"Clumsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thing could be done; when he found his house dismantled, saw the good ceilings and elegant cornices knocked to pieces, saw the light domes and modern sashes give way; all taken out to be replaced, at profuse expense, by a clumsy imitation of Gothic; how often did be sigh and calculate, when he saw the tribes of workmen file off as their dinner bell rang! how often did he bless himself, when he beheld the huge beams of timber dragged into his ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... very clumsy of you, my little friend, to present your bill before the furs. Learn to know women. You must never ask us to pay until the moment ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... a clumsy enough way of explaining things, he thought discontentedly, and yet it was the best he could do. He folded the paper and put it into the envelope; he sat for a moment with it in his hand looking down at Christine's married name, "Mrs. ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... was graciously pleased also, upon their good behaviour, to remit the subsequent execution. She sent presents to all the learned men in Asia; and they in return did not fail to cry her up as a pattern of clemency, wisdom, and virtue: and though the panegyrics of the learned are generally as clumsy as they are fulsome, they ventured to allure her that their writings would be as durable as brass, and that the memory of her glorious reign would reach ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole
... enough everywhere) is coarse and clumsy in this career. Vengeance has nothing to do with comedy, nor properly with satire. The satirist who told us that Indignation made his verses for him, might have been told in return that she excluded him thereby from the first class, and thrust him among ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... place. It has not even a cheap shop for female gear. Every thing in the one store which it boasts, kept by Martha Deane, linen-draper and haberdasher, is dear and good, as things were wont to be. You may actually get there thread made of flax, from the gouty, uneven, clumsy, shiny fabric, ycleped whited-brown, to the delicate commodity of Lisle, used for darning muslin. I think I was never more astonished, from the mere force of habit, than when, on asking for thread, I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... boldness in outline, and delicacy in details: its pyramidal form is graceful. It consists of three stories, gradually diminishing in height and diameter as they rise, and terminating in a cross, whose clumsy shape only renders the destruction of that which it replaces the more to be regretted. The form is octagon throughout; and upon every compartment in each of the stories, is carved, at a short distance from its base, a narrow cinquefoil-headed arch, surmounted by a triangular crocketed canopy. But ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... fashionable to call a Philistine, and who calls himself a "practical man," often has under him a beginner fresh from the schools, who is glib and confident in repeating bookish theories, but is not yet skillful in applying them. If the practical man is thoughtless, he sniffs at theory and points to his clumsy assistant as proof of the uselessness of what is to be got from books. If he is wise, the practical man realizes how much better off he would be, how much farther his hard work and experience might have carried him, if he had had the ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... movements and of adaptation; very probably, as is seen in an attentive study of infancy, sensibility precedes the power of motion in its differentiations. A child shows an extraordinary acuteness of perception at an age when its hand is still very clumsy. The correlation, then, is not absolute. And then even if it were so, it would not follow that the suppression of any movement would produce by rebound the suppression of the sensation to which this movement habitually corresponds. ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... march on Santiago de Chile, and met the patriot forces near Talca. The revolutionists largely outnumbered the Spaniards, but were poorly disciplined and ill-provisioned. While they lost time the Spanish main column under Osorio came up. Ordonez took advantage of the clumsy manoeuvres of the revolutionists to drive a sharp attack between their two wings, piercing their centre. The battle was won after the first fifteen minutes. O'Higgins was wounded and had to be carried out of the fight. ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... stood for a moment with an arm still around the girl; but as Murray rose to his feet he pushed her gently behind him, and then as the man was upon him Jimmy ducked easily under the other's clumsy left and swung a heavy right hook to his jaw. As Murray staggered to the impact of the blow Jimmy reached him again quickly and easily with a left to the nose, from which a crimson burst spattered over the waiter and his victim. ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... clumsy affair, with windows at each end and a door in the rear, but open at the sides except for enamel cloth curtains, which were buttoned to the supports that carried a railed roof extending as far forward as the dashboard. ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... swept the Kansas prairies, but gentle zephyrs almost breathless that rustled softly and musically through the little blades of grass just as the wind was rustling through the stalks now as he walked slowly with the heavy stride of the clumsy farmer, hoeing ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... "My dear Watson, clumsy as I have been, you surely do not seriously imagine that I neglected to get the number? No. 2704 is our man. But that is no use ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... be pretty sure to start a laugh at the clumsy, ill-natured Kate's expense, and Annie would walk loftily away from the group of young gossips. Perhaps some memory of Gretel's assailants crossed her mind as she skated rapidly toward Amsterdam, for her eyes sparkled ominously ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... the names, palaeotherium, anthracotherium, anoplotherium, lophiodon, &c., have been applied to them with a consideration of more or less conspicuous peculiarities; but a description of the first may give some general idea of the whole. It was about the size of a horse, but more squat and clumsy, and with a heavier head, and a lower jaw shorter than the upper; the feet, also, instead of hooves, presented three large toes, rounded, and unprovided with claws. These animals were all herbivorous. ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... run all round, looking for a chance to break through the fence. Of course he finds the hole, and pokes his head through it. One of us stands outside, as you see me now, with a hatchet ready; and we would be clumsy, indeed, if we could not cleave in his skull, or give him such a crack upon it, as would turn him back downwards. You shall see how the bear will rush to this hole the moment he comes out, and then, masters! you ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... the new with a clean record. It is a measure absolutely necessary. The snake does not put on his new skin over the old one. He sloughs off the first, before he dons the second. He would be a very clumsy serpent, if he did not. One can not have successive layers of friendships any more than the snake has successive layers of skins. One must adopt some system to guard against a congestion of the heart from plethora ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... Something clumsy, warm, and panting pushed against her, and she uncovered her face and looked down upon William trying to thrust his head under her arm and join in ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... Some of my remarks were flung about the table, and had the same success as uncouth Lombard carvings have with connoisseurs in naivetes of art. By that time we had come to be compare and comare to each other—the sequel of some clumsy ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... old tub for kindness' sake with a little gracious bow at the end! Don't you remember my telling you about that wisp of an organist whom Mr. R—— petted till he didn't know his shock head from his clumsy heels, and the insufferable airs he gave himself at their party over the piano, and the audience, and the lights, and silence, and what he would or would not play to the elderly merchants. And of all the amateur-and-water ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... time when the coarse-handed British criticism began to blame his delicate art for the universal acceptance of his verse, and to try to sneer him into the rank of inferior poets, he was without rancor for the clumsy misliking that he felt. He could not understand rudeness; he was too finely framed for that; he could know it only as Swedenborg's most celestial angels perceived evil, as something distressful, angular. The ill-will that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... so the appearance is not aesthetical. Only a stranger to the fashionable world can take the polite assurances, which are only a form, for proofs of affection, and say he has been deceived; but only a clumsy fellow in good society calls in the aid of duplicity and flatters to become amiable. The former lacks the pure sense for independent appearance; therefore he can only give a value to appearance by truth. The second lacks reality, and wishes to replace it by appearance. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... all. During the six hours we were together—train, club, theatre, and train again—he never once called me 'sir'; he never once employed our clumsy, repellent Anglo-Saxon mode of address, 'mister'; in fact, he never employed any mode of address at all. He got round it quite cleverly,—on system, as I soon began to perceive; and not for a moment ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... was convinced, and so every able-bodied youth I could muster was enrolled in my infantry battalion and spent most of his time in vigorous bayonet practice. And for the same reason I had discarded the idea of armor. I felt it would be clumsy, and questioned its value. True, it was an absolute bar against the disintegrator ray, but of what use would that be if a Han ray found a crevice between overlapping plates, or if the ray was used to annihilate the very earth beneath the ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... most need of her. But no earnestness of writing can do much after all. It is true the eye affects the heart, and we would show what we have seen in the hope that even the second-hand sight might do something; but words are clumsy, and cannot discover to another that poignant thing the eye has power to transmit to the heart. And it is well that it is so, for something stronger and more consuming than human emotion can ever be ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... this time, and Armand St. Just, who loved her so dearly, felt that he had placed a somewhat clumsy ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... cheaper, and along that path went short-sighted Nineteenth Century Progress, quite heedless of the possibility of ending in a cul-de-sac. The first locomotives, apart from the heavy tradition of their ancestry, were, like all experimental machinery, needlessly clumsy and heavy, and their inventors, being men of insufficient faith, instead of working for lightness and smoothness of motion, took the easier course of placing them upon the tramways that were already in existence—chiefly for the transit ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... all in keeping with Mr. Simon Peter Hathaway's gifts and adroitness that he should begin by attempting a clumsy bit of acting. ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... Guicciardini—the toil of a month of nights—was as the work of an ant in the dust. Beside her interest in his gossip of the schools, the coffee-house, the street corner, my exposition of the Sonnets of Petrarca was as the babble of school children at play in the Pra; beside her attentions to his clumsy caresses, her tenderness to me hour after hour was but the benevolence of a kindly woman to a lad left on her hands. Oh, bitter tonic discovery! How bitter it was I leave my reader to determine. I do not feel equal to the task of relating ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... a guessing game," suggested the Rolling Elephant, who, by this time had managed to get down to the table without upsetting any more of the toys. "If we play tag or hide and go seek, I'm so big and clumsy I may knock ...
— The Story of a Nodding Donkey • Laura Lee Hope
... its character; nor are the four pillars supporting the roof, and the unequal arches leading into the south aisle, in the least calculated to convey any idea of grandeur, or feeling of veneration. These arches have been cut through in a very clumsy manner, so that scarcely any vestige of the ancient church of St. Mary Magdalen now remains. A small doorway and windows, however, are still visible at the east end of this chapel; the west end formerly opened into the south transept; but that also is now ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... pick with you, young man," he said with clumsy joviality. "You beat me upon the purchase of that Westmarsh property. Very shrewd, indeed, Mr. Burnit; very like your father. I suppose that now, if I wanted to buy it from you, I'd have to pay you a pretty advance." And he ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... in this reign, and a short clumsy war with France for favouring Scotland; but, the events at home were so dreadful, and leave such an enduring stain on the country, that I need say no more of ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... adaptation on the part of individuals and groups to the requirements of life may be in part accomplished by biological selection, that is, by eliminating the least adapted. But selection is, after all, a very clumsy and imperfect instrument for securing the highest type of adaptation. Again, it is evident that a certain degree of adaptation can be secured through the constraint of government and law; but only a relatively low ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... Euryalus. There was young Forrester, merry and plucky, saving his goal more than once by a prompt touch-down. There, even, was the elephantine Jeffreys, snorting and pounding in the thick of the fray, feeling his feet under him, and doing his clumsy best to fight the battle ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... water, while cheaper, was inconvenient, for the travellers must use the flatboat, which was clumsy and slow and, worst of all, of little use except when ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... too bad. I never did such a clumsy thing in my life," declared Jane. "Here, Dad! Settle the damages with Mrs. Livingston. Anything broken ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... and coined an excuse for their blackness; not aware that the direction of his mind toward Clara pushed him to a kind of clumsy double meaning, while he satisfied an inward and craving wrath, as he said: "By the way, I have been racking my head; I must apply to you, sir. I have a line, and I am uncertain of the run of the line. Will this ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his line of vision as he spun through the emptiness. Two or three little bits of the cord chipped off and drifted away. Tremont realized that it was frozen and brittle. He redoubled his efforts. After a few minutes of clumsy clicking of fingertips against thumbs, he strained to pull his ...
— Satellite System • Horace Brown Fyfe
... delight, With clapping hands applaud the sight. With smiles, quoth Pug, 'If pranks like these The giant apes of reason please, 40 How would they wonder at our arts! They must adore us for our parts. High on the twig I've seen you cling; Play, twist and turn in airy ring: How can those clumsy things, like me, Fly with a bound from tree to tree? But yet, by this applause, we find These emulators of our kind Discern our worth, our parts regard, Who our mean mimics thus reward.' 50 'Brother,' ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... can succeed, however, who tamely copies his neighbor's work. Let us hope, then, that our art will soon drop its clumsy costume, and take to itself something natural and national; that it will become, as it should, the type of our Western civilization—a civilization that spreads itself, not by sword or sceptre or crozier, but by life ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... Sun Wu Kung: "I am not too small for you; and I can make myself large at will. You scorn me because I am without a weapon, but my two fists can thresh to the very skies." With that he stooped, clenched his fists and began to give the devil a beating. The devil was large and clumsy, but Sun Wu Kung leaped about nimbly. He struck him between the ribs and between the wind and his blows fell ever more fast and furious. In his despair the devil raised his great knife and aimed a blow at Sun Wu Kung's head. But the latter avoided the blow, and ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... and decoration are the principal objects; the Doric is calculated for strength, and the Ionic partakes of the Doric strength, and of the Corinthian ornaments. The Composite and the Tuscan orders are more modern, and were unknown to the Greeks; the one is too light, the other too clumsy. You may soon be acquainted with the considerable parts of civil architecture; and for the minute and mechanical parts of it, leave them to masons, bricklayers, and Lord Burlington, who has, to a certain extent, lessened himself by knowing them too well. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... fearful descent, at once the despair and delight of engineers. The mountain fell away rapidly as the long, clumsy train raced down its flank at a breakneck pace. Pobloff shivered and clutched the arms of his seat. He saw nothing but deep blue sky and the tall top of an occasional tree. The racket was terrific, the heat depressing. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... civilization, this hardy pioneer should be honored by the present generation and his name handed down to posterity as that of one who fought the good fight of progress, and fought well, with weapons which if perhaps crude and clumsy—as the age was crude and clumsy judged by Twentieth Century standards—were at least most ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... slug, "a monstrous man crushing a tender slug under his clumsy hoofs. Birds I can tolerate. They are not so big ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... "My clumsy friend," Brice was saying, pleasantly, "I'm afraid you'll never win that watch. Shall we call it a ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... can do without them for a while.' 'O, no,' said the old woman, 'I can't consent to that; but here is a pair of heavy boots that I bought for Thomas, who can't wear them. If you would only buy these, we should get on nicely.' The boy bought the boots, clumsy as they were, and has worn ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... journey. We should have been better without the courier and the maid. The courier is a tall man. I have no opinion of tall men. I am a man myself of five foot—that's the right height for a courier. I could have done all the work, and saved Mistress the money. Her maid is another tall person; clumsy with her fingers. I could dress Mistress's hair a deal better than the maid, if she would only let me. The fact is, I want to do everything for her myself. I shall never be quite happy till I'm the only servant ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... compelled to take you before a magistrate, where you can explain to his satisfaction," the officer replied firmly, drawing from his pocket some strange instruments, looking like clumsy bracelets, with heavy ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... an apologetic tone, "What does the likes o' me know about holdin' babies? I were brought up to seamanship, and not to nussin'. I'd joy to see you, missus, set to manage a thirty-pounder. I warrant you'd be as clumsy wi' a gun as I be ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... an arrow, which, rending little surface, enters deeply, but they whose minds are dull resemble stones dashing with clumsy ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... steam is beyond that of our best vessels, and she therefore becomes, at her pleasure, utterly inaccessible to anything we may send to pursue her. We have built our steamers strong and heavy; but proportionately slow and clumsy. The Alabama could not safely encounter any one of them entitled to the name of a regular cruiser; but she does not intend to risk such a contest, and, most unfortunately for us, she cannot be compelled to meet it. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... confined to comic etching or designs on wood. He was also an artist in oil and water colour. He painted in oils The Drunken Gardener; The Organ of Murder, a clumsy, nervous craniologist feeling his own head in doubt and perplexity to ascertain whether the dreadful "organ" is developed in himself; An Hour before the Duel (exhibited at the Institution in Pall Mall). Other subjects of his pictures were: The Poet reading his Manuscript ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... them in this way, and the dame thought that it would be a good scheme for one of her maids to now endeavor to slip out and arouse the village to their help. One of the women therefore essayed the journey; but was so clumsy as to attract the enemy's attention. She was seized and made to confess how the house was protected and where it was most likely to fall before a sharp assault. Being a witless wench, she told them truly, and Master Ford then bade ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... shockingly by the process. Perhaps not really worse than in prose translation, but every metre (or almost every) deprives you at once of a sensible fraction of the already scanty vocabulary. One learns also how essentially clumsy and prosaic the language is in its vocabulary, though so ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... instance, our city government. A few decades ago our cities were so notoriously misgoverned that they were the scandal of the world. Our boards of aldermen or councilmen, representing ward constituencies, with all sorts of local strings tied to them, were clumsy and unwieldy and easily ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... when we discovered it two days ago. It is Donatello's prize. We were sitting here together, planning an interview with you, when his keen eyes detected the fallen goddess, almost entirely buried under that heap of earth, which the clumsy excavators showered down upon her, I suppose. We congratulated ourselves, chiefly for your sake. The eyes of us three are the only ones to which she has yet revealed herself. Does it not frighten you a little, like the apparition of a lovely woman that livid of old, and has long ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the light of contrast that I could reflect on the rusty and clumsy way in which I had previously done my thinking, and I remembered with a faint amusement that there had been a time when I considered that I had a very clear and logical mind. Logical! What did we, as mere mortals full of personal desire, know of logic? The reflection seemed infinitely humorous. ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... (i.e., sculptures) exhibit a close observance of nature such as we could only expect to find among a people considerably advanced in the minor arts, and to which the elaborate and laborious, but usually clumsy and ungraceful, not to say unmeaning, productions of the savage can claim ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... inquiringly, but just took hold of the job he had come to do, and Polly explained to Mamsie. And presently everybody was obeying the stage-driver just as soon as he spoke a word. And his big hands were just as gentle and light, and his fingers, that always seemed so clumsy holding the old leather reins, were a great deal softer in their touch than Mother Pepper's own, as they wandered all over ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... procession of carts, but instead of going up the hill in the direction of the barracks, it was descending the hill, and instead of soldiers in clumsy uniforms, peasants in bell-shaped sheepskin coats walked by their horses' heads, snapping the long lash whips they carried in their hands. I recognized the covered gypsy wagons and the open carts with their ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... improvised boat was soon ready for transportation. Working all night, in shifts, it was ready for its voyage down the river the next morning, and just about the time our lads were eating breakfast, the desperadoes, with the professor and Pete lying tightly bound in the bottom of the clumsy ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... this, both boys had progressed so far that they were able to work on a mat, made up of several layers of thick carpet, without the aid of the "mechanic." Of course their act lacked finish. Their movements were more or less clumsy, but they had mastered the principle of the ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... in his admiration of Miss Chatterton's masterly analysis and comprehension. She had, so to speak, taken Frida Tancred to pieces and put her together again in a phrase—"Dying for love of life." Beside her luminous intuition his own more logical method seemed clumsy and roundabout, a constructive process riddled by dangerous fallacies and undermined by monstrous assumptions. At the same time he persisted in returning to one of these, the most monstrous, perhaps, of all. In spite, perhaps because, of her flat denial, he pictured Frida not only as mysteriously ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... animals I've met The Puppy is the worst one yet. Clumsy and crude, he hasn't brains Enough to come in when it rains. But with insufferable conceit He thinks that he is ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... as it rests on the saddle, is not felt. Moreover it does not require nearly so much dip to put it in the water. I have heard of a sort of upright with a universal joint being applied to the English canoe, but it seems to me a much more clumsy and much less effective, because rigid, contrivance than the Eskimo saddle. Inside, under the deck, as I will show you by and by, I have lighter and shorter paddles for use when in narrow rivers, but I prefer the long heavy paddle when traversing ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... by the entry of an elfin-tressed little girl, who stares at us half impudently, half shyly, with bright black eyes, hesitates at the botanist's clumsy smile and nod, and then goes and stands by her father ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... up her pole and finding that she could touch bottom, began to pole the raft inshore, and in twenty minutes she was looking for a place to land. She found it in a quiet little bay beyond a tree-crowned bluff, and in a little time she had beached the clumsy craft, and jumped ashore. She anchored the raft to a tree, and then looked around. Just where she had landed, there was a level patch of sward, backed by massive firs and, after considering its possibilities ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... under officers who themselves knew next to nothing. As usual with such fledgling troops there was no end to the fuss and feathers among the members of the busybody staffs, who were numerous enough to manage an army but clumsy enough to spoil a platoon. It was said, and not without good reason, that there was as much gold lace at Harper's Ferry, when the sun was shining, as at a grand review ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... Indian women are homely to the last degree. "Ugly," said an Oregonian to me, as we contemplated a company of squaws—"ugly is too mild a word to apply to such faces;" and he was right. Broad-faced, flat-nosed, small-eyed, unkempt, frowzy, undersized, thickset, clumsy, they have not a trace of beauty about them, either young or old. They are just useful, nothing more; and as you look at them and at the burdens they bear, you wonder whether, when the Woman's Rights movement has succeeded, and when women, ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... be sure, most proverbially courteous and intelligent reader, might never have guessed at first sight, from the young man's outer aspect, the nature of his occupation. The gross and clumsy male intellect, which works in accordance with the stupid laws of inductive logic, has a queer habit of requiring something or other, in the way of definite evidence, before it commits itself offhand to the distinct conclusion. But Elma Clifford was a woman; and ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... be run. You can avoid much labor turnover and unsatisfactory work if you first ask a few questions of substantial members of the countryside who are in the habit of employing such men and therefore know their good and bad points. One man may be strong and willing but so stupid and clumsy that he destroys more than he earns; another may be deft, ingenious, have an uncanny way with flowers and vegetables, but yet have such an utter lack of responsibility that one cannot depend on him ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... point of view, is in a literary sense the less remarkable. One is indeed a little astonished to find that a public, accustomed to such admirable political satire as the Anti-Jacobin, should have been so much taken as it seems to have been by the rough versification and somewhat clumsy sarcasm of the Devil's Thoughts. The poem created something like a furore, and sold a large reissue of the number of the Morning Post in which it appeared. Nevertheless it is from the metrical point of view doggerel, as indeed the author admits, three of its most smoothly- ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... gross appeals to human passions were made by those who sought to please corrupt leaders of society in an effeminate age. The turgidity and luxuriance of art gradually passed into tameness and poverty. The reliefs on the Arch of Constantine are rude and clumsy compared with those on the Column ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... changed its expression a bit, but he did not trouble to answer. Tomaso's brother knew far better than did Johnny all the rules of commerce. Johnny's clumsy attempt to depreciate what he wanted very much to buy merely convinced Tomaso's brother of the ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... consists of collar straps, leashes, and surcingles, (1) and the collar should be broad and soft so as not to rub the dog's coat; the leash should have a noose for the hand, (2) and nothing else. The plan of making collar and leash all in one is a clumsy contrivance for keeping a hound in check. (3) The surcingle should be broad in the thongs so as not to gall the hound's flanks, and with spurs stitched on to the leather, to preserve the purity ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... big clumsy boy, a little inclined to fat, with small eyes, heavy low forehead, thick lips, and amorphous nose, lurched over to where Dam endeavoured to read himself into a better and brighter world inhabited by Deadwood Dick, Texas Joe, and Red Indians ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... clumsy boat that the brig could n't hoist in nor tow," answered Jack, coolly, turning short round at the same time, but not condescending to "uncoil" his arms as he did so, a mark of indifference that would probably have helped to mystify the ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... official police photographer and his assistants had arrived (this was long after midnight) with special apparatus for photographing the victim and the scene of the crime. And their work occupied two full hours owing largely to the difficult manipulation of a queer, clumsy camera that photographed the body from above as it ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... told her. "Do you know that last Christmas I cried and cried because I was tied to the Crossroads school and to Bower's? I wanted to live in the city and have lovely things. You can't imagine how I hated all Eve Chesley's elegance. I seemed so—clumsy and common." ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... with her clock; but still Herr Ludwig, as the mountaineer called himself, tarried in the dim and dusty shop. Clocks, old and new, broken and whole, clocks from the four ends of the world; and watches, thick and clumsy, thin and graceful, of ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... I received your letter from his clumsy sailor's fist, my mind was made up. I asked him whether he was returning to Flushing, and when he said yes, I declared he must take me with him, cost what it would. I would have paid him all I possessed, without hesitation, ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... wish they were all like you!" she cried, with a stamp of her foot. "Sometimes I despise gallantry. I hate the smooth compliments of your macaronies. I thank Heaven you are big and honest and clumsy and—" ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... blunt, and at times perhaps uncouth-appearing, farmer. Writing about that time, a surgeon in the American army said: "This is my first interview with this celebrated hero, Putnam. In his person he is corpulent and clumsy, but carries a bold, undaunted front. He exhibits little of the refinements of a well-educated gentleman, but much of the character of ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... clumsy, I'm afraid. But it cannot be helped. I must go blundering on. I'm groping in the dark, you know, but it's a thousand pities I shall have to tread on ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... the woman, whose dress and deportment the honest man conceived to be nothing less than that of a lady of one of the "first families," obeying the motion, began to descend from the carriage. "Now, Broadman," continued Blowers, arranging his reins, and with clumsy air making his descent over the fore wheels, "take that 'ar wench o' mine, and, by the State's custom, give her the extent of the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... doesn't know what suffering means, any more than if she were a bird or a squirrel. I thought you'd take a fancy to her, Blanche; and perhaps you can think of some way to help them. Women know how to set about such things. I'm such a clumsy fellow that all I dared attempt was to deal out as much meal and bacon as ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... full of sharp-shooters, who, taking advantage of trees, stumps, and the levee, would shoot down every man that poked his nose outside the protection of their armor; so that he could not handle his clumsy boats in the narrow channel. The rebels had evidently dispatched a force from Haines's Bluff up the Sunflower to the Rolling Fork, had anticipated the movement of Admiral Porter's fleet, and had completely ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... and preserves, intended to be kept a long time, are often spoiled by the clumsy and ineffectual manner in which they are fastened down. Bottles therefore should be secured with the following cement, spread upon the cork after it is cut level with the top of the bottle. Melt in an ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... mere youth of, at the most, twenty. They were strikingly alike in physiognomy, notwithstanding the difference in their years, but neither had anything at all remarkable either in his looks or general appearance: both were small, clumsy-limbed, somewhat simple-faced, rather ugly; and on the whole they were a very commonplace, every-day-to-be-seen pair ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... lady Whose conduct is shady Or smacking of doubtful propriety; When Virtue would quash her I take and whitewash her And launch her in first-rate society. I recommend acres Of clumsy dressmakers - Their fit and their finishing touches; A sum in addition They pay for permission To say that they ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... a rising sea combined to hold back the tug and her rather clumsy tow as the day waned. Occasional heavy rain squalls made the deck of the barge a rather uncomfortable place, so the boys stayed in the main ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... he was, did not dare attack her. He walked around and around, like a great clumsy elephant, and she turned her small body as he turned his, and kept up a dreadful hissing and spitting. Suddenly I saw a Spitz dog hurrying down the street. He was going to help the mastiff, and Malta would be badly hurt. I had barked and no one had come ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... physician, who, when a young practitioner, had the good-fortune to call one day upon Stuart when he was suffering from the effects of a fall. He had been thrown from a vehicle and had broken his arm, which was so unskilfully set that it became inflamed and swollen, and the clumsy surgeon talked of amputation. Imagine the feeling of such an artist at the idea of losing his right arm! The doctor's visit was not professional, but, seeing the despondent mood of the invalid artist, he could not refrain the offer of service. It was accepted, and proved successful, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... had been awakened, the memory of his hot breath in her face, of his clumsy fevered embraces was a torment to her; for always in contrast there were the fresh clean-shaven cheeks and chin of a young Berserker with honest, wondering blue eyes, the curly head of a child, and body and limbs like a young ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and that Arabs of doubtful character have driven a splendid trade in Moabite antiquities ever since the discovery of the Moabite stone. On the other hand, the forger, if forgery there be, is assuredly no clumsy and ignorant bungler, as the makers of the Moabite pottery were confidently alleged to be by those who disputed its genuineness. It is, of course, part of his craft, and not, perhaps, much more than the 'prentice part, to give to the sheepskins on which the text is inscribed an appearance ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... when we adopt the more accurate rendering of the Revised Version, 'received Him with blows.' Mark's account, then, is this: that, as soon as the unanimous howl of condemnation had beep uttered, some of the 'judges'(!) fell upon Jesus with spitting and clumsy ridicule and downright violence, and that afterwards He was handed over to the underlings, who were not slow to copy the example set them at the upper ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... whole scheme was a very clumsy imitation of Smith's, he drew a considerable number of followers to his Wisconsin branch, where he published a newspaper called the Voree Herald, and issued pamphlets in defence of his position, and a "Book of the Law," explaining his doctrinal teachings, which ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... blue sky overhead, do you see a black speck? Not got it yet? Wait a moment and try again. There! That is right, and there is another and another; you can't help seeing them now. Their flight is the slow heavy flight of clumsy birds. What do you suppose they are? Vultures. They live, as you know, on carrion, which is dead flesh, and the vultures of Bombay are peculiarly favoured, for they banquet ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton |
