"Lout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Idle lout," she cried, "thou couldst not keep an eye to the bread although thou wouldst be glad to fill thy belly with it. Play another trick of the kind and I will ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... forced him to endure. The timid lecturer, angry at the poor figure he had cut on the platform, was glad to take it out of young Gourlay for the wrongdoing of the class. Gourlay was their scapegoat. The lecturer had no longer over a hundred men to deal with, but one lout only, sullen yet shrinking in the room before him. Instead of coming to the point at once, he played with his victim. It was less from intentional cruelty than from an instinctive desire to recover his lost feeling of superiority. The class ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... better at the house. I hadn't the heart on your account, Dr. Perry, to hurry matters faster than necessity compels. What a lout he is! Pardon me, but what a lout he is to have had two such uncommon ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... our line of march recline Dead gods devoid of feeling; And thick about each sun-cracked lout Dried Howisons ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... was Joan's brother's room—a cheerless place of hewn stone. What kind of a man could he have been? What were his reflections as he went about his farm-work and thought of his sister at the head of armies? Was he merely a lout or something worse—the prototype of our Conscientious Objector: a coward who disguised ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... the evening; but I did not require that; I should have recognized him by the eyes. How strange it is! Those two brothers, so different; Jacques so refined, so distinguished, so noble-minded, and the other, a big, heavy, vulgar lout, common- looking, and a rascal—well, they have the ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... "Our thieving lout, ensconced without, Came through the window slinking; He grabbed the pot and on the spot Began to eat ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... this," he told himself. "I'm neither a savage like Bizco nor a brazen, carefree lout like Vidal. What am I going to ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... the various geniuses have developed which, in a manner almost spectacular, rise before us as we study the literatures of the past? The youthful years of Shakespeare were spent under circumstances which might have produced in him one dull and unaspiring British country lout, like, as one egg to another, to a hundred thousand others who lived in his age. What made this one country boy the most astonishing genius in all the history of literature? Study the youth of Robert Burns, of Heinrich Heine, ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... have just reached the farm, and I met them face to face. I thought they would have recognized me, for amongst them was one whom I remember to have seen doing sentry duty; but I'm such a scarecrow in these clothes, and so dishevelled, that they took me for some farm hand or village lout, and let me pass. But in a little while they will be asking questions of the farmer, there'll be a hue and cry, and they'll know that one of the prisoners who escaped has been close to them. We must move. ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... and pored over a pocket-map of the department, a lout of a lad shambled out of the auberge wearing a fixed scowl in no degree mitigated by the sight of the customer. In the dooryard, which was also the stableyard, the boy caught and saddled a dreary animal, apparently a horse designed by a Gothic architect, mounted, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... be sorrier yet. There's the Governor with an attack of gout, screaming like a wounded horse, and you nowhere to be found. Be off, man—away with you at speed to Government House! You're awaited, I tell you. Best lend him a horse, Kent, or the lout'll be all night ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... of conceit which come so naturally to Frenchmen in the expression of their feelings—"what is extraordinary in the fact of your loving a young and beautiful woman, artist enough to be able to earn her living like Tinti, and of giving you some of the pleasures of vanity? What lout but would then become an Amadis? This is not in question between you and me. What is needed is that we both love faithfully, persistently; at a distance from each other for years, with no satisfaction but that of ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... Alexander Gordon could do was to put on the rough jerkin of a laboring man, and set to cleaving firewood in the courtyard with the scolding assistance of a maid-servant. When the troopers entered to search for the master of the house, they heard the maid vehemently "flyting" the great hulking lout for his awkwardness, and threatening to "draw a stick across his back" if he did not work ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... lumber, while he would never be successful in my brothel gewgaws. [3] Thus I flung off in a passion, telling him that I would soon show him that I spoke truth. The bystanders openly declared against him, holding him for a lout, as indeed he was, and me for a man, as ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... promptly forward at the announcement of the overgrown lout, who had signified his intention of whipping the young engineer of No. 999. Clark had told Ralph that athletics was his strong forte. He looked it as he squared firmly before ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... sympathy. It was to him like a kind of prophetic mirror, revealing to him the true meaning of all he had ever felt for Dennet Headley, and of his vexation and impatience at seeing her bestowed upon a dull and indifferent lout like her kinsman, who not only was not good enough for her, but did not even love her, or accept her as anything but his title to the Dragon court. He now thrilled and tingled from head to foot with the perception that all this meant love—love ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be here, and no more 'Suffolk' Bowling-greens. Once more I want you to help in finding me a lad, or boy, or lout, who will help me to get through the long Winter nights—whether by cards or reading—now that my eyes are not so up to their work as they were. I think they are a little better: which I attribute to the wearing of these hideous Goggles, which keep out Sun, Sea, ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... thrumming of its wheels a good way off. The scene is one of great animation, the machine is drawn up against the conical-shaped haystack, its black smoke stretches out in serpentine coils against the sky. A dozen men are busy about her: those who work her, old Anderson, son Robert—a dreadful lout he is too, quite unlike his sister—various other louts of the same calibre, the two little boys, very much in everyone's way, and Mrs. Anderson and Annie, who have just brought out jugs of ale. I naturally stop to say a few words to Annie and watch the threshing. Anderson is grinding out some of ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... said the reverend lout, after solemn reflection, "would indeed seriously affect our friend's interest and endanger his soul. I had not expected Brother Dobsho so soon to ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... nothing lazy lout, Wicked within and ragged without. Who can bear to have him about? Turn ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... of the tongue of slander. Heaven help and direct me! I would suffer death rather than see Doris subjected to the leers and innuendoes of every lout in ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... of it. Their walls are cracked and crumbling to ruins, the ample courtyards are grass-grown and the stables empty, or occupied only by half a dozen clumsy cart-horses; while of human kind moving around will be a lout or two in smock-frocks, where gaudily-dressed postillions, booted and spurred, with natty ostlers in sleeve-waistcoats, tight-fitting breeches, and ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... had been restored, and the care that had evidently been taken to remove the more obvious and brutal traces of burglary. This somewhat staggered his theory that Seth Davis was the perpetrator; mechanical skill and thoughtfulness were not among the lout's characteristics. But he was still more disconcerted on pushing back his chair to find a small india-rubber tobacco pouch lying beneath it. The master instantly recognized it: he had seen it a hundred times before—it was Uncle Ben's. It was not there when he had closed the room yesterday ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... who was a great personage in Nottingham, had a ward whom he had foisted upon the good folks of Nottinghamshire as an Earl, but as a fact he was simply a country lout, and all the teachings of the Sheriff would not make him appear anything different. Robert of Huntingdon was the Earl, in fact, and the Sheriff was going to try to keep him out of his title and estates. The merry men of Sherwood forest were great favourites with Robert ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... way). Helen, ask yourself this question: what choice is left to a man in such a case? You are generally known as the most beautiful woman in this city. Now shall I, an artist, allow myself to acquire the reputation of an unsociable lout who shuts himself up in his four walls and denies himself to all visitors? The second possibility would be to receive you while at the same time pretending not to understand you. That would give me the wholly undeserved reputation of a simpleton. ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... take the word 'lout,' of which Johnson gives two derivations for our choice: it is either the past participle of 'to lower, or make low;' a lowed person, (as our House of Lords under the direction of railway companies and public-house keepers); or else—and more strictly I believe in etymology—a form of the German ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... said that possibility was not to make any difference to us. Wouldn't it be making the wrong sort of difference to let it keep a great lout like me in idleness while Bernard is going to ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my word," he said, earnestly, "I thought you did. And now I have made you unhappy. Babbie, I wish I were anybody but myself; I am a hopeless lout." ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... sent down with the thread as a line. An inquisitive lout of a seal did all it could to bite through the thread, but whether this was too strong or its teeth too poor, we managed after a lot of trouble to coax the marlinspike up again, and the interfering rascal, who had to come up to the surface now ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... who kept it had often accompanied them on their excursions, and though the boys of the city streets considered him a dumb lout, they respected him somewhat owing to his inside knowledge of ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... reverence, I should have refused to do it. You haven't had your proper sleep, and you may have caught cold in the church. It is that which has upset you. Besides which it would be better to marry brute beasts than that Rosalie and her ugly lout. That brat of theirs dirtied one of the chairs.—But you ought to tell me when you feel poorly, and I could make you something warm.—Eh! Monsieur le Cure, ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... lout! in the shade of the hillock yonder; What a dog it must be to drowse in the midst of a time like this! Why, the horses might neigh contempt at him; what is he like, I wonder? If the smoke would but clear away, I have strength in me yet ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... corse, in sorrow drowned, The damsel throws herself, in her despair, And shrieks so lout that wood and plain resound For many miles about; nor does she spare Bosom or cheek; but still, with cruel wound, One and the other smites the afflicted fair; And wrongs her curling lock of golden grain, Aye calling on ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... said. Certainly she did not anticipate violence on Tom's part. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps it was just because he was so quiet that she was afraid. She had always looked on him contemptuously as an amiable, transparent lout, and now he was puzzling her. She got an impression of something formidable behind his stolidity, something that made ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the earth—(Look in the index, you lout! Oh, won't I give it to you afterwards!)" once more began the wretched Bramble. He got no farther. Even had he remembered the words his voice could never have risen above the laughter, which continued as long as he remained on ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... big lout of fifteen, who already boasted of his love-affairs, learned German, and was to be a gentleman like his father—there he lay on the bottom-boards in the bow in a ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... Lowick. Fred's light hopeful nature had perhaps never had so much of a bruise as from this suggestion that if he had been out of the way Mary might have made a thoroughly good match. Also he was piqued that he had been what he called such a stupid lout as to ask that intervention from Mr. Farebrother. But it was not in a lover's nature—it was not in Fred's, that the new anxiety raised about Mary's feeling should not surmount every other. Notwithstanding ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... himself, as he watched John Dormay ride slowly away through the park, "and, if it were not that he is husband to my cousin Celia, I would have nought to do with him. She is my only kinswoman, and, were aught to happen to Charlie, that lout, her son, would be the heir of Lynnwood. I should never rest quiet in my grave, were ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... called him a lout and a fool, The son of a female and a fool, Of the race of the Clan Cleopas, the biggest rogues in the land. That and my seven curses And never a good day to be on you, Who stole my little cock from me that could ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... Grammatophyllum with bulbs some times over eight feet in length. The length of the name is certainly suitable for so large an orchid. I saw plenty of water-birds, including white egrets and a long-necked diver which is called the "snake-bird," owing to its long neck projecting lout of the water and thus greatly resembling a snake. I shot several of each kind of bird, plucking the fine plumes from the backs of the egrets. We ate some of the divers that evening and found them first-class food, tasting much like goose. We later in the day disturbed a whole colony ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... with me, and made some idiotic remark about my being quicker when I had had more practice. I bit his head off. I can't stand this hail-fellow-well-met attitude in these U.C. boats, from any lout dressed in an officer's uniform. They wouldn't be holding commissions if it wasn't for the war, and they should remember that fact. I suppose they think I'm stand-offish. Well, if they had my family tree behind them they ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... everything;' and the more he scolded, the worse they became. The 'minx' shook her curls, and flirted through the window with a handsome but ill-tempered looking man on a fine horse, who praised her 'golden locks,' as he called them; and oddly enough, when Melchior said that the man was a lout, and that the locks in question were corkscrewy carrot shavings, she only seemed to like the man and his compliments the more. Meanwhile, the untidy brother pored over his book, or if he came to the window, it was only to ridicule the fine ladies and gentlemen, so Melchior sent him to Coventry. ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... pathway to his throne—and he forgot the matron's pies. And then the cowherd's wife came in; she smelled the smoke, she gave a shout; she biffed him with the rolling pin, and cried: "Ods fish, you useless lout! You are not worth the dynamite 'twould take to blow you off the map! Your head is not upholstered right—you are a ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... looked at him," she said. "He is a lout, with great eyes staring, and a red nose. It does not need that one should look at men to win them. They look at ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Roger especially, with a very choice and particular hatred. 'That prig,' as hereafter he always designated Roger—'he shall pay for it yet,' he said to himself by way of consolation, after the father and son had left him. 'What a lout it is!'—watching the receding figure. 'The old chap has twice as much spunk,' as the squire tugged at his bridle-reins. 'The old mare could make her way better without being led, my fine fellow. But I see through your dodge. You're afraid of your old ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... in a shrill tone of disgust; "you'd never even our lad to a great fullish lout like Eli Redrup, with a head like a turmut! If Frank isn't just so fierce as some lads of his age, he's got ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... brow-beaten during his first term of service by a great broad-shouldered lout of some eighteen years or so, who thought he needed a little more "schooling," but at the same time felt quite competent to direct the manner ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... the same formula of federalism will apply: self- determination for every group in regard to matters which concern it much more vitally than they concern others, and government by a neutral authority embracing rival groups in all matters in which conflicting interests of groups come into play; lout always with the fixed principle that the functions of government are to be reduced to the bare minimum compatible with justice and the prevention of private violence. In such a world the present harmful outlets for the love of power would be closed. But the power which consists in persuasion, ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... sweetened, that she owes more than five hundred francs to her dressmaker; in fine, thinking about everything which you may suppose would occupy the mind of a tired woman. In the meanwhile arrives her great lout of a husband, who, after some business meeting, has drunk punch, with a consequent elation. He takes off his boots, leaves his stockings on a lounge, his bootjack lies before the fireplace; and wrapping his ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... garb! He it was who sat that black barb so royally; the King's plumed hat was in his left hand, while the right held that of Mrs Jane. It was at Will Jackson's words of thanks that she was smiling with such delight; it was he before whom Colonel Lane bent bare-headed to his saddlebow. The awkward lout who had never been in a gentleman's service, the ignorant clown, fresh from the plough-tail, the Roundhead, the traitor, had all vanished as if they had never been, and in their stead was King Charles the Second, smilingly complimenting ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... of being attacked or sneered at in print, without one thought of asking what Herald this unknown represents, without remembering that Miller's Pond or Somebody-else's Corners may have a Herald she hastens to grant to this probably ignorant young lout the unchaperoned interview she would instantly refuse to a gentleman whose name was even well known to her; and trembling with fear and hope she will listen to his boastings "of the awful roasting he gave Billy This or Dick That," referring thus to the most prominent actors of the day, ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... a man was floundering in a morass of wrath and amazement it was this loud-voiced youngster. He was a slow-witted lout, but the veriest dullard must have perceived that the disappearance of the weapon which presumably killed his father was a serious matter ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... feelings, vague in the house, were scarcely clearer in the cold and in the open spaces of the night, and Julian was conscious of a sense of irritation, of anger against himself. He felt as if he were an oaf, a lout. Was it, could it be, Cuckoo who had made him feel so? After all, what was she? Julian tried to hug and soothe himself in the unworthy remembrance of Cuckoo's monotonous life and piteous deeds, to reinstate himself in contented animalism by thoughts of the animalism of this priestess! He ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... how you'd like to trot and trip, To stop and stagger, slide and slip, Pulled up affrighted, Urged madly on, then checked once more, Whilst from some omnibus's door Some lout alighted. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... name of the gods, Rag, get thee to sleep once more, thou stupidest lout in Britain! It is a scurvy trick to waken thus at the wrong time and trumpet thy nonsense in such fashion. Good youth canst not skip that bit for peace's sake, and get ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... and I saw he was making up to her, and told him of it. He acknowledged it, remarking it was a pity such a nice young girl should not taste the sugar-stick. "Perhaps she has," said I. He thought not, there was a country lout she wanted to marry, and the mother looked after her closely. "I would give a ten-pound note to have her," he said to ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... and royal raiment. "Sorry, indeed!" cries Minerva, lacing on her corselet again, and scowling under her helmet. (I imagine the well-known Apple case has just been argued and decided.) "Hurt, forsooth! Do you suppose WE care for the opinion of that hobnailed lout of a Paris? Do you suppose that I, the Goddess of Wisdom, can't make allowances for mortal ignorance, and am so base as to bear malice against a poor creature who knows no better? You little know the goddess nature when you dare to insinuate ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... property, by some small holding of Scattergood's which seemed to have dropped into just the right spot to create the maximum amount of trouble for them. It could be nothing but chance, they told each other, for they had sat in judgment on Scattergood, and their judgment had been that he was a lazy lout with more than a fair share ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... it," said Mrs. Steward in the calmest of voices, "and when you go, take that great lout of a Caroline with you. She is as like you in appearance as one pea is like another. I am ashamed of you. Now, let us turn to a more congenial topic. Little Elma, I am glad to say, is made of very ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... poplars kept confined within the brilliant enclosure, enjoying the silence of the groves, listening to the murmuring waters and the rustling leaves, admiring the blue gaps outlined above my head by clouds of pearly sheen and gold, wandering fancy free in dreams of my future, I heard some lout or other, who had arrived the day before from Paris, playing on a violin with the violence of a man who has nothing else to do. I would not wish for my worst enemy to hear anything so utterly in discord with the sublime harmony of ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Brown, or Mazzini. When a man abandons his business or job and complacently leaves the clothing of his children to wife or neighbors in order to drink flip and talk politics, ordinary folk are content to call him a lazy lout, ne'er-do-well, worthless fellow, or scamp. Samuel Adams was not a scamp. He might have been no more than a ne'er-do-well, perhaps, if cosmic forces had not opportunely provided him with an occupation which his contemporaries and ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... favorite and most demoralizing forms of gambling in New York was policy-playing. The policy slips consisted of papers with three rows of figures written on them. The officer in question was a huge pithecoid lout of a creature, with a wooden face and a receding forehead, and his accuser whom he had arrested the preceding evening was a little grig of a red-headed man, obviously respectable, and almost incoherent with rage. The anger ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... was plenty of magnificent furniture in the rooms, and that there were numbers of people, both lackeys and officers, of various descriptions, who were awaiting the commands of the fool. The fool, seeing that all these people had a decent and honourable appearance, and that he alone was a lout, wished to be ...
— Emelian the Fool - a tale • Thomas J. Wise
... all that he had known and felt and done before. That was his new birth—that marvellous night with the piano. The conceit pleased him—not the less because there flashed along with it the thought that it was a poet that had been born. Yes; the former country lout, the narrow zealot, the untutored slave groping about in the dark after silly superstitions, cringing at the scowl of mean Pierces and Winches, was dead. There was an end of him, and good riddance. In his place there had been born a Poet—he spelled the word out ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... Tommy Hollins! He identified the youth, a yellow-headed, pink-faced lout in flannels who was always riding over, and who seemed to "go in" for nearly everything. He had detected a romping intimacy between the two. So it was Tommy Hollins. At once he felt a great relief; he need worry ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... therefore welcomed this rustic candidate for the honour of giving wings to their hours of lassitude and weariness, with a welcome more than common; and when his approach was announced, the polished circle looked for the advent of a lout from the plough, in whose uncouth manners and embarrassed address they might find matter both for mirth and wonder. But they met with a barbarian who was not at all barbarous: as the poet met in Lord Daer feelings and sentiments as natural as those of a ploughman, so they met in a ploughman ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... it was not because she did not provoke him, for there was nothing in his wife which Gervase hated so heartily, resented so keenly, as her refraining from contradicting him. But below the grossness and sin of the poor lout and caitiff there was a fund of sullen, latent manliness and kindness, which held him back from insulting the defenceless woman—for all her pride and purity—who was his wife, just as it had held him back from dallying with and ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... broke out in him, making the muscles of his face tense and his voice metallic. "Get to your room," he said fiercely, "get to your room. I've wasted time enough on you and your brat of a brother, and now a Western lout is to spoil what I've done? I've a mind to wash my hands of all of you—and sink you. Get to your room, and stay there, while I make up my mind which of the two I ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... had danced somewhat my way, to step over to them, and ask boldly for a dance. But, indeed, the tall one answered, simpering, that she was promised; and immediately gave her hand to a great hulking farmer-lout, and went round the green with him; and well punished she was for her waywardness; for she had all her skill to save her pretty feet from his loutish stampings; and very glad she was to meet the end ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... harmless play Beguiles the rustic's closing day, When drawn the evening fire about, Sit aged crone and thoughtless lout; Come, show thy tricks and sportive graces, Thus circled round with merry faces. Backward coiled, and crouching low, With glaring eyeballs watch thy foe. The house wife's, spindle whirling round, Or thread, or straw, that on the ground Its shadow throws, by urchin ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... still less for utilitarian, reasons, but for aesthetic. Stick to the rules, not because they are right or profitable, but because they are seemly—nay, beautiful. We are not telling you to be respectable, we are inviting you not to be a lout. We are offering you, free of charge, a trade mark that carries credit all the world over. "How French he (or she) is!" Many a foreigner would pay handsomely to have as ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... Honour my advice, and speak my opinion in this matter.—Thou art welcome, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby—speak,—speak what thou thinkest upon the subject, man, without fear.—Why then, replied Trim, (not hanging his ears and scratching his head like a country-lout, but) stroking his hair back from his forehead, and standing erect as before his division,—I think, quoth Trim, advancing his left, which was his lame leg, a little forwards,—and pointing with his right hand open towards a map of Dunkirk, which was pinned against the hangings,—I ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... virtues in a Briton shall we condemn as vice in this little band of Free State Boers and their leader, loyal to a lost cause? No, England, no! It is not you that shriek anathemas to the weeping skies because the foe dies hard. The gutter gamin and the brutal lout who never owned a soul fit to rise above the level of the kettle singing on the hearth may brand the name of Steyn and his stout burghers with infamy; but the clean-souled people of the Motherland, the ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... beast, The miller caused his hopeful son to ride, And walk'd behind, without a spark of pride. Three merchants pass'd, and, mightily displeased, The eldest of these gentlemen cried out, "Ho there! dismount, for shame, you lubber lout! Nor make a foot-boy of your grey-beard sire; Change places, as the rights of age require." "To please you, sirs," the miller said, "I ought." So down the young and up the old man got. Three girls next passing, "What a shame!" says one, "That boy should be obliged on foot to run, While that ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... handed it to his wife. Lady Angora, seeing it was an invitation from the Tortoshells to dinner on that day week, tossed her head as she gave it back, and Mr. De Mousa blandly informed the servant—a stupid lout, who had been bred in a farm-yard—that he would ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... pype thou now apace Unto thy love that made thee low to lout; Thy love is present there with thee in place; Thy love is there ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... and sandy, face of a country lout", and, like Middleton's rouse-about, "hadn't any opinions, hadn't any ideas", but possessed sufficient instinct and common bushcraft with which, by hard slogging, to amass money. He was developing a moustache, and had a "gu-r-r-r-l"; he wore tight trousers and long spurs; he walked with ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... comfortable perhaps—or perhaps the right man hasn't turned up. Florrie Hensor is several cuts above a malingering lout like Steadbolt. Well there, poor devil! Maybe, it's not unnatural that I should feel a sneaking sympathy for an unsuccessful lover. That abominable lie was a bit too strong though—and before you! The man must have been downright mad from drink and fury and bitterness. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... she said. "Don't worry; it was only some foolish lout from Bannalec. No one in St. Gildas or St. Julien would do such ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... were usually utterly inexperienced in wild backwoods life, in spite of their early surroundings—exactly as to-day any town in the Rocky Mountains is sure to contain some half-educated men as ignorant of mountain and plains life, of Indians and wild beasts, as the veriest lout on an eastern farm. Accordingly they accepted the wildest stories of frontier warfare with a faith that forcibly reminds one of the equally simple credulity displayed by the average classical scholar concerning early Greek and Roman prowess. Many of these primitive historians ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... description. There is no girl alive, fairly clever, half educated, and unluckily related, whose life has not at least as much in it as Maggie's, to be described and to be pitied. Tom is a clumsy and cruel lout, with the making of better things in him (and the same may be said of nearly every Englishman at present smoking and elbowing his way through the ugly world his blunders have contributed to the making of); while the rest of the characters are simply the sweepings ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... and motherly a way, what is she but a vampire, draining the blood of the weak? The upshot of such atrocities we may gather from the tale itself. Saintre becomes a perfect knight, but so utterly frail and weak as to be dared and defied by the lout of a peasant priest, in whom the lady, become better advised, has seen something that ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... Majesty the Queen of Portugal clasped that of the Regent's wife; indeed there were gala entertainments from the halls of the governor's residence to the lowest hut, and the pirates went from one to another, here a gentleman and there a lout, carousing, dancing, fighting, and love-making all day long. For an entire fortnight there was neither night nor day, only one continuous revel, a sea of pleasure whose depths no man ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... tears of rage in his voice. "Ginseng! You and your imagination, you swine, you! Get off my ship, you lout, or I'll ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... Andor at one time. Andor was his only brother's only child, and I suppose Pali bacsi[3] was suddenly struck with the idea that he really had no one to leave his hoardings to. He was always a fool and a lout. If Andor had lived it would have been all right. I think Pali bacsi was quite ready to do something really handsome for him. Now that Andor is dead he has no one; and when he dies his money all goes to the government. It is a pity," ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... for a saucy lout," said the sutor; "I'll brak' thy spindle-shanks wi' my pipe-stump. Be civil if thou can, Nicky, to thy betters. Sir, if it please ye to listen, we'll have ye well instructed in the matter by the schoolmaster here." He cast a roguish ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... off duty and called me aft. "Awful glad to see you, Webb," he declared. "I'm fit as a fiddle now. Want you in my boat again. We took on a lout at Buenos Ayres, who's had your berth; but he isn't worth a hang in the boat. You're going to finish out ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... said, "that my heart bodes ill of this match? Eric is a mighty man, and, great though thou art, I think that thou shalt lout low before him." ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... get so far as the Consul, but one of the clerks, a stupid lout with an eyeglass, had come out and told him that he would get no employment on a ship belonging to the firm, until he had been to the Seamen's school, and gave up drinking. As he told his story there was an evil glare in his eyes, which were large and bright like ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... Her poor coquetries did not deceive me, but she never meant them to deceive me. They accomplished, after all, just that for which she intended them. They deceived and maddened her half-drunken lout of a husband. Her dress, too, was something shameless. She wore above her scarlet skirt (which I verily believe was the same she had ridden in) a bodice of the same bright colour, low as a maid-of-honour's, that displayed her young neck and bust. About ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of it. That lout comes to a knowledge of his wants too late. If they promoted and offered me the command in India to-morrow—'My lord struck the arm of his chair. 'I live at Steignton henceforth; my wife is at a seaside place eastward. She left the jewel-case when on her journey through ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... old-fashioned place and it and its inhabitants were made the target for the jests and witticisms of the people of Judea. The word "Nazarene" was synonymous with "lout"; "boor"; "peasant"; etc., to the residents of the more fashionable regions. The very remoteness of the town served to separate it in spirit from the rest of the country. But this very remoteness played an important ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... shoulder, saw something of all this in his face. It was a transfigured face, with great shining eyes that gazed beyond the veil of sound and saw behind it the leap and pulse of life and the gigantic phantoms of the spirit. She was startled. The raw, stumbling lout was gone. The ill-fitting clothes, battered hands, and sunburned face remained; but these seemed the prison-bars through which she saw a great soul looking forth, inarticulate and dumb because of those feeble lips ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Baron.—(interrupting him) Hush, you lout. He means, you grace, the banquet waits without. If at our humble board you'll deign ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... is the kind of lout With Strephon for your foe, no doubt, We do not care a fig about! A fearful prospect opens out, We cannot say And who shall say What evils may What evils may Result in ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... hopes and prospects were dawning upon him, the farm duties seemed more insignificant and tedious than ever. Had it been Gethin who stretched himself and yawned as he attacked the first swathe of corn, Ebben Owens would have called him a "lazy lout," but as it was Will, he only jokingly rallied him upon his ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... do was trust to Gerda's own doubtless sterling good sense. She couldn't possibly prefer a lout like her current escort to good old Bill ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... is not inferior to that of 'Don Pasquale' in sparkle and brilliancy, but the plot is tame and childish compared to the bustle and intrigue of the latter work. It turns upon a sham love potion sold by a travelling quack to Nemorino, a country lout who is in love with Adina, the local beauty. Adina is divided between the attractions of Nemorino and those of the Sergeant Belcore, who is quartered in the village. In order to get money to pay for the potion ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... the sergeant was not ill-natured—until you happened to cross him, when his temper became damnable—but merely a big, vain, boisterous lout. John, having taken his measure, found it easy to study him philosophically and even to be passably amused by him. But he made himself, it must be owned, an affliction; and an affliction against which, since the boats had parted company, ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... much inclined to bring him home to luncheon; and in the clash and crisis, without any one's quite knowing how it happened, it turned out that Mrs. Evelyn had been so imprudent as to sanction an attachment between her daughter and that great lout of a young doctor, Lady Fordham's brother! Not only the M.P., but all the family shook the head and bemoaned the connection, for though it was to be a long engagement and a great secret, everybody found it out. Lucas had ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Brignais some four years back, when the companies slew James of Bourbon, and put his army to the sword, there was scarce a man of ours who had not count, baron, or knight. Peter Karsdale, who was but a common country lout newly brought over, with the English fleas still hopping under his doublet, laid his great hands upon the Sieur Amaury de Chatonville, who owns half Picardy, and had five thousand crowns out of him, with his horse and harness. 'Tis true that a French wench took it all off Peter as ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the young lady must have gone away with the idea that I was a combination of longshore lout and effeminate dilettante, with the financial resources of the former. She might as well have that idea as any other, I supposed, but, in her eyes, I must be more of a freak than ever. I should take care to keep out of the ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was dead—dead as Mumbo Jumbo. "Thank God!" he added inconsequently. He walked faster and faster, and on more than one occasion he brushed hurriedly against some of the brutal frequenters of that part of the world on foggy evenings. A rough lout growled belligerently at him, but shrank from the gladsome light of battle which leaped instantly into John Arniston's eye. To strike some one would have been a comfort to ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... sir. The party struck turns to me and says, "Come in. I give this man in charge for assault." I moves accordingly with the words: "I saw you. Come along with me." The defendant turns to me sharp and says: "You stupid lout—I'm a magistrate." "Come off it," I says to the best of my recollection. "You struck this woman in my presence," I says, "and you come along!" We were then at close quarters. The defendant gave me a push with the words: "Get out, you idiot!" "Not at all," I replies, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was ignorant of the arts of reading and writing, and would not be able to send word how matters went on after their departure. In this emergency, while Isoult and John were talking over the subject, Barbara presented herself with a deprecatory courtesy, or rather lout. ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... depress me, and I carefully avoided walking in the sun; but this could not everywhere be the case: for in the next broad street I had to cross, and, unfortunately for me, at the very hour in which the boys were coming out of school, a humpbacked lout of a fellow—I see him yet—soon made the discovery that I was without a shadow, and communicated the news, with loud outcries, to a knot of young urchins. The whole swarm proceeded immediately to reconnoitre me, and to pelt me with mud. "People," cried they, "are ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... bananas, through which was obtained a glimpse of the sea, Otaheitan Sally was busily engaged in playing at "school." Seated on the end of a felled tree was Thursday October Christian, who had become, as Isaac Martin expressed it, a great lout of a boy ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... the deck of his Majesty's ship Eos. I do not know how it was, for I am sure that I ought to have despised him for his unmanly and incessant weeping,—I knew that he had offended the laws of his country,—yet, when the great lout went forward disconsolately, and sat himself down, amidst the derision of the seamen, upon a gun-carriage on the forecastle, I could not help going and dispersing the scoffers, and felt annoyingly inclined to take his toil-embrowned hand, sit down beside, and cry with him. However, I did not ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... that dull-eyed, gin-sodden lout leaning against the post out there is immeasurably your intellectual superior? Do you know that every little-minded selfish scoundrel, who never had a thought that was not mean and base—whose every action is a fraud and whose every utterance is a lie; do you know that these are as much superior ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... the table with a bold step; there was nothing now of the country lout about him; on the contrary, he moved with remarkable dignity, and bore himself so well that many a pair of feminine eyes watched him kindly, as he took his seat at the ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... standing between those two, he seemed like a country lout between confederate sharpers. It struck me that she let me see, made me see, that she and Gurnard had an understanding, made manifest to me by glances that passed when the Duc had his unobservant eyes ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... a big country lout and bumpkin, whom his uncle is trying to polish as he polishes his silver goods, poor fool for ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... about fifteen feet deep near the made embankment, was alive with the tiny fish, squirming in a mass as they were pursued by larger fish. The son of Prince Hinoe, a round-shouldered lout, very tall, awkward, and merry, held a bamboo pole. His white suit was soiled and ragged, and he whistled "All Coons Look alike to Me!" The peanut-vender had brought a rod, and was fishing with difficulty and mostly by feel. He could keep ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... it was for twa shillin' a week that I first worked. I was a strappin' lout of a boy then, fit to work harder than I did, and earn more, and ever and again I'd tell them at some new mill I was past fourteen, and they'd put me to work at full time. But I could no hide myself awa' from the inspector when he came around, and each time he'd send me back to ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... was to show their contempt for the young lout that they invented names for him—weakly, perhaps, but very boylike—and for a time he was James the Second, but the lad seemed rather to approve of that; and it was soon changed for Barnacle, which had the opposite effect, and two fights down in a sandy cave ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... have nothing to do with the quarrel; but if I were walking along the streets and saw a big lout pick a quarrel with a weaker one and then proceed to smash him up altogether, I fancy I should take a hand in the business. The Germans deliberately forced on the war. They knew perfectly well that when they put up a German Prince as candidate ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... I'se tank yer fo' yer arm," said Mandy to a man near, with responsive dignity. "Yer wait on me here, an' yer kin wait on me home. I'se 'shamed on mysef dat I took up wid a lout dat kin do nuffin but fiddle; but I was kine ob sorry fer him, ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... thing so well, it matters not. To me, indeed, it seems discourteous. But you will find yourself the gainer. The family will not much tempt you. A mother, a son, and a daughter; an old woman said to be halfwitted, a country lout, and a country girl, who stands very high with her confessor, and is, therefore,' chuckled the physician, 'most likely plain; there is not much in that to attract the fancy ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... episode he despised Leff. His contempt was unveiled, for the country lout who had shown himself a coward had dared to raise his eyes to the one star in Daddy John's firmament. He would not have hidden his dislike if he could. Leff was of the outer world to which he relegated all men ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... was Willebald's. A poor slip of vulgar stock with the spirit of a house cat. I would have married her well, for she was handsome after a fashion, but she thwarted me and chose to wed a lout of a huckster in the Bredestreet. She shall have her portion from Willebald's gold, but none from me. But Philip is true child of mine, and sprung on both sides of high race. Nay, I name no names, and before men he is of my husband's getting. But to you at the end of my days I speak the ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... him, it's all lies, gentlemen! There, gentlemen, he's a most dishonorable man himself, gentlemen; he isn't worth your notice! Bah, my boy, what a lout you are! Well, I never knew you—and not for any blessings on earth would I have anything to do ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... is not thy lass fair enough for thee to take cudgel in hand for her sake? In truth, I believe that Nottingham men do turn to bone and sinew, for neither heart nor courage have they! Now, thou great lout, wilt thou not ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... free movement of a disdainful princess. "Oh, he's just a lout," she said. "He doesn't know any better. It isn't as if you ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... hear it. This Rivers is such a lout, that I could not tell how it might be. I did not look to see you turn homesick ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... whenas she hath to do with a man. Wherefore I have often had it in mind to make trial with this mute, since with others I may not, if it be so. And indeed he is the best in the world to that end, for that, e'en if he would, he could not nor might tell it again. Thou seest he is a poor silly lout of a lad, who hath overgrown his wit, and I would fain hear how thou deemest of the thing.' 'Alack!' rejoined the other, 'what is this thou sayest? Knowest thou not that we have promised our virginity to God?' 'Oh, as for that,' answered the first, 'how many things are promised Him all day long, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... silent indignation. It was hard to think, just when he had got the "prairie flower" of Craig Ronald (for whom he cherished a romantic attachment of the most desperate and picturesque kind) away from the house for a whole long afternoon at the fishing, that this great grown-up lout should come this way and spoil all his sport. Andra was moved to the ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... lout, you ain't a seaman; a seaman would never mutiny against his admiral; howsomever, do you hear, Sir Francis, I'll give the matter up, if you don't pay some ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... those who dare!—how you envy the spruce apprentice, and the lout in the smock who cracks his whip, and whistles with as much nonchalance as if he was between the handles of his plough! as though the awe of that fair presence should not freeze his lips to stone! Gauche that he is, how you envy him his opportunities! how you could slaughter ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... finds.' I reckon that Shakspeare always set a proper valuation on human digestion; 'cause when he speaks of a man with a good stomach,—an excellent stomach,—he always has a good word for him, and kind of strokes down his fur the right way of the grain; but he comes down dreadful strong on the lout that has no stomach, as he calls it. In 'Henry IV.,' he says, 'the cook helps to make the gluttony.' I estimate that that one sentence alone, if he'd never writ another word, would have made him immortal. If I had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... bowe At one marke shall shote to[o] high or to[o] lowe. He that his mynde settyth god truly to serve And his sayntes: this worlde settynge at nought Shall for rewarde everlastynge joy deserve, But in this worlde he that settyth his thought All men to please, and in favour to be brought, Must lout and lurke, flater, laude, and lye: And cloke in knavys ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... our mild Cavannah, has at length met with his deserts, and left the sage savans of the fool's hotbed, London, the undisturbed possession of the diligently-achieved fool's-caps their extreme absurdity, egregious folly, and lout-like gullibility, have so splendidly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... A young lout with a stumpy nose, which had evidently been broken some time or other, a bare breast, and a shock of ragged hair covering his face, ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... 'That instruction would place them under an omnibus; you had better confine your attention to yourself—you will want it all;' and has driven his charge away, with an intelligence of ears and tail, and a knowledge of business, that has left his lout of a man very, very ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... Boy to get off, and got on himself. But they hadn't gone far when they passed two women, one of whom said to the other: "Shame on that lazy lout to let his ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... was she arrested?" said the man, thrusting his beak-like nose closer to Armand's face. Evidently the piece of silver had done its work well; he meant to be helpful to this country lout. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... some lout who has spent his days herding swine, think you, that you could trick me into believing this creature to be Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye—this creature with the mien of a peasant, with a breath reeking of garlic like a third-rate eating-house, and the walk of a woman who has never ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... skipper may give him a good wigging for that boarding business yesterday. I hope he won't be very hard upon you, old chap," he added, in a tone of deep sympathy, turning to me, "for somehow I have taken quite a liking to you, and if I had been at your elbow yesterday, instead of that over-grown lout, Harvey, I would have kept you out of the serape. You must be very quiet and submissive when he pitches into you, and plead ignorance—say you will be a good boy and not ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... am I to be kept waiting forever? You were quicker in obeying my caprices yesterday. Get up, you muddy lout, and let us kill each other ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... star. "'Tis better to have loved and lost." Although the moon should have nothing to say to Endymion, although he should settle down with Audrey and feed pigs, do you not think he would move with a better grace, and cherish higher thoughts to the end? The lout he meets at church never had a fancy above Audrey's snood; but there is a reminiscence in Endymion's heart that, like a spice, keeps it fresh ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... yourself, sonny, and don't waste valuable time in stopping to ask silly questions," was the ungracious reply I received; and I suppose it was the reflection that it served me right for persisting in my attempts to be civil to the lout that drove out of my head the thought which had flashed into it for an instant, that it was rather queer that the skipper should have sent for me at a moment when Bainbridge was actually on the spot and would serve his purpose quite as well. So, all unsuspectingly, I trundled ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... Eustace's studs were in his shirt, and the unnatural shine on his tawny hair too plainly revealed the perfumeries that crowded the young squire's dressing-table. With the purest intentions of kindness Eustace had done his best to disguise a demigod as a lout. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... find trouble than to strike the horse of the cattle-drover. I have seen an indolent blacksmith booted across his shop because he kicked a horse on the leg to make him hold his foot up. And I have seen a lout's head broken because the master caught him swearing at ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... sharpening his critical faculties. A thing struck him that had never happened to strike him before. What was that great strapping Scollay fellow doing at home on a small croft where he was quite superfluous, when his country needed every man? And why did the lout stare and then laugh? Considering what a vigilant eye was watching him behind Mr. Hobhouse's glasses, it seemed to me unwise as well ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... that sum, you lying lout," returned Brush, fiercely. "But to get rid of such a pest, and prevent your going round town with that lie in your mouth, I'll give you all you ask; and there they are!" he continued, pulling out and disdainfully ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... head, and reddened foolishly, but he gave a loud laugh and said, "I can well understand. There was some country lout that your father would have wedded you to. That is the way with the ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... with rage): Hear his arrogance! A country lout who. . .who. . .has got no gloves! Who goes out without sleeve-knots, ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... slave;—he is a Briton free, A noble sample of humanity. This may be liberty,—the ass, the horse, Wear out their lives in routine none the worse. They only toil all day,—then eat and sleep, They have no wife or children dear to keep. Better, far better, is the tattered lout, Who, tho' all so-called luxuries without, Can stand upon the hill-side in the morn, And watch the shadows flee as day is born. Tho' with a frugal meal his fast he breaks, And from the spring his crystal draught he takes, Better, far better, seems that man to mel ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... better to be this poor Peggotty, or his lout of a nephew,' he said, getting up and leaning moodily against the chimney-piece, with his face towards the fire, 'than to be myself, twenty times richer and twenty times wiser, and be the torment to myself ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens |
