"Ungainly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have raised footpaths, roughly constructed, and swarming with animal life, as is to be expected in the luxurious East. There are no fewer than thirty mosques in the town, whose minarets give it a beautiful and picturesque appearance, albeit that the buildings themselves are imperfect, and ungainly in architectural detail. The Mussulmans have a school in the town, where Turkish and Slavish are taught. Girls are, however, debarred this advantage, and indeed no institution of any kind exists throughout the province for their training ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... ungainly as were his movements, there was in his withdrawal a touch of dignity, even a hint of the sublime; and Molly could ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... but was as charming as any of them. The entire parish belonged to Mr. Newton, as did portions of three or four parishes adjoining. The house itself was neither large nor remarkable for its architecture;—but it was comfortable. The rooms indeed were low, for it had been built in the ungainly days of Queen Anne, with additions in the equally ungainly time of George II., and the passages were long and narrow, and the bedrooms were up and down stairs, as though pains had been taken that no two should be on a level; and the windows were of ugly ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... will fold up and form a perfect triangular pyramid. And I would first remind my readers that the primary colours of the solar spectrum are seven—violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. When I was a child I was taught to remember these by the ungainly word formed by the initials of the ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... duty in highly creditable style, and go along at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour, under no stronger incentive then the voice of the yamstchik. Indeed, the capabilities of these lean, slouching, ungainly quadrupeds are often astounding when they are under the guidance of a man who knows how to drive them. Though such a man commonly carries a little harmless whip, he rarely uses it except by waving it horizontally in the air. His incitements are all oral. He talks to his cattle as he would ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... look a sinister expression, calculated to defeat entirely any neutralizing or less objectionable feature. His form—to conclude the picture—is constructed with singular power; and though not symmetrical, is far from ungainly. When impelled by some stirring motive, his carriage is easy, without seeming effort, and his huge frame throws aside the sluggishness which at other times invests it, putting on a habit of animated exercise, which changes the entire appearance of ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... daunted the most resourceful of men, yet Anthony had proved equal to it. For twenty-one days he had labored like a real general, spending his nights alone with diagrams and little dummies on a miniature gridiron, his days in careful coaching. He had taken a huge, ungainly Nova Scotian lad named Ringold for centre; he had placed a square-jawed, tow-headed boy from Duluth in the line; he had selected a high-strung, unseasoned chap, who for two years had been eating his heart out on the side-lines, and made him ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... up with elbows flapping loosely, as was his ungainly habit. His grin was wide and golden as of yore, his hat at the same angle over his ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... gift of some dull boy— Then when you see her do not wrong Yvette, Because Yvette is not a clever toy, A tawdry doll in fairy limelight set ... And should her song sound cynical and base At first, herself ungainly, or her smile Monotonous—wait, listen, watch her face: The sufferings of those the world calls vile She sings, and as you watch Yvette Guilbert, You too will shiver, seeing ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... leprosy. I have carried away a more vivid recollection of this and of the people, than of Theobald's sermon. Even now I can see the men in blue smock frocks reaching to their heels, and more than one old woman in a scarlet cloak; the row of stolid, dull, vacant plough-boys, ungainly in build, uncomely in face, lifeless, apathetic, a race a good deal more like the pre-revolution French peasant as described by Carlyle than is pleasant to reflect upon—a race now supplanted by a smarter, comelier and more hopeful generation, which has discovered that it too has ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... assumption was justified by fact or was a mere trick it was impossible to say. There was in the man something strong and good and calm—a manner never acquired by one who has anything to conceal. His dignity was perfect. One forgot his stoutness, his heavy breathing, his ungainly size. He was essentially manly, and a presence to be feared. The strength of his will ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... wings half folded. When within ten feet of the ground they checked their fall with pinion and tail, and the sound of them was like the roar of a cataract. Those seated on the ground moved forward in a series of ungainly hops, trying for more haste by futile urgings of their wings. Where the wildebeeste had fallen was a writhing, flopping, struggling brown mass. In an incredibly brief number of seconds it was all over. The birds withdrew. Some sat disgruntled and humpbacked ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... threw it open. The cool night air came in refreshingly. In the distance, the dark shapes of the mountains stood out forbiddingly in the moonlight. Millions of stars winked and twinkled. Gaunt cacti reared their ungainly shapes—beautiful because of ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... So, under his ungainly monk's habit, he continues his profession of rhetorician. He has come to Thagaste with the intention of retiring from the world and living in God; and here he is disputing, lecturing, writing more than ever. The world pursues him and occupies him even in his retreat. He says to himself that down ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... enough, ain't it, Master Hugh Ritson?" said Drayton, with an ungainly bow, and a vast show of civility, followed instantly by a sidelong leer at his cronies ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... collection called the Mirror of Magistrates,[46:3] are marked with a pathetic majesty, a genuine sympathy for the precariousness of greatness, which seem a prelude to the Elizabethan drama. But these fragments were mostly felicitous efforts, which soon passed on into the ungainly, the uncouth, the obscure or the grotesque. But in the Shepherd's Calendar we have for the first time in the century, the swing, the command, the varied resources of the real poet, who is not driven by failing language or ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... very much mistaken. If she had but broken up the ice, she would have found that the water below was not shallow. The duke, in fact, like many other Englishmen, though he did not like the trouble of showing forth, and had an ungainly manner, was a man who had read a good deal, possessed a sound head and an honourable mind, though he did not know what it was to love anybody, to care much for anything, and was at once perfectly sated and yet perfectly contented; for apathy is the ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fell in with the great body in the course of half an hour. The space from the quays, including the great sweep in front of the Custom-house, was swarming with men, and women, and small children, and the big ungainly crowd bulged out in Gardiner-street, and the broad space leading up Talbot-street. The ranks began to be formed at eleven o'clock amid a down-pour of cold rain. The mud was deep and aqueous, and great pools ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... before half-time, he had what seemed a safe chance, but at the critical moment Jeffreys' ungainly bulk interposed, and received on his chest the ball which would certainly have carried victory ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... pitiless, still his dog crouches in loving submission. And the animal, whether a high-bred, glossy-coated favorite, with golden collar and silken leash, for whom hundreds had been paid, or an ill-favored, ungainly brute picked up from nowhere and as thankful for a kick as for a crust, was loyal with a fidelity that puts to shame ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... illustration of this soon after tying up at the landing. A tall, lank, ungainly officer, with a face so distinctively homely as to instantly attract my attention, led his company of men up the river bank, and ordered them to transport the pile of commissary stores from where they had been promiscuously thrown to a drier spot farther ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... day!" cried Molly, "and here's my gift." She had in her arms a large and rather ungainly bundle, loosely wrapped ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... rails of the narrow-gauged road which led out across the quaking tundra to the mountains and the mines. Upon this slender trail of steel there rolled one small, ungainly teapot of an engine which daily creaked and clanked back and forth at a snail's pace, screaming and wailing its complaint of the two high-loaded flat-cars behind. The ties beneath it were spiked to planks laid lengthwise ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... be very well managed, and very successful. As I looked at the class to whom a lesson was then being read, all the urchins from eight to eleven or twelve years old, I thought I had never seen a congregation of more unpromising and ungainly heads, and accordingly they are the worst and lowest specimens of humanity; starved, ill-used children of poor and vicious parents, generally arriving at the school weak and squalid, with a tendency to every vice, and without having received any moral or intellectual cultivation whatever; ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... like a jackass, and the neck itself was thick with rather a large head to it. The horns curved backwards so as to lie close along the neck; the legs of the animal were thick and stout, and he appeared to be altogether a stupid creature, and ran with a clumsy ungainly gait. ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... calves and old cows were in the rear of the herd, and it was not a little comical to witness their ungainly attitudes. They would stretch their clumsy necks, and shake their heads, as if they did not rightly understand what was going on. Finding that if they stopped too long to indulge their curiosity, there was a danger of their ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... wi' 'im on account of me," said Babe. Chichester laughed. The fact that so handsome a girl as Babe should deliberately fall in love with so lank and ungainly a person as Tuck Peevy seemed to him to be one of the problems that philosophers ought to concern themselves with; but, from his point of view, the fact that Babe had not gradually faded away, according to the approved rules ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... an old house in the "Dom Platz," at Frankfort, in which Luther lived for some years. A bust of him in relief is let into the outer wall; it is a grim-looking ungainly effigy, coarsely coloured, and of very small pretensions as a work of art; but evidently of a date not much later than the time of the great Iconoclast. Round the figure, the following words are deeply cut: "In silentio et in spe, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... to the ungainly externals of Jack Tier. She now wore a cap, thus concealing the short, gray bristles of hair, and lending to her countenance a little of that softness which is a requisite of female character. Some ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... some what dark, and the terrible form of the mystery loomed in the dusk, heavy and formidable. He was as big as a man, somewhat lank, and covered with coarse hair the colour of cocoanut matting. This afternoon, when the early patrons entered, they found him hanging limply by one arm, like a great ungainly bat. ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... presently came to the garden steps to watch like a hen at the water's edge, saw her cousin's pretty figure in its white dress of India muslin hurrying across the grass. She was accompanied by the tall, ungainly shape of Martha the new maid, who, dull and indifferent to every one else, showed a surprising willingness and allegiance to the ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Christina, so it has been spoken of the Queen, that many had killed themselves for hopeless love of her. For this was the most dangerous of the world's creatures—a royal coquette. Such would our own Queen Bess have been had not God, for the good of England, given her a plain face and an ungainly form. For surely the devil is in it when a woman can command both love and men. Queen Christina, since the death of a husband who was years older than herself (and, as some say, before that historic event), had played a woman's game with that skill ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... way through the air. A moment later, a band of perhaps from three to four hundred penguins would scramble out on to the stones with great rapidity, at once exchanging the vigorous and graceful movements for which they were so remarkable while in the water for the most ludicrous and ungainly ones possible now that they were on terra firma; for, they tumbled about on the shingle and apparently with difficulty assumed the normal position which is their habit when on land—that of standing upright on their feet. These latter are set too far back for their bodies ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to any one who would listen to him. I say that he sang—I mean, of course, that he spoke his verses; it was a minstrel's simple improvisation. But there are people in the villages of southern France who still recall that ungainly, shambling figure. He had grown a beard; it crinkled thickly, hiding his mouth and chin. He laughed a great deal. He was not altogether clean. And he slept wherever he could find a bed—in farmhouses, cheap hotels, haylofts, stables, open fields. Waram's ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... these canine giants, however, was not at first very satisfactory, as although plenty of bone was obtained, many were most ungainly in appearance and ill-shaped animals that had very little about them to attract attention. Captain Graham, however, stuck to his work, and very soon the specimens that he brought forward began to show a fixity of type both in head and in general outline. Brian was one of his best dogs, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... preparations. She was never happier than when curled up on the sofa, a box of chocolates by her side, her work-basket frothing over, like a great dish of oeufs a la neige, with lawn or mull or what-not, and (I verily believe to complete her content) my ungainly figure and hatchet-face within her purview. She would eat and sew industriously. Sometimes she would press too hard on a sweetmeat and with a little cry would hold up a ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... leaves of the plane trees and the shivering silver of the balsam-poplars into an arresting and artificial distinctness. Between were spaces of vacancy and gloom. And from out such a space, immediately opposite, slowly emerged a shambling and ungainly figure, in which Dominic Iglesias recognised the third of his fellow-lodgers, Mr. de Courcy Smyth. His acquaintance with the said lodger was of the slightest, since the latter had but recently entered into ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... his ear to discipline, and speaking to him that his heart may receive instruction, many times that poor man is as if the devil had found him, and not God. How frenzily he imagines; how crossly he thinks; how ungainly he carries it under convictions, counsels, and his present apprehension of things! I know some are more powerfully dealt withal, and more strongly bound at first by the word; but others more in an ordinary manner, that the flesh and reason may be seen to the glory of Christ. Yea, and where the ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... veritas, et prevalebit." The auditorium occupies all the rest of the first story, but one could wish that the wall which divided it from the vestibule need not have spoiled one of the beautiful windows at either end, thus leaving an ungainly half window in the auditorium. A row of wooden pillars on either side gives the effect of galleries as the room is entered, but a closer view shows that the space between the rows is arched toward the centre of the ceiling. One of the pillars ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... to cross. But before long Aling espied a man in the distance at work with a huge buffalo, and exclaiming, "Hi-yah! belly good walkee now," rushed off in that direction. He soon returned with the buffalo and his owner, and indicated that we could cross on the back of the former. The huge, ungainly beast threw up his head and snorted when he caught sight of the "fanquis," or foreign devils, but a pull at the ring through his nose soon brought ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... long away from the world that, for all I know, this ancient British type, this "grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore," may have become extinct, like another, but less unprepossessing bird—the dodo; whereby our state ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Bob, I say," came from Susan Lanham, and poor, ungainly Bob blushed to his hair to find himself the ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... James I, was an ungainly Scotch pedant, who was incapable of appreciating heroism and manliness in others, because of his own deficiency in all such qualities. He lavished favors and titles on unworthy favorites, and incurred the contempt of wise men for his ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... odd man was strutting in stiff, ungainly attitudes, cricking his neck and elbows, and tossing up his toes. How foolish he seemed to them in their innocent wisdom! They knew he was nothing to them, for he had no heart; he was nothing but a trick on springs. Yet they wished he would go away, and give them room to be alone, while the moon ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... all the glitter of new arms, housings and uniforms, with Valentine M'Clutchy as their captain and paymaster, and graceful Phil as lieutenant. Upon what slight circumstances do great events often turn. Because Phil had an ungainly twist in his legs, or in other words, because he was knock-kneed, and could not appear to advantage as an infantry officer, was the character of the corps changed from foot to cavalry, so that Phil and Handsome Harry ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... impression of the man from the West did nothing to contradict the expectation of something weird, rough, and uncultivated. The long, ungainly figure upon which hung clothes that, while new for this trip, were evidently the work of an unskilful tailor; the large feet, the clumsy hands of which, at the outset, at least, the orator seemed to ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... all references to their ungainly movement and doltish intellect, the Wild Goose, of which the White-fronted is one of the most interesting, is held in high estimation by the sportsman, and even he, if keen of observation, will learn ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II., No. 5, November 1897 - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... his personal appearance, as much as anything, was displeasing to her fastidiousness. He was so big, so awkward; his hands and feet were so clumsy. A little more and he would have been ungainly; perhaps she considered him ungainly as it was. He had tried to negative his defects by spending a great deal of money on his clothes and being as particular as a girl about his nails; but he felt that with all his efforts he was but ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... herself erect, and often complains of pain in the back and shoulders and along the intercostal spaces on the side of the convexity. To relieve the muscles of the back she is inclined to lounge in easy and ungainly attitudes. ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... nephew and aide-decamp to the Chancellor—and Doctor Busch were seated facing us. The conveyance was strong, serviceable, and comfortable, but not specially prepossessing, and hitched to it were four stout horses—logy, ungainly animals, whose clumsy harness indicated that the whole equipment was meant for heavy work. Two postilions in uniform, in high military saddles on the nigh horse of each span, ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... district, with many smashed windows. He passed through canyons formed by office buildings. He crossed a manufacturing area, in which there were many ungainly factories but no sign of any work going on. In any epidemic many men stay home from work to avoid contagion. On Tallien Three nobody would be willing to risk employment, for fear of losing much more than ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Though love's guerdon she defer, If her lover look on her, 40 The very breath of life enjoy; And two lovers, love's curse under Kept asunder, Will I leave to grieve apart, And achieve by this my art 45 Things at which you'll gaze in wonder. For a lady most ungainly For a halfpenny at night Will I cause without a light To look nor ill nor well too plainly. 50 To another loveliest, As star in heaven Shall this destiny be given That of noblest men and best None against her love protest. 55 And the better to ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... turned and tiptoed away, his ungainly body swaying about as he stole across the heavy pile carpet. He went out of the room, closing the door softly behind him. He left Greve sunk in a reverie at the desk, gazing with unseeing eyes upon the dead face of the master ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... Fort Bridger. Where cotton-wood is used for poles,—and there are hundreds of miles where no other tree is found,—it will have to be replaced very frequently; for it decays rapidly, and has a fancy for twisting itself into all manner of ungainly shapes when cut and exposed to the sun and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... which tinged, though they did not altogether obscure, the natural civility of an amiable disposition, as well as the acquired habits of politeness which he had learned in the good society that frequented Lord Bidmore's mansion. He not only indulged in neglect of dress and appearance, and all those ungainly tricks which men are apt to acquire by living very much alone, but besides, and especially, he became probably the most abstracted and absent man of a profession peculiarly liable to cherish such habits. No man fell so regularly into the painful dilemma of mistaking, or, in Scottish phrase, miskenning, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... quiet as he led them through the wood, strange ungainly mechanisms which a whiff of a scent could set in motion. A pinafore, which Joan had worn at breakfast, was served to them for an indication of the work they had to do; they snuffed at it languidly for some seconds. Then ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... of the Map taught me. By this means I improved in my Study, but became unpleasant in Conversation. By conversing generally with the Dead, I grew almost unfit for the Society of the Living; so by a long Confinement I contracted an ungainly Aversion to Conversation, and ever discoursed with Pain to my self, and little Entertainment to others. At last I was in some measure made sensible of my failing, and the Mortification of never being spoke to, or speaking, unless the Discourse ran upon Books, put me upon forcing my self ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... root here, and the following rather humorous account of a series of camel races, copied from its pages, serves to show something of how the sporting proclivities of the English army of occupation enlist the services of even the awkward and ungainly ships of the desert: ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the body of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began to find eloquent voices. There it must lie; there was ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... perceived that the tall man, ungainly as he was, affected a bizarre individualism in the matter of dress. His clothing cried out, rather than suggested, that it was expensive. His feet were cased in button shoes with fancy tops; his waistcoat, cut in the extreme of style, revealed that little strip of white which ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... acute disgust with herself so that she could have torn the dress from her and rushed into her old obscure and dingy black again. Of what use to dress her up? She would always look wrong, always be awkward and ungainly ... tears of disappointment gathered slowly in her eyes. Then her pride reasserted itself; she raised her head proudly and laughed at her anxious gaze. There was still her new hat. She took it from the bed and put it on, sticking big pins into it, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... a strange ungainly figure. In his desperate haste he did not give much heed, but tried to push his way past. The figure turned on him, and then Grant stopped short, an exclamation frozen to his lips. Red unwinking eyes stared out at him from goggles set in a helmet. The body was completely inclosed ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... the street corner, by the clock, a couple of Town Councillors stood chatting. While the Emigrant looked there came round the corner a ruck of boys from school chivvying and shouting after an ungainly man, who turned twice and threatened them with a stick. The Town Councillors did not interfere, and the rabble passed bawling by the Pack-horse. Long before it came the Emigrant had recognised the ungainly man. It was Dicky Loony, ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... notice where they were going; but they were certainly going to the wilder and more silent heights of the Heath. As their pursuers gained on them, the latter had to use the undignified attitudes of the deer-stalker, to crouch behind clumps of trees and even to crawl prostrate in deep grass. By these ungainly ingenuities the hunters even came close enough to the quarry to hear the murmur of the discussion, but no word could be distinguished except the word "reason" recurring frequently in a high and almost childish voice. Once over an abrupt dip of land and a dense tangle of thickets, the detectives ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... last was half as large as the others, produced no less than a thousand eggs; eight hundred were deposited in the larger nests and two or three hundred in the smaller. Truly a fine family, but a thought ungainly, were it not that only a few of ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... about this, but that was because she did not know her own power. To her astonishment, Priscilla found that she could act. If the part suited her she could throw herself into it so that she ceased to be awkward, ungainly Priscilla Peel. Out of herself she was no longer awkward, no longer ungainly. She could only personate certain characters; light and airy parts she could not attempt, but where much depended on passion and emotion Priscilla could do splendidly. Every day her friends found fresh points of ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... overt intention was frustrated by old Reinhardt, smitten with an admiration as unconcealed for the beautiful stranger. In the interval before the arrival of the later members of the quartet, he fluttered around her like an ungainly old moth, racking his scant English for complimentary speeches. These were received by Aunt Victoria with her best calm smile, and by Professor Saunders with open impatience. His equanimity was not restored by the fact that there chanced to be rather more general ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... ornament, and just beneath Dr. Eames's balcony there ran out what had perhaps been a flying buttress, still shapelessly shaped into gray beasts and devils, but blinded with mosses and washed out with rains. With an ungainly and most courageous leap, Eames sprang out on this antique bridge, as the only possible mode of escape from the maniac. He sat astride of it, still in his academic gown, dangling his long thin legs, and considering further chances of flight. The whitening ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... man, with a dark, sallow face and an ungainly figure. There were suggestions of both ill-health and wretchedness in his appearance, and his manner was awkward and embarrassed. Two human beings more utterly unlike each other than himself and the man who held his hand could not possibly have been found. It was ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... walruses as a breathing-hole. Here they got out, hid the sledge and dogs behind a hummock, and, getting ready their spears and harpoons, prepared for an encounter. After waiting some time a walrus thrust its ungainly head up through the young ice that covered the hole, and began to disport itself in ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... natural as if you were in undress. Nothing is more distressing to a sensitive person, or more ridiculous to one gifted with an esprit moquer [a disposition to "make fun"], than to see a lady laboring under the consciousness of a fine gown; or a gentleman who is stiff, awkward, and ungainly in a ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... discourse on general maxims, than to conduct any intricate business: his intentions were just; but more adapted to the conduct of private life than to the government of kingdoms. Awkward in his person, and ungainly in his manners, he was ill qualified to command respect; partial and undiscerning in his affections, he was little fitted to acquire general love. Of a feeble temper, more than of a frail judgment; exposed to our ridicule from his vanity; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... hand raised for a moment to the prospect of intellectual life and then hurled down by the caprice of circumstance to the unrelenting round of manual toil at the soap and candle factory. Dickens would have given a touch of the grotesque to Grail's gentle but ungainly character; but at the end he would infallibly have rewarded him as Tom Pinch and Dominie Sampson were rewarded. Not so George Gissing. His sympathy is fully as real as that of Dickens. But his fidelity ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... and laid on the effects with a liberal brush, while Burke was subtle, incisive and refined. Burton's features were strong and heavy, and his figure was portly and ungainly. Burke was lithe and graceful. His face was plain, but wonderfully expressive. The versatility of this rare actor was remarkable, his pathos being quite as striking a feature as his comedy. {HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} His dramatic effects sprung more from intuition than from study; ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... fighting aviator must master early in his career is that of high diving. Many of us have seen a hawk, soaring high in air, suddenly fold his pinions and drop like a plummet full on the back of some luckless pigeon flapping along ungainly scores of feet below, or a fishhawk drop like a meteor from the sky with a resounding splash upon the bosom of some placid stream and rise again carrying a flapping fish to his eyrie in the distant pines. The hunting methods of the hawk are the fighting methods of the airman. ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... cage; we beat the bars, We bruise our breasts, we struggle vainly; Up to the glory of the stars We strain with flutterings ungainly. And then—God opens wide the door; Our wondrous wings are arched for flying; We poise, we part, we sing, we soar . . . Light, freedom, love. . . . Fools ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... as I have said, against the bulwarks, where he lay like some horrible, ungainly sort of puppet, life-size, indeed, but how different from life's colour or life's comeliness! In that position I could easily have my way with him, and as the habit of tragical adventures had worn off almost all my terror for the dead, I took him by the waist as if he had been a sack ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is known by civilians of the nature and appearance of armoured trains, which played so prominent a part in the war, that a rough sketch of the "altogether" of one of these ungainly and diabolical machines may here be given. Armoured trains are hastily-constructed affairs, consisting of a locomotive and a few waggons, the engine generally being located about the middle of the train. The waggons and locomotive are covered by boiler-plating three-quarters ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... brought them in sight of the melancholy songster. Seated in a corner of the cave, with his massive head on his fore-paws, the picture of dejection, was the most enormous creature they had ever seen or dreamed about. He was rather like an elephant, but much more immense and without a trunk: a huge, ungainly, slate-coloured animal. ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... cogency of logical reason. Those who insist on charm, on winningness in style, on subtle harmonies and fine exquisiteness of suggestion, are disappointed in Burke: they even find him stiff and over-coloured. And there are blemishes of this kind. His banter is nearly always ungainly, his wit blunt, as Johnson said, and often unseasonable. As is usual with a man who has not true humour, Burke is also without true pathos. The thought of wrong or misery moved him less to pity for the victim than to anger against the cause. Again, there are some gratuitous and unredeemed vulgarities; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... hunter in his day, and many were the stories afloat of his skill and prowess. For years he held the record of being the best moose hunter in the village. The moose, although the largest of the deer tribe, and of an ungainly appearance, can move through the forest with great rapidity. It never gallops like other deer, but swings along on a pacing trot, at a rate, and with an endurance that would soon leave the swiftest ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... shores to forage for themselves. But there are a few backward or lazy children—perhaps a hundred—still hanging around the places where they chipped the egg, hiding among the roots of the trees or crouching beside the rocks. What quaint, ungainly creatures they are! Big-headed, awkward, dusky, like gnomes or goblins, they hop and scuffle away as you come near them, stumbling over the tangled dead branches and the tussocks of grass, with outspread wings and clumsy motions. Follow one a little while and he will take ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... therefore utterly unskilled in the matter of driving; and so it came about that old Jack was so confused at the start that he made a most awkward and wretched appearance in his effort to get off, being all "mixed up," as the saying is,—so much so that the crowd roared at his ungainly efforts, and his flying rivals were twenty rods away before he even got started. But at last he got his huge body in a straight line, and, leaving his miserable shuffle, squared away to his work, and, with head ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... study exacted. But he was not without his consolations; he could sing a song well, and, at a new insult, could blow off excitement through his flute. The popular picture of him in these days is of a slow, hesitating, somewhat hollow voice, a low-sized, thick, robust, ungainly figure, lounging about the college courts on the wait for ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... War—the Puritans had been the butt of the satirical, the jest of the wits—ridiculed and laughed at on all sides. Then came a time, "when," in the words of Macaulay, "the laughers began to look grave in their turn. The rigid ungainly zealots ... rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly smiling, trod down under their feet ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... At length the tall, ungainly figure and ungracious visage of Ebenezer presented themselves. The upper part of his form, notwithstanding the season required no such defence, was shrouded in a large great-coat, belted over his under habiliments, and crested with a huge cowl of the same ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... hand enclosed in a grasp as strong as a man's; and three minutes later Mrs Olliver—whose seat on a horse was as ungainly as her hand on its mouth was perfect—had become a mere speck on ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... a spate of oaths and protestations. Suddenly, looking in the officer's unmoved face, they realised the uselessness of words, turned and ran between the gateless posts, out upon, away over, the dusty, hoof-tracked, wheel-scored veld. And their ungainly hurry and awkward gestures of terror somehow reminded the peering Bough Van Busch of an engraving he had seen by chance in a Dopper Bible, in which Lot and his two daughters, fearfully foreshortened by the artist, scuttled in ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... unconcerned nakedness. Here and there were men of brawn, whose skins shone clear and ruddy. They took splendid poses, standing massively like chiefs. When they had dressed in their ungainly garments there was an extraordinary change. They then showed bumps and ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... her relief, Pauline came in. She looked rough and untidy in appearance. She slipped into the nearest chair in a sulky, ungainly fashion, and taking up a battered spelling-book, ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... lowly as the Son of God, in a hovel; of what real parentage we know not, reared in penury, squalor, with no gleam of light, nor fair surrounding; a young manhood vexed by weird dreams and visions; with scarcely a natural grace; singularly awkward, ungainly even among the uncouth about him: it was reserved for this remarkable character, late in life, to be snatched from obscurity, raised to supreme command at a supreme moment, and intrusted with the destiny ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... desire to win the favour of the assembly by the same means. So he got up from his place and began dancing, but he cut such a ridiculous figure as he plunged about, and made such a grotesque exhibition of his ungainly person, that the beasts all fell upon him with ridicule ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... word was said, In came the nose, in came the head: As sure as sermon follows text, The long and scraggy neck came next; And then, as falls the threatening storm, In leaped the whole ungainly form. ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... with its many legs moving slowly and uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its long antennae, like carters' whips, waving and feeling, and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses, and a greenish incrustation blotched it here and there. I could see the many palps of its complicated mouth flickering and feeling as ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... not been thought of before, and it compelled that interest which attractive novelties always command. It was to be a picnic on a gigantic scale. The participants in it, instead of freighting an ungainly steam ferry—boat with youth and beauty and pies and doughnuts, and paddling up some obscure creek to disembark upon a grassy lawn and wear themselves out with a long summer day's laborious frolicking under the impression that it was fun, were to sail away in a great steamship ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... water-tight timbers it presented a scene of varied beauty. Grasshoppers disported gayly upon its rugged surface, occasionally leaping inadvertently into the surrounding surf and kicking their ungainly legs in the ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... pencils. A few tardy visitors, familiar with the place, tiptoe in through the grimy doors, ducking and winking, and softly lifting and placing their chairs, with a mock-timorous upward glance toward the long, ungainly personage who, under a faded and tattered crimson canopy, fills the august bench of magistracy with its high oaken back. On the right, behind a rude wooden paling that rises from the floor to the smoke-stained ceiling, are the peering, bloated ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... Although she believed in the intellectual capacity of woman, she did not look upon herself as a representative of the class: her admiration of her sex did not degenerate into self-laudation, and her enthusiasm was not tainted by egotism. Hers was not a strong-mindedness that showed itself in ungainly coiffures and tasteless attire. It was content with desiring and claiming for woman whatever is best, noblest and most lovely in mind and body. She would have given her life to further this end, but thought it mattered little if her name were forgotten in the bulletin that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... was in fact a sickly narrow-faced young man with thick obstinate lips and a slight lameness that made his walk ungainly; but though no way resembling the ermine-cloaked king of the chapel at Pontesordo, he yet knew how to put on a certain majesty with his state wig and his orders. As for the newly married Duchess, who sat at the other end of the cabinet caressing a toy spaniel, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... unfolding his ungainly length as he rose to help them in. Long Sam, it was generally agreed, had the longest length for the narrowest width of any man in the county. He grinned at Dolly and taking her hands helped her into the boat, ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... of the river, rows of brilliant red flamingos were standing in the shallow water, fishing, and here and there a pelican with his ungainly beak. Our Chinese crew were having their meal of rice when we walked forward, and the national chopsticks were hard at work. We talked to several of them. They could all speak a little Spanish, and ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... who constituted the whole crew of the Johannes, and was as dirty as his master was clean. I felt a certain envious reverence for this unprepossessing youth, seeing in him a much more efficient counterpart of myself; but how he and his little master ever managed to work their ungainly vessel was a miracle I never understood. Phlegmatically impervious to rain and cold, he steered the Johannes down the long grey reaches in the wake of the tug, while we and Bartels held snug gatherings down ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... tries to cover with a light mantle of blue-gray tufts. It is these sterile places which yield the best truffles of Perigord. Sometimes trained dogs are used to hunt for the cryptogams, but, as in the Quercy, the pig is much more frequently employed for the purpose. A comical and ungainly-looking beast this often is: bony and haggard, with a long limp tail and exaggerated ears. A collar round the neck adds to ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... crowding round to kiss me, saying that they loved me all the same; and then, and when the old sorrow came into my dear mother's mild and tender look, the truth broke upon me for the first time, and I knew, while watching my awkward and ungainly sports, how keenly she had felt for ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... in any case, and, when he saw her trying to ruin his bicycle, he was diverted from Bessie and, shouting furiously, ran toward her with the idea of saving his wheel. So it was no trick at all for the two girls, light on their feet and graceful in their movements, to avoid the shambling, ungainly, overgrown boy, who, smarting from the pain of the scratches Dolly had inflicted, ran after ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... upon the boy, under the impression that he was the nigger in question; but at the same moment he caught sight of a full-blooded, woolly-headed West Coast African leading a very large camel by a rope, the great ungainly beast mincing and blinking as it gently put down, one after the other, its soft, spongy feet, which seemed to spread out on the gravelled road, while their high-shouldered owner kept on turning its bird-like ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... time or another in a peculiarly furtive manner, quite unlike the frank stare of your unsophisticated savage. Indeed, they had all seemed remarkably taciturn, and when they did speak, endowed with very uncanny voices. What was wrong with them? Then I recalled the eyes of Montgomery's ungainly attendant. ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... already being served when Ingigerd entered on the arm of the very ungainly and very ordinary looking Achleitner. At the sight of her absurd get-up, Frederick felt like sinking through the floor. The barber had piled her beautiful light hair into a fearful mountain of puffs, and about her narrow shoulders ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... mighty kick Ned sent his rough boots flying, one after the other, across the room, and then, without more ado, curled up his ungainly figure on the settle, and before Humphrey could have believed it possible, he was snoring loudly, his arm thrown under his head, and his tawny red locks in a tangled mass, spread upon the softest cushion on which ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... the tapping, there came, instead, the sound of someone or something, scrambling on to the window-sill,—as if some creature, unable to reach the window from the ground, was endeavouring to gain the vantage of the sill. Some ungainly creature, unskilled in surmounting such an obstacle as a perpendicular brick wall. There was the noise of what seemed to be the scratching of claws, as if it experienced considerable difficulty in obtaining a hold on the unyielding surface. ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... that happened in the country, for he had the art of gaining the affections both of his own people and of strangers. When a party of poor men came to his town to sell their hoes or skins, no matter how ungainly they might be, he soon knew them all. A company of these indigent strangers, sitting far apart from the Makololo gentlemen around the chief, would be surprised to see him come alone to them, and, sitting down, inquire ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... another. And although not a few marveled at finding the major such a queer person, and quite unlike what he had been represented, all joined in drinking his health and flattering his vanity. And when it was ten o'clock, there came divers delegations of ungainly persons, (from the custom house, and the post office, and Tammany Hall, and various other halls,) such as fighting men and vagabonds, who, being headed by such ambitious politicians as the invincible George Branders, and flanked by the too honest Emanuel Hart, presented an appearance ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... under the day of God's power: When Christ is opening his ear to discipline, and speaking to him that his heart may receive instruction; many times that poor man is, as if the devil had found him, and not God. How frenzily he imagines? how crossly he thinks? How ungainly he carries it under convictions, counsels, and his present apprehension of things? I know some are more powerfully dealt withal, and more strongly bound at first by the world; but others more in an ordinary manner, that the flesh, and reason may be seen, to the glory of Christ. Yea, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... down to it. The ugly big brute let himself out to the last notch, hugging the rail with long, ungainly strides. The jockey on Auckland had counted the race as won—in fact, he had been spending the winner's fee from the end of the second mile—but on the upper turn the thud of hoofs came to his ears, and with them wild whoops of encouragement. He looked back over his shoulder ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... the House of Lords, looking respectfully upon that august assembly, cannot fail to be struck by a stout and ungainly object facing the throne—an ungainly object upon which in full session of Parliament, he will observe seated the Lord Chancellor of England. The object is a woolsack, and it is stuffed as full of pure history as the office of Lord Chancellor itself. For it reminds a cotton-spinning, ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... got a very good look at them in their cribs, but one day when they were old enough to be let out, I went up with Miss Laura to the yard where they were kept. Such queer, ungainly, large-boned creatures they were, and such a good time they were having, running and jumping and throwing up ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... Athens. His powerful physique and sensual nature inclined him to self-indulgence, but he early learned to restrain both appetites and passions. His physiognomy was ugly and his person repulsive; he was awkward, obese, and ungainly; his nose was flat, his lips were thick, and his neck large; he rolled his eyes, went barefooted, and wore a dirty old cloak. He spent his time chiefly in the market-place, talking with everybody, old or young, rich or poor,—soldiers, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... situation of all the principal inmates of Wychecombe Hall. The interdict was taken off the rooms of Sir Wycherly, and in them had collected all the gentlemen, Mrs. Dutton and her daughter, with three or four of the upper servants of the establishment. Even Galleygo contrived to thrust his ungainly person in, among the rest, though he had the discretion to keep in the background among his fellows. In a word, both dressing-room and bed-room had their occupants, though the last was principally filled by the medical men, and those whose rank gave them claims to be near ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... outstretched arm pointing at the ridge—an order, and we were all scrambling into our saddles and straightening the ranks in high expectation. We started at a trot, two or three patrols galloping out in front, towards the high ground, while the regiment followed in mass—a great square block of ungainly brown figures and little horses, hung all over with water-bottles, saddle-bags, picketing-gear, tins of bully-beef, all jolting and jangling together; the polish of peace gone; soldiers without glitter; horsemen without ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... shapeless and ungainly monsters which I now set before the reader," he says of his essays (in the "Introduction on Gargoyles" in Alarms and Discursions), "does not consist of separate idols cut out capriciously in lonely valleys or various islands. These monsters are meant for the gargoyles of a definite ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... staccato breaths at every step, Inspector Weymouth ascended, ungainly, that frail and moving stair. Arrived beside me, he wiped the perspiration from his face ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... made a peculiar feature of this weird, uncanny life. Long of leg, wattled and web-footed, with ungainly bodies, sparsely feathered, and bare necks, they were, Stern thought, absolutely the most hideous and unreal-appearing creatures he had ever seen. In size they somewhat resembled an albatross. The folk called them kalamakee. They were so fully domesticated as to make free with all the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... not been eluded. The airship was moored upon a raft which was to be towed out into the lake to enable the dirigible to ascend. But something went wrong with the arrangements. A strong wind caught the ungainly airship, she dipped her nose into the water, and as the motor was set going she was driven deeper into the lake, the vessel only being saved ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... was drawn from the long canvas Patricia's eyes were on the faces of those in whose impressions she was most interested, and they gave her great satisfaction. Mrs. Bingham's eyes were wide and startled as those of the small hen who discovers that her ungainly child is really a ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... men were beardless, but one had the ghost of a moustache on his upper lip. He was dapper, clean and deferential. The other was short and somewhat ungainly in build, and his face showed evidence of the recent shaving off of a heavy beard. He had no graces, and evidently no thoughts but of service—service of any kind, so long as he recognized the authority demanding it. His clothes did not suit him; they were rich enough, but they were not his ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... the great house on the hill the guests had all departed and only the musicians remained. As they filed out through the ample doorway, on their way home, the first faint streak of early dawn became visible in the east. One of them, a lank, plain-featured young man of ungainly aspect but penetrating eye, called the attention of the others ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... had predicted this, the actuality of it struck Bud all of a heap. He paced up and down the cage for the full space of an hour, hanging his ungainly head between his shoulders in abandonment ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... knew enough law to become an attorney, and went to Springfield, and after that it was only a short time before he had won his clients. His cousin Denny came to hear him try one of his first cases. He watched the tall, lank young fellow, still as ungainly as in his early boyhood, and heard him tell the jury some of those same stories he had ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... of about the same age as Ian Stafford of the Foreign Office, who had brought him that night at her request. Ian had called him, "my South African nabob," in tribute to the millions he had made with Cecil Rhodes and others at Kimberley and on the Rand. At first sight of the forceful and rather ungainly form she had inwardly contrasted it with the figure of Ian Stafford and that other spring-time figure of a man at the end of the first row in the stalls, towards which the prima donna had flashed one trusting, happy glance, and with which she herself had been familiar since her childhood. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... always did, and involuntarily poured out a libation on the hearth, as he almost always did. Good-natured, ungainly, long-suffering men seldom achieve the art of ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... metrical arrangements of the Psalms by non-Catholic authors exist in English. Most of these metrical efforts are very poor, unreliable in giving the sense, and awkward and ungainly in poetic forms. An interesting book is Prothero's Psalms in Human Life. The author was a Protestant, hence his numbering of the Psalms may at first ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... speak, ungainly is the manner of my speech as one leaping among furrows, as one advancing unevenly; for all this I fear to raise thine anger, and to provoke instead of appeasing thee; nevertheless, thou wilt do unto me as may please thee. O Lord, thou hast held it good to forsake us in these days, ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... by men who certainly had no democratic associations or leanings, am not ready to think so. But democracies have likewise their finer instincts. I have also seen the wisest statesman and most pregnant speaker of our generation, a man of humble birth and ungainly manners, of little culture beyond what his own genius supplied, become more absolute in power than any monarch of modern times through the reverence of his countrymen for his honesty, his wisdom, his sincerity, his faith in God and man, and the nobly humane simplicity of his character. And I remember ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... and came toward them she reeled in her walk, stumbling over stones and groping blindly with her huge bony hands. But still she kept on singing, with twisted lips that strove to simper, and once she tried to sway her ungainly body into an uncouth dancing-step that brought her floundering to ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... scarce human in his appearance. The neck was drawn out like a plucked chicken's, making the rest of him seem the more obese and unnatural by the contrast. He was clad only in his long night-dress, and his swollen ankles and ungainly feet protruded starkly from beneath it. Beside him stood a smart-looking police-inspector, who was ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... that!" laughed Ned. "That was only Harry's crazy notion after he saw something big and ungainly careening about the enclosed yard of Shop Thirteen. Hello, there go Mary Nestor and her father!" and Ned pointed to the opposite side of the street where the girl and Mr. Nestor could be seen in the light of ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... very rapid, indeed, that in about three years from that day he found himself in Maynooth, and in three years more was an active curate, to whom that very teacher appeared as slavishly submissive as if he had never ridiculed his vulgarity or ungainly dimensions. Poor Frank, however, in consequence of the rapid progress he made, and of the very short interval which elapsed from the period of his commencing Latin until that of his ordination, was assigned ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... of the favor of Louis XIV., who, entertained by his rough honesty, gave him a pension of two thousand francs. Later, when appointed with Racine to write a history of the reign,—that unfortunate history which was accidentally burned,—we find him an unwilling follower on royal expeditions, his ungainly horsemanship the mock of high-bred courtiers. In fact, he was bourgeois through and through, and not at ease with the aristocrats. He was thrifty bourgeois too; so often called miserly as well as malicious that it is pleasant to remember certain illustrations of his nobler side. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... man; but Squire Mountmeadow, scarcely deigning to avail himself of their proffered assistance, and pausing on each step, looking around him with his long, lean, solemn visage, finally reached terra firma in safety, and slowly stretched his tall, ungainly figure. It was at this moment that Dr. Masham's servant approached him, and informed his worship that his master was at the inn, and would be happy to see him. The countenance of the great Mountmeadow relaxed at the mention of the name of a brother magistrate, and in an audible voice he bade the ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... black rotter of a boat Past service to the labouring, tumbling flote, Lay stranded in mid-stream; With a horrid list, a frightening lapse from the line, That made me think of legs and a broken spine; Soon, all too soon, Ungainly and forlorn to lie Full in the eye Of the cynical, discomfortable moon That, as I looked, stared from the fading sky, A clown's face flour'd for work. And by and by The wide-winged sunset wanned and waned; The lean night-wind ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... glad if I have been able to be of service to Captain Rexford in making his business arrangements here, and hope all will prove satisfactory. I have only to add that, although you must be prepared for much that you will find different from English life, much that is rough and ungainly and uncomfortable, you may feel confident that, with a little patience, the worst roughness of colonial life will soon be overcome, and that you will find compensation a thousand times over in the glorious climate and cheerful ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... still bellowing, he scrambled to his feet, an ungainly embodiment of mortal agitation, and ran for the door. But Mr. Geltfin beat him to it and through it, Quinlan and Appel following in the ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... costume was in 1843, will admit that there was room for improvement. Changes were made indeed, but these changes can hardly be said to have been made in the direction of either comfort, convenience, or good taste. The "Albert hat" (as it was called), one of the ugliest, most ungainly, and preposterous of military shakoes that was ever invented, made its appearance about this time, and the idea was credited (rightly or wrongly) to the amiable prince. Constant reference to this preposterous invention is made in the pages of Punch, and the prince's ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... ugly and muddy looking pearls. From these ornaments Lord Bude was inseparable; to chaff about presents from dusky princesses on undiscovered shores he was impervious. Even Merton did not know the cause of his attachment to these ungainly jewels, or the dark memory of mysterious loss with which they ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... and the whitest gravel ever you did see—and they would apparently have gone on for goodness knows how long if a gray-white, thin, worn post a couple of yards away had not turned into a heron and stalked an ungainly stalk towards them. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... representatives were John A. McClernand, James Shields, William A. Richardson, and other men who rose to national distinction. Abraham Lincoln, a Whig representative from Sangamon County, was already well known for his ungainly length of body, for his habit of reasoning in parables which were now scriptural and now vulgar to the point of obscenity, and for a quaint and rare honesty. He was four years older than the new member from Morgan, and nearly two feet taller. Douglas, many years later, declared that he was drawn ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... Batard and Leclere is a history of war—of five cruel, relentless years, of which their first meeting is fit summary. To begin with, it was Leclere's fault, for he hated with understanding and intelligence, while the long-legged, ungainly puppy hated only blindly, instinctively, without reason or method. At first there were no refinements of cruelty (these were to come later), but simple beatings and crude brutalities. In one of these Batard had an ear injured. He never ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London |
