"Oaf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are a stupid oaf; do you believe that Her Grace the Duchess of Monmouth would come to applaud your last dance? Once more, Polypheme, you are tricking, you seek all sorts of evasions. You are afraid of being hanged, ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... one hand on the man's forearm and ran the other down the plump body beneath the coat. 'My goodness!' said he to Torpenhow, 'and this gray oaf dares to be a thief! I have seen an Esneh camel-driver have the black hide taken off his body in strips for stealing half a pound of wet dates, and he was as tough as whipcord. This things' soft all over—like ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... meed of her beauty,' said Bedford. 'Sister Kate likes not worship at any shrine save one. Look at our suite: our knights—yea, our very grooms are picked for their comeliness; to wit that great feather-pated oaf of a Welshman, Owen Tudor there; while dames and demoiselles, tire-women and all, are as near akin as may be to Sir Gawain's ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Newt, to whom he made this oration, had been taught by her husband that Mr. Van Boozenberg was an oaf, but an oaf whose noise was to be listened to with the utmost patience and respect. "He's a brute, my dear; but what can we do? When I am rich we can ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... embarrassed because he was entirely thrown out of all his calculations. He felt for the moment that there was no calculating at all, no security in preparing paths. You never know where they would lead. Here had he been actually alarmed in secret! And the oaf stood before him undisturbedly opening up ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the Prince Regent and the great fights on Hounslow Heath—whilst I was to remain forever a farmer's boy. That afternoon I was upstairs, looking at the reflection of myself in the tall glass, wondering miserably why I seemed to be such an oaf. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... for an oaf? Dang me, if he han't been used to drink vinegar, he'll find it out fast enow of ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... now; and, when they see A poet eyeing round the company, Straight each-man for himself begins to doubt; They shrink like seamen when a press comes out. Few of them will be found for public use, Except you charge an oaf upon each house, Like the train bands, and every man engage For a sufficient fool, to serve the stage. And when, with much ado, you get him there, Where he in all his glory should appear, Your poets make him such rare things to say, That he's more wit than any man i' th' play: But of ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... scorn of their methods of entertaining themselves they had felt to be disgusting impudence, which would have been deservedly punished with a horsewhip, if the youngster had not been a big-muscled, clumsy oaf, with a dangerous eye. Upon this footing their acquaintance had stood in past years, and to decide—as Sir Nigel had decided—that the oaf in question had begun to make his bid for splendid fortune under the roof of Stornham Court itself was a thing not to be regarded calmly. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... they all thought me an awkward clumsy oaf, and I must have looked it; but I was suddenly brought to myself by my uncle's voice and the sight of ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... Well, yesterday (that means what day you like) 'Papa' had rouge and hair-powder to buy; He brought back salt! this oaf of six-foot-one! ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... he came to Paradise, And found his own four Gods, and that he wrote; And marvelled, being very near to God, What oaf on earth had made his toil God's law, Till God said mocking: "Mock not. These be thine." Then cried Evarra: "I have sinned!" — "Not so. If thou hadst written otherwise, thy Gods Had rested in the mountain and the mine, And I were poorer by four wondrous ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... from the fresh lips blown Of Cherubim at play about God's throne Seemed her virginity. She dreamed alone Dreams round and sparkling as some sea-washed stone. Then an oaf saw and lusted at the sight. They smashed the thing ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... the cassock began to break out in excuses, saying that his Patron would reward me, and that he was glad that an Englishman had been by to rescue a Person of Quality from such great Peril, when that Flanders Oaf younger—the extortionate villain—would not stir a finger to help him unless he had half a guilder over ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... muttering to himself. "A plague upon it! To train two boys is more than I bargained for, and over and above to hinder this wiseacre Ashton from ruining himself, or being ruined by le Borgne Basque! What brought him here? I thought he was safe in Castile with the Free Companions. I would let the oaf take his course, for a wilful wrong-headed fool, but that it would scarce be doing good service to ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hath a soul And loves to make bread pleasant— The Twist, the long Vienna Roll, The Horseshoe and the Crescent, The Milk, the Tin, the lovely loaf Where currants one discovers, The Wholemeal for the country oaf, The Knot for all true lovers. So, till upon the glowing East The sun in red and gold Comes forth to bake the daily feast, I'll cry with heart as light ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... spoilt-child tone, "I'm not going to bed before my time for laughing at that great oaf! Nurse Alice says he is to wed me, but I won't have him! I like the pretty boy who had the good dog and saved father, and I like you, Master Ambrose. Sit down by me and tell me the story over again, and we shall see Kit Smallbones ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Odds bodikins and pins! I shall never be able to contain myself! Where's the money to pay the rent, you oaf? ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... —At the bottom, I knew, rain-drippings stagnate; Next, a handful of blossoms I plucked To bury him with, my bookshelf's magnate; Then I went in-doors, brought out a loaf, Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis; Lay on the grass and forgot the oaf Over a jolly chapter ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... April, When the sap begins to stir! Make me man or make me woman, Make me oaf or ape or human, Cup of flower or cone of fir; Make me anything but neuter When the sap begins ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... younger than Hiram. He was a shrewd, quick-witted lad, idle, shiftless, willful, ill-trained perhaps, but as bright and keen as a pin. He was the very opposite to poor, dull Hiram. Eleazer White had never loved his son; he was ashamed of the poor, slack-witted oaf. Upon the other hand, he was very fond of Levi West, whom he always called "our Levi," and whom he treated in every way as though he were his own son. He tried to train the lad to work in the mill, and was patient ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... regale? You was one of that stinking crowd, I suppose, that bawled in the street. You go and herd with knaves and yokels, do you? and bring shame upon me, and set the countryside a-chattering of Richard Burke and his idle young oaf of a brother! By gad, sir, I'll whip you for this; I'll give you something ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang |
