"Clumsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would be blest were they masters of themselves, and therefore of circumstances; who are miserable because, not being masters of themselves, they try to master circumstance, to pull down iron walls with weak and clumsy hands, and forget that he who would be free from tyrants must first be free from his ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... not one of my tactful speeches. It was culpably, might indeed have been wilfully, ambiguous; and yet it was the kind of clumsy and impulsive utterance which has the ring of a good intention, and is thus inoffensive except to such as seek excuses for offence. My instincts about Mrs. Lascelles did not place her in this category at all. Nevertheless, the ensuing pause was long enough ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... entirely made up of fragments of some older sculptured figures, placed together without regard to anatomy in much the same brutal fashion that the melodies of the time were sung together. The traces of this clumsy music-making extended down to Palestrina's time, and became the germ of counterpoint, canon, and fugue, constituting (apart from the folk song) the only ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... meat, in thin slices, is served on hot plates, with vegetables at discretion on the same plate, separate vegetable dishes—except for salads—not being used on private dinner tables. Certain vegetables, as sweet corn on the cob, may be regarded as a course by themselves, being too clumsy to be disposed of conveniently on a plate ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... be the cause of innocent mistakes. Relying on his intimacy with Felicie, Pierquin tried to discover the secret of Marguerite's journey, and to know if it were really a question of her marriage, and whether he must renounce all hope; but, notwithstanding his clumsy cleverness in questioning them, neither Balthazar nor Felicie could give him any light, for the good reason that they were in the dark themselves: Marguerite in taking the reins of power seemed to have followed its maxims and kept ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... many names of Japan is that of the Country Ruled by a Slender Sword, in allusion to the clumsy weapons employed by the Chinese and Koreans. See, for the shortening and lightening of the modern Japanese sword (katana) as compared with the long and heavy (ken) of the "Divine" (kami) or uncivilized age, "The Sword of Japan; ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... appeal; it was orderly, methodical, unrelenting; it was backed by the whole force of the kingdom; it overlooked nothing; it forgot nothing; it was comparatively incorruptible. The lesser courts, with their old clumsy procedure, were at a hopeless disadvantage before the professional judges, who could use all the new legal methods. If a man suffered under these there was none to plead his cause, for in all the country there was not a single trained lawyer ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... appears awkward as he works on land. In use of arms and hands he reminds one of a monkey, while his clumsy and usually slow-moving body will often suggest the hippopotamus. By using head, hands, teeth, tail, and webbed feet the beaver accomplishes much. The tail of a beaver is a useful and much-used appendage; ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... the stage was to represent the deck of a ship in a storm, or the interior of a Greek temple, or the streets of a certain town, to all of which inartistic devices Shakespeare is reduced, and for which he always amply apologises. Besides this clumsy method, Shakespeare had two other substitutes for scenery—the hanging out of a placard, and his descriptions. The first of these could hardly have satisfied his passion for picturesqueness and his feeling ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... with her quietly, till the time of residence necessary before they could be married was expired. He knew that he was treading on a mine, which at any time might burst and blow his clumsy schemes to the wind. But circumstances were in his favour, and the time came to an end at last. He drank hard all the time without letting Mary suspect it, but afterwards, when it was all over, wondered at his nerve and self-possession through all those trying days, when he was forced ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... Farthing Doll put her foot on my dress this morning in passing me, and tore it. She is a clumsy thing." ...
— Adventures in Toyland - What the Marionette Told Molly • Edith King Hall
... loudly together in protest. "Ay, by the gods, much better. She is far too fair for the first sweetness of her youth to be wasted on a clumsy clown. We are ourselves indifferent good at this taming and the rest, and, like a loyal subject, I will gladly serve the King in this." He advanced towards Perpetua, but Robert instantly ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... aerial garment of the advancing day. And with the coming of the sound and the light the sphere lurched, and blinded and dazzled we staggered helplessly against each other. It lurched again, and the hissing grew louder. I had shut my eyes perforce, I was making clumsy efforts to cover my head with my blanket, and this second lurch sent me helplessly off my feet. I fell against the bale, and opening my eyes had a momentary glimpse of the air just outside our glass. It was running—it was boiling—like snow into which a white-hot rod is thrust. ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... commonplace, and an Englishman is proverbially incapable of expressing his feelings. In the supreme moments of their lives, it is true, a few men, and those not always the most sincere, may speak eloquently; but for the most part a proposal of marriage from an Englishman is—as it should be—a clumsy thing. Peter Ogilvie could only speak in such limited language as he always used. Yet the world seemed to stand still for him just then, for he knew that everything in his heaven or upon earth depended on what ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... of those built at Constantinople, and consisted of two clumsy boats lashed together side by side and boarded over; very well suited for smooth water, but extremely dangerous with a heavy sea running. However, as it was important to get the guns on shore, Green determined to make the attempt. ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... a silence, prolonged, curious, in a sense thrilling. A girl of wonderful appearance had risen to her feet and was looking eagerly towards him. She was wearing the plain black dress of a working woman, whose clumsy folds inadequately concealed a figure of singular beauty and strength. Her cheeks were colourless; her eyes large and deep, and of a soft shade of grey, filled just now with the half wondering, half worshipping expression of a pilgrim who has reached the Mecca of her desires. ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... given to raincoats made in this way. Overshoes, too, were made of pure rubber poured over clay lasts which were broken after the rubber had dried. These overshoes were waterproof,—there was no denying that; but they were heavy and clumsy and shapeless. When they were taken off, they did not stand up, but promptly fell over. In hot weather they became so sticky that they had to be kept in the cellar; and in winter they became stiff and inelastic, but they never wore out. How to get rid of the undesirable qualities and not ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... his head. "Oh, no, I didn't mean to suggest anything like that. It's just that Eileen was ... well, clumsy is an unkind word ... unco-ordinated I guess, though she tried to make a joke of it. She was always bumping into things, spilling her glass of water and things like that, but not because she had been drinking ...
— The Last Straw • William J. Smith
... intense life—if it be real?" she asked. "I think it's the only one—everything else is so clumsy!" Her companion laughed, and she brought out with her charming serenity what next struck her. "It's so interesting to ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... and repetition; while, as I have tried to show, there exists no scheme of natural classification into which the whole series could have been forced. I realize, only now that it is too late, that the arrangement is clumsy and confusing: or at least has become so by the manner in which I have carried it out; and that even if it justify itself to the mind of my readers, it can never be helpful or attractive to their eye, which had the first right to be considered. That I should have failed ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... (rebelliously): No, no! It is too clumsy, too unjust! So great a heart! So great a poet! Die Like this? what, die. ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... protected as long as a single boat's crew remained afloat, it was the little rock of Psara. Yet, in spite of repeated warnings, the Greek Government allowed the Turkish fleet to pass the Dardenelles unobserved, and some clumsy feints were enough to blind it to the real object of an expedition whose aim was known to all Europe. There were ample means for succouring the islanders, as subsequent events proved; but when the Turkish admiral, Khosrew, with 10,000 men on board, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... if you will be so clumsy!" said Beatrice. "Come indoors, and I'll tie it up for you. You'd better hold it under ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... seemingly infinite slowness, with all the hundreds of straining, thrusting, clumsy pushpots clinging to it and pushing ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... her! she doesn't know what suffering means, any more than if she were a bird or a squirrel. I thought you'd take a fancy to her, Blanche; and perhaps you can think of some way to help them. Women know how to set about such things. I'm such a clumsy fellow that all I dared attempt was to deal out as much meal and bacon ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... a relief when Sam returned from up-stairs, his articles that needed mending done up in a clumsy bundle, and his hat cocked on his head with the army badge over the back of ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... inconvenient at times. My, what a jar!" as she came down rather hard, missing the last step—"I feel it from the crown of my foot to the sole of my head. Here, Simon, take away this ladder-step; the next time I want it I think I'll do without; I'm growing so old in my clumsy age. Walk in and take a seat, Mr. Torville. Or shall we sit here? It's pleasanter than indoors ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... mandate is therefore a very clumsy instrument for work of a very delicate character. The democracy, instinctively, knows this very well, and sets no great store by ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... no reason why I should conceal it—smells of the stable, which must be prejudicial to him. He is slightly Republican, too, wears clumsy boots, has awful nails, and when he gets new gloves, twice a year, his fingers ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... won't ride after us, and I don't believe they'll give us any more trouble," chuckled Bud, as he visioned the outlaws, used to their comfortable if clumsy saddles, riding bareback. To a horseman this is the limit of torture, for the horses of the west are no circus animals, with broad, flat backs. Instead, they generally have a ridge of bone on which it is almost impossible ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... clumsy boat that the brig could n't hoist in nor tow," answered Jack, coolly, turning short round at the same time, but not condescending to "uncoil" his arms as he did so, a mark of indifference that would probably have helped to mystify the captain, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... more rapidly now. It was such a small foot. My own looked so enormous and clumsy ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Felix came across the artillery, which consisted of battering rams and immense crossbows; the bows were made from entire trees, or, more properly, poles. He inspected these clumsy contrivances with interest, and entered into a conversation with some men who were fitting up the framework on which a battering ram was to swing. Being extremely conceited with themselves and the knowledge they ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... stronger, there is in the Kiakhta tea an exquisite delicacy, which will always receive in its favour a higher price. The difference, I am told, mainly arises from the fact that the caravan tea, exposed to the air during its twelve months' journey in loose and clumsy and much-shaken paper and sheep-skin bundles, gets rid of the tannin and other gross substances, a process of purification which cannot be effected in the necessarily sealed and hermetically-closed boxes in ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... face, narrowing suddenly as the fringe of his whiskers became a little straggling beard. But to me he was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. And I loved him. I do not think it is possible to love, to adore any creature more than I loved and adored that clumsy, ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... Consul came to the theatre, but Clarke, hardly rising, did not give up his place. The First Consul only stayed a short time, and when he came back he showed great discontent at this affectation of pride and of vanity. Wishing to get rid of a man whom he looked on as a blundering flatterer and a clumsy critic, he sent him away as charge d'affaires to the young extemporized King of Etruria, where Clarke expiated his folly in a sort of exile. This is all the "great disfavour" which has been so much spoken about, In the end General Clarke returned ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... was originally a covering for the head. Then the fashion arose of carrying a square of similar material in the hand, and so we get handkerchief, and later pocket-handkerchief, which, if we analyse it, is rather a clumsy word, "pocket-hand-cover-head." The reason it is so is that the people who added pocket and hand knew nothing of the real ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... intended warning came too late, our hero staggered back a few steps, and fell, stunned and motionless, against the stable door. Unconsciously he had passed just behind the heels of the stranger's horse, which being by no means in good humour with the clumsy manoeuvres of his shampooer, the hostler, had taken advantage of the opportunity presented to him of working off his irritability, and had consequently inflicted a severe kick upon the right ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... doubt have crippled all in a position to render them assistance. To my astonishment, the signals were disregarded, and no efforts were made to second my operations." The Pedro Primiero, after fighting alone for some time, and during that time even doing but little mischief, by reason of the clumsy way in which her guns were ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... year, and begin the new with a clean record. It is a measure absolutely necessary. The snake does not put on his new skin over the old one. He sloughs off the first, before he dons the second. He would be a very clumsy serpent, if he did not. One can not have successive layers of friendships any more than the snake has successive layers of skins. One must adopt some system to guard against a congestion of the heart from plethora of loves. I go in for the much-abused, fair-weather, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... enough for Voltaire to content himself with vague poetical material for his poetical discourse on Liberty, but from Diderot, whether as editor or as writer, something better might have been expected than a clumsy reproduction of the reasoning by which men like Turretini had turned philosophy into the corrupted ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... themselves confusedly jumbled by the shock of the Revolution: the grand seigneur dined at the table of the opulent contractor; and the witty and elegant marquise was present at the ball by the side of the clumsy peasant lately grown rich. In the absence of the ancient distinctions, elegant manners and polished language now formed a kind of aristocracy. The house of St. Germain, conducted by a lady who possessed the deportment and the habits of the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... age of twenty Galileo began to discover. His first discoveries were, of course, clumsy and poorly made, but very soon he commenced to turn out neat and durable discoveries that would ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... had swollen big, and his eyes grown moist by this time, so much had the gentle answer of that familiar voice moved him. He assured her hurriedly, and without looking at her, that he was not angry. He then managed to ask her, in a clumsy, constrained way, if she had had a pleasant journey, and seen many interesting sights. She spoke of a few places that she had visited, and so the time passed till he withdrew to take his place at one of the levers ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... for the security of the city by leaving in it a powerful reserve, Alfonso drew off the residue of his army, probably not much exceeding three thousand five hundred horse and five thousand foot, well provided with artillery and with arquebuses, which latter engine was still of so clumsy and unwieldy construction, as not to have entirely superseded the ancient weapons of European warfare. The Portuguese army, traversing the bridge of Toro, pursued their march along the southern side of the Douro, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... theory of a long plectrum used for pizzicato purposes, as I consider, with Engel, that such an implement would have been unmanageably clumsy even for the primitive music of the ancients. Whenever I see a rod, as in the accompanying drawing of the Assyrian Trigonon, I maintain that its purpose was to excite ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... invasions of the sensual, smirking, patronizing male brutes with which every passing train appeared to be filled; the well-dressed, hard-finished city men, who held her cheap because she presided behind an eating-house cash-register. How well she knew their quick, bold stares, their so clumsy subterfuges to enter into conversation with her; and how different was Bob ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... cuckoo clocks in top-swollen chalets. The letter would be brought to her on a silver salver, exciting perhaps the stately curiosity of Mrs. Quintan and questions embarrassing to answer. It was a pity he used that railroad envelope! Or would it lie beside her plate at breakfast, as clumsy and unrefined as himself, amid a heap of scented notes from members of the nobility? Ah, if he could but see her face and read his fate ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... rough, foolish, rich youth, tutored in evil by his Mephistopheles, but only, we fancy, skin-deep in it, slow of thought but quick of feeling, with his one and only love, never forgotten, and now found again in the very woman whom his "friend" has wronged. His last speech, with its clumsy yet genuine chivalry, its touching, broken words, its fine feeling and faltering expression, is one of the most pathetic things I know. Such a character, in its very absence of subtlety, is a triumph of Browning's, to whom intellectual simplicity must be ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... himself. After reflecting a long time upon the labour which would attend their removal, he concluded to let them remain. Hitherto, all the animals, beasts, fishes, &c. had dwelt indifferently on the land or in the water. The shark and the porpoise, though very clumsy and easily tired, could nevertheless walk some, and the whale, though his waddling gait would have made you laugh, yet contrived to go over a considerable piece of dry ground in a short time. Chappewee now allotted ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... for truthful accuracy of meaning. He never would suffer what he considered either the connection or the balance and adjustment of varied and complementary truths to be sacrificed to force or point of expression; and he had to choose sometimes, as all people have, between a blurred, clumsy, and ineffective picture and a consciously incomplete and untrue one. His choice never wavered; and as the artist's aim was high, and his skill not always equally at his command, he preferred the imperfection which left him the consciousness of honesty. The other cause which threw a degree ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... fence that formed still another pen; three or four pompous turkey gobblers strutted unhurriedly about the barnlot, while some of their less theatrical hens perched stiffly, watchfully on the sides of a clumsy wagon-bed over against the barn. Martins and chimney-swallows darted above the cabin and out-buildings, swirling in mad circles, dipping and ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... came to the palace, and was received there with rejoicing. Pwyll, also, the chief of Annwn came to the orchard with his hundred knights, as Rhiannon had commanded him, having the bag with him. And Pwyll was clad in coarse and ragged garments, and wore large clumsy old shoes upon his feet. And when he knew that the carousal after the meat had begun, he went towards the hall, and when he came into the hall, he saluted Gwawl the son of Clud, and his company, both men and women. "Heaven prosper thee," said Gwawl, "and the greeting of Heaven be ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... is most awful clumsy, too. One time when he was t' our house he knocked off a real cluny vase of ma's and broke it and his wife says, 'Evans Billhorn, th' next time I take you anywheres I'll crate yuh!' she says. Pa kep' a piece of that vase fer a long time. 'Pore ...
— The Fotygraft Album - Shown to the New Neighbor by Rebecca Sparks Peters Aged Eleven • Frank Wing
... how to be bad? Ah," Mitchy replied, "your irritation testifies more than anything else could do to our peculiar genius or our peculiar want of it. Our vice is intolerably clumsy—if it can possibly be a question of vice in regard to that charming child, who looks like one of the new-fashioned bill-posters, only, in the way of 'morbid modernity,' as Mrs. Brook would say, more extravagant and funny than any that have yet ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... of it I had turf underfoot; but where this ended and the rock began, I had to leave the barrow behind. It was ticklish work, climbing down; for footing had to be found, and Lydia was a monstrous weight. Pah! how fat she was and clumsy—lolling this way and that! Besides, the bag hampered me. But I reached the foot at last, and after a short rest clambered out along the ridge as fast as I could. I was sick ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... March proposed a resolution for a committee of the whole house, to consider such measures as might relieve the owners and occupiers of real property, and establish a more equitable apportionment of the public burdens. Sir Charles Wood, in an awkward and clumsy speech, confuted Mr. Disraeli, no difficult matter even in such a speech, for the honourable leader of "the country party" had collected his statistics carelessly, and used them illogically. His speech was also deficient in the eloquence so striking generally in his elaborate ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... keep the clumsy raft moving at such disadvantage, but Deerfoot would not yield the pole to either of his companions, and, after awhile, he drove it against the shore, and all stepped upon dry land, without so much as their feet ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... almost to the extent of making him wish that he really could have been the desperado McEachern fancied him. Never in his life before had he sat still under a challenge, and this espionage had been one. Behind the clumsy watcher, he had seen always the self-satisfied figure of McEachern. If there had been anything subtle about the man from Dodson's, he could have forgiven him; but there was not. Years of practise had left Spike with a ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... sail. He carried no top-gallant-mast, so as not to strain her; her sails were all in holes, as if they had been riddled with bullets; and where ropes had broken in the rigging, they had been tied in clumsy knots, instead of being spliced in proper sailor-like fashion. There was not much to boast of in the way of navigation either; the captain keeping his log by the simple method of spitting over the side, or throwing a chip of wood overboard, and making ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... she was pretty, but she suddenly assumed an air of graciousness and dignity which captivated everyone. Some very little girls do acquire this air: what its source is no one knows. In this case certainly not Mr. and Mrs. Symons, who were particularly clumsy. Etta, as she was called, was often summoned from the nursery when visitors came; so were Minna and Louie her elder sisters, but all the ladies wanted to talk to Etta. Minna and Louie had by this time, at nine and eleven, advanced to the ugly, uninteresting stage, and they owed Henrietta a grudge ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... looked him up and down, and shrugged her clumsy shoulders. "I don't know what you are talking about," she declared, and with that turned on her heel. "Since you will not take yourself off like a gentleman, I'll go ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... gunboat. They had killed two Scots who had mistaken them for a supply boat from Beresnik and gone to meet them empty-handed. The Bolo had regained his boat after a little firing between him and the second platoon which was at the upper end of the village. We were trying to locate oars for the clumsy Russian barzhaks on the bank, intending to cross to the island where the gunboat was moored and do a little navy work, when the British monitor hove into sight around a bend about three miles down stream, and opened fire on the gunboat. The first shot was a little ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... because I can't tell you anything more, except that the man you came with is not to be trusted and may involve you in the difficulties that threaten him. You must think of me as a stranger to whom you tried to do a good turn and who has showed his gratitude in a clumsy way." ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... back behind the spruce again. Thereupon we threw more stones; and again the beast rushed out, growling and scratching up the grass in an odd manner; he did not appear inclined to pursue us, however, and we now noticed that there was something clumsy in its gait, ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... clumsy, coarse way of cutting meats is immense. For example, at the beginning of the present season, the part of a lamb denominated leg and loin, or hind-quarter, sold for thirty cents a pound. Now this includes, besides the thick, fleshy portions, a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Watson answered; "indeed, he was not that kind of man. It is my way—my clumsy way of explaining what I mean by decent. Many a decent man has seen the inside of a prison. By being there he pays his debt, and afterwards, in common justice, he should be free, really free, free from his ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... Your threats won't avail you," said the squire contemptuously. "Your plan is a very clumsy one. Let me suggest to you, young man, that threats for the purpose of extorting ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... o' you," said Joey, and after a little comparison of blades, most of which were ground more or less on their owner's clumsy boots, he selected one, and carefully slit open the shirt and, cutting away enough to form a pad, he pressed it down upon the wound and checked ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... of artificial ornament about it, but the princess wore a number of heavy brass rings on her arms and ankles. Those on the latter reached half-way up to her knees, and they were so heavy that her walk was little better than a clumsy waddle. Before we could pass further comment on her appearance, King Jambai entered, and saluted us by taking us each separately and rubbing noses with us. This done, he ordered in breakfast, which consisted of roast ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... was rather peculiar, and somewhat clumsy, Flint thought; but then he had been a schoolmaster, and perhaps he was inclined to be over-critical. But the meaning of the first clause could not be mistaken, however, though the word "operations" seemed to indicate something on a grander scale ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... harmony. There is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and this entrancing art, it seems, has taken it; sorely dislocating its graceful limbs, and injuring its goodly proportions in the unseemly escapade. We hate your crashing, clumsy chords, and utterly spit at and defy chromatic passages, from one end of the instrument to the other, and back again; flats, sharps, and most appropriate 'naturals,' spattered all over the page. The essential ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... when the dawn was strong and bright, I took one last look 'round, and ran for the door. I got it unlocked, in a nervous and clumsy fashion, then locked it hurriedly, and went to my bedroom, where I lay on the bed, and tried to steady my nerves. Peter came, presently, with the coffee, and when I had drunk it, I told him I meant to have a sleep, as ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... him; and he came to the palace, and was received there with rejoicing. Pwyll, also, the chief of Dyved, came to the orchard with a hundred knights, as Rhiannon had commanded him. And Pwyll was clad in coarse and ragged garments, and wore large, clumsy old shoes upon his feet. And when he knew that the carousal after the meat had begun, he went toward the hall; and when he came into the hall he saluted Gawl, the son of Clud, and his company, both men and women. "Heaven prosper thee," said Gawl, "and friendly greeting be unto ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... scientific investigation of beauty in general is connected with the name of Pere Buffier (see First Truths), form, and illustrates his theory by the human face. A A beautiful face is at once the most common and most rare among members of the species. This seems to be a clumsy way of saying that it is a clear expression of the typical form ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... shyly. His black cloth trousers were too short, and did not hide his clumsy laced boots. His features were small and regular, and his light-brown hair grew thick on his little round head, which he carried on one side. He was young, seven or eight and twenty, and so good-looking that some unhappy romantic passion ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... summoned Giant Despair himself, happening to see from her window his clumsy figure coming up ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... of the boat. The fishing implements were of the roughest kind. The hooks were formed of fish bones, bound together by fine gut; the lines were twisted strips of skin, strong gut attaching the hook to these lines; the bait was small pieces of fat, varied by strips of fish with the skin on them. Clumsy as the appliances were, jack, tench, and other fish were caught in considerable numbers, and among them two or three good-sized salmon. The nets were of coarse mesh, made of hemp, which grows wild in many parts of Siberia. They were ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... the fact. Not that she felt that it was henceforth useless to lie. On the contrary, she was in the habit of denying the obvious truth, and she had, of course, too much knowledge of men to be ignorant of the fact that, when in love, there is no lie, however clumsy, which they cannot believe if they wish to do so. But on this occasion, contrary to her nature and habit, she refrained from lying. She was afraid of offending the dead. She imagined that in denying him she would be doing him a wrong, depriving him of his share, angering him. She held her peace, ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... lightly answered the other. "How mighty it is! How savage! What tusks! You know the pastime? A quick step, a sure arm, an eye like lightning—presto! your boar lies on his back, with his feet in the air! You, my Lord, are the boar; big, clumsy, brutal! Shall we begin the sport? I promise to prick you ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... would express relations of real kinship between real genera. We know what kind of physics grew out of this, and how, for having believed in a science unique and final, embracing the totality of the real and at one with the absolute, the ancients were confined, in fact, to a more or less clumsy interpretation of the physical ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... to Scotland if its nobility ever consented to her being 'subject to an unfaithful husband.' It was unanswerable, except by a new passion of tears, under which the Reformer stood at first silent and unmoved. He broke silence at last with a clumsy attempt to explain or to console; and Mary's indignation was not diminished by Knox's quaint protest that he was really a tenderhearted man, and could scarcely bear to see his own children weep when corrected for their faults. She broke with him finally; and Knox, dismissed to the ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... having a mission to express that diplomatic contempt for the Senate which his colleagues, if they felt it, were obliged to conceal. He performed his duties with conscientious precision. He never missed an opportunity to thrust the sharp point of his dialectic rapier through the joints of the clumsy and hide-bound senatorial self-esteem. He delighted in skilfully exposing to Madeleine's eyes some new side of Ratcliffe's ignorance. His conversation at such times sparkled with historical allusions, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... dining-room, but stood irresolute by the little work-table where trailed a white piece of calico, with a needle stuck in it, as if the work had been left hurriedly. The pink-crested cockatoo started, on his appearance, into clumsy activity and began to climb laboriously up and down his perch, calling "Joanna" with indistinct loudness and a persistent screech that prolonged the last syllable of the name as if in a peal of insane laughter. The screen in the doorway moved ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... to pass for good sense in substance. That Robespierre had decent fluency, copiousness, and finish, need hardly be said. The French have an artistic sense; they have never accepted our own whimsical doctrine, that a man's politics must be sagacious, if his speaking is only clumsy enough. Robespierre more than once showed himself ready with a forcible reply on critical occasions: this only makes him an illustration the more of the good oratorical rule, that he is most likely ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... coarseness was horribly right. A bad priest? No, a good priest, who spoke strictly according to his conscience and belief, and tried to apply his religion simply, such as it was, without hypocritical concessions. Ignorant, clumsy, gross—yes, but honest and logical even in his fearful attempt. In the half-hour that I had listened to him, he had tried by all the means that religion uses and recommends to follow his calling of making converts and giving absolution. He had said everything that ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... spite of herself at the notion. 'That would be too shameful! I must forego the god of light himself, if I am to see him in the person of a clumsy barbarian.' ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... ways One flower of truth, the busy crowd we shun, And to the shades of tranquil learning run, How many a doubt pursues! how oft we sigh When histories charm to think that histories lie! That all are grave romances, at the best, And Musgrave's but more clumsy than the rest. By Tory Hume's seductive page beguiled, We fancy Charles was just and Strafford mild;[7] And Fox himself with party pencil draws Monmouth a hero, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... are Uncle Joshua, who is a good and well-loved man, and Peter, probably in his late teens, who is a farm worker, well-intentioned but clumsy. A big event in the village is May Day, and there is rivalry among the girls about which of them shall be Queen of the May. It is Lilac. Yet that very day her mother is taken ill and dies. She is taken to their ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... entirely what is done—for instance, when the train drew into the station, Mr. Flanders burst open the door, and put the lady's dressing-case out for her, saying, or rather mumbling: "Let me" very shyly; indeed he was rather clumsy about it. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... very ordinary remark on a very ordinary or natural deficiency. It would hardly seem a crushing criticism to say that some wild Arab chieftain was not very good at imitating a farmyard; or that the Grand Llama of Thibet was rather clumsy at making paper boats. But the remark might be natural in a man travelling in paper boats, or touring with an invisible farmyard for his menagerie. As my friend was a cinema-producer, I supposed he meant that the Indians ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... the caricaturist, was rather clumsy with the Gallic tongue. Whistler used to term it ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... had not done by his conducting of the Ninth Symphony, what the Vienna Conservatoire, Dionys Weber, and many other clumsy performances (which had led me to regard classical music as absolutely colourless) had not fully accomplished, was achieved by the inconceivable charm of the most unclassical Italian music, thanks to the wonderful, thrilling, and entrancing impersonation of Romeo by Schroder-Devrient. What effect ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... closing in upon the train. Off there to the left the outlaws were keeping pace with him, but as yet they were making no attempt to lessen the distance between them. He came up with the last wagon, turned off the road beside it, and had the clumsy covered vehicle between him and ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... are the Caledonian. Tell by the truck .... Do you think so? I don't think they're anything so very much. Nix. You'll never do it. Look at the way they run with their heads up. That shows they're all winded. Look at the clumsy way they got the ladder off the wagon. Blap! The judge thought it was coming through the boards on him. Oh, pretty good, pretty good, but you just wait till you see our boys. Look at the fool hanging there on the ladder waiting till ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... papers perfunctorily, and, although his air was deliberate, his fingers made clumsy work of it. At last ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... and pulled off to the Juno, while Nellie and Donald walked around to the wharf. In a few moments the boat was ready, and came up to the pier, though her clumsy skipper was so excited at the prospect of having the nabob's pretty daughter in his boat, that he had nearly smashed her against the timbers. The gallant skipper bowed, and smirked, and smiled, as he assisted Miss Patterdale to a place in the standing-room. Donald ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... a successful military leader. The late Duke of Guise had eclipsed his glory, and in a much briefer career had exhibited much more striking tactical skill. The battle of Saint Denis, it was alleged by many, had itself been marred by his clumsy disposition of his troops. Proud and overbearing in his deportment, he alienated even those with whom his warm attachment to the Roman Catholic Church ought to have made him popular. Catharine de' Medici, we have ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... whose quartzose sediment tinkled metallically about her iron prow, the clumsy Honda made slow headway. She was a craft of some two hundred tons burden, with iron hull, stern paddle wheel, and corrugated metal passenger deck and roof. Below the passenger deck, and well forward on the hull, stood the huge, wood-burning boiler, whose incandescent stack pierced ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... dislike Balzac had evoked in the literary world, and his occasional obscurity and clumsy style, have militated very strongly against his popularity in his native land, where perfection in the manipulation of words is of supreme importance in a writer. While in France, however, Balzac's undoubted faults ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... it's on the regular American lines," Jeff pursued, after parting with his mother. "Jackson's done it, and he can't imagine anything else. I don't say it isn't well done in its way, but the way's wrong; it's stupid and clumsy." When they were got so far from the hotel as to command a prospect of its ungainly mass sprawled upon the plateau, his smouldering disgust burst out: "Look at it! Did you ever see anything like it? I wish the damned thing would burn ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... bourgeois and a middle-aged woman were seated, when suddenly the occupant of the chair which backed into mine and had been backing into it so often during the evening that I had punctuated my eating with comments on other people's clumsy bulkiness; suddenly, as I say, this occupant, turning completely round, forced his face against mine and, cigarette in hand, asked me for a light. I could see nothing but face—a waste of plump ruddy face set deep between vast shoulders, a face ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... could not write verses like his friend Lovelace, or like Cowley's Chronicle or Waller's lines "On a Girdle." He had not the inexhaustible, astonishing (though tiresome) wit of Butler. He is often clumsy and sometimes almost babyish. One has frequently occasion to wonder how a man of business could allow himself to be tickled by such obvious straws as are too many of the conceits which give him pleasure. To ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... was a plain, large half-sheet of note-paper, on which a sentence in French was scrawled in red ink in a large, clumsy hand, thus: ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... almost worth devoting an hour to the successive examination of five buildings, as illustrative of the last degradation of the Renaissance. San Moise is the most clumsy, Santa Maria Zobenigo the most impious, St. Eustachio the most ridiculous, the Ospedaletto the most monstrous, and the head at Santa ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... that—never that," her host cried distractedly. "If I have been in the wrong, I apologise from my heart. But trifling never entered my thoughts. How could it do so, with all the respect I have for you and Susan? I may have been clumsy, but I acted for ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... to see what the thing was. There was only a flashing glimpse of a pebble-like object as it disappeared. But her heart leaped at the thought of what it might be. Thrusting the ragged handkerchief into a pocket already examined, she had just stooped to peer under the clumsy piece of furniture when a telephone ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... wonderful!" whispered the French lieutenant, placing his lips at Prescott's ear. "You Americans must have learned your stealth from your own Indians. We are clumsy when we try to equal you in moving ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... clothes—and sat up. It was a sharp little pinch—through many thicknesses of clothes. Under the coarse nightgown buttoned carefully to the throat, she was still wearing the red and green plaids and all her day clothes. Only the clumsy shoes, slipped off, stood by the bed, waiting for her. Her hand reached down to them cautiously, and felt them—and she lay down and closed her eyes. There was a step on the stairs—coming slowly. Betty Harris grew ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... sordid, gas-lit dreariness of Oxford Street as his dingy four-wheeler dragged its weary way to Charing Cross. He did notice one peculiarity about it worth remembering. London was still London. A certain style dignified its grime; heavy, clumsy, arrogant, purse-proud, but not cheap; insular but large; barely tolerant of an outside world, and absolutely self-confident. The boys in the streets made such free comments on the American clothes and figures, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... in which they were kept. He was a rascal who was planning some gigantic robbery. How could I, without striking my own daughter, who was infatuated about him, prevent him from carrying out any plan which he might have formed? My device was a clumsy one, and yet I could think of nothing more effective. If I had written a letter under my own name, you would naturally have turned to me for details which I did not wish to give. I resorted to an anonymous letter, begging you to ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the removal of disabilities of creed and rank and income, to meet the demands of the nation, has been proved by experience a clumsy but useful weapon for checking oppression. Nowadays, we are using it less for defence against oppression, or as an instrument for removing political grievances, and are testing its worth for the provision of positive social reform. More and more it is required of Parliament that means be ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... a sudden there was heard a heavy footfall near the entrance way. The oval-shaped door-frame was pushed aside. In stepped a large black foot with great big claws. Then the other clumsy foot came next. All the while the baby badgers stared hard at the unexpected comer. After the second foot, in peeped the head of a big black bear! His black nose was dry and parched. Silently he entered the dwelling and sat down on the ground by the doorway. His ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... By clumsy imitation of this process, Lucius, the hero of the romance, transforms himself, not as he had intended into a showy winged creature, but into the animal which has given name to the book; for throughout it there runs a vein of racy, homely satire on the love of magic then prevalent, curiosity ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... Aylingford. He came constantly to Lady Bolsover's, and on each occasion seemed to consider himself of more importance. So far as Barbara could judge he knew nothing of her reason for leaving the Abbey. He asked no questions, but delivered himself of many clumsy compliments framed to express his delight that the most charming creature on earth had brought sunshine again to town. It was impossible to make Judge Marriott understand that his attentions were not wanted, and Barbara, who had no desire to make an enemy of him, endured them ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... of fortune and has formerly been in the service of the Duke. The Senate sends two commissioners into his camp to represent the state there, and to be spies upon his conduct. This was a somewhat clumsy contrivance of the Republic to give a patriotic character to its armies, which were often recruited from mercenaries and generaled by them; and, of course, the hireling leaders must always have chafed under the surveillance. After the battle of Maclodio, in which ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... far worse, especially the decadent critics, the decadent illustrators—there were even decadent publishers. And they utterly lost the light and reason of their existence: they were masters of the clumsy and the incongruous. I will take only one example. Aubrey Beardsley may be admired as an artist or no; he does not enter into the scope of this book. But it is true that there is a certain brief ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... savage charge at the camel was within a few yards of all of us, for every one was trying to entice him to come forth; after his headlong rush out of the bush he reared so upright in his attempt to reach his clumsy disturber, which was quite frantic from deadly fear, that he succeeded in ripping it in what in a horse would be termed the stifle joint. The poor brute rolled over in its agony, smashed one of its legs in the fall, and was ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... from the Umbiquas, Callapoos, Cayuses, Nez-perces, Bonnaxes, Flat-heads, and some of the Crows, who had not yet gained prudence from their last "brushing." The superiority of our arms, our tactics, discipline, and art of intrenchment, together with the good service of two clumsy old Spanish four-pounders, enabled us not only in a short time to destroy the league, but also to crush and annihilate for ever some of our treacherous neighbours. As it would be tedious to a stranger to follow the movements of the whole campaign, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... came sailing down upon it with outspread wings. "Kill me!" said the poor creature, and bent its head down upon the water, expecting nothing but death. But what was this that it saw in the clear water? It beheld its own image; and, lo! it was no longer a clumsy, dark-gray bird, ugly and hateful to look at, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... told you many moons ago For high preferment you were all unfit. A clumsy bear makes but a sorry show Climbing a pole. Let him, judicious, sit With dignity at bottom of his pit, And none his awkwardness will ever know. Some beasts look better, and feel better, too, Seen from above; and ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... venture in the yard myself, unless I have an old ulster on. I could not put on my dress again if all those scratchy paws had been over it. Richard does not train them properly; they all spring up and nearly knock me down in their clumsy gambols." ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... followed by a black, the hair being finally tipped with white. The fur is much used in the manufacture of fine paint brushes, a good "Badger blender" being a most useful accessory in the painter's art. The badger is slow and clumsy in its actions, except when engaged in digging, his capacities in this direction being so great as to enable him to sink himself into the ground with marvellous rapidity. The nest of the animal is made in the burrow, and the young are three or four in number. His diet is as variable and ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... Diogenes was as ridiculous a dog as one would meet with on a summer's day; a blundering, ill-favoured, clumsy, bullet-headed dog, continually acting on a wrong idea that there was an enemy in the neighbourhood, whom it was meritorious to bark at; and though he was far from good-tempered, and certainly was not clever, and had hair all over his eyes, and a comic nose, and an inconsistent tail, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... seemed to be drifting up the bay. The dark, shadowy shores were much farther away than he had suspected. While struggling to bale out the boat, he had forgotten how necessary it was to keep near to the shore. He now saw his mistake, and strove to paddle the boat back again. With such a clumsy oar it is not likely that he could have achieved his desire at all, had the flood tide been stronger; but now it was about at its height, and would soon turn, if it was not turning already. The current, therefore, was but a weak ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... over for ever, and now the soldier must be at ease. He gasped and spluttered, his figure lost its tenseness, and from the fit of coughing he came back again an old and feeble man. He looked at his hand trembling against his waist, at his feet in their large and clumsy slippers; he looked at the picture of himself upon the wall, then quitted the room with something like a ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... enough everywhere) is coarse and clumsy in this career. Vengeance has nothing to do with comedy, nor properly with satire. The satirist who told us that Indignation made his verses for him, might have been told in return that she excluded him thereby from the first ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... an affair not altogether reputable, and for many years afterwards he clung bravely to the commonplace, and rejected all occasions of occult investigation. Indeed, on some homeopathic principle, he for some time attended the seances of distinguished mediums, hoping that the clumsy tricks of these gentlemen would make him altogether disgusted with mysticism of every kind, but the remedy, though caustic, was not efficacious. Clarke knew that he still pined for the unseen, and little by little, the old passion began to reassert itself, ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... improvement that has succeeded, are still cheated, belied, robbed, and plundered on all hands by political adventurers, private jobbers, and saintly hypocrites, in an artful, clean-fingered, and beautiful style of the trade, a thousand times more provoking than the clumsy, old-fashioned, honest kind of roguery that used to be in fashion, when folk were not too large for innocent mirth, and not too wise for enjoying what was liked by their ancestors. The people cry improvement—so do we; but we cherish a theory that has no charm, in these days ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... next day they went; but an old carriage and a clumsy charioteer delayed them, and they arrived some three hours after their appointment. But etiquette does not seem to have been the order of the day, for the inviters had gone out to enjoy their pig-shooting by themselves. The invited were left to amuse ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... and I, to be sure, most proverbially courteous and intelligent reader, might never have guessed at first sight, from the young man's outer aspect, the nature of his occupation. The gross and clumsy male intellect, which works in accordance with the stupid laws of inductive logic, has a queer habit of requiring something or other, in the way of definite evidence, before it commits itself offhand to ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... the world, that she had not the whole catechism of men at her finger-ends. All who glanced at her glanced again—with sympathy and curiosity; and the second glance pricked Audrey's conscience, making her feel like a thief. But her moods were capricious. At one moment she was a thief, a clumsy fraud, an ignorant ninny, and a suitable prey for the secret police; and at the next she was very clever, self-confident, equal to the situation, and enjoying the situation more than she had ever enjoyed anything, and determined ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... its chirography, and usually covered much of the surface of the slate, punctuation being attended to, the i's dotted, and the t's crossed. In the second, when the communication was in answer to a question addressed to a Spirit the writing was clumsy, rude, scarcely legible, abrupt in terms, and sometimes very vague in substance. In short, one bore the marks of deliberation and the other of haste. This difference we found to be due to the different conditions under which the communications were written. The long messages are ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... said, with the severe face of a young woman who speaks only because it is absolutely necessary. 'Perhaps you are not aware of it? It was the dungeon: if you wish to go down there too, the servant will show you the way. It is not at all ornamental: rough, unhewn arches and clumsy piers.' ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... but they always squeaked. Still aunt Jane's patience held good, and some small measure of skill was creeping into Rebecca's fingers, fingers that held pencil, paint brush, and pen so cleverly and were so clumsy with ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is one of the most extraordinary sights in the world. Think of all the mills in which machinery does delicate work like that of the human hand; think of the patterns made by the machines, of the newspapers printed and folded with very little human guidance, and then leap back to this clumsy device used now by the Egyptian as it was used by his ancestors thousands of years ago! A few pints of muddy water raised by a weight, half of it falling out of the badly constructed basin as it goes, and the same drop of water handled again and again by four men till the ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... down, in a state of intense excitement, with that queer step of his, which swayed him from right to left on each of his legs, like a wild beast, a heavy, clumsy bear. And, with a hoarse voice and distorted features, ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... each object in the collection helps bring in those shillings; and 'loss of use' of a single one would be a real deprivation. So it's fair and above board. But thus far, I've paid my premium and got no return, these last three years. Our tourists are so disgustingly honest, or our burglars so clumsy and unenterprising, that, as you say in the States, ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... suffered far more heavily than the Allies. Their losses elude the inquiries of the statistician. They consisted in the utter discredit of the royalist cause throughout France, the resentment that ever follows on clumsy or disloyal co-operation, and the revelation of the hollowness of the imposing fabric of the First Coalition. In the south of France four nations failed to hold a single fortress which her own sons had placed in ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... "Place" is the church of St. Paul, 12th cent., on a terrace commanding a view towards the sea. The figures by the side of the altar represent the apostles Peter and Paul. In the clumsy modern addition to the church is an ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... plucky, saving his goal more than once by a prompt touch-down. There, even, was the elephantine Jeffreys, snorting and pounding in the thick of the fray, feeling his feet under him, and doing his clumsy best to fight the battle of ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... styled this Magister Morum "the benignant and judicious foster-parent of literature"; and since Darwin wrote of it (ii. 260) "One cannot expect fairness in a reviewer;" nor has it even taken to heart what my friend Swinburne declared (anent its issue of December 15, '83) "clumsy and shallow snobbery can do no harm." Like other things waxing obsolete it has served, I hasten to confess, a special purpose in the world of letters. It has lived through a generation of thirty years in the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... neat things. They are exceedingly difficult to draw, and very ugly when drawn. Choose rough, worn, and clumsy-looking things as much as possible; for instance, you cannot have a more difficult or profitless study than a newly-painted Thames wherry, nor a better study than an old empty coal-barge, lying ashore at low-tide: in general, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... navy came in for its share of glory. On March 8 the ram Virginia, late Merrimac, which had been taking on her mysterious iron raiment at the Norfolk navy yard, issued from her concealment, an ugly and clumsy, but also a novel and terrible monster. Straight she steamed against the frigate Cumberland, and with one fell rush cut the poor wooden vessel in halves and sent her, with all on board, to the bottom of the sea. Turning then, she mercilessly battered the frigate ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... and occupy their attention. It required an extraordinary effort of the imagination to invent something that would excite the people. The most ingenious attempts do not always succeed, while the clumsy ones take a surprising effect. Among those of the latter kind there was a story after my fashion of which 5 thousand copies at one kopek a copy were ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... which the devil is the unfortunate buffoon, giving occasion to the most exuberant laughter of the people—here is this rude boyhood, if we may so say, of the one art, roofed in with the perfection of another, of architecture; a perfection which now we can only imitate at our best: below, the clumsy contrivance and the vulgar jest; above, the solemn heaven of uplifted arches, their mysterious glooms ringing with the delight of the multitude: the play of children enclosed in the heart of prayer aspiring in stone. But it was not by any means all laughter; and ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... idiot went forth, and his irregular clumsy footsteps sounded on the pebble-paved yard. When the noise of them ceased in the soft roadway, Froyle jumped off the table again. Gradually his body, like a stopping pendulum, came to rest under the hook, and hung twitching, ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... greatest of all wars that it was precipitated by diplomats and rulers, and, assuming that all these statesmen sincerely desired a peaceful solution of the questions raised by the Austrian ultimatum, (which is by no means clear,) it was the result of ineffective diplomacy and clumsy diplomacy ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... to talk about cats? A cat's place is in the woods. Tell me about dogs, maybe, but I have no time for cats. Besides, if you would throw that gun away you wouldn't be so clumsy. It's no good." ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... yellowish-brown without. The drying process required several days, and during its progress the gum was ornamented with characters or lines made with a stick. When it was completed, the clay mold was broken to pieces and shaken out of the opening. The natives in this manner made a species of rough, clumsy shoe, and an equally rough bottle. In some parts of South America, the natives make it a rule to present their guests with one of these bottles, furnished with a hollow stern, which serves as a syringe for squirting water into the mouth in order to cleanse it after eating. The articles thus made ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... of his regiment, Colonel Pepe was as much struck by its martial aspect, as he was vexed at its clumsy manoeuvres, and low moral condition. Both men and officers lacked instruction. The former were most incorrigible thieves. Plundering was a pretty common practice with the French armies in Spain, even in Suchet's corps, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... his own outlook much better. He was twenty-one years old, and he had no skill, no training,—no ability that would ever take him among the kind of people he admired. He was a clumsy, awkward farmer boy, and even Mrs. Erlich seemed to think the farm the best place for him. Probably it was; but all the same he didn't find this kind of life worth the trouble of getting up every morning. He could not see the use of working for ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... this class is likely to put even more obstacles in the path of Socialism than the rich: "Much more likely to obstruct the way to Socialism," says Mr. Wells, "is the ignorance, the want of courage, the stupid want of imagination in the very poor, too shy and timid and clumsy to face any change they can evade! But even with them popular education is doing its work; and I do not fear but that in the next generation we will find Socialists ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... offers a good anchorage, except when the wind is from the north or east. Several species of pandanus and some tall cocoa-nut trees gave a tropical character to the scenery. Soon after anchoring, a large but rather clumsy canoe came alongside, with an officer who spoke a little English, and said he was the harbour-master, and a number of attendants. They wore neatly plaited straw hats, white shirts bound round the loins with cloths, and large white scarfs thrown gracefully over the shoulders like the Scotch ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... and the pretty big girls copied letters in little squares, just so. There were so few of us that Reb' Isaiah could see everybody's page by just leaning over. And if some of our cramped fingers were clumsy, and did not form the loops and curves accurately, all he had to do was to stretch out his hand and rap with his ruler on our respective knuckles. It was all very cosey, with the inkwells that could not be upset, and the pens that grew in the woods or strutted ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... he exclaimed; "as bad as a county gaol or a lack of beaver, to get a creatur' into your very trap, then to see it get off. As much as six first quality skins, in valie, has paddled off on them clumsy logs, when twenty strokes of a well-turned paddle would overtake 'em. I say in valie, for as to the boy in the way of natur', he is only a boy, and is worth neither more nor less than one. Deerslayer, you've been ontrue to your fri'nds in letting such ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... stood—for an instant in dumb amaze—balancing himself upon his rocking raft with the pole he had been using. To attempt to swim ashore would have been useless. He was a clumsy swimmer at best; and the cold, rushing waters and floating ice ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... interest. Ivanhoe himself says but little, and is in fact not much developed. We are disgusted, and unnecessarily, at every turn with Athelstane—there was no occasion for making him this degraded glutton. It seems a clumsy contrivance to break off his marriage with Rowena; and surely the boast of his eating propensities, when he shows himself to his astonished mourners escaped from the death and tomb prepared for him, is unnatural, and throws a ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... party, was a Swede, and a Swede in a very bad humour. The iron ring in his torn nose, and the stout stick in the hand of one of his Italian masters, showed very plainly that he needed stern discipline. Now he dragged at the strong rope attached to the iron ring, and held back, moving his clumsy legs as if his machinery were out of order, or at least as if goodwill were lacking to ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... word, but between it and the moorghy-khana I had a bad night. I thought I had to make in five minutes a new scheme of the Universe. All the odd-shaped pieces were lying about like a picture-puzzle, and I feverishly tried to make them fit, in the clumsy ineffective way one does things in dreams. Just as I had it almost finished, Mrs. Royle came with a fowl in each hand and said sternly, "These must come into your scheme." I took the two great ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... Seal Rocks, near the Cliff House, were the seals, or rather sea-lions, clumsy creatures like black rubber sacks with fins, or flippers, and a head. Some were lying in the sun and others crawling up the steep, wet rocks. Those highest up were asleep and quiet, but most of them kept barking or growling as they tried to ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... go in, and Rudy trod heavily on my tail; he certainly is very clumsy. I mewed; but neither he nor Babette had any ears for me. They opened the door, and entered together. I was before them, and jumped on the back of a chair. I hardly know what Rudy said; but the miller flew into a rage, and threatened to kick him out of the house. He told ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the bachelor wart hog a parting dig, and we walked slowly and silently through the zebra-house towards the elephants. "Of course we do not intend to settle down," he said presently, with a clumsy effort to render his ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... the most ardent of the German colonials were far from satisfied with their triumph. Curious details have appeared showing that their schemes included the laying of a trap for the Sultan of Zanzibar, which failed owing to clumsy baiting and the loquacity of the would-be captor. Lord Rosebery also managed, according to German accounts, to get the better of Count Herbert Bismarck in respect of St. Lucia Bay (see page 528) and districts ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... to you," Ormskirk answered, "because I have seen through your cowardly and clumsy lie, and have only pity for a thing so base as you. I give them to you because to read one syllable of their contents would be to admit I had some faith ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell |
