half-articulate mixture of question and statement which some wretched clown pours out in the agony of his terror and confusion.' The latitude allowed in such cases is highly honourable. 'Hardly anything short of wilful misbehaviour, such as gross insults to the court or abuse of a witness, will draw upon (the prisoner) the mildest reproof.'[94] The tacit understanding ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... matters shall be written down And the long record of our years is told, Where sham, like flesh, must perish and grow cold; When the tomb closes on our fair renown And priest and layman, sage and motleyed clown Must quit the places which they dearly hold, What to our credit shall we find enscrolled? And what shall be the jewels of our crown? I fancy we shall hear to our surprise Some little deeds of kindness, long forgot, Telling our glory, and ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... offer prayers of thanksgiving. Following a curious custom of the day, which shows Folly and Wisdom side by side, just as we find them in Calderon's and Shakespeare's dramas, Lucretia presented the costly robe which she wore when she offered up her prayer, to one of her court fools, and the clown ran merrily through the streets of Rome, bawling out, "Long live the illustrious Duchess of Ferrara! Long live Pope Alexander!" With noisy demonstrations the Borgias and their retainers celebrated the ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... have been provoked at my own stupidity, but never, never have I felt so stupid, such a godforsaken blockhead as I do now. When I try to consider I feel as if that heavy shutter had been nailed clown on my head. Have you had any ideas? I have not one which would not disgrace the veriest ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... among you I am called Lord Fermain Clancharlie, but my real name is one of poverty—Gwynplaine. I have grown up in poverty; frozen by winter, and made wretched by hunger. Yesterday I was in the rags of a clown. Can you realise what misery means? Before it is too late try and understand that our system of society is ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... one in bas-relief. In brief, this dog, who caused Kitty Silver so much disquietude, as she sat upon the back steps at Mr. Atwater's, belonged to that species of which no Frenchman ever sees a specimen without smiling and murmuring: "Caniche!" He was that golden-hearted little clown of all the world, ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... daughter's resolution and journey southward. He studied every sentiment, and even every phrase, which he thought could reconcile the old man to her extraordinary resolution. The effect which this epistle produced will be hereafter adverted to. Butler committed it to the charge of an honest clown, who had frequent dealings with Deans in the sale of his dairy produce, and who readily undertook a journey to Edinburgh to put the letter ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... sc. 2, Shakespeare makes the Clown use bibble-babble in a similar sense; but afterwards in the same drama, act v. sc.1, brabble is ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... Bartlemy fair? If you have, you may have seen—nay, you must have seen—Richardson's immortal show. You must have seen a tall platform in front of the migratory edifice, and on that platform you must have delighted your visual orb with the clown, the pantaloon, the harlequin, the dancing ladies, the walking dandy, the king with his crown, the queen in her rabbit-skin robes, the smock-frocked countryman, the top-booted jockey, and all the dramatis personae of the performance that every moment of every day, during ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... said he. "It's the first nest of Hooty's that I've ever found, and perhaps I'll never find another. Gee, I'm glad I came over here to find out what those Crows were making such a fuss about. I wonder if I can get these clown without ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess
... pre-eminence;—you who prate of God and know nothing whatsoever about Him! The horse, dog, cat,—even the wild animals, whose vices, perchance, pale beside your own, may go to Heaven before you. The Supreme Architect is neither a Nero, nor a Stuart, nor a clown. He will recompense all who deserve recompense, be they ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... and in my breast! And cursed be this sin to which he led me! Spurn me, Rei; strike me on the cheek, spit upon me, on Meriamun, the Royal harlot who sells herself to win a crown. Oh, I hate him, hate him, and I will pay him in shame for shame—him, the clown in king's attire. See here,'—and from her robe she drew a white flower that was known to her and me—'twice to-day have I been minded with this deadly blossom to make an end of me, and of all my shame, and all my empty greed of glory. But this thought has held my hand: I, Meriamun, ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... told you all that Lucilla can tell. Permit me to reappear in these pages. Shall I say, with your favorite English clown, reappearing every year in your barbarous English pantomime, "Here I am again: how do you do?" No—I had better leave that out. Your clown is one of your national institutions. With this mysterious source of British amusement let no foreign person ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... floor was a tub containing Miss Wishart mid-deep in soapsuds. Her thick hair was all soaking, and clung fast to her head: dripping locks hung clown over her eyes, which looked out through the tangle patient and suffering. She glanced up quickly as Miss Mackenzie came in, and then resigned herself passively into Kate's hands, who with a piece of flannel had resumed the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... subject, a glance over a wide range of human experience proves that God helps those who help themselves, and whatever be the tenor of our fortune, levity is more seemly than moodiness, and under any circumstances there is more virtue in being a clown than a cynic. But in adversity, a subdued cheerfulness and quiet humor are, next to Christian fortitude, the golden mean of feeling that makes the loss of worldly things rest lightly on the heart, and spreads out before the hopeful eye the vision ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... But he loved his mother with a fundamental, generous, undistinguishing love. Only he always forgot what he was going to do. He was much more sensitive than Maria, more shy and reluctant. But his shyness, his sensitiveness only made him more aimless and awkward, a tiresome clown, slack and uncontrolled, witless. All day long his mother shouted and shrilled and scolded at him, or hit him angrily. He did not mind, he came up like a cork, warm and roguish and curiously appealing. She loved him with a fierce protective love, grounded on pain. There was such ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... "He's a clown or a hacrobat, or somethink of that sort, in one of the theatres or music-'alls. He's bin burnt out o' his 'ome last night, an's a-sellin' off all he's been able to ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... than the stranger. Still his head and heart, alike, were full, and he talked more freely than was altogether consistent with his Yankee character. He told of Ralph's predicament, and the clown sympathized; he narrated the quest which had brought him forth, and of his heretofore unrewarded labors; concluded with naming the ensuing Monday as the day of the youth's trial, when, if nothing in the meantime could be discovered of the true criminal—for the pedler never for a moment doubted ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the scene, but with that decorum which belonged to their superior age and gravity. As for Clive, he was in these matters much older than the grizzled old warrior his father. It did one good to hear the Colonel's honest laughs at Clown's jokes, and to see the tenderness and simplicity with which he watched over this happy brood of young ones. How lavishly did he supply them with sweetmeats between the acts! There he sat in the midst of them, and ate an orange ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... thy prayers a little longer. Stay! a cloud of dust, a horseman!—no doubt an outrider hastening on to announce his approach. Ah! he passes, the stupid clown! Another! Nay, that was only a Derby wagon; the stars forbid that our deliverer should come in a Derby! But now, hush! there's a bona fide barouche, two black horses, black driver and all. Almost at the turn! O gentle Ethiopian, tarry! this is the castle! Go, then, false man! Fatima, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... has," concurred Polly. "Snap says he's just wise to everything, and did you ever see anything so absurd as those clown ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... ear the muffled sound of a cheer raised by countless voices. The smile upon his lips grew scornful: "The King!" he muttered, "greeting his good Parliament. 'Tis said he loves a well-timed jest; pity to rob England of such a famous clown; perchance in hell the devil may use his wit to while ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... profound to be caught by the facile fallacy that the rapid changes in religious thought betoken the early abrogation of all creeds. Lessing, the philosophers of the French revolution, James Mill, Schopenhauer and others fell into this error. They were not wiser than the clown of Horace, who seated himself by the rushing stream, thinking it must soon run ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... were so deep in melancholy that I could not hold my wrath. "Was it a gentleman's part to lead me on to play the clown?" I asked. "I ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... remembered, after hearing the "motley fool" moral on the time, declared that "motley's the only wear"; and I opine that Lamb would consider it no small praise to be likened, in wit, wisdom, and eloquence, to Touchstone, or to the Clown in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... the wise{,} doth eve{r} make the better fool. Clown. God send you, sir, a speedy infirmity{,} for the better increasing of your folly."—Shakespeare. Twelfth Night{, Act I, ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... say not this to cry him clown; I find my Shakespeare in his clown, His rogues the self-same parent own; Nay! Satan talks in Milton's tone! Where'er the ocean inlet strays, The salt sea wave its source betrays, Where'er the queen of summer blows, She tells the zephyr, "I'm ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... very often she would say to him, "Your actions are like a Ne-naw-bo-zhoo." Then the child would reply, "I am the great Ne-naw-bo-zhoo on this earth." The meaning of this word in the Algonquin language is "a clown" and therefore he meant that he was the great "clown" of ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... beggarly wretch!" replied Anastasia, showing her teeth. "You are a low-bred fellow. Alfred, your boot-tree, till I take the length of his muzzle, to teach him to come and play the Joe Miller at his age, old clown!" ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... Such an aggregation of actual, living Silurian monsters, any one of which would make a man a fortune to-day, if it could be kept on ice and exhibited for one season only. You could take a full grown mastodon to-day, and with no calliope, no lithographs, no bearded lady, no clown with four pillows in his pantaloons and no iron-jawed woman, you could go across this continent and successfully ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... not only gave no milk but had a vicious disposition. He had paid two prices for a pair of locoed horses that did their pulling backward. He had made himself a laughing stock to the entire country and seemed destined to play the clown somehow whenever Helene Spenceley was in the vicinity. His ears grew red to the rims as he ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... the garden, besides a "Vauxhall," which was in reality a drinking-bar where tea too was served, and there were a few green tables and chairs standing round it. A chorus of wretched singers and a drunken but exceedingly depressed German clown from Munich with a red nose entertained the public. The clerks quarrelled with some other clerks and a fight seemed imminent. Svidrigailov was chosen to decide the dispute. He listened to them for ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... for mirth;" Much less for sigh and frown. "A vale of tears" may be this earth— 'Tis so to every clown. The desert blossoms as the rose, And joy flows everywhere; The star of hope in brightness glows, No room ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... shining morning cheek (Who, in the tumbril, with her market-gear, Sits seated high), seems to expect the flash Exploding, that shall lay the innocent And feathered tenants of the landscape low. Not so the clown, who, heedless whether life Or death betide, across the plashy ford 120 Drives slow; the beasts plod on, foot following foot, Aged and grave, with half-erected ears, As now his whip above their matted manes Hangs tremulous, while the dark and shallow stream Flashes beneath their fetlock: he, astride ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... hearthstone had they not profaned? What fatigue, what danger, what crime, had ever checked them for a moment? And for all this obedience, labor, and bloodshed, were they not even to be paid such wages as the commonest clown, who only tore the earth at home, received? Did Philip believe that a few thousand Spaniards were to execute his sentence of death against three millions of Netherlanders, and be cheated of their ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... quite at variance with Mr Farmer's ideas; so, in order to overcome it by the gentlest means in the world, Reuben had the option given him of being flogged, or of laying out on the smoke-sail yard, just to begin with, and to get into the way of it. It was a laughable thing to see this huge clown hanging with us boys on the thin yard, and hugging it as closely as if he loved it. He had a perfect horror of getting to the end of it. At a distance, when our smoke-sail yard was manned; we looked like a parcel of larks spitted, with one great ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... three men; and the clown and policeman will make five. Thats why you wanted five men ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... their way across the piazza and mounted the church steps behind the crowd where they could look across obliquely to the little stage. A clown was dancing to the music of a hurdy-gurdy, while a woman in a tawdry pink satin evening gown beat an accompaniment on a drum. It was a very poor play with very poor players, and yet it represented to these people of Grotta del Monte something of life, of ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... chapter: for Mr. Bellfrey being at a visit where I was, viz., his cousin's (Lady Dainty's) in Soho, was asked, what entertainments they had in the country? Now Bellfrey is very ignorant, and much a clown; but confident withal. In a word, he struck up a fox-chase: Lady Dainty's dog, Mr. Sippet, as she calls him, started and jumped out of his lady's lap, and fell a barking. Bellfrey went on, and called all the ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... and fine only as it is wrought finely. Educate a boy to tumbled hair and grimy hands, and he will go tumbled and grimy to his grave. Put a hundred boys together where they will have the appurtenances of a clown, and I do not believe there will be ten out of the hundred who will not become precisely to that degree clownish. I am not battling for the luxuries of life, but I am for its decencies. I would not turn boys into Sybarites, but neither would I let them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... granted so, we must get them back. The gentleman is dwelling in a bungalow on the mountain side, for greater convenience in watching events and wooing the lady of his heart's desire. We employed a clumsy clown to put him out of the world; but he dies hard, and now we have got to get rid of him. But if he hasn't the papers on his clothes then you have this pleasant scheme for kidnapping him, getting him down to your steamer at Baltimore and cruising with him ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... saying, the exact force of which we cannot determine. The reading of H. 1. 13 may be translated, 'No fool on a board (or shield ?),' that is, a clown or tumbler (?). ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... a rabbit out of one of the girl's handkerchiefs, and was springing it from his hand against the wall. He seemed to have a fair appreciation of the character of his associates for the evening; and though himself perfectly competent to behave well in the best society, chose to act the clown ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur |
