"Unwieldy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a huge machine moving upon wheels, and including several platforms or stages, which held various parties of armed soldiers, who were defended by a strong roofing of boards and hides, beneath which they could work their battering-rams with impunity. To co-operate with this unwieldy and bulky instrument, which, from its shape and covering, they called a "sow," movable scaffolds had been constructed, of such a height as to overtop the walls, from which they proposed to storm the town; and, instead of a single vessel, as on the former occasion, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... particular, drew my attention, larger and more spiteful-looking than the rest, and closer to me than any. Each instant, too, he was drawing nearer and nearer. I thought he had reached my hand, and I could feel him crawling upon it. I could feel the cold harsh touch as he dragged his unwieldy shape over my fingers, but I could not move either hand or finger to cast him off. On he came over my wrist and straight up my arm, which was lying outstretched from my body. He appeared as if determined to attack me in the face or the throat. I read his intention to do so from the eagerness with ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... some of these specks even represented Christopher as capable of harbouring designs in 'that head,' and as being a crafty impostor. Other motes there were which showed him as a heavy, selfish, drifting Booby, who, having stumbled, in the course of his unwieldy jostlings against other men, on the discovery that to get through life with ease and credit, he had but to hold his tongue, keep the bald part of his head well polished, and leave his hair alone, had had just cunning enough to seize the idea and stick to it. It was said that his ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... any but a most skilful rider. The situation was full of peril. Every plunge of the excited horse brought it against the horns again, and goaded it to fresh madness. It was all that the girl could do to keep herself in the saddle, yet a slip would mean a terrible death under the hoofs of the unwieldy and terrified animals. Unaccustomed to sudden emergencies, her head began to swim, and her grip upon the bridle to relax. Choked by the rising cloud of dust and by the steam from the struggling creatures, she might have abandoned her efforts in despair, but for a kindly voice at her elbow ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... reasons, having so few of her own. They served—Delia's reasons—for Mr. Dosson as well, so that Francie was not guilty of any particular irreverence in regarding her sister rather than her father as the controller of her fate. A fate was rather an unwieldy and terrible treasure, which it relieved her that some kind person should undertake to administer. Delia had somehow got hold of hers first—before even her father, and ever so much before Mr. Flack; and it lay with Delia to make any change. She couldn't ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... standing across the street to eat the fine cauliflower he had just plundered from the stall of an unresisting greengrocer, and who, exercising the proud rights of citizenship, could only be politely coaxed to move his unwieldy carcase out ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... unscathed by the weapons of their defenders. Not imagining it would be needed, he had not sent it on with the main body, but now he commanded twelve of the strongest horses to be yoked to it, and on went the unwieldy engine, rumbling and staggering on its ill-formed wheels. Lancaster, whose impatience no advice could ever control, dashed on with the first troop, leaving his cooler comrade to look to the yoking of the engines ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... drank of it; and though he was young, and of a healthful disposition, it so deranged his head that it spoiled his pleasure and disordered him for three days after. Whether it was from drinking these wines, or from some other cause, the King became so lazy and so unwieldy, that he was trussed on horseback, and as he was set, so would he ride, without stirring himself in the saddle; nay, when his hat was set upon his head he would not take the trouble to alter it, but it sate as ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... that the music is there, although I am not able to break the spell that binds it. It is pleasant to know that Bellini and Mozart, Cimarosa, Porpora, Glueck and all such,—or at least their souls,—sleep in that unwieldy case. There lie embalmed, as it were, all operas, sonatas, oratorios, nocturnos, marches, songs and dances, that ever climbed into existence through the four bars that wall in melody. Once I was entirely repaid for ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... without a double share Of wisdom? vast, unwieldy, burdensome; Proudly secure, yet liable to fall By weakest subtleties, not made to rule, But to subserve where wisdom ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... delights; clung round the linden-trees of the great Herrenhausen avenue, and at first would not quit the place. Schulenberg, in fact, could not come on account of her debts; but finding the Maypole would not come, the Elephant packed up her trunk and slipped out of Hanover unwieldy as she was. On this the Maypole straightway put herself in motion, and followed her beloved George Louis. One seems to be speaking of Captain Macheath, and Polly, and Lucy. The king we had selected; the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... proportion like a portly, Daniel-Lambert sort of man put by the side of a starving street urchin of seven. The only advantage the thresher apparently possessed was in its eyes, which, when one could get a glimpse of them, looked like those of a hawk; while the unwieldy cetacean had little tiny optics, not much bigger than those of a common haddock, which were placed in an unwieldy lump of a head, that seemed ever so much bigger than its body, with a tremendous lower jaw containing ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... wears a huge rosary, sometimes so large as to be uncomfortable. I saw several that were so unwieldy that they went over the shoulders and formed a huge line, larger indeed than a string of sleigh bells. These are ornamental rosaries and are not used for prayer. The praying rosary is as small and dainty as those used by fashionable ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... the larger boat in their own skiff. It was an unwieldy craft, with but one pair of oars, and as the two young men were not accustomed to rowing together, and as Mr. Raybold was not accustomed to rowing at all and did not like it, Mr. Clyde pulled the boat. But, do what he could, it was impossible for him to ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... swear, and break things. "He is fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils." He fears no consequences, and can accomplish impossibilities. If he is a cripple, he fancies he can dance like a satyr; if he is slow and unwieldy, he can run like a hart; if he is weak and feeble in strength, he can lift like Samson, and fight like Hercules; if he is poor and pennyless, he is rich as Croesus on his throne, and has money to lend. This is all a correct representation. It is what happens ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... skipped jauntily down the steps to the gateway, the Doctor followed his unwieldy, oddly-dressed form with his eyes, and, inclining his head gravely to Dick's sweeping wave of the hand, asked with a compassionate tone in his voice. "You don't happen to know, Richard, my boy, if your father has had any business troubles ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... crush'd conceit, and man was of a piece; Where wealth, unlov'd, without a mourner dy'd; And scarce a sycophant was fed by pride; Where ne'er was known the form of mock debate, Or seen a new-made mayor's unwieldy state; Where change of fav'rites made no change of laws, And senates heard before they judg'd a cause; How would'st thou shake at Britain's modish tribe, Dart the quick taunt, and edge the piercing gibe? Attentive truth and nature to descry, And pierce each scene with philosophic eye, To thee ...
— English Satires • Various
... adds his Lordship, "was so obliging as to attend Lord Lovat, with his archers, all the way to Angouleme. He had the luck to procure a cursed little chaise, where Lord Lovat was in a manner buried alive under the unwieldy bulk of this enormous porpoise." This relation, so different from that given by Mr. Arbuthnot, weakens the veracity of both accounts, and leads one to infer that the long narrative by the reverend gentleman of Lord Lovat's adventures in the Bastille ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... existed at the time in that island; but, when he tried to express them in speech or letter, there issued from his mind the most extraordinary mixture of exclamations, questions, arguments soon losing themselves in the sands of words, unwieldy parentheses, and morsels of beautiful pathos or subduing eloquence. Yet, as you read these amazing utterances, you come by degrees to feel that you are getting to see the very heart and soul of the Puritan Era, and that you would rather be beside this man than any other representative of the period. ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... led by Honest Moses, poled an unwieldy scow to the Ohio shore, took the dashing equestriennes on board and ferried back to ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... it be the house that has got him. As I understand it, that was a valid objection urged by Momus against the house which Minerva made, that she "had not made it movable, by which means a bad neighborhood might be avoided"; and it may still be urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them; and the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves. I know one or two families, at least, in this town, who, for nearly a generation, have been wishing to sell their houses in the outskirts and move into the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... a hole like lightning! Prepare a canister, Mr. Bolton—quick!" shouted the captain in desperation, as he sprang over the side and assisted to cut into the unwieldy obstruction. The charge was soon fixed and fired, but it only split the block in two and left it motionless as before. A few minutes after the ship again grounded; the ice settled round her; the spring tide was lost, and they were ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... fortune, to mankind a shame, Think how posterity will treat thy name; And buy a rope, that future times may tell, Thou hast at least bestowed one penny well. "Right," cries his lordship, "for a rogue in need To have a taste is insolence indeed: In me 'tis noble, suits my birth and state, My wealth unwieldy, and my heap too great." Then, like the sun, let bounty spread her ray, And shine that superfluity away. Oh, impudence of wealth! with all thy store, How dar'st thou let one worthy man be poor? Shall half the new-built churches round thee fall? Make quays, build bridges, or repair Whitehall: ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... time the name of the late captain had been mentioned, and Herrick grasped the occasion. The reader shall be spared Uncle Ned's unwieldy dialect, and learn in less embarrassing English the sum of what he now communicated. The ship had scarce cleared the Golden Gates before the captain and mate had entered on a career of drunkenness, which was scarcely interrupted by their malady and only closed by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the final stage, when the decrepit old man, like the unwieldy though most sagacious elephant, becomes grave, sedate, and distrustful. He then also begins to hang down his head towards the ground, as if surveying the place where all his vast schemes must terminate, and where ambition and vanity are finally ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... now see how it was—threw all hands into the boats in chase, the felucca being too unwieldy and every effort to get alongside unsuccessful. He's a devil of a fellow, that Nelson and Bronte; and I had rather hear the thunder of ten thousand tempests than get one of his tempestuous letters. Well, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... she produced miraculously from the jumble an unwieldy engine dragging a long and tangling tail of hose behind it, the end lost among mementos of unfinished meals "—this pump is full of the Metamorphizer, enough to inoculate a hundred and fifty acres when added in proper proportion to the irrigating water. I have a table worked ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... which shall be capable by means of fleets and armies of imposing its will upon the world, then it is satisfactory to think, for the reasons above given, that the ideal is an unattainable one. Any closer union of the British Empire attempted with this object would absolutely fail. The unwieldy weapon would break in our hands. The ideal is as impracticable as it ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley
... out the major's hogs, and they came rooting and tumbling with unwieldy gambols. And with this wild troop of animals, and the mob shrieking in a frenzy of delight, and now and then a woman in terror before the onslaught of a galloping horse, and now and then a whole group of cutters overset by a charging hog, and up and after him, and slaying him, ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... no ornamental plumage to display. Goatsuckers, geese, carrion vultures, and many other birds of plain plumage have been observed to dance, spread their wings or tails, and perform strange love-antics. The courtship of the great albatross, a most unwieldy and dull coloured bird, has been thus described by Professor Moseley: "The male, standing by the female on the nest, raises his wings, spreads his tail and elevates it, throws up his head with the bill in the air, or stretches it straight out, or forwards, as far as he can, and then utters a curious ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... which, with my advanced years, begat in me a sort of distaste to the bickerings of the council chamber; so I conferred and communed with myself, anent the possibility of ruling the town without having recourse to so unwieldy a vehicle as the wheels within wheels of the factions which the Yankee reformator, and that projectile Mr Plan, as he was called by Mr Peevie, ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... contemporaries, and appealed to the coming age—both preferred fame to reputation—both during their life-time met with obloquy, which crushed them not—both combined intellect with imagination, in equal proportions—both were persevering and elaborate artists, as well as inspired men—both were unwieldy in their treatment of commonplace subjects. Neither possessed a particle of humor; nor much, if any, genuine wit. Both were friends of liberty and of religion—their genius was "baptized with the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... played All beasts of the earth since wild, and of all chase In wood or wilderness, forest or den. Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards, Gambolled before them; the unwieldy elephant, To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... in particular, are more pompous and unwieldy than what he writes in his own person. This want of relaxation and variety of manner has, I think, after the first effects of novelty and surprise were over, been prejudicial to the matter. It takes from the general power, not only to please, but to instruct. The ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... mass of living corruption." Gibbon, in his "Decline and Fall," also says that "his (Galerius's) death was caused by a very painful and lingering disorder. His body, swelled by an intemperate course of life to an unwieldy corpulence, was covered with ulcers and devoured by immense swarms of those insects who have given their names to this most loathsome disease." It is also said that the African Vandal King, the Arian Huneric, died of the disease. Antiochus, surnamed the "Madman," ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... appear to be discouraged by this reception. She finished unloading the cart of all except the tables, which she found unwieldy single-handed. Then she unharnessed old Neddy, and went and seated herself on the low wall beside the house. She was seemingly quite content with the situation. But to the two women indoors it was a dreadful experience. Their minds were ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... these to rank among the derangements and deformities of nature. She, according to her usual taste and economy, would never be at the expense of rearing, and that upon ground that might have otherwise been much better occupied, such unwieldy, useless masses of matter, merely for the sake of gratifying the taste for grandeur and sublimity in a few of her sons, nor, indeed, for any other use we ever heard ascribed to them.... According to our ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... pressure of news or of advertisements. The suggestion as to form has been adopted bit many of our religious, literary, and special weeklies, to the great convenience of the readers, and I doubt not of the publishers also. Nothing is more unwieldy than our big blanket-sheets: they are awkward to handle, inconvenient to read, unhandy to bind and preserve. It is difficult to classify matter in them. In dull seasons they are too large; in times of brisk advertising, and in the sudden access of important news, they are too small. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the fight of 1588," says Camden, "charged the enemy with marvellous agility, and having discharged their broadsides, flew forth presently into the deep, and levelled their shot directly, without missing, at those great ships of the Spaniards, which were altogether heavy and unwieldy." Moreover, the Spanish fashion, in the West Indies at least, though not in the ships of the Great Armada, was, for the sake of carrying merchandise, to build their men-of-war flush decked, or as it was called "race" (razs), which left those on deck exposed and open; ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... husband, he was inimitable, and brought down the house two or three times during the evening. He was also very great as "Little Toddlekins," a part that might have been specially written for him. The character is that of a stout, somewhat bulky and unwieldy young person who possesses an inordinate appreciation of her own imaginary charms. Her father, whom I might designate as a fly-by-night sort of a gentleman, a character which I once ventured to portray myself, is obsessed by the ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... Nearer and nearer I approached, until at last my feet rested on the hard caked soil. For the first few minutes after my arrival I was too overwhelmed with fear to do other than remain stationary. The ground beneath my feet swarmed with myriads of foul and long-legged insects, things with unwieldy pincers and protruding eyes; things covered with scaly armour; hybrids of beetles and scorpions. I have a distinct recollection of one huge-jointed centipede making a vicious grab at my leg; he failed to make his teeth meet in anything tangible, ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... their home, their hut-like bower; Green water-rushes overspread the floor; [73] 240 Long grass and willows form the woven wall, And swings above the roof the poplar tall. Thence issuing often with unwieldy stalk, They crush with broad black feet their flowery walk; [74] Or, from the neighbouring water, hear at morn [75] 245 The hound, the horse's tread, and mellow horn; Involve their serpent-necks in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... family or clan possesses its own familiar spirits of this class. They are represented by men who disguise their bodies in dense masses of sago leaves and their faces in grotesque masks with long hooked noses. In this costume the maskers jig it as well as the heavy unwieldy disguise allows them to do. But the dance consists in little more than running round and round in a circle, with an occasional hop; the orchestra stands in the middle, singing and thumping drums. Sometimes two or three of the masked men will make a round of the village, pelting the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... his arms at the first alarm, Zac had fled to the woods. Being stronger than Claude, he was fortunate in having a less unwieldy burden; for Margot did not lie like a heavyweight in his arms, but was able to dispose herself in a way which rendered her more easy to be carried. On reaching the woods, Zac did not at once plunge in among the trees, but continued ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... wit, good sense, clear spirited, an honest creature, courteous, charitable, a giver of alms, and of a jovial humour, a boon companion, and a merry blade, if ever there was any in the world. He was somewhat gorbellied, had a little shake in his head, and was in effect unwieldy of his body. In his old age he took to wife the Bailiff of Concordat's daughter, young, fair, jolly, gallant, spruce, frisk, brisk, neat, feat, smirk, smug, compt, quaint, gay, fine, tricksy, trim, decent, proper, graceful, handsome, beautiful, comely, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... with the wind abeam, had now drawn abreast of her unwieldy adversary. The merchant captain, apparently, finding himself out-speeded and being unable to spare his gun crews to trim sails, had put the head of his ship into the wind, where she stood, with canvas flapping, her bows offering a steady mark to ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... really an old woman, her whimsical fascination dead in its decaying home, her powers faded if not fled for ever. She might do what she liked then. It would all be of no use. Even the voice would be cracked and thin, unresponsive, unwieldy. The will would be phlegmatic. If it were not, the limbs and features would not easily obey its messages. The figure, now beautiful, would perhaps be marred by the ungracious thickness, the piteous ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... thrust the half-welded cheese into the fiery furnace, and again it was dragged forth, and the jolly giant bent, and tugged, and sweated, and commanded,—he did not swear over his task. At length having succeeded in making the unwieldy lump assume an approach to the desired shape, he observed, in a deep, bass, chuckling, triumphant aside, to the engineer who was looking on, "I'm not a very little one, but I think if I was as big again you'd try what I ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... on hand to adjust matters!" she thought inwardly. "But I can see that when they really begin to use their 'phones at all, as most owners of them do, this exchange business would become a rather unwieldy affair." Then Joyce sighed so profoundly that Gus heard it at the other end, even ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... party, should they find us. Still they had several days to wait before they could commence their voyage. They also formed a rudder with one of the spars; and out of a piece of plank which had been secured, along with two other spars, they constructed two oars to assist in impelling their unwieldy craft. At last a light breeze sprang up. There was no little difficulty in getting clear of the branch; but after all their stores had been placed on it, the skipper, by his good management, at last succeeded. The ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... brought him to his feet with a sudden exclamation. One of the big electric trams that ply between the Place St. Germain des Pres and Clamart, by way of the Porte de Versailles and Vanves, was dragging its unwieldy bulk round the turn from the rue de Rennes into the boulevard. He could see the sign-board along the imperiale—"Clamart-St. Germain des Pres," with "Issy" ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... controversy as to which should marry first, had been overtaken by old age before they had got the question settled; here was a little young wife with a great old husband; there, on the other hand, was a dapper little man and an unwieldy giantess. In one house, every step one took one stumbled over a child; another, however many people were crammed into it, never would seem full, because there were no children there at all. Old husbands (supposing the estate was not entailed) should get themselves ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... extraordinary figure, rising from the grain beyond, began to gesticulate to him wildly. Checking the driver of the first carriage, Clarence bore down upon the stranger. To his amazement it was Jim Hooker. Mounted on a peaceful, unwieldy plough horse, he was nevertheless accoutred and armed after his most extravagant fashion. In addition to a heavy rifle across his saddle-bow he was weighted down with a knife and revolvers. Clarence was in no mood for trifling, and almost ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... inconvenient or ridiculous, and not impossibly both; but I shouldn't at all mind upholding in public disputation, say, at the Poetry Bookshop, that there was no other way than Drayton's of doing the thing at all. It was the mythopoetic way. For purposes of poetry, Britain is an unwieldy subject, and if you are to allow to a river no other characters than those of mud and ooze, swiftness or slowness, why, you will relate of it little but its rise, length and fall. Drayton's weakness ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... visited by bisons with their calves, and in Winter by reindeer. This theory is open to a great many objections. As is well known, some animals make quite extensive migrations annually, but we can scarcely believe that heavy, unwieldy animals like the hippopotamus, were then such industrious travelers as to wander every year from Italy to Northern England and return. But the very ground on which this theory rests, that of strongly contrasted summers and winters, could ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... was really the ancient warlike custom of the people. It seems in some respects too elaborate to be the armature of a simple and primitive race. We may reasonably suppose that at least the scale armor and the unwieldy wicker shields (yeppa), which required to be rested on the ground, were adopted at a somewhat late date from the Assyrians. At any rate the original character of the Median armies, as set before us in Scripture, and as indicated both by ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... transferred the burden of responsibility to other and eminently capable shoulders, he turned with an easier conscience to take advantage of the help offered him in his task. On the very day after the review, Sadiq Ali's regiments, some swollen to unwieldy size, others depleted to mere skeletons, were thoroughly overhauled, and the ten smartest men picked out of each hundred. These were turned over to Rukn-ud-din's Mohammedans to be drilled, and after a preliminary course set to drill their fellows. The higher ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... them from the shore. But he found scant time to stare idly at the water. All about them it's surface was clogged with floating debris. The river had risen to within a foot of the slender cable that held the boat on its course, and the unwieldy craft was trembling and jerking as uprooted trees and masses of flotsam caught on the line, strained it almost to the point of snapping and then rolled under by the force of the current, allowed the line to spring into place again. Slowly, the boat, swept by the force of the flood, ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... outdoor exercise, since the roughly paved streets made driving impossible for him, and he was far from being able to walk. After a time I contrived to hire a large rowing boat, and on fine afternoons it was our custom to lower him from the quay among the swans into this somewhat unwieldy craft, so that he might take the air as a Venetian. The idea tickled him, and our progress along the disused canals was always a matter of interest to the towns-people, who showed an unappeasable inquisitiveness concerning their renowned ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... of Mexico and ask that he lay the matter before the Cabinet and King. Without that high authority we can do nothing. But I see no reason to doubt the issue when we, who know the wants and needs of California, approve and desire. We are doomed to failure in this unwieldy land of worthless savages, but it is the business of the wretched servants of a glorious monarch to ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... that, being the loveliest (of the ideas) she is also the most palpable to sight?" [Footnote: Sec. 251.] Now, whatever one's stand on the question of nature versus humanity in art, one must admit that embodying ideals means, in the long run, personifying them. The poet, despising the sordid and unwieldy natures of men, may try, as Wordsworth did, to give us a purer crystallization of his ideas in nature, but it is really his own personality, scattered to the four winds, that he is offering us in the guise of nature, as the habiliments ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... indomitable determination to wrestle with and prevail over it is inspiring. There is no imaginable image that he does not press into his service in rattling the chains of his voluntary servitude. Above all, he groans over the unwieldy mass of ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... hundred feet, have rudders for giving a vertical or a horizontal motion, and several strengthening keels that prevent leeway when turning. They are entirely on the principle of birds, maintaining themselves mechanically, and differing thus from the unwieldy balloon. Starting as if on a circular railway, against the wind, they rise to a considerable height, and then, shutting off the batteries, coast down the aerial slope at a rate that sometimes touches five hundred miles an hour. When near the ground the helmsman directs the prow upward, and, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... flower that "spreads its sweet leaves to the air, and dedicates its beauty to the sun",—there is poetry, in its birth. If history is a grave study, poetry may be said to be a graver: its materials lie deeper, and are spread wider. History treats, for the most part, of the cumbrous and unwieldy masses of things, the empty cases in which the affairs of the world are packed, under the heads of intrigue or war, in different states, and from century to century: but there is no thought or feeling that can have entered into the mind of man, which he would be eager to communicate ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... who know Florence well, that she is growing unwieldy. Like a bulky old concierge they say, she sits in the passage of her Arno, swollen, fat, and featureless, a kind of Chicago, a city of tame conveniences ungraced by arts. That means that there are suburbs and tramways; it means that the gates will not hold her in; it has ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... Because he desists from youthful habits. He assumes an air of dignity incompatible with the lightness of childish sallies. He is visited and vexed with all the cares that rise out of our mistaken institutions, and his heart is no longer satisfied and gay. Hence his limbs become stiff and unwieldy. This is the forerunner of old age and death' (ii. 863-64). 'Medicine may reasonably be stated to consist of two branches, the animal and intellectual. The latter of these has been infinitely too much neglected' (ii. 869). We may look forward to a ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... Deerslayer was as good as his word. In less than five minutes after this speech was made, the whole party was in the ark, and in motion. There was a gentle breeze from the north, and boldly hoisting the sail, the young man laid the head of the unwieldy craft in such a direction, as, after making a liberal but necessary allowance for leeway, would have brought it ashore a couple of miles down the lake, and on its eastern side. The sailing of the ark was ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... enable all his troops to hurl their darts at once. While much boasting of this sort was going on around him, raising his already overweening self-confidence to a frantic pitch, Demaratus, the Lacedaemonian, alone told him that the disorganized and unwieldy multitude in which he trusted, was in itself a danger to its chief, because it possessed only weight without strength; for an army which is too large cannot be governed, and one which cannot be governed, ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... an unbolting of bars, the turning of huge, unwieldy keys, and the lieutenant of the castle ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... neutralized the former and gradually limited the garrison to the range of its guns. This close grasp of the land approaches to Boston, so persistently maintained, stimulated the Americans to catch a tighter hold, and force the garrison to escape by sea. The capture of that garrison would have placed unwieldy prisoners in their hands and have made outside operations impossible, as well as any practical disposition of the prisoners themselves, in treatment with Great Britain. Expulsion was the purpose of the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... of coolness and to avoid mosquitoes, they plunge into streams or mud-holes, and lie there for hours with only their muzzles and eyes above water. It is rather a pleasing sight to see one of these unwieldy, dangerous-looking brutes being led quietly along, by means of a thin string attached to its nose, by a wee native girl, who, when tired of walking, stops the animal, draws its head down by the string, places her tiny foot on the massive ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... punching new holes in his belt with an unwieldy jack-knife. He suddenly gave off twisting the point of the knife against the leather and lifted it menacingly in the ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... to accommodate three others, then, gentlemen publishers, in swelling your books to catch the public eye, you have taken from us far more than you put into your own pockets from your sales to us. You have made our book storage four times as costly and unwieldy as it ought to be; but you have done worse than this, you have sold us perishable instead of durable goods. You have cheapened every element of the book—paper, ink, and binding—so that, while we begin the twentieth ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... months and years. Gangazara sat in the dark cellar, without the sun's light falling upon him, and feasted upon the breadcrumbs and sweetmeats that the rats so kindly supplied him with. These delicacies had completely changed his body into a red, stout, huge, unwieldy mass of flesh. Thus passed full ten years, as prophesied in ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... him. Felipe orders that certain offices shall be sold; that the natives must pay at least part of their tributes in kind; and that the salaries of the auditors be more promptly paid. Command is given that war-ships in the islands be no longer built so large as hitherto, as they are expensive, unwieldy, and in some circumstances useless. A letter to the auditors gives directions for the method of procedure in trying certain cases of appeal; and answers some questions which the auditors had asked. Bishop Arce, of Cebu, writes to the king (July 31, 1631). ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... of Europe. In France Louis XVIII. found himself confronted by an ultra-royalist chamber of deputies which clamoured for vengeance on the partisans of the republican and imperial regimes and for the restoration of the privileges and estates of the Church. Ferdinand VII. of Spain swept away the unwieldy constitution of 1812 amid the rejoicings of his people, who little foresaw his future tyranny; and Great Britain did not venture to resist the action of Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies in abolishing a constitution ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... of him was blocked by the unwieldy forms of five buffaloes, in charge of a naked brown wisp of humanity four feet high, armed with a no more formidable weapon than a pine branch stripped of its needles. But the crux of the situation lay in the fact that, between the fourth and fifth ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... them were in my chain Ytied; and now, what for unwieldy age And unlust, they may not to love attain: And sain that "Love is but very dotage!" Thus, for that they themself lacken courage, They folk exciten by their wicked saws For to rebell against ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... the formations were partly broken by thick bush, in which the force became somewhat entangled. The cavalry went in advance as scouts. The guns, water-carts, and ammunition-wagons were in the centre, and the Indian Brigade came last, surrounding the unwieldy mass of baggage-animals. Last of all came the telegraph detachment, unrolling as they went the wire that ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... bull or a panther, they would have had their bones shivered to pieces by the tremendous blows which Boone dealt upon his adversary with all the strength of despair; but Bruin is by nature an admirable fencer, and, in spite of his unwieldy shape, there is not in the world an animal whose motions are more rapid in a close encounter. Once or twice he was knocked down by the force of the blows, but generally he would parry them with a wonderful agility. At last, he succeeded in seizing the other ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... guardians, the big boat moved across the lake to Leoni. How a little hamlet on a Bavarian lake got that Tuscan-sounding name I cannot tell; but Leoni it is. The big boat was a long time crossing: the lake here is about three miles broad, and these heavy barges are unwieldy and heavy to move, even though they are towed and tugged at ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... could ever remember, but to every man there present it opened a door in his heart, and brought back the knowledge of youth. She whom he had loved best danced before him, her tender hands caressed him; the words she sang were sighs which the dead had whispered in his ears. Even to Abi, old, unwieldy and steeped in cunning, these soft visions came, although it is true that it seemed to him that this lovely singer led him to a precipice, and that when she ceased her song and appeared to vanish, to seek her he leapt into the clouds that ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... is at all times a very brisk, bustling, active little man, - for he is, as it were, chubby all over, without being stout or unwieldy, - but yesterday his alacrity was so very uncommon that it quite took me by surprise. For could I fail to observe when he came up to me that his gray eyes were twinkling in a most extraordinary manner, that his little ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... bishop of London, and then, on Eadwig's death, Archbishop of Canterbury. It was Dunstan who really ruled England throughout the remainder of his life. Essentially an organiser and administrator, he was able to weld the unwieldy empire into a rough unity, which lasted as long as its author lived, and no longer. He appeased the discontent of Northumbria and the Five Burgs by permitting them a certain amount of local independence, with the enjoyment of their own laws and their ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... Sickingen in 1523 only showed its hopeless weakness. The Reichsregiment, or Imperial governing council, a body instituted by Maximilian, had lamentably failed to effect anything towards cementing together the various parts of the unwieldy fabric. Finally, at the Reichstag held in Nuernberg, in December 1522, at which all the estates were represented, the Reichsregiment, to all intents and ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... chanson that woke us early on the morning of our departure from the Lake of the Bear. A gang of lumbermen were bringing a lot of logs through the lake. Half-hidden in the cold gray mist that usually betokens a fine day, and wet to the waist from splashing about after their unwieldy flock, these rough fellows were singing at their work as cheerfully as a party of robins in a cherry-tree at sunrise. It was like the miller and the two girls whom Wordsworth saw dancing in their boats ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... great confederacy, if it does not obtain decisive success at the outset, before these seeds of division have had time to come to maturity. With what admirable skill and incomparable address Marlborough kept together the unwieldy alliance will hereafter appear. Never was a man so qualified by nature for such a task. He was courtesy and grace personified. It was a common saying at the time, that neither man nor woman could ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... him to be now and then entangled with an unwieldy sentiment, which he cannot well express, and will not reject; he struggles with it a while, and, if it continues stubborn, comprises it in words such as occur, and leaves it to be disentangled and evolved by those who have more leisure to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... is never rendered gay by the passing, and repassing of beautiful pleasure boats, to the delights of which the parisians seem total strangers. Its shores are sadly disfigured by a number of black, gloomy, and unwieldy sheds, which are erected upon barges, for the accommodation of the washerwomen, who, by their mode of washing, which is, by rubbing the linen in the river water, and beating it with large flat pieces of wood, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... as His Majesty's Council for Virginia, had become a large and unwieldy body, with many of its members inactive. Its influence on the conduct of Virginia's affairs was now decidedly less important than in the earlier years. According to the Orders and Constitutions, no one ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven
... crouched in the shadow, Billy saw the Englishman's figure reappear against the sky on top of a higher roof. The route over the old buildings had been found, so Billy turned and crept forward along the wall, carrying the last long ladder of poles in his hand. It was an unwieldy thing to carry and it ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... all the anarchic chaos of this day, when old institutions are crumbling or crashing into decay, when the whole civilised world seems slowly and painfully parting from its old moorings, and like some unwieldy raft, is creaking and straining at its chains as it feels the impulse of the swift current that is bearing it to an unknown sea, when venerable names cease to have power, when old truths are flouted as antiquated, and the new ones seem so long in making their ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... disconnected, infinitely diversified empire, with that liberty and safety of the provinces which they must enjoy, (in opinion and practice at least,) or they will not be provinces at all. I know, and have long felt, the difficulty of reconciling the unwieldy haughtiness of a great ruling nation, habituated to command, pampered by enormous wealth, and confident from a long course of prosperity and victory, to the high spirit of free dependencies, animated with the first glow and activity of juvenile heat, and assuming to themselves, as their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Commons has long been noted as the best club in England; and this sense of fellowship, of continuing friendship and intimacy, gives a charm to English parliamentary life which is hardly possible with the unwieldy numbers and huge hall of our own House of Representatives, but does spring out of the smaller and continuing membership of the Senate. A class in debating should have the sense of comradeship which comes of hard work together and the trying ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... certain sense of desolation and sadness is the College library. There used to be a story in my days at Cambridge of a book-collecting Don who was fond of discoursing in public of the various crosses he had to bear. He was lamenting one day in Hall the unwieldy size of his library. "I really don't know what to do with my books," he said, and looked round for sympathy. "Why not read them?" said a sharp and caustic Fellow opposite. It may be thought that I am in need of the same advice, but it is not the case. There are, indeed, ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... which he was aiming than they had been to start with. And, reasoning upon this, the conclusion forced upon him was that, after all, he had merely succeeded in retarding their own drift to leeward; while to actually force his unwieldy raft to windward and thus reach the desired flotsam, was ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... in which he had to travel. He hated the harsh, incessant noise of the grinding rails, the swaying and lurching of the trucks, the dizzying procession of the landscape past the barred slits which served as windows to his car. Moreover, sometimes the unwieldy length of the circus train would be halted for an hour or two on some forest siding, to let the regular traffic of the line go by. Then, as his wondering eyes caught glimpses of shadowed glades, and mysterious wooded aisles, and far-off hills and horizons, ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... was apparently the leader of the trio, was a big, unwieldy boy of sixteen, a year older and considerably larger than Bob and Joe. His eyes were close together, and he had a look of coarseness and arrogance that denoted the bully. Buck Looker, as he was called—his ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... hither to assure you that you have no cause for alarm. The numbers of the enemy, which seem to you so formidable, should, if properly considered, be a ground of confidence; for this unwieldy armament is a sign that they are thoroughly terrified, and seek safety in a huge crowd of ships. The firmness and discipline which they have acquired by long experience of land warfare will avail them ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... in. The trail was narrow, exceedingly steep, and in some places fronted on precipices. Gale's burden was not very heavy, but its bulk made it unwieldy, and it was always overbalancing him or knocking against the wall side of the trail. Gale found it necessary to wait for Yaqui to take the lead. The Indian's eyes must have seen as well at night as by day. Gale toiled ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... dissected every structure proper to this locality, and so closely has he investigated every possible condition of it as being the seat of hernial, that the only novelty which now remains to be sought for is that of a simplification of the facts, already known to be far too much obscured by an unwieldy nomenclature, and a useless detail of trifling evidence. And it would seem that nothing can more directly tend to this simplification, than that of viewing the inguinal and femoral regions, not separately, but as a relationary whole. For as both regions are blended together by structures which ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... as heavy and slowly-dragging as those of some unwieldy old person, with drooped figure, and stained and swollen face, I enter the school-room an hour later to tell ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... a room one is haunted by the two gentlemen, in getting furniture and provisions one is afterward haunted by the "family" relation. It is a result of the youthfulness of our civilization, that as yet it is cumbrous and unwieldy. We do not yet master it, but are mastered by it; and nowhere in America will one find the charming arrangements for single living which have filled the Old World with delightful haunts for the students of every land. As yet we provide for people, not persons; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... vicinity about three weeks when one day he met the woman. He knew her at once, although she was greatly changed. She had grown stout, although, poor soul! it seemed as if there had been no reason for it. She was not unwieldy, but she was stout, and all the contours of earlier life had disappeared beneath layers of flesh. Her hair was not gray, but the bright brown had faded, and she wore it tightly strained back from her seamed forehead, although it was thin. One had only to look at her hair to realize ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and the most strenuous activity, as though the heavens themselves were to be stormed, and truth were to be drawn out of the deepest of all wells; and yet, in war, the largest machines are the most unwieldy. Genuine culture therefore leaves such places as these religiously alone, for its best instincts warn it that in their midst it has nothing to hope for, and very much to fear. For the only kind of ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... annexation first. The thinking, reflecting people among us don't want these provinces. We guess we are big enough already, and nothing but our great rivers, canals, railroads, and telegraphs (which, like skewers in a round of beef, fasten the unwieldy mass together) could possibly keep us united. Without them we should fall to pieces in no time. It's as much as they can keep all tight and snug now; but them skewers nor no others can tie a greater bulk than we have. Well, I don't think ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... of the inspection plate and pushing it free, he climbed out into the deserted lab; made his way out into the corridor, his unwieldy package hanging to his shoulder and runlets of water making a trail behind him—and stepped ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... at Magnesia, B.C. 190, not far from Smyrna, in the valley of the Hermus. The forces of Antiochus were eighty thousand, including twelve thousand cavalry, but were undisciplined and unwieldy. Those of Scipio were about half as numerous. The Romans were completely successful, losing only twenty-four horsemen and three hundred infantry, whereas the loss of Antiochus was fifty thousand—a victory as brilliant as that of Alexander at Issus. Asia Minor ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... Unlike the unwieldy and ponderous classic or Italian systems, whose pride cannot stoop to anything beneath the haughtiest uses of life without being broken into the whims of the grotesque and Rococo, the Romantique has already exhibited the graceful ease with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... much needed; and a press was sent with the Rev. Albert L. Holliday and Mr. William R. Stocking, who sailed from Boston in January, 1837. At Trebizond, the press was found too unwieldy to be carried overland, and was accordingly sent back to Constantinople and sold to the Armenians, for their high-school at Scutari. The new missionaries were met at Erzroom by Mr. Perkins and Mar Yohannan, and reached their destination in June. Mr. Holliday ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... ever beheld by man, ay, beyond what even his imagination had pictured in his most restless and diseased hours of sleep. The bodies of many of them were larger than the trunks of the largest forest trees, and so unwieldy that, when they would turn round, they were compelled to take a circle almost as wide as their length. But bountiful nature, which always compensates for a defect or disadvantage by adding an excellence, made up for the heavy motion of their bodies by bestowing upon them the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... opened her eyes, the little Papoos ran out to acquaint the woman who followed her into the hut. She was of large size, very corpulent and unwieldy, with little covering on her body; her hair, which was woolly in its texture, was partly parted, partly frizzled; a cloth round her waist, and a piece of faded yellow silk on her shoulders, was all her dress. A few silver ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... cold does fire reek.* *smoke Four gledes* have we, which I shall devise**, *coals ** describe Vaunting, and lying, anger, covetise*. *covetousness These foure sparks belongen unto eld. Our olde limbes well may be unweld*, *unwieldy But will shall never fail us, that is sooth. And yet have I alway a coltes tooth, As many a year as it is passed and gone Since that my tap of life began to run; For sickerly*, when I was born, anon *certainly Death drew the tap of life, and let it gon: And ever since hath ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... what point he would probably make the attempt, in season to concentrate so large an army to oppose him. Alexander's troops, being a comparatively small and compact body, and being accustomed to move with great promptness and celerity, could easily evade any attempt of such an unwieldy mass of forces to oppose his crossing at any particular point upon the stream. At any rate, Darius did not make any such attempt, and Alexander had no difficulties to encounter in crossing the Tigris other than the physical obstacles presented by ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... way of storming, battering or otherwise capturing Eugen's Camp, not to speak of Heyde's town, Romanzow finds, on trial after trial, that he can do as good as nothing; and his unwieldy sea-comrades (equinoctial gales coming on them, too) are equally worthless. September 19th [a week after this of Werner, tenth day after Bunzelwitz had ended], Romanzow made his fiercest attempt that ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle |
