"Clownish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bread and hot milk to the prefects, who carried the basins up and down the tables as deftly as Mr. Paul Cinquevalli. Everywhere was a prospect of raw faces and figures, which Charity had deliberately made as uncomely as possible by clownish garb and simple toilet. The children ate hungrily, and the place was full of the spirit of childhood, an adulterated spirit. The noise leaped and swelled on all sides in an exultant joy of itself, but if here and there a jet of ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... them, or rather look after them, are neither exactly town nor country. They have the clownish dress and boorish gait of the regular 'chaws,' with a good deal of the quick, suspicious, sour sauciness of the low London resident. If you can get an answer from them at all, it is generally delivered in such a way as to show that the answerer ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... (ignorant) 491. unkempt. uncombed, untamed, unlicked[obs3], unpolished, uncouth; plebeian; incondite[obs3]; heavy, rude, awkward; homely, homespun, home bred; provincial, countrified, rustic; boorish, clownish; savage, brutish, blackguard, rowdy, snobbish; barbarous, barbaric; Gothic, unclassical[obs3], doggerel, heathenish, tramontane, outlandish; uncultivated; Bohemian. obsolete &c. (antiquated) 124; unfashionable ; newfangled &c. (unfamiliar) 83; odd ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... give spirits special permission to return to earth and take upon themselves such forms for the mere purpose of tipping tables and piano-fortes, rapping upon doors, windows, and empty skulls, misspelling their own names, and murdering Lindley Murray, and performing clownish tricks for the amusement of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... guide the hero, or heroine, to the ruinous precincts? Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried in my very title-page? and could it have been possible for me, with a moderate attention to decorum, to introduce any scene more lively than might be produced by the jocularity of a clownish but faithful valet, or the garrulous narrative of the heroine's fille-de-chambre, when rehearsing the stories of blood and horror which she had heard in the servants' hall? Again, had my title borne, 'Waverley, a Romance from the German,' what head so obtuse as not to image forth ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... that she was swayed by a pure and mystic passion. De Seze, on the other hand, believed this mystic passion to be genuine love. Coming to visit her at Nohant, he was revolted by the clownish husband with whom she lived. It gave him an esthetic shock to see that she had borne children to this boor. Therefore he shrank back from her, and in time their relation ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... but that in the main the Turks were a good-natured people; that what would have been a deadly affront anywhere else was only a little freedom there: in short, they told him to think no more of the matter, and to try his fortune in another promenade. But the squire, though a little clownish, had some home-bred sense. "What! have I come, at all this expense and trouble, all the way to Constantinople only to be kicked? Without going beyond my own stable, my groom, for half a crown, would have kicked me to my heart's content. I don't mean to stay in Constantinople ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... hugely, and he thought he had never before seen anything half so funny; even the annual circus, with its train of animals, and dancers, and tumblers and clowns, could not equal it. The "Jolly Scourer" was extremely comical and clownish, evidently without trying to be so, while the circus clown's effort at comical acts and sayings detracts from the amusing effect ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... But any London visitor who might imagine that he was about to find himself in a company of clownish provincials would be much mistaken. A very large proportion of colonists have travelled and even lived in more lands than one. They have encountered vicissitudes and seen much that is odd and varied in nature and human nature. In consequence they are often ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... condemns beyond the reach of hope The careless lips that speak of s[)o]ap for s[o]ap; Her edict exiles from her fair abode The clownish voice that utters r[)o]ad for r[o]ad; Less stern to him who calls his c[o]at, a c[)o]at And steers his b[o]at believing it a b[)o]at. She pardoned one, our classic city's boast. Who said at Cambridge, m[)o]st instead of m[o]st, But knit her brows and stamped ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... joyous hopefulness was too sudden to be borne. Crouching behind the bush, he dropped his head in his arms. What could he hope for, single-handed against such overwhelming odds? For a while his heart failed him utterly, and all his faculties were scattered in clownish confusion. He knew not which way to turn. At last one thought shone through the murk of his brain like a star: Natalie must not be rudely frightened. He got up; and composing his face with a great effort of will, he hastened ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... streaming from the death-ship and the curving river is the thought of the older South: the sincere and passionate belief that somewhere between men and cattle God created a tertium quid, and called it a Negro,—a clownish, simple creature, at times even lovable within its limitations, but straitly foreordained to walk within the Veil. To be sure, behind the thought lurks the afterthought,—some of them with favoring chance might become men, but in sheer self-defense we ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... schoolmate Juanito Pelaez, the barbero or pet of the professors, as big a rascal as he could be, with a roguish look and a clownish smile. The son of a Spanish mestizo—a rich merchant in one of the suburbs, who based all his hopes and joys on the boy's talent—he promised well with his roguery, and, thanks to his custom of playing tricks on every ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... his shedding tears over a print representing a soldier lying dead in the snow, his dog sitting in misery on one side, on the other his widow with a child in her arms. His person was robust, his manners rustic, not clownish. ... His countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. There was a strong expression of shrewdness in his lineaments; the eye alone indicated the poetic character and temperament. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... see Jolly Robin when he came to the swamp that afternoon. At least, the Hermit said he was much pleased. He had very polished manners for a person that lived in a swamp. Beside him, Jolly Robin seemed somewhat awkward and clownish. But then, Jolly always claimed that he was ...
— The Tale of Jolly Robin • Arthur Scott Bailey
... investigations tend to show that honest Izaak's account is prejudiced, as Hooker in his will makes his "wel-beloved wife" sole executrix and residuary legatee, and his father-in-law was one of the overseers. Nevertheless Wood calls her "a clownish, silly woman, and ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... says, 'I am credibly informed that an ingenious gentleman living near the seaside laid on his lands great quantities, which made his neighbours laugh at him (as usually they do at anything besides their own clownish road or custom of ignorance),' and after a year or two's exposure to the weather 'they exceedingly enriched his land for many years after.' The bones then used were marrow-bones and fish bones, or 'whatever hath any oiliness or fatness in it', but the bones of horses and other animals were also ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... handed out. Each one was elaborately addressed and furnished with a rhymed or unrhymed tag that often hid a sting beneath its clownish exterior. The father read the inscription aloud before he handed each parcel to its recipient, who had to open it and let its contents be admired by all before another ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... Misrule With mimic pomp and march; And the burly Abbot of Unreason Forgets not that the blythe Yule season Demands his paunch at church; And he useth his staff While the rustics laugh,— And, still, as he layeth his crosier about, Laugheth aloud each clownish lowt,— And the lowt, as he laugheth, from corbels grim, Sees carven ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... I'll have you know, the women's wants shall be considered, as well as yours. I think my lord and the colonel do you too much honour in offering to represent such a set of clownish, dirty, beggarly animals—Ah! I wish we women were ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... clownish, matter-of-fact man; he wanted some person to assist him in looking after the farm, and taking care of the stock; and he brought up Mary to fill the place of the son he had lost, early inuring her to take an active part, in those manual labors which were peculiar to his vocation. ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... /adj./ [from the name of a TV clown even more losing than Ronald McDonald] Resembling or having the quality of a bozo; that is, clownish, ludicrously wrong, unintentionally humorous. Compare {wonky}, {demented}. Note that the noun 'bozo' occurs in slang, but the mainstream adjectival form would be 'bozo-like' or (in ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... author of 'Festus.' His father is proprietor of the Nottingham Mercury, and the editorial department rests with him. He is a heavy, thick set sort of man; of a stature below the middle size; complexion dark; and, in years about eight and thirty. His physiognomy would be clownish in expression, if his eyes did not redeem his other features. He spoke of 'Festus,' and of its fame in America, of which he seemed very proud. In England, it has only reached the third edition, while eight or nine have been published in the States. You know my opinion of the work. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... officers; Mouldy, Shadow, Wart, and Bull-calf, recruits; Feebee, at once a recruit and a woman's tailor, Pilch and Patch-Breech, fishermen (though these last two appellations may be mere nicknames); Potpan, Peter Thump, Simple, Gobbo, and Susan Grindstone, servants; Speed, "a clownish servant"; Slender, Pistol, Nym, Sneak, Doll Tear-sheet, Jane Smile, Costard, Oatcake, Seacoal, and various anonymous "clowns" and "fools." Shakespeare rarely gives names of this character to any but the lowly in life, altho perhaps we should cite as exceptions Sir Toby Belch and ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... sauntering into camp at about four o'clock twirling his hat on the end of a stick in an annoyingly care-free manner. Tom Slade saw him passing Council Shack intent upon his acrobatic enterprise of tossing the hat into the air and catching it on his head, as if this clownish feat were the chief concern ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... said, "Bully," and "I thought it was great," with such absolute frankness and sincerity that Aladdin's heart almost warmed toward him. It was presently known all over the house that Aladdin had written the song. And some of the more clownish of the young people called for Author, ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... was armed with a fan of nearly equal dimensions. Addison observes that 'women are armed with fans, as men with swords, and sometimes do more execution with them.' The graceful carriage of each weapon was considered a test of high breeding. The clownish man was in danger of being tripped up by his sword getting between his legs: the fan held clumsily looked more of a burden than an ornament; while in the hands of an adept it could be made to speak a language of its own. {35} It was not everyone who felt qualified to make ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... Alixirrhoe, so fame reports, Daughter of two-horn'd Granicus, brought forth, By stealth, AEsacus 'neath thick Ida's shade. Wall'd cities he detested; and remote From glittering palaces, secluded hills Inhabited, and unambitious plains; And scarce at Troy's assemblies e'er was seen. Yet had he not a clownish heart, nor breast To love impregnable. By chance he saw Cebrenus' daughter, fair Hesperie—oft By him through every shady wood pursu'd— As on her father's banks her tresses, spread Adown her back, in Phoebus' rays she dry'd. The nymph, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... seems to be always a wag or clown among each group of animals,—some one species in which the amusing or the grotesque is prominent. Among these clownish fellows I should class the black vulture, or john-crow. He is not a crow at all, but gets that name probably because so historic a tribe as Corvus must have some representative, and the real crow, so common at the North, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... of Italy are known, Where none but only dead men wear a gown, On theatres of turf, in homely state, Old plays they act, old feasts they celebrate; * * * * * The mimic yearly gives the same delights; And in the mother's arms the clownish infant frights. Their habits (undistinguished by degrees) Are plain alike; the same simplicity Both on the stage and in the pit you see. In his white cloak the magistrate appears; The country bumpkin ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... clownish youth falls before the queen and desires a boon, which she might not refuse, viz. the achievement of any adventure which might present itself. Then appears a fair lady, habited in mourning, and riding on an ass, while behind her comes a dwarf, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... conditions in which fairy-powers might get a hold of them; the quarrelling king and queen of Fairyland, with their courtiers, Blossom, Cobweb, and the rest, and the court-jester, Puck; the ignorant, clownish artisans, rehearsing their play,—fairies and clowns, lovers and courtiers, are all mingled in one exquisite harmony, clothed with a night of early summer, rounded in by the wedding of the king and queen. But I have talked enough about it. Let us ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... after his assassination. And this it is that makes him now the less able, poor fellow, to understand and endure the shame he is put to. 'Stat rex indignatus.' He does try to assert himself now—does strive, by day and by night, poor petrefact, to rip off these fell and clownish integuments. Of his elder brother in Paris he has never heard; but he knows that Lazarus arisen from the tomb did not live in grave-clothes. He forgets that after all he is only a statue. To himself he is still a king—or at least a man who was once ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... did my heart e'er tell me, I should be Condemned the flower of my youth to spend In this wild native region, and amongst A wretched, clownish crew, to whom the names Of wisdom, learning, are but empty sounds, Or arguments of laughter and of scorn; Who hate, avoid me; not from envy, no; For they do not esteem me better than Themselves, but fancy that I, in my heart, That feeling cherish; though I strive, indeed, No token ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... dressed up in severall sorts of fashions: Some of them she hath a great fancy for, but then she doubts whether that be the newest mode or not. One seems too plain and common, which makes her imagine in her thoughts; that's too Clownish. But others stand very neat and handsom. 'Tis true, the Stuf and the Lining is costly and very dear; but then again it is very comly and handsom. And then again she thinks with her self, as long ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... it more agreeable. She was some eighteen months older than William; and when he first came to be an apprentice with her father, and a boarder in his house, she looked upon him as quite a boy, while she considered herself to be a full-grown woman. He was, indeed, a mere boy—and a clownish-looking boy too. He wore a black leathern cap, edged and corded with red, which his mother called a bendy; a coarse grey jacket; a waistcoat of the same; and his trousers were of a brownish-green ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... sir, and do not outrage my sufficiently harrowed feelings by adding worse to bad. I shall go to the inn on terra firma, and leave you in charge of what you seem so able to manage in your own clownish, pantomimic way. Be good enough to bring my fish, and do not distinguish yourself by upsetting them into their native element." With these words, and in great apparent scorn, the draggled dominie took his course along the bank and soon disappeared from view. The lawyer followed in the canoe, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... and courteous, who bow and scrape, and salute each other by certain prescribed gestures, then the Quakers will appear to have contracted much rust, and to have an indisputable right to the title of a clownish and inflexible people. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... she found that to do this she must mingle with the crowd of strange haymakers; and besides, among them she saw the clumsy form and shock head of Caliban, as she had secretly named the clownish and surly nephew of her good host. This fellow was the one bitter drop in Hilda's cup. Everything else she had learned to like, in the month which had passed since she came to Hartley's Glen. The farmer and his wife she loved as they deserved to be loved. The little maidservant was her ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... looked from beneath his sleepy eyelids at the brown earth that stretched away, beautiful in spite of itself in that June sunshine; looked at the graves, the gables of the farmhouse showing over the stone walls of the camps, at the clownish fellow at his feet, and yawned. But he had drunk of the hind's tea, and must ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... very a knave as he is a fool. He whose hair grows thick on his temples and his brow, one may certainly at first sight conclude that such a man is by nature simple, vain, luxurious, lustful, credulous, clownish in his speech and conversation and dull in his apprehension. He whose hair not only curls very much, but bushes out, and stands on end, if the hair be white or of a yellowish colour, he is by nature ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... awkward, clownish, ill-mannered, insulting, uncouth, bluff, coarse, impertinent, raw, unmannerly, blunt, discourteous, impolite, rude, unpolished, boorish, ill-behaved, impudent, rustic, untaught, brusk, ill-bred, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... applied for the place even of a menial servant, they were too clownish and awkward for the presence of the lady of the house;—and once, when William (who had been educated at the free grammar-school of the town in which he was born, and was an excellent scholar), hoping to obtain the good opinion of a young clergyman whom he solicited for the favour of waiting upon ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... brilliant circle of men of letters which the city then boasted—Dugald Stewart, Robertson, Blair, etc., and was a guest at aristocratic tables, where he bore himself with unaffected dignity. Here also Scott, then a boy of 15, saw him and describes him as of "manners rustic, not clownish. His countenance ... more massive than it looks in any of the portraits ... a strong expression of shrewdness in his lineaments; the eye alone indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... pious mother, he was placed, like Voltaire and Diderot, in an attorney's office. Dismissed with disgrace "as good for nothing but to ply the file," the young man was bound apprentice to an engraver, "a clownish and violent fellow," says Rousseau, "who succeeded very shortly in dulling all the brightness of my boyhood, brutalizing my lively and loving character, and reducing me in spirit, as I was in fortune, to my real position of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... give makes the boys a little less clownish in their manners, and more intelligent when spoken to by strangers. On the other hand, it has made them less contented with their lot in life, and less willing to work with their hands. The form which discontent takes in this country is not of a healthy kind; for, the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and amiable, who even in a passion sensual at its commencement is capable of true attachment; the girl of light character, either thoroughly depraved, vain, cunning, and selfish, or still good-hearted and susceptible of better feelings; the simple and clownish, and the cunning slave who assists his young master in cheating his old father, and by all manner of knavish tricks procures him money for the gratification of his passions; (as this character plays a principal part, I shall shortly make some further observations on it;) the flatterer or accommodating ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... invalid, while Hasjelti and Hostjoghon performed their antics with fawn skin and wands. The third series embraced all the dances exactly like the above. The fourth series embraced nineteen dances. The only variation in this was that the leaders were often more clownish in their performances, and upon several occasions only four men representing women appeared. In this case two men danced together. Some of the dancers dropped out from weariness, which caused diminution in some of the sets. The last dance closed at the first light of day. The ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... of mine. I can only say I sigh, and have a sort of a being in Cologne, where I have some more assurance of protection than I could hope I from those interested brutes, who sent me from you; yet brutish as they are, I know thou art safe from their clownish outrages. For were they senseless as their fellow-monsters of the sea, they durst not profane so pure an excellence as thine; the sullen boars would jouder out a welcome to thee, and gape, I and wonder ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... who had tried to hold her came plunging after her; his face was creased in clownish and cruel smiles. Lucas saw the thing stupidly; his mind prompted him to nothing; he stood where he was, empty of resource. He was directly in the flying woman's path, and she rushed at him as to a refuge. He was the sole thing in that narrow arena of dread which she did not recognize as a figure ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... a clownish sort of boy among the boys—an expert mimic and impersonator. This talent made him popular and in his way a leader. He was a natural actor, and early showed marked ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... account of his beauty, has caused him to be brought to her realm, but, in spite of all her charms and graces and her assiduous attentions, she cannot awaken love in him, nor change him from the rude and clownish fellow that he is; and it is not until he meets with Silvia, the shepherdess, that love is seen to be more potent than all the charms of fairy-land to make of simple Harlequin, as of Hawthorne's Faun, a man. The developing influence of love is the theme of the comedy, and, ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... where I lived, you knave?" said the Lord Nigel, angrily. "'Sdeath! I shall have every clownish burgher from Edinburgh come to gaze on my distress, and pay a shilling for having seen the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... length the wretched civil tumults may cease in England and Peace and Literature come back, but still with a return of the query what could possibly have become of the missing volume between London and Oxford, and into what clownish hands it might have fallen. In the third Strophe and Antistrophe there is a compliment to Rous as the faithful keeper of one of the most splendid libraries in the world, with acknowledgment of his kindness in seeking to have the missing volume replaced, so that ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... may appear, to be thought a well-bred Person has no small Share in this clownish Behaviour: A Discourse therefore relating to good Breeding towards a loving and a tender Wife, would be of great Use to this Sort of Gentlemen. Could you but once convince them, that to be civil at least is not beneath the Character ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the Persians used them, and this not once only, but many times, when they laid their cities waste, demolished their temples, and cut the throats of those animals whom they esteemed to be gods; for it is not reasonable to imitate the clownish ignorance of Apion, who hath no regard to the misfortunes of the Athenians, or of the Lacedemonians, the latter of whom were styled by all men the most courageous, and the former the most religious of the Grecians. I say nothing of such kings as have been famous for piety, particularly ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... Ginevra. Mrs. Sclater rose; Mr. Sclater threw himself back and stared; the latter astounded at the presumption of the youths, the former uneasy at the possible results of their ignorance. To the astonishment of the company, Ginevra rose, respect and modesty in every feature, as the youth, clownish rather than awkward, approached her, and almost timidly held out her hand to him. He took it in his horny palm, shook it hither and thither sideways, like a leaf in a doubtful air, then held it like a precious ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... the beginning of the feast, there presented him selfe a tall clownish younge man, who falling before the Queene of Faeries desired a boone (as the manner then was) which during that feast she might not refuse: which was that hee might have the atchievement of any adventure, which ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... know how to carve any joint or dish set before them, or, however high their standing in the world, they appear awkward and clownish; and, therefore, all men should practise the art of carving in ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... harmony with the June evening and a part of it, while he, in his working clothes, his rugged, sun-browned features and hair tinged with gray, was a blot upon the scene. She who was so lovely, must be conscious of his rude, clownish appearance. He would have faced any man living and held his own on the simple basis of his manhood. Anything like scorn, although veiled, on Alida's part, would have touched his pride and steeled his will, but the words and manner of this gentle ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... peculiar and superfastidious man, nobody had the smallest objection to seeing her distort her fine mouth in comic grimaces, or lend her fine figure to clownish acts. There were those, of course, who called Mrs. Hawthorne vulgar; but too many persons liked her for the charge of vulgarity to go undisputed or become loud. A good many had reason to ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... other on the site of the Cathedral, but, they were deceived who have said that this bishop extirpated paganism from Rouen, and from the province. Saint-Ouen, who came after Saint-Romain, found the people clownish, superstitious, and idolatrous, in consequence of the negligence of some bishops, his predecessors. The inhabitants of the neighbouring country, were coarse, cruel and dishonest; morals and the sciences were cultivated only among the higher classes ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet
... character are deadened; all pride of personal appearance, all nice self-respect and proper regard for the good opinion of others, every sense of decorum, and at last every pretence of decency. Dignity of behavior yields to clownish silliness, and the person lately respected is now an object of pity and loathing. The great central convictions of right and wrong now find no place in his nature; conscience is quenched, dishonesty prevails. This is true both as to the solemn promises, which prove mere idle tales, ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... delicate apprehension and tact, which can only be formed in a highly polished state of society, nor for the indignation of insulted morality expressed by the ancients: it is altogether a caricature, not of finished individual portraits, but of a single type;—a clownish sensual German priest, his intellect narrowed by stupid wonder and fanatical hatred, who relates with silly naivete and gossiping confidence the various absurd and scandalous situations into which he falls. These letters ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... almost too pale for beauty, which came of his being so little in the open air and the sunlight—for even vegetables grown in the dark are white; but he looked happy, merry indeed—perhaps at the thought of having routed the goblins; and his bearing as he stood before them had nothing clownish ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... a convulsive twitch of the nose, would agitate his face from time to time, and it was this that completed his resemblance to a rabbit. His merriment was just as likely to find issue in a nervous, metallic, sonorous outburst as in a muffled, clownish guffaw. He would stare at people from top to bottom and from bottom to top in a manner all the more insolent for its jesting character, and to add to the mockery he would detain his gaze upon his interlocutor's buttons, and his eyes would dance from the cravat to the trousers and from ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... improves, and men are mingled in it. Hence another fall for the art. Still the least of the witches retains somewhat of the Sibyl. Those other frowsy charlatans, those clownish jugglers, mole-catchers, ratkillers, who throw spells over beasts, who sell secrets which they have not, defiled these times with the stench of a dismal black smoke, of fear and foolery. Satan grows enormous, gets multiplied without end. 'Tis a poor triumph, however, for ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... now I remember. Well, he was better than most. But the faces of your young people in general are not interesting—I don't mean the children, but the young men and women—and they are awkward and clownish in their manners, without the quaintness of the elder generation, who are the funniest old ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... John, to lift his visor or to name his name. But their officious inquisitiveness was not gratified. The Disinherited Knight refused all other assistance save that of his own squire, or rather yeoman—a clownish-looking man, who, wrapped in a cloak of dark-colored felt, and having his head and face half buried in a Norman bonnet made of black fur, seemed to affect the incognito as much as his master. All others being excluded from the tent, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... first theme; followed by a lovely cantabile melody—the second theme proper—that typifies the romantic love pervading the play. This theme also is expanded into several sections; the first of which may portray the clownish Athenian tradespeople, and the second, the brays of Bottom after he has been transformed ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... her manners. A scornful affectation and awkward dignity began to be assumed. A greater attention was paid to dress, which was of gayer hues and more fashionable texture. I rallied her on these tokens of a sweetheart, and amused myself with expatiating to her on the qualifications of her lover. A clownish fellow was frequently her visitant. His attentions did not appear to be discouraged. He therefore was readily supposed to be the man. When pointed out as the favourite, great resentment was expressed, and ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... moment silent. Then he laughed a little laugh—not a pleasant one. "Another of Time's clownish tricks!" he said to himself: "the earl the factor on the family-estate!" Donal did not like the way he took it, but ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... most are the days of life in a great school, but it is at college that aspiring talent first enters on its inheritance. Oxford was slowly awakening from a long age of lethargy. Toryism of a stolid clownish type still held the thrones of collegiate power. Yet the eye of an imaginative scholar as he gazed upon the grey walls, reared by piety, munificence, and love of learning in a far-off time, might well ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... hear the whole tragedy and comedy of a ham and beef carver's life. So you will get a view of the world as oddly coloured as Harlequin's clothes, with puffs of sentiment dear to the soul of Columbine, and Clownish fun with Pantaloonish wisdom and chuckles. When you were young, you used, I think, to enjoy a butterfly's kiss; and that, you remember, was when your mother brushed your cheek with her eye-lashes. And also when you were young you held a buttercup under other children's ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... an advantage, the fanatic democratic ruler could never acquire, or else disdained to practise, the courtesies usually exercised among the higher classes in their intercourse with each other. His demeanour was so blunt as sometimes might be termed clownish, yet there was in his language and manner a force and energy corresponding to his character, which impressed awe, if it did not impose respect; and there were even times when that dark and subtle spirit expanded itself, so as almost to ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... finely. Educate a boy to tumbled hair and grimy hands, and he will go tumbled and grimy to his grave. Put a hundred boys together where they will have the appurtenances of a clown, and I do not believe there will be ten out of the hundred who will not become precisely to that degree clownish. I am not battling for the luxuries of life, but I am for its decencies. I would not turn boys into Sybarites, but neither would I let them riot into Satyrs. The effeminacy of a false aristocracy is no nearer the heights of true manhood than the clumsiness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... other hand) had never a movement but it commended him. So it befell that when the one appeared gracious and the other ungracious, every trick of their bodies seemed to call out confirmation. Not that alone: but the more deeply Mr. Henry floundered in his brother's toils, the more clownish he grew; and the more the Master enjoyed his spiteful entertainment, the more engagingly, the more smilingly, he went! So that the plot, by its own scope and progress, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the people when questioned upon points the most interesting to them, regarding their history, their agriculture, their tanks, and temples, was most provoking; and their manners seemed to me more rude and clownish than those of people in any other part of India I had travelled over. I asked my little friend the Sarimant, who rode with me, what he ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of the Muses, has always been at the service of the poets. Schiller tells a pretty story of his having been sold by a needy poet and put to the cart and the plough. He was not fit for such service, and his clownish master could make nothing of him But a youth stepped forth and asked leave to try him As soon as he was seated on his back the horse, which had appeared at first vicious, and afterwards spirit-broken, rose kingly, a spirit, a god, unfolded ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... tried to say to you personally what I am about to write, but was prevented by a kind of almost clownish bashfulness. Now that I a not in your presence I shall speak out more boldly: a letter does not blush. I am inflamed with an inconceivably ardent desire, and one, as I think, of which I have no reason to be ashamed, that in a history ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... at that time they put no women into nunneries but such as were either one-eyed, lame, humpbacked, ill-favored, misshapen, foolish, senseless, spoiled, or corrupt; nor encloistered any men but those that were either sickly, ill-bred, clownish, and the trouble of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... leaving port we were all busy as usual except the four men in the "crow's-nests," when a sudden cry of "Porps! porps!" brought everything to a standstill. A large school of porpoises had just joined us, in their usual clownish fashion, rolling and tumbling around the bows as the old barky wallowed along, surrounded by a wide ellipse of snowy foam. All work was instantly suspended, and active preparations made for securing a few of these frolicsome fellows. A "block," or pulley, was hung out at ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... is not from incaution, but because he knows perfectly well what he is about. He is quite at home in the usages of the best literary society. In his writing there is none of that hit-or-miss playing at snapdragon with language, of that clownish bearing-on in what should be the light strokes, as if mere emphasis were meaning, and naturally none of the slovenliness that offends a trained judgment in the work of so many of our writers later, unmistakably clever as they are. In short, he has tone, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... aunt, or the equally pleasing (tho' less loquacious) society of a husband, who, with a complaisance peculiar to husbands, responds—sometimes by a doubtful shrug, sometimes a stupid yawn, a lazy stretch, an unthinking stare, a clownish nod, a surly no, or interrogates you with a—humph? till bed time, when, heaven defend us! you are doom'd to be snor'd out of your wits till ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... in the extreme; and the edges, which, ought to have been smooth and gilded, were rugged and uneven like a ploughed field. It was hopeless to expect that a most discerning public should pay six shillings for a book of pastorals of such clownish appearance, when the sweetest rhymes, jingling like silver bells, and descriptive of angels and cupids, and the whole heaven of Greek and Roman mythology, were offered for a lesser sum, in settings resplendent with all the colours ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... was Mis in the twilights that followed the hatching of his children; and, though he was as much in the air as ever, it was not the fun of frolic and clownish tricks that kept him there. For, besides his own keen appetite, he had now the hunger of the twins to spur him on. Such a hunter as he was in those days! Why, he caught a thousand mosquitos on one trip; and meeting a swarm of ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... down, they asked the hag where were the people of the house. And the hag spoke not but muttered. Thereupon behold the people of the house entered; a ruddy, clownish curly-headed man, with a burthen of fagots on his back, and a pale slender woman, also carrying a bundle under her arm. And they barely welcomed the men, and kindled a fire with the boughs. And the woman cooked something and gave them ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... with a few halfpence in his pocket, and Swift's Tale of a Tub in his hand, had been so captivated by the wonders of the royal gardens, that he applied there for employment. The king, on perceiving the clownish boy, with his stockings tied about his legs by scarlet garters, inquired about him, and specially desired that he might ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... growth, finally fossilized in print, from the rhythmic cries of a barbaric dance-circle in its festal hour, there is a weighty school of critics who hold them to be the mere rag-tag camp-followers of mediaeval romance. See, for instance, the clownish ballad of Tom Thumbe, with its confused Arthurian echoes. Some of the events recorded in our ballads, moreover, are placed by definite local tradition at a comparatively recent date, as Otterburne, Edom o' Gordon, Kinmont Willie. What becomes, then, ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... her. She has just been showing me the magnificent hoop of diamonds Ellis has given her. She says we must all call him Ellis now. 'Chacun a son gout:' Poor Ellis is not very brilliant, certainly: I remember we used to call him clownish and uncultivated. But he has a good heart, and he is really very fond of Isabel; and as she is satisfied, I suppose we need not doubt the wisdom of her choice. Mother is radiant, and makes so much of the little bride-elect that she declares her head is quite turned. The house is ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... humbug—of course, with much talent and moral reality, or else she could never have been so great a humbug.... Toward the last there appears to have been a total collapse in poor Margaret, morally and intellectually; and tragic as her catastrophe was, Providence was, after all, kind in putting her and her clownish husband and their child on board that fated ship.... On the whole, I do not know but I like her the better, though, because she proved herself a very woman after all, and fell as the meanest ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... satisfied, he turned round to look at the bronze Perseus which rose just above him. Benvenuto Cellini's dark hero looked female, with his plump hips and his waist, female and rather insignificant: graceful, and rather vulgar. The clownish Bandinellis were somehow more to the point.—Then all the statuary in the Loggia! But that is a mistake. It looks too much like the yard ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... unseamanlike fellow; from a northern word implying a clownish dolt. A boatswain defined them as "fellows fitted with teeth longer than their hair," ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... village somewhat larger than the former, which is called Soato. Here they found themselves so much exhausted with over fatigue and want of food, that they were compelled to sit down and rest awhile. The people, however, were a very uncourteous and clownish race, and teazed them so much with their rudeness and begging propensities, that they were glad to prosecute their journey to save themselves from any ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... a glossy garb of the finest black broadcloth, with a spotless vest of pearl-tinted satin, and immaculate white kids. His dark visage, small, peering black eyes, and low-bred, clownish aspect, contrasted strangely with the ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... hurt is there in this? But death against The will is but a slovenly kind of potion; And though prescribed by Heaven, it goes against men's stomachs. So does it at fourscore too, when the soul's Mewed up in narrow darkness: neither sees nor hears. Pish! 'tis mere fondness in our nature. A certain clownish cowardice that still Would stay at home and dares not venture Into foreign countries, though better than Its own. Ha! what countries? for we receive Descriptions of th' other world from our divines As blind men take relations of this from us: My thoughts lead me ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... after years became too frequent an occurrence to occasion much comment, for the ease with which the poet fell in and out of love was the chief fault in a faulty life. But when this episode occurred the boy was still an innocent country lad in his fifteenth year, a lad perhaps somewhat rude and clownish, at least such is an unfounded tradition. Out of the monotony of this life of prosaic toil and drudgery, Burns is lifted by the romance which fortunately he has ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... for the first time, amongst well-bred gentlemen. Of all here present you are probably the sole person ignorant that I am Sir Giles Mompesson. But it is scarcely likely that they should be aware, as I chance to be, that the clownish insolent who has dared to wag his tongue against me, is the ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... commander of the starry sky, That guidest the life of every mortal wight, From the inclosures of the fleeting clouds Fain down some food, or else I faint and die: Pour down some drink, or else I faint and die. O Jupiter, hast thou sent Mercury In clownish shape to minister some food? Some meat! some meat! ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... backs, the small, fine heads, And laugh'd and said, "The Gods will have it thus, The choicest of the earth for sacrifice; Let it be man, or maid, or lowing bull!" Where lay the witchcraft in their clownish words, To shake my heart? I know not; but it thrill'd, As Daphne's leaves, thrill to a wind so soft, One might not feel it on the open palm; I cannot choose but laugh—for what have I To do with altars ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... king, who would protect them peacefully and with justice. The chiefs answered not a word to this. Thereupon, the bishop spoke again and asked them whether they had understood the words he had spoken to them, and if they would answer. Thereupon a clownish Indian arose and said: "We answer that we wish the king of Espana to be our king and sovereign, for he has sent Castilians to us, who are freeing us from the tyranny and domination of our chiefs, as well as fathers ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... diversions less manly, but no less characteristic of the period than those of the staff and arrow. Beneath an awning, under which an itinerant landlord dispensed cakes and ale, the humorous Bourdour (the most vulgar degree of minstrel, or rather tale-teller) collected his clownish audience; while seated by themselves—apart, but within hearing—two harpers, in the king's livery, consoled each other for the popularity of their ribald rival, by wise reflections on the base nature of common folk. Farther on, Marmaduke started to behold what seemed to him the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reposed in our bosoms could not be disappointed, but ample redemption, with interest, was secure with us. Lastly, our common captivatrix of the love of all men (money), did not neglect the rectors of country schools, nor the pedagogues of clownish boys, but rather, when we had leisure to enter their little gardens and paddocks, we culled redolent flowers upon the surface, and dug up neglected roots (not, however, useless to the studious), and ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... is my elder," he said. Perhaps an existence like his, always solitary, reduced to the satisfaction of mere needs, deprived of money and all pleasures in youth, may explain to physiologists and thinkers the clownish expression of the face, the feebleness of mind, the vacant silliness of the man. His sister had steadily prevented him from marrying, afraid perhaps to lose her power over him, and seeing only a source of expense and injury in some woman who would certainly be younger ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... of heaven, Fullest of love, and of most ample space, Receive you, as ye tell (upon my page Henceforth to stand recorded) who ye are, And what this multitude, that at your backs Have past behind us." As one, mountain-bred, Rugged and clownish, if some city's walls He chance to enter, round him stares agape, Confounded and struck dumb; e'en such appear'd Each spirit. But when rid of that amaze, (Not long the inmate of a noble heart) He, who before had question'd, thus resum'd: "O blessed, who, for death preparing, tak'st ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... could possibly have possessed De Guiche to go to a wild-boar hunt by himself; that is but a clownish idea of sport, and only fit for that class of people who, unlike the Marechal de Grammont, have no dogs and huntsmen to ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... desire, she had been comparing him in her mind with another. A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him. He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror. Instinctively he turned his back more to the light lest she might see the shame that burned ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... "Indeed!" said the ill-bred, clownish king, contemptuously. "And how can the queen think of violating her solemn oath which renders every inch of the Low Countries inalienable. I have no desire to obtain distant territory which will be useless to me; much less do I wish to expend money in new fortification. Neither the ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... the crisis, fail him, as they had failed his father in law, and might well wish to surround himself with men who were not of our blood, who had no reverence for our laws, and no sympathy with our feelings. Such imputations could find credit with no body superior in intelligence to those clownish squires who with difficulty managed to spell out Dyer's Letter over their ale. Men of sense and temper admitted that William had never shown any disposition to violate the solemn compact which he had made ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... condemnation—so wide is the privilege of genius in sportive fancy—what, but for the self-rectifying spirit of fiction, would have been an outrage on nature, and in the number not only of forbidden but unhallowed things. The passages interpolated by Mr Horne's own pen are as bad as possible—clownish and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... cherishing them. But Lucius Manlius aggravated the misfortune of his son by severity, and further clogged the slowness of his intellects; and if there were in him even the least spark of natural ability he extinguished it by a rustic life and a clownish education, and ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... and colloquial speaking. You do not assume, indeed, the solemnity of the pulpit, or the tone of stage-declamation; neither are you at liberty to gabble on at a venture, without emphasis or discretion, or to resort to vulgar dialect or clownish pronunciation. You must steer a middle course. You are tied down to a given and appropriate articulation, which is determined by the habitual associations between sense and sound, and which you can only hit by entering into the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... scornfully, while he said: "Clownish dolts, don't thrust in your tongues, when people are debating about matters of art and science; stick to your straw and your chaff; they are things you are better skilled in handling. Proceed, knowing sir," he added, looking with suspicious graciousness toward the stranger; "how do ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... their evening sports theatricals were in vogue. Illustrations would be given of selfish schemes to take things easy at the expense of others, clownish processions to create laughter, or marriage ceremonies in which, when it came to the point, the bride rebelled and would not have her husband. Ventriloquism also was attempted, in which, as they say, "voices ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... and died in his bed, without offence to any man." Wit Shakspeare had in common with his ingenious contemporaries; but theirs, to speak out plainly, "was not that of gentlemen; there was ever somewhat that was ill-natured and clownish in it, and which confessed the conversation of the authors." "In this age," Dryden declares the last and greatest advantage of writing proceeds from conversation. "In that age" there was "less ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... always the case in towns, that some one in it is foolish or clownish. It happened to be so here; for a Maujeekewis was in the lodge; and after the young man had given his father-in-law presents, as he did to the first, this Maujeekewis jumped up in a passion, saying, "Who is this stranger, that he should ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... stone steps into the empty, echoing courtyard. The unexpected appreciation of my doubtful humor set me musing over the possibility of a duty new to Americans. It is the French who have stood for gaiety. We have warmed ourselves in their quick wit. Perhaps it is time for us to do our little clownish best ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... that its interior arrangement be for the convenience of the in-door farm work, and the proper accommodation of the farmer's family, should be quite as apparent; but, that it should assume an uncouth or clownish aspect, is as unnecessary as that the farmer himself should be a boor in his manners, or a ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... the comforts and conveniences, all the marvelous treasures, all that is pleasing to the eye and to the senses, may not be happy—may be unhappy. The rustic who follows the plow through furrowed fields, unkempt, clownish, toil-stained, weary and overworked, may brawl raucous roundelay at even-tide and enjoy the fullness of earthly bliss. His neighbor similarly situated may suffer agonies because his tastes and ambitions are higher. ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... rote a coded praise, Unto a leering two-faced god falls prone, And smears with lust and fear his alternate days For monstrous imaginations to atone; For you, most instant, most ardent,—you are flown Like fumes to his clownish brain, and in his fear He dreams you a eunuch carved of pallid stone Warning, "Beware all ye ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... Lewis Orne. He had been a blocky, heavy-muscled redhead with slightly off-center features and the hard flesh of a heavy planet native. Even in the placid repose of near death there was something clownish about his appearance. His burned, ungent-covered face looked made up for some ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... dayes, uppon which xii. severall dayes, the occasions of the xii. several adventures hapned, which being undertaken by xii. severall knights, are in these xii. books severally handled and discoursed. The first was this. In the beginning of the feast, there presented him selfe a tall clownish younge man, who, falling before the Queen of Faries, desired a boone (as the manner then was) which during that feast she might not refuse: which was that hee might have the atchievement of any adventure, which during that feaste should happen: that being graunted, he rested him on the floore, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... Amorous Jilt, who had once been attached to George Marteen, the Younger Brother, married for a convenience the clownish Sir Morgan Blunder. Prince Frederick, who had seen and fallen in love with her during a religious ceremony in a Ghent convent, follows her to England. They meet accidentally and she promises him a private interview. George Marteen had recommended a ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... a kid for Bacchus, sir," said the man to him as he was running his eye over the goats. On Agellius answering in the negative, he said in a clownish way, "He who does not sacrifice to Bacchus does ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... damsel, whom he releases from the tree, Maudlin and Douce retiring the while to watch his success, which is small. Baffled, he again shuts the girl up in her natural cell, and his mother, coming forward, rates him soundly for his clownish ways, reading him a lecture for his guidance in his intercourse with women, in which she seems little concerned by the presence of her daughter. This latter, so far as it is possible to judge from the few speeches assigned to her in the fragment, appears to ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... abroad with me by coach to Bartholomew Fayre, and our boy with us, and there shewed them and myself the dancing on the ropes, and several other the best shows; but pretty it is to see how our boy carries himself so innocently clownish as would make one laugh. Here till late and dark, then up and down, to buy combes for my wife to give her mayds, and then by coach home, and there at the office set down my day's work, and then home ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... silent; he looked down and caught a clownish garnet gleam out of a blackness neighbouring his knee. "Well, see here," he said. ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... and the entire want of society, Burns might have grown up the rude and clownish and unpopular lad that he has been pictured in his early teens. But in his fifteenth summer there came to him a new influence, which at one touch unlocked the springs of (p. 008) new emotions. This incident must be given in his own words:—"You know," he says, "our country custom of coupling ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... be compared with the episode of Tappe-coue or Tickletoby in Pantagruel:—"Villon, to dress an old clownish father grey-beard, who was to represent God the Father [at the performance of a mystery], begged of Friar Stephen Tickletoby, sacristan to the Franciscan Friars of the place, to lend him a cope and a stole. Tickletoby refused him, alleging that by their provincial ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... Germanicus; therefore Tiberius' nephew, Caligula's uncle, and a brother-in-law to Agrippina. Mr. Baring-Gould says that somewhere deep in him was a noble nature that had never had a chance: that the soul of him was a jewel, set in the foolish lead of a most clownish personality. I do not know; certainly some great and fine things came from him; but whether they were motions of his own soul (if he had one), or whether the Gods for Rome's sake took advantage of his quite negative being, and prompted it to their own ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... indicated. Then there was good in him to the measure of admiring a woman like Alexa, though not of admiring a far better. He saw himself in danger of losing her; concluded influences at work to the frustration of his own; surmised that she doubted the character of his business; feared the clownish farmer-poet might have dazzled with his new reputation her womanly judgment; and felt himself called upon to make good his position against any and every prejudice she might have conceived against him! He would yield nothing! If he was foiled he was foiled, ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... leading out of the town in a northerly direction, several of the men on guard were assembled, amusing themselves at the expense of the departing peasantry, whose uncouth physiognomy and strange clownish appearance afforded abundant food for the quaint jokes and comical remarks of the soldiers. The market people were, for the most part, women, old men, and boys; the able-bodied men from the country around Pampeluna, having, with few exceptions, left their homes, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... have not made me an adept in talking with young ladies," said Paul. "Doubtless you think me rude and clownish, and perhaps you are right, but I hope I have nothing but true feelings at heart. You are fighting for your father in this election, Miss Bolitho, and I do not complain in the least. You hope he will win, and you are using every legitimate means to obtain votes for him—that is right, that ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... boy was ridiculous. In what bucolic school of fence he had been taught was beyond imagining. He was downright clownish. "Short work and simple" was my judgment, while his red hair seemed a-bristle with very rage and while he ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... have been a recognisable, if not a staring likeness of the poet, I said and still say—"How awkward is the ensemble of the face! What a painful stare, with its goggle eyes and gaping mouth! The expression of this face has been credited with humour, bonhommie and jollity. To me it is decidedly clownish; and is suggestive of a man crunching a sour apple, or struck with amazement at some unpleasant spectacle. Yet there is force in the lineaments of this muscular face." The large photograph of the Monument lately issued ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby
... a lily from the mould, Abel staggered backwards, partly in clownish mirth, partly in astonishment. He was so impressed that he got breakfast himself, and afterwards went and sandpapered his hands until they were sore. Hazel, enthroned in one of the broken chairs, fastened on Foxy's ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... pallid,—his features are regular and of a certain delicacy,—his eye is bright and quick,—his lips play over the thought he utters as a pianist's fingers dance over their music, and his whole air, though it may be timid, and even awkward, has nothing clownish. If you are a teacher, you know what to expect from each of these young men. With equal willingness, the first will be slow at learning; the second will take to his books as a pointer or a setter ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to amuse them, or—why not?—an appendage to his daughter's state! Ah, Jesus Maria! such a state! such a muchacha! A picked-up foundling—a swineherd's daughter—to be ennobled by his, Pedro's, attendance, and for whose vulgar, clownish tricks,—tricks of a swineherd's daughter,—he, Pedro, was to be brought to book and insulted as if she were of Hidalgo blood! Ah, Caramba! Don Juan Peyton would find he could no more make a servant of him than he could make ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... not understand the vital and almost painful interest which this young man had roused in her. He was both child and poet to her, and as she watched him trying to make friends with the men, her indignation rose against their clownish offishness. She understood fully that his neat speech, his Eastern accent, together with his tailor-cut clothing and the delicacy of his table manners, would surely mark him for slaughter among the cow-hands, and the wish to shield him made her face graver than anybody ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... in high dudgeon, and he was left to curse his ill-timed jest. What a blundering fool he had been! Her first, timid little advance,—and he had met it with boorish, clownish wit! A scurvy jest, indeed! She ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... later critics, not the most cavalier nor the dullest, has dared to call him vain. His estimate of himself, offered as simple fact, has been accepted in the same spirit, and one abyss of ineptitude still yawns for the heroic folly, or the clownish courage, of the ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... still, while another is speaking to you. You will not of course be so rude as to dig in the earth with your feet, or take your penknife from your pocket and pair your nails; but there are a great many other little movements which are scarcely less clownish. ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... time, ma'am. Albino has been a theological student in his day and can say it in the boat," remarked another youth, pointing to the tall, thin one who had first spoken. The latter, who had a clownish countenance, threw himself into an attitude of contrition, caricaturing Padre Salvi. Ibarra, though he maintained his serious demeanor, also joined in ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... short clownish grub, would beare the whole carkase of an Oxe, and yet neuer tugged with him, like that so famous Milo, ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... fear," if any say. A free-born wench, no right 'tis up to lock, So use we women of strange nations' stock. Because the keeper may come say, "I did it," She must be honest to thy servant's credit. He is too clownish whom a lewd wife grieves, And this town's well-known custom not believes; Where Mars his sons not without fault did breed, Remus and Romulus, Ilia's twin-born seed. 40 Cannot a fair one, if not chaste, please thee? Never can these by any means agree. ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... As a clownish fellow was driving his cart along a deep miry lane, the wheels stuck so fast in the clay, that the horses could not draw them out. Upon this he fell a-bawling and praying to Hercules to come ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... lips; with her children she talked English and Italian in equal perfection, and when she heard young Carminatti's facetious remarks she laughed with marked impudence. Signer Carminatti was tall, with a black moustache, a hooked nose, well-formed languid eyes, lively and somewhat clownish gestures; he was at the same time sad and merry, melancholy and smiling, he changed his expression every moment. He was in the habit of appearing in the salon in a dinner-jacket, with a large flower in his button-hole and two or three fat diamonds on his chest. He ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... I remain. To sit in an empty whorehouse and masturbate.... No! If this hallucination grows powerful enough to trick my senses into clownish fornications, let my madness enjoy them. Not I. We are no longer friends, ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... were diffident. That was the first thing which reassured me. Had you been rustic, clownish, awkward, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Friday, February 25th. Lord Carteret proposed the motion for the Address to the King, and went over much of the {90} same historical ground that Pulteney had traversed in the Commons. The Duke of Newcastle replied in his usual awkward and bungling fashion, with the uneasy attitudes and clownish gestures which were characteristic of him. He was not able to make any effective use of the King's message, and the Lord Chancellor read it for him. The division in the House of Lords showed seventy-nine votes and twenty-four proxies for the King, in all ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... personal friends; and when we entered the well-known reception-room, a very tall, lanky man came quickly forward to meet us. His manner seemed to me the perfection of courtesy. I was struck with the simplicity, kindness, and dignity of his deportment, so different from the clownish manners with which it was then customary to invest him. His face was a pleasant surprise, formed as my expectations had been from the poor photographs then in vogue, and the general belief in his ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... I was on my feet. She stood pointing up the slope. On the brow of it was a clownish, bad-looking fellow, a few inches taller than myself. He looked hostile, but I saw no reason to fear him, for he had no weapon, and my little friends had ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... slangy, classical, lyrical, precious, prurient, and low—a mixture of bawdy jests, affectations, coarseness, and wit, all of which seemed to have a foreign accent. Ironical, and gifted with a certain clownish humor, they had not much natural wit: but they were clever enough, and they manufactured their goods in imitation of Paris. If the stone was not always of the first water, and if the setting was always strange and overdone, at least it shone in artificial light, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... pounds), is mainly invested in his thirteen landed estates; he attends to the management of it in person systematically and with enthusiasm; he comes seldom or never to the capital, and, when he does appear there, by his clownish manners he contrasts not less with the polished senator than the innumerable hosts of his uncouth rural slaves with the elegant train of domestic slaves in the capital. Far more than the circles of the nobility with ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... to haue had against him for calling thy Father Ropemaker. Mas, thats true, what Action will it beare? Nihil pro nihilo, none in law; what it will doe vpon the stage I cannot tell, for there a man maye make action besides his part, when he hath nothing at all to say: and if there, it is but a clownish action that it will beare; for what can bee made of a Ropemaker more than a Clowne? Will Kempe, I mistrust it will fall to thy lot for a merriment one of these dayes." Strange Newes, Of the intercepting ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp
... A very clownish Provencal rustic heard of the extremity of the King, while on his way from Marseilles to Paris, and came this morning to Versailles with a remedy, which he said would cure the gangrene. The King ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... ambition, the stupid arrogance were the same in both, and the difference was in a brute will that probably left the porter the gentler man of the two. The very innocence of Lapham's life in the direction in which he had erred wrought against him in the young man's mood: it contained the insult of clownish inexperience. Amidst the stings and flashes of his wounded pride, all the social traditions, all the habits of feeling, which he had silenced more and more by force of will during the past months, asserted ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... for recreation, as a reward of their diligence, obedience and profiting; and that to be appointed at the Masters discretion, eyther the Thursday, after the vsuall custom; or according to the best opportunity of the place.... All recreations and sports of schollars, would be meet for Gentlemen. Clownish sports, or perilous, or yet playing for money, are ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... imperious way would take no denial. So George had his bath, got a fresh horse saddled, nearly chucked Minnie over the other side as he clumsily helped her to mount her pony, and rode away with her a willing if somewhat clownish captive. Arriving at the bungalow Mactavish, honest George was bewildered by the transformation it had undergone. Flowers were where the spirit-case used to stand. There was a drawing-room with actually a piano in it; the World lay ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... passions and caprices, and incapable of hearing the voice of reason." A woman's vanity may be hurt when she finds that she has a husband for whom she has to blush and tremble every time he opens his lips. She may be annoyed at his clownish jealousy, his mulish obstinacy, his incapability of being managed, led, or driven; but she must reflect that there was a time when a little wisdom and reflection on her own part would have prevented her from delivering her heart and her person to so ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... upon the audience. In the practical jokes, the melodrama, the ranting bombast, and Bottom's ambition to play "a tyrant's vein," they recognise a satire on the amateur theatricals of the trades-guilds, the clownish horseplay of the "moralities" so-called. These crude plays, once so popular, have become the jest of an audience who pride themselves on a drama of higher ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... squire would have almost unlimited power. They would be able to drive or send to the poll an entire labouring population. These districts would return an unmixed squirearchy. The scattered small towns which now send so many members to Parliament, would be lost in the clownish mass; their votes would send to Parliament no distinct members. The agricultural part of England would choose its representatives from quarter-sessions exclusively. On the other hand a large part of the constituencies would be town ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... and robust; his manners rustic, not clownish; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its effect, perhaps, from one's knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His features are represented in Mr. Nasmyth's picture, but to me it conveys the idea that they are diminished as if seen in perspective. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... louder, and more frequent than any poet since Elizabethan times. Whatever we hold about the insight and imagination of Browning, no one can doubt that he often chose to be uncouth, crabbed, grotesque, and even clownish, when the humour was on him. There are high precedents for genius choosing its own instrument and making its own music. But, whatever were Browning's latent powers of melody, his method when he chose to play upon the gong, or the ancient instrument of marrow-bone and cleavers, was the exact ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... way, throwing her tainted money back to the town as fast as the town threw it into her purse, roaring, swearing, laughing—a thumping sentimentalist, a clownish Samaritan, a Madam Aphrodite by Rube Goldberg. There are many stories that used to go the rounds. But when I read the coroner's report there was one tale in particular that started up in my head again. A mawkish tale, perhaps, and if I write it with too maudlin a slant I know who will wince ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht |
