"Gawky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gang a' through the toun, An' the wee lairdie trows I 'll hang or I 'll droun. Wi' his gawky-like face, yestreen he did say, "I 'll maybe tak you, for Bess I 'll no hae, Nor Mattie, nor Effie, nor lang-legged Jeanie, Nor Nelly, nor Katie, nor skirlin' wee Beenie." I stappit my ears, ran aff in a fury— I 'm thinkin' to bring them afore judge an' jury. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... apt to be in their youth. He cared little for boyish games, and still less for the bright eyes of the girls. He had remarkably long arms and legs, which were too often in the way of his comrades, and from which he derived the nickname at the Latin-School of "gawky Sumner"; and it may be well to notice here that there is no better sign for future superiority than for a lad to be ridiculed in this manner; while the wags who invent such sobriquets usually come to no good end. [Footnote: More than one such has died the death of an inebriate.] ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... new boy walked forward with no more articulate complaints, though his face was drawn and he bit his lips. He was shown the chicken-yard—full of gawky, half-grown chickens shedding their down and growing their feathers—and forgot his feet in the fascination of scattering grain to them and watching their fluttering scrambles. He was shown the rabbit-house and allowed to take one of ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... was pitifully gawky; he neither sat erect nor lounged—he slumped spineless. Big spectacles were in style now, but Pop's big spectacles were just out of it. His face was like a parchment that had been left out in the rain and ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... the direction indicated and saw there a very tall, awkward boy, pouring over a badly worn book, and making notes on a slip of yellow paper. He wore glasses, and possessed that queerly undefinable personality, usually ascribed to the gawky boy, or he ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... crimson silk gown," said good-natured Mrs. Sedley. "What a gawky it was! And his sisters are not much more graceful. Lady Dobbin was at Highbury last night with three of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Yes," she went on, looking into her empty teacup; "it was good-bye. He walked away, erect, his shoulders high, his body swinging. And I sat there shivering. I had turned down a president of the United States! Me, a gawky little Iowa girl. And, what was worse, I was in love with him, too. Well, I remember sitting on the porch till the folks came home from prayer meeting and I remember going to bed and lying awake all night, ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... through to the unfurnished and somewhat dingy kitchen. It had a low window-seat, from the extreme ends of which, as the two skippers entered, two figures—a middle-aged woman and a gawky lad— arose and saluted them; the one with a highly genteel curtsey, the other with an awkward half-pull at his forelock, and much scraping ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... looked around in gawky embarrassment, bewildered by the splendor of the room; and after some deliberation selected the most substantial of the chairs, on the extreme edge of which he carefully ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... leaning on the trailer's shoulder and waiting for his turn in the line in front of the ticket window, when a tall, gawky, good- looking country lad sprang out of it and at him with an expression of surprise and anxiety. "Father," he said, "father, what's wrong? What are you doing here? Is anybody ill at home? ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... a compositor—a tall, lank, hollow-eyed man with a bad cough. His mother was a woman of the people, angular and taciturn. Jonas himself was pale and gawky and shy. ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... scarcely believe my eyes when she stepped down from the car platform, for the somewhat gawky maiden, as I used to term her in our not altogether infrequent playful differences of opinion, when similar compliments were common, had grown into a handsome woman, fair-skinned, but ruddy of color, as all of us were, and I was embarrassed when to the envy of the loungers she embraced me ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... a spacious temporary platform upon which were seated the scholars who were to take part in the exercises of the evening; rows of small boys, washed and dressed to an intolerable state of discomfort; rows of gawky big boys; snowbanks of girls and young ladies clad in lawn and muslin and conspicuously conscious of their bare arms, their grandmothers' ancient trinkets, their bits of pink and blue ribbon and the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ones, now come In turn; the lean, ill-favored, gawky, bald, Long-nosed, uncouth, raw-boned, and those with scald And freckled, frowsy, ricketty and squat, The stumpy, bandy-legged, gaunt, each bought A man; though ugly as a toad, they sold, For every man with her received his gold. The heaped-up gold which beauteous ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... was the first of Edison's masters, and perhaps his fellows, who appreciated him. Mediocrity had only seen the gawky stripling, with his moonstruck air, and pestilent habit of trying some new crotchet. Himself an inventor, Milliken recognised in his deep-set eye and musing brow the fire of a suppressed genius. He was then just twenty-one. The friendship of Mr. Milliken, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... themselves particularly, and not without reason, on the smart and soldierlike aspect of the regiment Recruits were looked on with a jealous eye, and a gawky or loutish fellow was received with open disfavour. While we were at Cahir a couple of young fishermen from the North of Ireland joined. They came in sea-boots, pilot-cloth trousers, and knitted jerseys; and they were ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... ease, thoroughly prepared to take advantage of all gratification that might come in his way, and thoroughly preserving the manners of a gentleman accustomed to the companionship of a prince. John Leech's Master Slender," she continues, "was picturesquely true to the gawky, flabby, booty squire.... His mode of sitting on a stile, with his long ungainly legs dangling down ... ever and anon ejaculating his maudlin cuckoo cry of 'Oh sweet Ann Page,' was a delectable treat." Without disrespect to Leech's memory, it may be said that others of his friends did not ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... at a distance, look like great clusters of white blossoms. But the rank undergrowth of the forests of this region is not attractive. Many of its component parts deserve the name of weeds, being gawky, ragged umbels, coarse docks, rank nettles, and many other things which I don't know, and never wish to see again. Near the end of this descent my mare took the bit between her teeth and carried me at an ungainly gallop into the beautifully ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... all of which showed it to be the residence of a Musk-rat of honour and eminence, a chief of high degree among his people. The chief of the Musk-rats bade the Nanticoke enter this cabin, but a moment after he said, "No, no, that cannot be done. It is not high enough for such a tall, strapping gawky as you are. So sit you here, while I go and fetch you food." So the Nanticoke seated himself on the sward, while the chief of the Musk-rats went to his house to fetch food for ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... impish tricks. And now—letting alone that pock-marks have seamed her grim face till she is as ugly as Alecto—she is a Precisian of the Precisians. I declare our household is in her eyes sinfully free! If she can hammer out a text of Scripture, and write her name in characters as big and gawky as herself, 'tis as far as her education has carried her, save in pickling, preserving, stitchery, and clear starching, the only arts not sinful in her eyes. If I am to have a broomstick, I had rather ride ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Yes, the gawky and stumble-over-things age! Piano-stools, rugs, anything that comes in his way. And the impressions wouldn't do him a bit of good. They might, in fact, do him harm," and she laughed merrily and spread her fingers to the blaze. A laugh was often her best shield. She had in her time dealt many ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... microscopical proportions, and looked dirty; Bittlesea itself had the appearance of a village with foolish aspirations to be considered a port, and he noticed, with a strong sense of pity tempered with disdain, the attentions of two young townsmen to a couple of gawky girls in white frocks. ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... struggle for the first necessities of life, for the daily meal and the nightly bed. He had seen his comrades of letters die of actual privation. From childhood he had known no happiness. The half blind gawky youth, with dirty linen and twitching limbs, had always, whether in the streets of Lichfield, the quadrangle of Pembroke, or the coffee-houses of London, been an object of mingled pity and amusement. With a proud and sensitive soul, every day of his life must have brought ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... she doomed to find a natural death; for, when the case seemed hopeless, a noise was heard on the staircase, and, with scarcely the apology for a knock, a wild gawky man made his appearance, and at once cried out, "I hope, sir, it's not a bargain yet; I hope it's not too late; discharge this young woman, Mr. Reding, and let me teach you the old truth, which never has ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... no comfort to me, as I leave any person of common prudence to imagine; for that scoundrel of a young Bullingdon (who was now growing up a tall, gawky, swarthy lad, and about to become my greatest plague and annoyance) would have inherited every penny of the property, and I should have been left considerably poorer even than when I married the widow: for I spent my personal fortune as well as the lady's income ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... anxious to discover what impression her friend Mr. Holsworthy was making on me. Till then, I had no idea she was fond of anyone in particular; but the way her glance wandered from him to me and from me to Hilda showed clearly that she thought much of this gawky visitor. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... perfect health, my sister is in perfect health, how are yours?" she said, as Puffy Ellis started to clear his throat. "No, no, don't sit down. You're much too imposing. Mr. Crocker, you take one side of the fireplace and Mr. Ellis the other, and please don't look so gawky. You aren't really afraid of one little girl, are you? And by the way, Charlie Lazelle, go out on the porch ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... encourage the insurrection; Danton takes Henriot's hand and tells him, in a low voice, "Go ahead, don't be afraid; we want to show that the Assembly is free, be firm."[34164] At this the tall bedizened gawky recovers his assurance, and in his husky voice, he addresses the president: "Herault, the people have not come here to listen to big words. You are a good patriot... Do you promise on your head that the Twenty-two shall be given up in twenty-four hours?"—"No."—"Then, in that case, I am not ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... is a curious Being to pretend to be censorious—an awkward Gawky, without any one good ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... long while Cleopatra had looked on, wistfully it is true, but not enviously at her sister's astonishingly successful career: for was not Baby only a child after all? And, from the age of eleven to fourteen, Leonetta had been so outrageously gawky and unattractive, no matter how beautifully she happened to be clad, that Cleopatra's feelings of uneasiness about her sister were laid to rest as if for ever ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... he seemed to be. He heaved a sigh and wiped his eye, and then he said to me: "Take your books and make your books companions—never toys; For they who so forsake their books grow into gawky boys." I don't know who he was. Do you? he snuffled at the end; And he said, "Mark—ME—boy! Your book should ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... stay here, my Didine. All is at an end. And is this fortune so lightly earned after all? Must I not marry a gawky, tow-haired creature, with a red nose, the daughter of a notary, and saddle myself with a stepmother who could give Madame de Piedefer points on ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... presenting himself before his master; "and is your honor, then, not ganging hame when Mysie the puir old body's in the dead thraw! Hech, sirs, but its awfu'! Ane of the big sacks o' siller—a' gowd, ye maun ken, which them gawky chields and my ain sell were lifting to your honor's chaumer, cam down on her head! Eh! but it gars me greet—ah! wull-a-wins, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various |
