"Unwieldy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mother's door in a cab oftener than about once a month. He opened that door with a latch-key (a modern lock was almost the only innovation that he had succeeded in fixing on his mother), and stumbled with his unwieldy parcel into the ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... President, Secretary of War, and Congress. He spoke of organizing a grand army of invasion, of which the regulars were to constitute the "iron column," and seemed to intimate that he himself would take the field in person, though he was at the time very old, very heavy, and very unwieldy. His age must have been ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... huge dog rushed into the hall, disturbing, by his unwieldy and boisterous gambols, the whole economy of reels, rocks, and distaffs, with which the maidens of the household were employed when the arrival of their lord was a signal to them to withdraw, and extracting ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... The dizzying mill-wheel rests; the anvil's din Hath ceased; all, all around is quietness. Less fearful on this day, the limping hare Stops, and looks back, and stops, and looks on man, Her deadliest foe. The toil-worn horse, set free, Unheedful of the pasture, roams at large; And as his stiff, unwieldy bulk he rolls, His iron-armed hoofs gleam in the morning ray. But chiefly man the day of rest enjoys. Hail, Sabbath! thee I hail, the poor man's day. On other days the man of toil is doomed To eat his joyless bread, lonely; ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... news that the French had been seen four weeks before from the coast of Candia, and were then steering southeast. This intelligence was corroborated by a vessel spoken the same day. Southeast, being nearly dead before the prevailing wind, was an almost certain clew to the destination of an unwieldy body which could never regain ground lost to leeward; so, although Nelson now learned that some of his missing frigates had also been seen recently off Candia, he would waste no time looking for them. ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... invention of such a lamp by Dr. Clanny, of Sunderland, who, in 1813, contrived an apparatus to which he gave air from the mine through water, by means of bellows. This lamp went out of itself in inflammable gas. It was found, however, too unwieldy to be used by the miners for the purposes of their work, and did not come into general use. A committee of gentlemen was formed to investigate the causes of the explosions, and to devise, if possible, some means of preventing them. ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... been a bull or a panther, they would have had their bones shivered to pieces by the tremendous blows which Boone dealt upon his adversary with all the strength of despair; but Bruin is by nature an admirable fencer, and, in spite of his unwieldy shape, there is not in the world an animal whose motions are more rapid in a close encounter. Once or twice he was knocked down by the force of the blows, but generally he would parry them with a wonderful agility. At last, he succeeded in seizing the ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... head toward the latter ship, the turtle puffed forth black smoke and wallowed across the channel. An uglier poor thing you never saw, nor a bolder! Squat to the water, belching black smoke, her engines wheezing and repining, unwieldy of management, her bottom scraping every hummock of sand in all the shoaly Roads—ah, she was ugly and courageous! Our two small gunboats, the Raleigh and the Beaufort, coming from Norfolk, now overtook us,—we went on together. I was forward with the crew ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... bowlder, which served the purpose of a throne, sat the Chief of the Bow-legs, playing with his unwieldy club (which was merely the root end of a sapling hacked into shape with sharp stones), as if it had been a bulrush. In height and bulk he was far above his fellows, though similar to them in general type except for the matter ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the especial butt of Mr. Wilson's unwieldy sarcasms. Robertson, he tells us, was the "principal of the University High School of Edinburgh,"—an institution of which we do not remember ever to have heard before. He is especially indignant that "Robertson—a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... chambers was continued when the youth came to town during the vacations. The uncouth, unwieldy moralist was flattered at finding himself an object of idolatry to two high-born, high-bred, aristocratic young men, and throwing gravity aside, was ready to join in their vagaries and play the part of ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... heavy and well-fed, and of a rich and rubicund countenance. From over-indulgence he had become unwieldy, being propped up in a well-stuffed chair, one leg resting on a low stool, his whole frame bloated by indolence and sensuality. He was short-necked and full-chested. His eyes, gray and fiery, were almost starting ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the time of Henry VI. the brotherhood of lawyers had attained to an unwieldy growth, and it separated into two halls, the original two halls of the Knights Templar forming the nuclei around which the frequenters of each grouped themselves. Thus arose the Middle and Inner Temple. Under the eighth Henry the two societies ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... big unwieldy key, he let himself in and went upstairs to bed. Two thoughts went with him—apparently quite ordinary and ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... day had been spent in counting out and securing, in separate lots, duly docketted and distinguished, a portion of that unwieldy accumulation of wealth, the charge of which he had accepted, against the time when it should be called for and ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... council choosing should consist of the interest of the commonwealth: as the wisdom of the commonwealth is in the aristocracy, so the interest of the commonwealth is in the whole body of the people. And whereas this, in case the commonwealth consist of a whole nation, is too unwieldy a body to be assembled, this council is to consist of such a representative as may be equal, and so constituted, as can never contract any other interest than that of the whole people; the manner whereof, being such as is best shown ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... still described as His Majesty's Council for Virginia, had become a large and unwieldy body, with many of its members inactive. Its influence on the conduct of Virginia's affairs was now decidedly less important than in the earlier years. According to the Orders and Constitutions, no one "under ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven
... cost?" said he, still smiling. It was a large, elaborate, and perhaps, I may say, unwieldy affair, with a great elephant at the ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... tremendous cleft in the Akma Dagh. The ground seems too small for the battle-field of such armies as were engaged on the occasion. It is bounded on the north by a low hill, separating it from the plain of Baias, and it is possible that Alexander may have made choice of this position, leaving the unwieldy forces of Darius to attack him from the plain. His advantage would be greater, on account of the long, narrow form of the ground, which would prevent him from being engaged with more than a small portion of the Persian army, at one time. The plain is ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... "The Boy Orator of Zepata City," as he was called, was very dear to the people of that booming town. In their eyes he was one of the most promising young men in the whole great unwieldy State of Texas, and the boy orator thought they were probably right, but he was far too clever to let them see it. He was clever in his words and in his deeds and in his appearance. And he dressed much more carefully than any other man in ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... certain sense of desolation and sadness is the College library. There used to be a story in my days at Cambridge of a book-collecting Don who was fond of discoursing in public of the various crosses he had to bear. He was lamenting one day in Hall the unwieldy size of his library. "I really don't know what to do with my books," he said, and looked round for sympathy. "Why not read them?" said a sharp and caustic Fellow opposite. It may be thought that I am in need of the same advice, but it is not the case. ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... deficiency, dearth, paucity, scarcity, deficit. Lame, crippled, halt, deformed, maimed, disabled. Large, great, big, huge, immense, colossal, gigantic, extensive, vast, massive, unwieldy, bulky. Laughable, comical, comic, farcical, ludicrous, ridiculous, funny, droll. Lead, guide, conduct, escort, convoy. Lengthen, prolong, protract, extend. Lessen, decrease, diminish, reduce, abate, curtail, moderate, mitigate, palliate. Lie (noun), untruth, falsehood, falsity, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... point he would probably make the attempt, in season to concentrate so large an army to oppose him. Alexander's troops, being a comparatively small and compact body, and being accustomed to move with great promptness and celerity, could easily evade any attempt of such an unwieldy mass of forces to oppose his crossing at any particular point upon the stream. At any rate, Darius did not make any such attempt, and Alexander had no difficulties to encounter in crossing the Tigris other than the physical obstacles ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... bad for us," O'Sullivan said gravely to his two friends. "I think that the French ships will outsail the English, but there is little chance that this unwieldy craft will do so; in which case, my friends, it is likely that we shall all see the inside of an English prison, and that probably not a few of us will be executed. The colonel should be safe, for he came over with the Brigade ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... summer of the year 1795, or thereabouts, a company of six persons, composed of two married men and their wives, with two small children, pushed a rough-looking and somewhat unwieldy little boat away from the shore in the neighbourhood of Poughkeepsie, and turned its prow up the Hudson. A rude sail was hoisted, but it flapped lazily against the slender mast. The two men betake themselves to the oars. The sun was just showing his face above the eastern woods ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... paces forward with his unwieldy burden and, setting one knee on the sofa, attempted to force Neeland's head and shoulders through the open port. At the same moment a rapid knocking sounded ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... the imagination of his troops, he condescended to use some extraordinary precautions of fire and a ditch, of iron spikes and a rampart of bucklers; but the event taught the Mongols to smile at their own fears; and as soon as these unwieldy animals were routed, the inferior species (the men of India) disappeared from the field. Timur made his triumphal entry into the capital of Hindustan, and admired, with a view to imitate, the architecture of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... celle d'Amadis." Now to some of us the reading of Amadis is not "fade" at all. But he finds some philosophical and psychological passages of merit. Over the Memoires d'un Homme de Qualite—that huge and unwieldy galleon to which the frail shallop of Manon was originally attached, and which has long been stranded on the reefs of oblivion, while its fly-boat sails for ever more—he is quite enthusiastic, finds it, though with a certain relativity, "natural," "frank," and "well-preserved," gives it ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... wagons, he retorted by saying: "I did not know that you wanted to pay $1200 a pair for your horses. These six horses will cost you $750, and they are worth it." They were a sturdy lot, young, well matched, not so large as to be unwieldy, but heavy enough for almost any work. The lightest was said to weigh 1375 pounds, and the heaviest not more than a hundred pounds more. Two of the teams were bay with a sprinkling of white feet, while the other pair was red roan, and, to my ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... triumphant, amid the deafening cheers of the crowd. Wreaths of flowers were tossed to him from the people, who stood up in their seats all round the great circle to hail him with their acclamations, and the Emperor, lifting his unwieldy body from under his canopy of gold, stretched out his hand as a sign that the prize which the dauntless combatant had fought to win was his. He at once obeyed the signal;—but now the woman, hitherto so passive and ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... Of an insatiate bed. O my lord, The drunkard after all his lavish cups Is dry, and then is sober; so at length, When you awake from this lascivious dream, Repentance then will follow, like the sting Plac'd in the adder's tail. Wretched are princes When fortune blasteth but a petty flower Of their unwieldy crowns, or ravisheth But one pearl from their scepter; but alas! When they to wilful shipwreck lose good fame, All princely titles ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... is a thing that can't have a head. It's a sort of unwieldy monster that's bound to run its skull against the wall sooner or later, and knock out what bit of brain it's got. You see, you need wit and courage and real understanding if you're going to do anything positive. And Labour has none of these things—certainly ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... with mountain ballads, paused, here and there, to pluck some lovely flower, accumulating, presently, a nosegay so enormous as to be almost unwieldy, whistled to the birds and smiled as they sent back their answers, laughed at the fierce scolding of a squirrel on a limb, heard the doleful wailing of young foxes and crept near enough their burrow ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... returned with the medicine which Zebedee had left for such emergencies, she found her stepmother beside the rolling-pin. Her mouth was open and a little twisted, and she was heavy and unwieldy when Helen raised her body and made it ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... gentlemen's cabin, containing 170 berths. This is lighted by artificial light, and is used for meals. An enclosure for the engine occupies the centre, but is very small, as the machinery of a, high-pressure engine is without the encumbrances of condenser and air- pump. The engines drove the unwieldy fabric through the calm water at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. I have been thus minute in my description, because this one will serve for all the steamers in which I subsequently travelled in the United States ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... three strokes that might have helped to forge an AEgis. The treasures of his mind are of a similar description with the mind itself; his knowledge is gathered from all the kingdoms of Art, and Science, and Nature, and lies round him in huge unwieldy heaps. His very language is Titanian; deep, strong, tumultuous; shining with a thousand hues, fused from a thousand elements, and winding in labyrinthic masses.' We recommend Jean Paul to universal study; he will, in spite of all his grotesque ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... were to describe it very shortly, we should characterize as a tissue of moral and devotional ravings, in which innumerable changes are rung upon a few very simple and familiar ideas: —but with such an accompaniment of long words, long sentences, and unwieldy phrases—such a hubbub of strained raptures and fantastical sublimities, that it is often extremely difficult for the most skilful and attentive student to obtain a glimpse of the author's meaning—and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... so small As they were lived, but stark like a slain man Who would alive have been ourself with twice The skill, the knowledge, the vitality Actually ours. Yea, as a tree may view With fingerless boughs and lorn pole impotent, An elephant gorged upon its leaves depart, Men often have reviewed an unwieldy past, That like a feasted Mammoth, leisured and slow, Turned its back on their warped bones. Even thus, Momentous with reproach, her grave regard Made me feel mean, cashiered of rank and right, My limbs that twelve good years had nursed were numbed And all their ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... Justice, and get it done there. I'll do whatever you say." His eyes fell under the merciless stare she continued to fix on him, and he shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. As he stood there before her, unwieldy, shabby, disordered, the purple veins distorting the hands he pressed against the desk, and his long orator's jaw trembling with the effort of his avowal, he seemed like a hideous parody of the fatherly old man ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... thousand subjects, or allies, of the great king. The Moslems, whose numbers were reenforced from twelve to thirty thousand, had pitched their camp in the plains of Cadesia: [20] and their line, though it consisted of fewer men, could produce more soldiers, than the unwieldy host of the infidels. I shall here observe, what I must often repeat, that the charge of the Arabs was not, like that of the Greeks and Romans, the effort of a firm and compact infantry: their military force was chiefly formed of cavalry and archers; and the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... air-tight barrels, one of which was lodged under each corner of the float, was such that with Tom and his machine upon the planks the whole platform would float six or eight inches free of the water. To pole or row this unwieldy raft in such a flood would have been quite out of the question, and even in carrying out the plan which Tom now thought furnished his only hope, he knew that the sole chance of success lay in starting right. If the float, through premature or unskilful starting, should get headed downstream, ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... prevented a catastrophe that might have nullified the meeting and caused infinitely more complications than the original boundary dispute. But the memory of the robber Sheik remained with him always, and the recollection of his bloated, vicious face and gross, unwieldy body rose clearly ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... Lydia and John Wodrush. In my opinion she chose the wrong one. The history of the Wodrush elopement, compressed to a couple of pages, seems to me far more original and interesting than the present rather unwieldy tale. The Magic Gate is a war-novel confessed, and I can only fancy that the thronging new sensations of the past three years have proved a little too much for Mrs. RAWSON'S sense of form. She is so anxious that her heroine and her readers shall miss nothing of it all that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... evidently bent upon conquest, and vain enough to think he might achieve it by virtue of his personal attractions. If he could have understood how she loathed the sight of his narrow eyes, with their puffy lids, his thick, tobacco-stained lips, his doubtful teeth, and his unwieldy person, Wain, a monument of conceit that he was, might have shrunk, even in his own estimation, to something like his real proportions. Rena believed that, to defend herself from persecution at his hands, ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Stephen, that prepared and cleared the ground for the Utilitarians. Their object was not to reconstruct, hardly to remodel, existing forms of government; it was to remove abuses, and to devise remedies for the evils of an unwieldy and complicated administrative machine, clogged by stupidity and selfishness. And the plan of Mr. Stephen's first volume is to describe the state of society at this period, the condition of agriculture and the industries, the position ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... extraordinary accounts, by British officers and others, of exhibitions like this, which they alleged they had often witnessed in India. I remembered one, in particular, where tigers and other unwelcome guests, and even the somewhat unwieldy bulk of an elephant, had seemingly been brought down, before their eyes, upon a cable fastened by some mysterious agency far aloft; for I suppose it behooved to be made fast in some inconceivable region of the ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... bargain, either beauty, money, promotion, wealth, worship, pleasure, honour, knowledge, or any other benefit whatsoever.' As to the preternatural gifts of these hags, he sensibly argues: 'Alas! what an unapt instrument is a toothless, old, impotent, unwieldy woman to fly in the air; truly, the devil little needs such instruments to bring ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... feels that the writer who shall make his poem speak with a living voice to the largest number of these, will meet with most earnest heed, and be doing best the poet's true work. At the same time we must not forget that Horace's public was not our public. The unwieldy mass of labouring millions, shaken to its depths by questionings of momentous interest, cannot be drawn to listen except by an emotion vast as its own; but the society for whom Horace wrote was homogeneous in tone, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... and all kinds of shifts were made to eke out the scanty supply. Corn, wheat, oats, peas, poultry and the like sufficed to satisfy any obligation. But then, though answering well in cases of barter, where two mutual desires met, were far too bulky and unwieldy for general use. Naturally then recourse was had to an article in extensive use among the traders, and possessing in a measure the portability of gold and silver, and wampum became a constituent part of the currency. In one feature at least, the old civilization ...
— Wampum - A Paper Presented to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society - of Philadelphia • Ashbel Woodward
... but mope in a vast palace with two mniserable tapers, and two or three monsignori, whom they are forced to court and humour, that they may not be entirely deserted. Sundays they do issue forth in a most unwieldy coach ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... SUBSECONDARY CLASSIFICATION: When a group of fingerprints becomes so large that it is cumbersome and unwieldy, even though fully extended, it can be subdivided further by using a second subsecondary division, which is brought up into the classification formula directly above the subsecondary, and for which the symbols S, M and L are used. ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... and gradually limited the garrison to the range of its guns. This close grasp of the land approaches to Boston, so persistently maintained, stimulated the Americans to catch a tighter hold, and force the garrison to escape by sea. The capture of that garrison would have placed unwieldy prisoners in their hands and have made outside operations impossible, as well as any practical disposition of the prisoners themselves, in treatment with Great Britain. Expulsion was the purpose of the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... go "a-fishing," managed, now and then, to find an evening of leisure in which to divert himself with the pleasant, bookish talk at No. 53. A salon as "was a salon"—that of the Cary girls. With the vast, unwieldy city of today in mind we wonder how they managed it, by what charm and persuasion they gathered with such regularity so many of the literati really worth while. But it was a smaller town then. It was easier to be neighbourly. When ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... of partnership, contrary to our mutual interest, will see us absolute masters of the Mediterranean, with Gibraltar on one side and Toulon on the other, with a quiet and composed mind, whilst we do little less than declare that we are to take the whole West Indies into our hands, leaving the vast, unwieldy, and feeble body of the Spanish dominions in that part of the world absolutely at our mercy, without any power to balance us in the smallest degree? Nothing is so fatal to a nation as an extreme of self-partiality, and the total want of consideration of what others will naturally ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... resolved on a most hazardous manoeuvre. His supply and ammunition train consisted of over five thousand waggons. He was encumbered with the heavy guns of the siege artillery. He had with him more than fifty field batteries; his army was still 95,000 strong; and this unwieldy multitude of men, horses, and vehicles, had to be passed over White Oak Swamp, and then to continue its march across the front of ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... lowered her boats, and these, in spite of the fire of the enemy, brought her head round before the wind, and she made her way through her antagonists and got clear. For several hours the battle continued. The Spanish fire was so slow, and their ships so unwieldy, that it was rarely they succeeded in firing a shot into their active foes, while the English shot tore their way through the massive timbers of the Spanish vessels, scattering the splinters thickly among the soldiers, who had been sent below ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... marvellous agility, and having discharged their broadsides, flew forth presently into the deep, and levelled their shot directly, without missing, at those great ships of the Spaniards, which were altogether heavy and unwieldy." Moreover, the Spanish fashion, in the West Indies at least, though not in the ships of the Great Armada, was, for the sake of carrying merchandise, to build their men-of-war flush decked, or as it was called "race" (razs), which left those on deck exposed ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... being at Paris, he witnessed the two insurrections of the 20th of June and 10th of August. He was accustomed to speak of the insurgents as the most despicable banditti, and to express with what ease a determined officer could have checked these apparently formidable, but dastardly and unwieldy masses. But with what a different feeling of interest would Napoleon have looked on that infuriated populace, those still resisting though overpowered Swiss, and that burning palace, had any seer whispered to him, "Emperor ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... sometimes that the whole mass of walls and scaffolding, labourers and foremen made but a single being: a sort of fearsome deity, something like an unwieldy monster with inhuman, cruel feelings, something which had to be fed with all that workmen's sweat; and all this feverish activity seemed to him the whirling along of a crowd of unfortunates who had stepped into the fatal circle marked ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... it might appear to the lay mind that a germ would scarcely care to pick a bone when it had fat meat to feed on, but my own recollections bore out my friend's statements. I remembered a man of my acquaintance, an enormously fleshy and unwieldy man, who, fearing apoplexy, undertook a radical scheme of banting. He lost fifty pounds in three months, so apoplexy did not get him, but pneumonia did with great suddenness. He was sick only three days. Nobody suspected that ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... follow a similar course of action in the divisional and the district producers' federations. Again, the alternative to the organization of a series of disconnected federations is a centralized bureaucracy of such magnitude, and holding such vast power, that it would be both unwieldy and dangerous, beside violating that very essential rule of local authority in ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... used to roll crumbs with both hands,—-but Sydney Smith would have enjoyed the tingling felicity of this last stinging touch of wit, left as lightly and gracefully as a banderillero leaves his little gayly ribboned dart in the shoulders of the bull with whose unwieldy bulk he is playing. ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... 450 feet long, 78 broad, and 66 feet high. This colossal bulk, equivalent to that of a 7500-ton ship necessary to supply lifting power for the metallic frame, naturally made her unwieldy to handle, unsafe to leave at rest, outside of a sheltering shed, and a particularly attractive target for artillery in time of war. Actual action indeed proved that to be safe from the shells of anti-aircraft guns, the Zeppelins were ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... and Portugal, united by a common danger, combined their forces to exclude the northern nations from any share in the coveted spoil. The rage for spices spread throughout Europe, and kindled a fire of international animosity which lasted for centuries. In A.D. 1595 the unwieldy Dutch ships started on a perilous voyage round the Cape, to trace the unknown path to the mysterious Moluccas, described as "odorous with trees of notemuge, sending of their fragrance across the sea on the softe breath ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... a figure which precluded all possibility of personal prowess; though, because he saw Mr. Thrale one day leap over a cabriolet stool, to show that he was not tired after a chase of fifty miles or more, he suddenly jumped over it too, but in a way so strange and so unwieldy, that our terror lest he should break his bones took from us even the ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... imposing person stood under a Japanese print holding the palm of one hand outspread; his unwieldy trunk and thin legs wobbled in concert ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... receiving the commands of his young mistress, Caesar reappeared, ushering into the apartment the subject of the foregoing digression. In person, the peddler was a man above the middle height, spare, but full of bone and muscle. At first sight, his strength seemed unequal to manage the unwieldy burden of his pack; yet he threw it on and off with great dexterity, and with as much apparent ease as if it had been filled with feathers. His eyes were gray, sunken, restless, and, for the flitting moments that they dwelt on the countenance ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... into which you may dig your thumb, in the cheeks. Those of fourteen or fifteen have deplorably thin arms, and still such terrible calves; and a stomach telling of childish gigantic meals; but they have the pert, humorous frankness of Verrocchio's David, who certainly flung a jest at Goliath's unwieldy person together with his stone; or the delicate, sentimental pretty woman's grace of Donatello's St. John of the Louvre, and Benedetto da Maiano's: they will soon be poring over the Vita Nuova and Petrarch. Two other St. Johns—I am speaking of Donatello's—have turned out differently. One, the ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... fifty yards before them, and Andrew McByle another fifty, but with the bear gaining upon him fast, it being astonishing how rapidly the great unwieldy animal could shuffle over the ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... of Japan, whose heavy paunches and unwieldy, puffy limbs, however much they may be admired by their own country people, form a striking contrast to our Western notions of training, have attracted some attention from travellers; and those who are interested in athletic sports may care ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... method of over-inflation and threatening collapse. It is an alarming process because those huge and heavily armed monsters of primeval days who furnish the zoological types corresponding to our modern over-armed states, themselves died out from the world when their unwieldy armament had reached its final point of expansion. Will our own modern states, one wonders, more fortunately succeed in escaping from the tough hides that ever more closely constrict them, and finally save their ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... order. The black scrambled to his feet, yawned, nodded, and strode away into the main vestibule and out into the garden to investigate a shadow which the general had just reported, and when he was out of sight the general and Yussuf, with his unwieldy burden, came quietly down the stairs and turned back ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... snake, and the various snakes usually found in the Atlantic states are here. Of the venomous kinds, multitudes are destroyed by the deer and swine. Chameleons and scorpions exist in the Lower Valley, and lizards everywhere. The alligator, an unwieldy and bulky animal, is found in the rivers and lakes south of 34 deg. north latitude. He sometimes destroys calves and pigs, and very rarely, even ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... crocodiles. There was vain racing, counseling and gesticulating; but at length, the first wave of excitement over, passengers and crew settled down to watch the outcome of the boy's struggle for life, while the pilot endeavored to turn the unwieldy ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... tremulous hand, and then leaned forward, breathlessly watching it fall, waver from side to side, and roll slowly under the bookcase. Too much excited to rise from his knees, he crept towards it, and, pressing his cheek against the dusty floor, he peered under the unwieldy piece of furniture, to catch a glimpse of his penny ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... regular engagement. When the Dardanians began again to advance, the Macedonian cavalry and light infantry harassed those who had no troops of that kind to aid them, and were, besides, burdened with unwieldy arms. The ground, too, favoured the assailants: very few were slain, but many wounded; none were taken, because they rarely quit their ranks, but both fight and retreat in a close body. Thus Philip, having checked the proceedings of those two ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... together; but the convention being once known and assented to, it does not matter whether we raise the idea of a stone by the word "lapis," or by "lithos," "pietra," "pierre," "stein," "stane" or "stone"; we may choose what symbols written or spoken we choose, and one set, unless they are of unwieldy length will do as well as another, if we can get other people to choose the same and stick to them; it is the accepting and sticking to them that matters, not the symbols. The whole power of spoken language is vested in the invariableness with ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... ruffing cloud to make The quiet surface of the ocean shake; As an awaken'd giant with a frown Might show his wrath, and then to sleep sink down. View now the Winter-storm! above, one cloud, Black and unbroken, all the skies o'ershroud: Th' unwieldy porpoise through the day before Had roll'd in view of boding men on shore; And sometimes hid and sometimes show'd his form, Dark as the cloud, and furious as the storm. All where the eye delights, yet dreads to roam, The breaking billows cast the flying foam Upon the billows rising—all ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... main force, but of 1000 men—ought to have been done in one week, were the dearth of camels, the imperfect drill of the camel corps, and, it must be added, the exaggerated fear of the Mahdi's power. When it was attempted to quicken the slow forward movement of the unwieldy force confusion ensued, and no greater progress was effected than if things had been left undisturbed. The erratic policy in procuring camels caused them at the critical moment to be not forthcoming in anything approaching the required numbers, ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... better than the good society anywhere else, but the bad society was capital. I like, for instance, to watch the shoals of fishermen that throng our streets in the early spring, inappropriate as porpoises on land, or as Scott's pirates in peaceful Kirkwall,—unwieldy, bearded creatures in oil-skin suits,—men who have never before seen a basket-wagon or a liveried groom and, whose first comments on the daintinesses of fashion are far more racy than anything which fashion can say ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... upon the profanity of that scurrilous Ursa Major. Think of poetry, dear B——, think of poetry, and then think of Dr. Samuel Johnson! Think of all that is airy and fairy-like, and then of all that is hideous and unwieldy; think of his huge bulk, the Elephant! and then—and then think of the 'Tempest'—the 'Midsummer ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... score years hath Corineius lived, Sometime in war, sometime in quiet peace, And yet I feel my self to be as strong As erst I was in summer of mine age, Able to toss this great unwieldy club Which hath been painted with my foemen's brains; And with this club I'll break the strong array Of Humber and his straggling soldiers, Or lose my life amongst the thickest prease, And die with honour in my latest ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... the following day, he might enter the harbor in befitting style. He accordingly stepped into the barge, and took his seat beneath the awning. The grand chamberlain seated himself on the cushion opposite. The rowers bent to their oars, and renewed their mournful old ditty, and the gorgeous, but unwieldy barge moved slowly and ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... the shoulders of the Dauphine's tutor. The Ambassador gravely replied that he should certainly send off a courier immediately to Vienna to inform the Empress that the only fault the French Court could find with Marie Antoinette was her being not so unwieldy as their own Princesses, and bringing charms with her to a bridegroom, on whom even charms so transcendent could make no impression! Thus the matter was laughed off, but it left, ridiculous as it was, new bitter enemies to the cause ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... conscientiously attended to their welfare, so that Rose was by no means an unfitting companion for the High School maiden, and they most happily compared notes over their very different lives, when they were not engaged in playing with little Cea, as the unwieldy name of Miss Morton's protegee had been softened. She was a very pretty little creature, with big blue eyes and hair that could be called golden, and very full of life and drollery, so that she was a treat to both; and when the housemaid, whose charge she was, insisted on her ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... inevitably, up to meet us. Even in that stupefying moment I was aware that the silver-banded hat was at a most uncanonical angle. Behind me on the car was stowed my sketching umbrella; I tore it from the retaining embrace of the camp-stool, and unfurled its unwieldy tent with a speed that I have never since achieved. Robert, on the far side of the car, was reasonably safe. The inestimable Croppy quickened up. Cowering beneath the umbrella, I awaited the crucial moment at which to shift its protection from the side to the back. The sound of the approaching ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... report an election for The Morning Chronicle; and probably a similar mistake happened to him to that which Mr. Pickwick experienced. So when he says, "The 'Great Horse' is famous in the neighbourhood, in the same degree as a prize ox, or county paper-chronicled turnip, or unwieldy pig—for its enormous size," he evidently was recalling an ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... unwieldy crowd so closely packed that nothing can be done with it and it can do nothing with itself, you will note three different types. There are the entirely inert—and they make up most of the crowd. They do ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... creditable future lay in store for "The Giant," its monstrous and unwieldy car was condemned, and presently removed to the Crystal Palace, where it was ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... with a reformed House of Lords, this would be quite practicable. An article in Fraser's Magazine, "Why not the Lords, too?" had struck me much, and the lines on which it ran greatly resemble those laid down by Lord Rosebery for lessening in number and improving in character the unwieldy hereditary House of Peers; but neither that writer nor Lord Rosebery grasped the idea that I made prominent in an article I wrote for The Review, which was that the reduction of the peers to 200, or any other number ought to be ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... him. Those I saw were without that snout or trunk hanging below the end of the upper jaw; but then the males were furnished with a large shaggy mane, which gave them a most formidable appearance. And, whereas, he says those he saw were unwieldy and easily destroyed, we found some, on the contrary, that lay at a mile's distance from the water, which came down upon us when disturbed with such impetuosity, that it was as much as we could do to get out of their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... Pope, Have Wits Immortal more to fear or hope? Wits toil and travail round the Plant of Fame, Their Works its Garden, and its Growth their Aim, Then Commentators, in unwieldy Dance, Break down the Barriers of the trim Pleasance, Pursue the Poet, like Actaeon's Hounds, Beyond the fences of his Garden Grounds, Rend from the singing Robes each borrowed Gem, Rend from the laurel'd Brows the Diadem, And, if one Rag of Character ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... in their excitement they took no notice of him. Not until he had nearly completed his task was he discovered; then some one raised a shout. The next instant they charged upon him, but his work had been done. With a snap the ropes parted, the cable went writhing and twisting up the track, the unwieldy apparatus came to ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... twelve miles above. They anchor among a fleet of native junks from the trading places on the Yang-tze, bound to the same port, and awaiting a change of tide, which the Chinese sailors celebrate by a great hubbub on the poops of their unwieldy-looking vessels, with tom-toms and other instruments of the same nature. This fleet of junks and sampans is a curious sight to the stranger approaching the China coast for the first time, and, with a ramble through the filthy village of Woosung, occupies the time ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... be; and how little I will get to eat; and how I'll long for a piece of roast-beef; and how they'll bring me a rotten turnip. And I am thinking how I will take a consumption, and waste away inch by inch; and how I'll grow very fat and unwieldy, and won't be able to stir out of my chair. And I am thinking how I'll be roasted by the Portuguese inquisition; and how I'll be impaled by the Turks; and how I'll be eaten by Cannibals; and how I'll be drowned on a voyage to the East Indies; and how I'll be ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... was inimitable, and brought down the house two or three times during the evening. He was also very great as "Little Toddlekins," a part that might have been specially written for him. The character is that of a stout, somewhat bulky and unwieldy young person who possesses an inordinate appreciation of her own imaginary charms. Her father, whom I might designate as a fly-by-night sort of a gentleman, a character which I once ventured to portray myself, is obsessed by the one thought of getting rid of her as quickly ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... showed its hopeless weakness. The Reichsregiment, or Imperial governing council, a body instituted by Maximilian, had lamentably failed to effect anything towards cementing together the various parts of the unwieldy fabric. Finally, at the Reichstag held in Nuernberg, in December 1522, at which all the estates were represented, the Reichsregiment, to all ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... committee, as it stands, is too unwieldy to draft a platform, and makes a motion that the chairman be empowered to appoint a sub-committee of five to outline one and submit it to the committee ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... inconvenient or ridiculous, and not impossibly both; but I shouldn't at all mind upholding in public disputation, say, at the Poetry Bookshop, that there was no other way than Drayton's of doing the thing at all. It was the mythopoetic way. For purposes of poetry, Britain is an unwieldy subject, and if you are to allow to a river no other characters than those of mud and ooze, swiftness or slowness, why, you will relate of it little but its rise, length and fall. Drayton's weakness is that he ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... never seen a wild elephant can form no idea of his real character, either mentally or physically. The unwieldy and sleepy-looking beast, who, penned up in his cage at a menagerie, receives a sixpence in his trunk, and turns round with difficulty to deposit it in a box; whose mental powers seem to be concentrated in the idea of receiving buns tossed into a gaping mouth by children's hands,—this very beast ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... in spite of her unwieldy form, and common, showy clothes, was fond of beautiful things, and especially fond of jewels. She was wondering whether the pearls worn by the lovely young Englishwoman standing ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... gracious words to a white-haired courtier, who kneeled among those gathered on the right of her line of progress. Startled by the loud cry of the falling knight, she turned swiftly and saw at her feet a man of monstrous girth struggling in vain to raise his unwieldy form. His plumed hat had rolled to some distance, exposing a bald head with two gray tufts over the ears. His sword stood on its hilt, with point in air, and his short, fat legs made quick alternate efforts to bend beneath him—efforts which the fleshy ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... to depart. I made my farewell calls, and we packed our baggage into my tarantass, with the exception of the terrible trunk that adhered to me like a shadow. As we had no Cossack and traveled without a servant, there was room for the unwieldy article on the seat beside the driver. I earnestly advise every tourist in Siberia not to travel with a trunk. The Siberian ladies manage to transport all the articles for an elaborate toilet without employing a single 'dog house' or 'Saratoga.' If they can do without trunks, of ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... could always be on hand to adjust matters!" she thought inwardly. "But I can see that when they really begin to use their 'phones at all, as most owners of them do, this exchange business would become a rather unwieldy affair." Then Joyce sighed so profoundly that Gus heard it at the other end, even as ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... the platform facing the triple row of seats at the far end began a waltz. Most of the men were elderly and well preserved. They danced with the girls. The half-dozen youths improved their chances by assiduous attentions to the unwieldy dames. Andrew thought that his princesses danced very badly. Many of them were taller than the men, and looked about to go head first over the shoulders whose support they seemed to disdain. The little ones bounded like ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... by the boat's occupants. He might have succeeded. Many things can happen at night and on the sea—strange escapades and hair's-breadth 'scapes—thrills denied to stay-at-homes dwelling in cities, who seldom venture beyond a lighted area. But there was even a greater probability that the unwieldy catamaran might be caught by the swell and dashed side-long against one of the half-submerged rocks that thrust their black fangs above ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... here hearts were broken at a ball and mended in Lovers' Walk, and here fortunes were nightly lost and won. It must have been in its material conditions a primitive place in the days of its greatest fame. Visitors came to it in their carriages and unwieldy four-horse chariots, attended by troops of servants, making slow but most enjoyable pilgrimages over the mountain roads, journeys that lasted a week or a fortnight, and were every day enlivened by jovial adventure. They came for the season. They were all of one social order, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... as the son of a Knight and a Noble of the land, on horseback, accompanied by Hans Bosch, who led a sumpter-horse loaded with his baggage. Both were armed, as was necessary in those times, with swords and pistols; the latter being somewhat large and unwieldy weapons. Eric, as befitted his station, had learned the use of his sword, and Hans was an old soldier who had grasped a pike for nearly half a century. Hans and Eric had always been good friends. ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... long-barreled rifle, and they were armed in addition with pistols, tomahawks, and knives. The cannon were left behind as too unwieldy for their purpose. Adam Colfax, Major Braithwaite, Gregory Wilmot, Thrale, Lyon, Cole, Drouillard, and the other lieutenants were at the head of the little army, and Boone, Kenton, the five, and at least fifteen more were in advance or on the flanks as ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... silver and plate of the "Scarlet Woman" had much to do with the persistent energy with which these hardy mariners braved the mysterious, unknown terrors of the great unknown ocean that stretched away to the sunset, there in far-away waters to attack the huge, unwieldy, treasure-laden galleons that sailed up and down the Caribbean Sea ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... down all Mr MacGinnis's remarks as if they had been uttered in a bell-like voice with a clear and crisp enunciation; but, in doing so, I have flattered him. In reality, his mode of speech suggested that he had something large and unwieldy permanently stuck in his mouth; and it was not easy for a stranger to follow him. Mr Abney signally failed to do so. He continued to gape helplessly till the tension was ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... the cigar, had taken to some unwieldy curvets and gambols, to vent the excitement into which he had been thrown; and now returning, approached the bench with a low growl of surprise, and sniffed at the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... greater benefit to the race that the Mission Fathers lived and had their fling of divine audacity for the good of the helpless aborigines than that any score one might name of the "successful captains of industry" lived to make their unwieldy and topheavy piles of gold. With all their faults and failures, all their ideas of theology and education,—which we, in our assumed superiority, call crude and old-fashioned,—all their rude notions of sociology, all their errors and mistakes, ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... and mistakenly disliked her. That was another matter. He was a headstrong man, impetuous, prone to leap to conclusions—a very walking heap of favourable and unfavourable prejudice. Thus, neither Claudia nor Darco was dethroned. The headlong, stammering, vivid man had made a mistake—the fat, unwieldy, diamond-hearted creature, all crusted with slag and scoria. Paul could have cried to know that Darco ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... to hurl him down many a steep place. Last came the serious acquisitions, the bulk of his library: solid and expensive works—historians, archaeologists, travellers, with noble volumes of engravings, and unwieldy tomes of antique lore. Little enough of all this had Rolfe digested, but more and more he loved to have erudition within his reach. He began to lack room for comely storage; already a large bookcase had intruded into ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... March the blizzard which had been raging a day or two moderated, and Roosevelt, hoping a thaw had set in, determined to set off after the thieves. They left Rowe as guard over the ranch and "the womenfolks," and with their unwieldy but water-tight craft, laden with two weeks' provision of flour, coffee, and bacon, started to drift ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... dispelled—sometimes slowly, but often suddenly like the bullet from the gun. Helmont had a little stone, which, by plunging in oil of almonds, imbued the oil with such sanative power that it cured almost any disease. It was sometimes applied inwardly, sometimes outwardly. A gentleman who had an unwieldy groom procured for him a small fragment of this stone, and, by licking it with the tip of his tongue every morning, in three weeks he was reduced in bulk round the waist by a span without affecting his general health. A gentleman in France who procured a small fragment of this stone ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... his crew of two were now doomed to tribulation. The huge, unwieldy craft from that moment was to become possessed of the devil. Down the white water of rapids it would bump, smashing obstinately against boulders, impervious to the frantic urging of the long sweeps; against the roots and branches ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... the size of the masses. If the advancing armies are large and unwieldy, and the distances to be covered great, it will be a difficult and tedious task for the defending commander to take proper measures against a surprise attack. On the other hand, the prospects of success of the attacking General will be ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... said Earl Douglas, at length. "She is still queen, and the king becomes daily more unwieldy and ailing. It is time to give him a ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... often, in this only half-intelligible life of theirs, flutters feebly with hints and suggestions to which it could never give open and unequivocal utterance. Even language, and language the most artful and finished, was, after all, merely a sort of clumsy Morse—its unwieldy dots and dashes left many a mood of the ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... for many generations with the sacred animal, he enjoys a certain consciousness of moral respectability, like a man whose uncles are deans or canons. In my mind, he is always associated rather with his buffaloes, those great, unwieldy, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... the busts of Lord Macaulay and of Thackeray, and the medallion heads of Sir Walter Scott and of John Ruskin; below them is the grave of Charles Dickens. The lovers of music raise their eyes meantime to the unwieldy figure of Handel, whose personality remained essentially German although the greater part of his life was spent in England, at the Court of the first three Georges. Beneath his monument is the medallion of that gifted singer Jenny ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... on board the ship as before, and prepared a second raft; and, having had experience of the first, I neither made this so unwieldy, nor loaded it so hard, but yet I brought away several things very useful to me; as first, in the carpenters stores I found two or three bags full of nails and spikes, a great screw- jack, a dozen or two of hatchets, ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... the slightest doubt of it, sir." Tristram stared at the old gentleman, who was of a tall unwieldy figure, short bull neck and ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the anarchic chaos of this day, when old institutions are crumbling or crashing into decay, when the whole civilised world seems slowly and painfully parting from its old moorings, and like some unwieldy raft, is creaking and straining at its chains as it feels the impulse of the swift current that is bearing it to an unknown sea, when venerable names cease to have power, when old truths are flouted as antiquated, and the new ones seem so long in making their appearance, when a perfect Babel ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... dangerously impaired, and that the social system, if it is to cohere, must be reorganized. So far as my observation has extended, such intuitions are usually not without an adequate cause, and if there be reason for anxiety anywhere, it surely should be in the United States, with its unwieldy bulk, its heterogeneous population, and its complex government. Therefore, I submit, that an hour may not be quite wasted which is passed in considering some of the recent phenomena which have appeared about us, in ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... highly colored. He had not been accustomed to praise, and such compliments as these from a rich banker were unwieldy for him. ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... the commercial travellers. But decent folks who went into the tavern in earnest, and who set store on their coffee being served promptly and scalding hot, thought a great deal of Karen. And when she slipped quietly forward among the guests with her tray, the unwieldy frieze-clad figures fell back with unaccustomed celerity to make way for her, and the conversation stopped for a moment. All had to look after her, she was ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... theatrical association which insists that no actor can share its bounty who has not walked so many years on those boards where the English tongue is never heard—between the little bars of music in an aviary of singing birds, to which the unwieldy Swan of Avon is never admitted—that bounty which was gathered in the name and for the elevation of ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... rafts of teak logs pass us occasionally, drifting slowly down with the current. The three or four oarsmen, when they see us, run about over the round logs and give a pull here and a pull there at long oars, and try to get the unwieldy length up and down stream; they wear only a waist cloth, and look so sun-bitten; there is but one tiny patch of shadow in the middle of their island under a lean-to cottage of matting, with a burgee on a tall bamboo flying over it. Our wash sends their ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... the command of Nakaeia, he had surrounded houses in the dead of night, cut down the mosquito bars and butchered families. Here was the hand of iron; here was Nakaeia redux. He came, summoned from the tributary rule of Little Makin: he was installed, he proved a puppet and a trembler, the unwieldy shuttlecock of orators; and the reader has seen the remains of him in his summer parlour ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... avoid an unwieldy electronic copy, I have transferred original pagination to brackets. A bracketed numeral such as [22] indicates that the material immediately following the number marks the beginning of the relevant page. I have preserved paragraph structure except ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... those of my outward journey, with a few unimportant variations in details. They may, therefore, be passed over with merely this brief reference to them, since to record them in detail would only render my story of altogether too unwieldy dimensions, without adding very greatly to ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... first time the name of the late captain had been mentioned, and Herrick grasped the occasion. The reader shall be spared Uncle Ned's unwieldy dialect, and learn in less embarrassing English, the sum of what he now communicated. The ship had scarce cleared the Golden Gates before the captain and mate had entered on a career of drunkenness, which was scarcely interrupted by their malady and only closed by death. For days and weeks they ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... emphasis to his words he produced his automatic pistol. The argument was conclusive. With every indication of fear the two natives pushed off, and seizing the paddles they propelled the unwieldy craft ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... long by six or seven feet beam, each canoe being manned by about fifty savages, every mother's son of whom was wielding a short, broad-bladed paddle as though his life depended upon it. Yet the canoes were not making very much headway, for they were unwieldy—looking craft, with long, high-peaked, overhanging bows, and sterns which seemed to catch and hold a good deal of wind, making the paddling of them to windward, especially against a heavy head ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... upon his limbs with feeble eild That shook, unwieldy with their proper weight, His armor laid and long unused shield, And marched gainst Raymond to the mountain's height; Great Solyman gainst Godfrey took the field; Fornenst Camillo stood Argantes straight Where Tancred strong he found, so fortune will That this good ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... result of their first efforts at creation, the gods now took the giant's unwieldy skull and poised it skilfully as the vaulted heavens above earth and sea; then scattering his brains throughout the expanse beneath they fashioned ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... youth of these our times that did behold This motion strange of this unwieldy plant Now boldly brag with us that are men old, That of our age they no advantage want, Though in our youth we ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... wagons are built very strongly to stand rough roads, and are of several patterns; those used in the war in South Africa were reported on as heavy, uncomfortable, and so unwieldy as to be incapable very often of keeping up with the troops; but a new and more mobile vehicle, to convey four patients lying down as well as six seated, or fourteen all seated (whereas the old pattern wagons only accommodated ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... not come back crippled; and that old and experienced captains, however confidently they may take the command at first, frankly own that they'll never put foot in her again, you very naturally begin to suspect that there's something wrong in her build. She is either too unwieldy, like the Great Eastern, or she is too long to turn well, or she requires such incessant repair; or, most fatal of all, she is entered for a trade where nobody wants her; and therefore you resolve that, come ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... of colored men, led by Honest Moses, poled an unwieldy scow to the Ohio shore, took the dashing equestriennes on board and ferried ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... were light-armed troops, so called because they carried light round shields instead of the large unwieldy oblong shield of the Hoplite, or heavy-armed infantry soldier. These light troops came gradually into favour with the Greeks during the Peloponnesian war, and afterward ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... a very lusty party, vigorous of limb and loud of voice. With them came the coach, and there was such a press about the gates that La Boulaye looked to see some of them crushed to death. But with a few shouts and oaths and threats at one another they got through in safety, and the unwieldy carriage was ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... aghast. Never in my life had I seen anything so grotesque as this woman. To begin with she was more than ordinarily stout and unwieldy—indeed, she appeared like a veritable mountain of flesh; but what was so disturbing to my mind was that she was nothing but a hideous caricature of her lovely daughter, whose dainty features she grotesquely recalled. Her face was seamed and wrinkled, her white hair was plastered ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Scott himself she describes as 'full of genius without the slightest effort at expression, delightfully natural, more lame but not so unwieldy as she expected.' Lady Scott she goes on to sketch in some half-dozen words—'French, large dark eyes, civil ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... abandon the lands belonging to the king.—We obliged them to leave their cannon, which consisted of nine pieces, &c." He further adds: "The English, struck with panic, took to flight, and left their flag and one of their colors." We have shown that the flag left was the unwieldy one belonging to the fort; too cumbrous to be transported by troops who could not carry their own necessary baggage. The regimental colors, as honorable symbols, were scrupulously carried off by Washington, and retained by him ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... its head was struggling against the Gauls and Spaniards, its long flanks were fiercely assailed by the Africans, who, facing about to the right and left, charged it home, and threw it into utter disorder. In this state, when they were forced together into one unwieldy crowd, and already falling by thousands, whilst the Gauls and Spaniards, now advancing in their turn, were barring further progress in front, and whilst the Africans were tearing their mass to pieces on both flanks, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... linked in happy nuptial league, Alone as they. About them frisking played All beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all chase In wood or wilderness, forest or den; Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards, Gambolled before them; the unwieldy elephant, To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed His lithe proboscis; close the serpent sly, Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine His braided train, and of his fatal guile Gave proof unheeded; others on the grass Couched, and now filled with pasture ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... cruelly dashed by the event, but also that of the void which his disappearance has left in the too thin ranks of those who, filled with reverence and enthusiasm for the great traditions of the past, seem nevertheless eager and capable of grappling with the unwieldy present. Let and restricted had been the recognition of his maturing worth, and now we must do without both him and the impetus of ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... long, curving horn; yet neither betrayed the slightest disposition to retire from the contest. Their wounds appeared but to goad them to greater fury, and to stimulate them to redoubled effort. The truly amazing activity displayed by these ponderous and unwieldy creatures was perhaps the most remarkable feature of the whole affair. They wheeled and doubled about each other with the nimbleness of fighting dogs, the rhinoceros leaping in to deliver his stroke, and then springing aside to avoid the thrust of the elephant's tusks with a rapidity that rendered ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... that there is more of ostentation than of real utility in ships of this vast and unwieldy burden, which are rarely capable of acting against an enemy; but if the building such contributes to preserve, among other nations, the notion of the British superiority in naval affairs, the expense, though ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... front of the Steel Spud. In their radiance he saw the gaily-attired form of a woman. She wore a white hat, with a sweeping, white ostrich plume, which hid her face with the exception of a retreating chin and prominent, carmine lips; while a fat, unwieldy body was covered by a waist of Scotch plaid silk—lines and squares of black and primary colors—and a short, scant skirt of blue broadcloth that, drawn up by her knees, exposed small feet in ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... to feel pretty well; quite happy. He has no fear or shame. He can curse, and swear, and break things. "He is fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils." He fears no consequences, and can accomplish impossibilities. If he is a cripple, he fancies he can dance like a satyr; if he is slow and unwieldy, he can run like a hart; if he is weak and feeble in strength, he can lift like Samson, and fight like Hercules; if he is poor and pennyless, he is rich as Croesus on his throne, and has money to lend. This is all a ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society |
