"Unwieldy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which point he purposed to follow the coast line on foot, with cautious discretion as to seasons, confident that, with arms and ammunition, he could support himself for many years. It has always been a grave error in all these northern land expeditions, that they have been too unwieldy, too much encumbered with the comforts and luxuries of civilization at the outset, and too much loaded with a philosophical paraphernalia, for a pioneering survey,—and cherishing too fondly the idea that the wide shores of the Arctic sea could be explored ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... Instead of the unwieldy and formidable looking apparatus of a short time ago, experimenters are now vying with each other in making small or novel equipment. Portable sets of all sorts are being fashioned, from one which will go into an ordinary suitcase, to one so small it will easily ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins
... true unity of individual and social life forbids this abrupt cleavage between the arts of production and consumption, between the man and his work. It is only in the case of the largest and densest industrial cities, swollen to an unwieldy and dangerous size, that such methods of decentralisation can in some measure be applied. In these monstrous growths machinery of decentralisation may be evoked to undo in part at any rate the work of centralising ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... never came. Instead the gorp drew in upon itself until it resembled an unwieldy ball of indestructible armor ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... rafts of teak logs pass us occasionally, drifting slowly down with the current. The three or four oarsmen, when they see us, run about over the round logs and give a pull here and a pull there at long oars, and try to get the unwieldy length up and down stream; they wear only a waist cloth, and look so sun-bitten; there is but one tiny patch of shadow in the middle of their island under a lean-to cottage of matting, with a burgee on a tall bamboo flying over it. Our wash sends ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... and the preceding ones, entitled 'Liberty,' were composed as one piece, which Mrs. W. complained of as unwieldy and ill-proportioned; and accordingly it was divided into ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... perfection the ultra-courteous manners of the time, might have passed for a nobleman anywhere except alongside of a real one. One might really have been excused for fancying him of a different race of beings from Monsieur Boulederouloue, the shapelessness of whose huge unwieldy frame was happily rendered undistinguishable by an extravagantly full suit of the Louis Quatorze fashion. An enormous full-bottomed wig of the same period surmounted and flanked his full moon face of pasty whiteness, most like the battered and colourless ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... same material, rough shoes and stockings, the upper garment reaching nearly to the ankle; a kind of cloth, like a dirty towel, was wound round the head. One of the women drove an ox-team; she had a large and powerful whip, with which, and a surprising strength, she belaboured and tugged the unwieldy team with great dexterity. The other woman had five children, and assisted in loading the wood; the younger, about sixteen years of age, had one child, and appeared to do nothing. The women, it seemed to me, worked harder than the men. I observed the ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... paddle. Drusus seized it and pushed against the water with so much force that the tough wood bent and creaked, but did not snap. The unwieldy barge sluggishly answered this powerful pressure, and under the stroke of the three oars began to head diagonally across the current and move slowly toward the farther shore. The soldiers did not at once perceive the intent of this move. By their actions they ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... wild disorder, heaped up in the outer hall, and old Dietrich, with a few other servants and lackeys, was busied in untying parcels and unpacking. The Electoral Prince went hurriedly past, and entered his sleeping room. Here, too, he found all in confusion; the dust lay thick upon the unwieldy old furniture, whose cushions were covered with faded and even here and there ragged tapestry. From the walls, hung with discolored papering, a few old ancestral portraits looked gravely and gloomily ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... on and their only chance of safety was, if possible, to stick to the plank box in the hope that the currents might carry them to some point where they could get safely to shore. Next day their unwieldy craft grounded near Nappan, and they at once landed and were hospitably entertained at a farm-house near by. After getting supplies and sending word to Prospect of their safety, they again boarded their strange vessel and succeeded that day in getting back ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... by far the largest, and has an unwieldy body, of enormous dimensions, when compared with her subjects; so also is the king, but inferior in size ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... hauled up the beach and even, in rough weather, over the sea-wall. The herring and mackerel drifters, which may venture twenty miles into the open sea, cannot be more than twenty-five feet in length else they would prove unwieldy ashore. To avoid their heeling over and filling in the surf, they must be built shallow, with next to no keel. They have therefore but small hold on the water; they do not sail close to the wind, and beating home against it is a long wearisome job. Again, because the gear for ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... Because he desists from youthful habits. He assumes an air of dignity incompatible with the lightness of childish sallies. He is visited and vexed with all the cares that rise out of our mistaken institutions, and his heart is no longer satisfied and gay. Hence his limbs become stiff and unwieldy. This is the forerunner of old age and death' (ii. 863-64). 'Medicine may reasonably be stated to consist of two branches, the animal and intellectual. The latter of these has been infinitely too much neglected' (ii. 869). We ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... just beyond we see the busts of Lord Macaulay and of Thackeray, and the medallion heads of Sir Walter Scott and of John Ruskin; below them is the grave of Charles Dickens. The lovers of music raise their eyes meantime to the unwieldy figure of Handel, whose personality remained essentially German although the greater part of his life was spent in England, at the Court of the first three Georges. Beneath his monument is the medallion of that gifted singer Jenny Lind Goldschmidt, placed there ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... heavy armament is carried nominally for protection against pirates, but its chief use is for the production of those stunning noises which Chinamen delight in on all occasions. In these helpless and unwieldy-looking vessels which are sailed with an amount of noise and apparent confusion which is absolutely shocking to anyone used to our strict nautical discipline, the rudder projects astern six feet and more, the masts are single poles, the large ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... with no pretensions to symmetry, seemed to be bending beneath the weight of a worm-eaten roof covered with the curved pantiles in common use in the South of France. The decrepit casements were fitted with the heavy, unwieldy shutters necessary in that climate, and held in place by massive iron cross bars. It would have puzzled you to find a more dilapidated house in Angouleme; nothing but sheer tenacity of mortar kept it together. Try to picture ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... our times that did behold This motion strange of this unwieldy plant Now boldly brag with us that are men old, That of our age they no advantage want, Though in our youth ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... life-boat himself. I descended the bank, and stood on the edge of the canal as it drew near. Then I saw that every oar was loosely but firmly fastened to the rowlock, so that it could be dropped and caught again in a moment; and that the gay sides of the unwieldy-looking creature were festooned with ropes from the gunwale, for the men to lay hold of when she capsized, for the earlier custom of fastening the men to their seats had been quite given up, because their weight ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... both by the difficult methods of the original masters and by this last method of Filippo's, which they thought absurd, for it appeared to them that he would ruin the work in two ways: first, by making the vaulting double, which would have made it enormous and unwieldy in weight; and secondly, by making it without a framework. On the other hand, Filippo, who had spent so many years in study in order to obtain the commission, knew not what to do and was often tempted to leave Florence. However, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... our horses to their speed, it seemed to make no difference to the unwieldy giant. He merely stretched his legs a little farther, and caused his great gaskined feet to pass each other as fast as if they had been shod with seven-league boots. So he not only kept up with us easily, but oftentimes made a detour through the fields and over the wild country ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... unwieldy name for every-day use," put in Strong. "If it would n't hurt your feelings, I 'd like to call you Quite So—for short. Don't say no, if you don't like ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... a man was carrying to Cashel on his back one of Bianconi's large looking-glasses. An old woman by the wayside, seeing the odd-looking, unwieldy package, asked what it was; on which Bianconi, who was close behind the man carrying the glass, answered that it was "the Repeal of the Union!" The old woman's delight was unbounded! She knelt down on her ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... at all mind upholding in public disputation, say, at the Poetry Bookshop, that there was no other way than Drayton's of doing the thing at all. It was the mythopoetic way. For purposes of poetry, Britain is an unwieldy subject, and if you are to allow to a river no other characters than those of mud and ooze, swiftness or slowness, why, you will relate of it little but its rise, length and fall. Drayton's weakness is that he can conceive of no other relation than a sex-relation, and in so ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... helplessly, all her sails of a sudden slack and sweeping the yards, she fired her lower tier, charged with crossbar shot, into the 'San Felipe.' Then the unwieldy galleon of a thousand and five hundred tons, which bristled with cannon from stem to stern, had good reason to repent her of her temerity, and 'shifted herselfe with all dilligence from her sides, utterly misliking her entertainment.' It is said she ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... afterwards became; food that was intended to arrive hot arrived cold, and, having once been hot, received precedence over things originally cold but ultimately more essential. Hot-food containers proved too unwieldy ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... horse, but two of its feet together, or simultaneously. We saw the footprints of young as well as old ones. This plateau is the real home of the giraffe. No place could be better adapted for such an unwieldy creature. There is abundance of small tholukh, on which it feeds; all the country is open around to it, and it is out of the reach of ferocious animals. Towards the evening the marks of the giraffe disappeared, and were succeeded by the footprints of what is here called the wild ox (but which Overweg ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... an emphatic announcement of stiff brocade, and enveloped the spectral Angela in an embrace of comfortable arms and bosom. Her unwieldy figure reminded Laura of a broad, low wall that has been freshly papered in a large flowered pattern. On her hands and bosom a number of fine emeralds flashed, for events had shown in the end that the impecunious young lover was not fated to dabble ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... ulcer preyed on the lower parts of his body and ate them away into a mass of living corruption." Gibbon, in his "Decline and Fall," also says that "his (Galerius's) death was caused by a very painful and lingering disorder. His body, swelled by an intemperate course of life to an unwieldy corpulence, was covered with ulcers and devoured by immense swarms of those insects who have given their names to this most loathsome disease." It is also said that the African Vandal King, the Arian Huneric, died of the disease. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... works. That is, they probably excavated canals from the Nile to the quarries, supplementing these, where necessary, with stone roadways or slides, and made other canals from the Nile to the location selected for the buildings, and transported the unwieldy masses of stone on barges to ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... haste rather as they could than as they would," to leave it. In the confusion and tumbling about of heavy boxes Mary might have been badly hurt, had not the young gallant, quickly springing to his feet, caught her as she was thrown forward by a second lurch of the unwieldy thing, and, lifting her up, carried her out of the way of falling luggage and struggling horses to ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... disciplined order, one company had sped for the water wagon and were now slowly trundling that unwieldy vehicle, pushing, pulling, straining at the wheels, from its night berth close to the corrals. Rushing like mad, in no order at all, the men of the other company came tearing across the open parade, ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... the opportunity and suggested a new form of trigger for the unwieldy crossbows. He saw that as at present discharged it must require some strength, perhaps the united effort of several men, to pull away the bolt or catch. Such an effort must disconcert the aim; these crossbows were worked upon a carriage, and it was difficult to keep the carriage steady even when ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... the house. The front-door bell, a huge unwieldy affair, seldom used, because, save in the depths of winter, the door stood open, suddenly sent a deep resonant summons echoing through the house. The bareness and height of the hall, and the fact that the room in which they were was quite close to the front door ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... occupation. The House of Commons has long been noted as the best club in England; and this sense of fellowship, of continuing friendship and intimacy, gives a charm to English parliamentary life which is hardly possible with the unwieldy numbers and huge hall of our own House of Representatives, but does spring out of the smaller and continuing membership of the Senate. A class in debating should have the sense of comradeship which comes of hard work together and the trying out ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... few in number, were well trained in warfare, and from the beginning showed capacity to out-general the unwieldy host and feeble leader opposed to them. At sunset, some of their forces crossed the Earn by a ford which the Scots had neglected to guard, and falling upon an outlying portion of the enemies' camp, where the infantry were quartered, slaughtered the surprised Scots at their leisure. ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... to him to be now and then entangled with an unwieldy sentiment, which he cannot well express, and will not reject; he struggles with it a while, and if it continues stubborn, comprises it in words such as occur, and leaves it to be disentangled and evolved by those who have more leisure to bestow ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... buoyant personality does bring comfort and relief. In the adjoining settlement of Bareneed lives an enormously fat old woman of seventy-odd summers. Life passes over her, and its only effect is to make her rotund and unwieldy. When the sick come to Brother Luke for treatment, if any of the few drugs which he has accumulated chance to have lost their labels—a not uncommon contingency in this land of mist and fog—he takes down a likely-looking ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... were the first English captains who attacked the unwieldy leviathans; then came Fenton, Southwell, Burton, Cross, Raynor, and then the lord admiral, with Lord Thomas Howard and Lord Sheffield. The Spaniards only thought of forming and keeping close together, and were driven by the English past Dunkirk, and far away from the Prince of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... tribunal thus constituted is better adapted in some respects to trying questions of fact than a single judge. It is a jury of three acting by a majority. But for the conduct of a jury trial it is unwieldy, slow-moving and uncertain. In most cases any question of law or legal practice will be virtually decided by the presiding judge, but he will usually pause to go through the form of consulting his associates. Occasionally they will overrule him, and in such case it will be apt to be by a misunderstanding ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... is a thing that can't have a head. It's a sort of unwieldy monster that's bound to run its skull against the wall sooner or later, and knock out what bit of brain it's got. You see, you need wit and courage and real understanding if you're going to do anything positive. And Labour has none of these things—certainly ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... injunctions to your care, I purpose that, the crusaders having found the value of our friendship, and also in some sort the danger of our enmity, those whom we shall safely transport to Asia, shall be, however unwieldy, still a smaller and more compact body, whom we may deal with in all Christian prudence. Thus, by using fair words to one, threats to another, gold to the avaricious, power to the ambitious, and reasons ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... according to the pressure of news or of advertisements. The suggestion as to form has been adopted bit many of our religious, literary, and special weeklies, to the great convenience of the readers, and I doubt not of the publishers also. Nothing is more unwieldy than our big blanket-sheets: they are awkward to handle, inconvenient to read, unhandy to bind and preserve. It is difficult to classify matter in them. In dull seasons they are too large; in times of brisk advertising, and in the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... low, flat-topped bowlder, which served the purpose of a throne, sat the Chief of the Bow-legs, playing with his unwieldy club (which was merely the root end of a sapling hacked into shape with sharp stones), as if it had been a bulrush. In height and bulk he was far above his fellows, though similar to them in general type except for the matter of color, which was ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... not determine at what point he would probably make the attempt, in season to concentrate so large an army to oppose him. Alexander's troops, being a comparatively small and compact body, and being accustomed to move with great promptness and celerity, could easily evade any attempt of such an unwieldy mass of forces to oppose his crossing at any particular point upon the stream. At any rate, Darius did not make any such attempt, and Alexander had no difficulties to encounter in crossing the Tigris other than the physical obstacles presented by ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the steps again. There was a moon clear in a frosty sky. How white the steps shone! For all her life she remembered the big, unwieldy figure of ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... Pope Paul IV for the creation of the new bishoprics, and this Bull was renewed and confirmed by Pius IV, January, 1560. Up to this time the entire area of the seventeen provinces had been divided into three unwieldy dioceses—Utrecht, Arras and Tournay. The See of Utrecht comprised nearly the whole of the modern kingdom of the Netherlands. Nor was there any archiepiscopal see. The metropolitical jurisdiction was ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... potent hand was removed which conducted the government, every one expected a sudden dissolution of the unwieldy and ill-jointed fabric. Richard, a young man of no experience, educated in the country, accustomed to a retired life, unacquainted with the officers, and unknown to them, recommended by no military exploits, endeared by no familiarities, could not ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... was yielded to age and valor; but each tribe or village existed as a separate republic, and all must be persuaded where none could be compelled. They fought on foot, almost naked, and except an unwieldy shield, without any defensive armor; their weapons of offence were a bow, a quiver of small poisoned arrows, and a long rope, which they dexterously threw from a distance, and entangled their enemy in a running noose. In the field, the Sclavonian infantry ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... of the caterpillar exceeded that of the shaft. It seemed to reflect for a few moments, and then with feverish haste enlarged the shaft. Another difficulty had then to be overcome. Was it possible to force such a bulky and unwieldy body head first down—the habitual way? The insect came to a rapid decision in the negative. Backing into the shaft, it seized the caterpillar by the head and drew it down, presently emerging, and how it managed to squeeze past so tight a plug is another of the magics of the morn. Having ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... cookee, and his crew of two were now doomed to tribulation. The huge, unwieldy craft from that moment was to become possessed of the devil. Down the white water of rapids it would bump, smashing obstinately against boulders, impervious to the frantic urging of the long sweeps; against the roots and branches ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... of men All the giants fled the land;— Only tiny brains were housed In their huge, unwieldy heads! ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... warlike labours, leaving precisely one quarter of the nation—every fourth head—as available for war. This process for David's case would have yielded perhaps about 1,100,000 fighting men throughout Palestine. But this unwieldy pospolite was far from meeting David's secret anxieties. He had remarked the fickle and insurrectionary state of the people. Even against himself how easy had it been found to organize a sudden rebellion, and to conceal it so prosperously that he and his whole court saved themselves from ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... a brief glimpse of a mountainous diplodocus assailed by half a dozen hissing, shrieking allosauri who, employing jaws and claws, ripped great, shuddering chucks of flesh from the agonized and unwieldy monster on whose back the frantic Jarmuthians ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... the error of under-estimating the foe, or of thinking, in an age when intelligence and liberty are so diffused, that it is impossible that we can be overcome by such a system as the Papacy. We have not, like the early Christians, to oppose a rude, unwieldy, and gross paganism; we are called to confront an idolatry, subtle, refined, perfected. We encounter error wielding the artillery of truth. We wrestle with the powers of darkness clothed in the armour of light. We are called to combat the instincts of the wolf and tiger in the form of the messenger ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... Two were evidently man and wife. They were both old, both slatternly and almost in rags; the man a thin, sallow-faced fellow, with grey hair and a black moustache; the woman fat, coarse of face, unwieldy of body. Of the other two, one it seemed must be their daughter, a girl of seventeen, not good-looking really, but dressed and turned out with a scrupulous care, which in those sordid and mean surroundings lent her good looks. The care, indeed, with which she was dressed assured me ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... seventeenth century, was the Dictionary of BAYLE, in which, amid an enormous mass of learning poured out over a multitude of heterogeneous subjects, the most absolute religious scepticism is expressed with unmistakable emphasis and unceasing reiteration. The book is an extremely unwieldy one—very large and very discursive, and quite devoid of style; but its influence was immense; and during the long combat of the eighteenth century it was used as a kind of armoury, supplying many of their sharpest weapons to the ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... Impertinent, preposterous abortion! With vacant stare, And ragged hair, And every feature out of all proportion! Embodiment of echoing inanity! Excellent type of simpering insanity! Unwieldy, clumsy nightmare of humanity! I ring ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... through the interminable wastes of dim woodland, and stood on the threshold of the beautiful blue-grass region of Kentucky; a land of running waters, of groves and glades, of prairies, cane-brakes, and stretches of lofty forest. It was teeming with game. The shaggy-maned herds of unwieldy buffalo—the bison as they should be called—had beaten out broad roads through the forest, and had furrowed the prairies with trails along which they had travelled for countless generations. The round-horned elk, with ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... me, who know Florence well, that she is growing unwieldy. Like a bulky old concierge they say, she sits in the passage of her Arno, swollen, fat, and featureless, a kind of Chicago, a city of tame conveniences ungraced by arts. That means that there are suburbs and tramways; it means ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... Just as he was hesitating as to what he should do, and looking for a rock or stump behind which he might hide while he reloaded his gun, the moose caught sight of him, forgot about Lije, and came charging through the weeds. Sandy had no more time for hesitation. He dropped his unwieldy musket, and clambered into a blackened and branchy hackmatack, so small that he feared the rush of the bull might break it down. It did, indeed, crack ominously when the headlong bulk reared upon it; but it stood. And Sandy felt as if every branch ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... eaves; and rows of pigeons, some with one eye turned up, as if watching the weather, some with their heads under their wings or buried in their bosoms, and others swelling, and cooing, and bowing about their dames, were enjoying the sunshine on the roof. Sleek unwieldy porkers were grunting in the repose and abundance of their pens, from whence sallied forth, now and then, troops of sucking pigs, as if to snuff the air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were riding in an adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets of ducks; regiments of turkeys were gobbling ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... to shut out all the real world to her heated senses! As it was, the sight of these miserable objects did create some new and more harrowing pain. She began to murmur of the torment to which she had been consigned—of the strange, heavy fiends so unwieldy and coarse that had taken her in charge. Every event of that fearful day was absolutely thrusting her a step ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... know that to be the opinion of the best seamen in Shetland?-I believe it is. For instance, the large boats used in the neighbourhood of Lerwick for herrings have often been lost when the common six-oared boats came safely. These large boats are more unwieldy and more difficult to ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... many years after the death of his wife. He was several years older than she. In fact, he was now considerably advanced in age. He became extremely corpulent as he grew old, which, as he was originally of a large frame, made him excessively unwieldy. The inconvenience resulting from this habit of body was not the only evil that attended it. It affected his health, and even threatened to end in serious if not fatal disease. While he was thus made comparatively helpless in body by the infirmities ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... not, in a satisfactory manner, express the real views of the Committee. They claim to have drawn up a body of improved marginal references, to have wholly removed archaisms, to have supplied running headings, to have modified what they consider unwieldy paragraphs, to have lightened what they regard as clumsy punctuation, and by typographical arrangements, such as by leaving a line blank, to have indicated the main transitions of thought in the Epistles and Apocalypse. These and other characteristics will ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... proof of extreme cordiality, he accepted the task of repeating the chasseur's name, which was 'Jacob Baumwalder Feckelwitz,' a tolerable mouthful for an Italian; and it was with remarkable delicacy that Beppo contrived to take upon himself the whole ridicule of his vile pronunciation of the unwieldy name. Jacob Baumwalder Feckelwitz offered him beer to refresh him after the effort. While Beppo was drinking, he seized the fan. 'Good; good; a thousand thanks,' said Beppo, relinquishing it; 'convey it aloft, I beseech you.' He displayed such alacrity and lightness ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the little Papoos ran out to acquaint the woman who followed her into the hut. She was of large size, very corpulent and unwieldy, with little covering on her body; her hair, which was woolly in its texture, was partly parted, partly frizzled; a cloth round her waist, and a piece of faded yellow silk on her shoulders, was all her dress. A ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... open canal we would watch the boats. I did not know there were so many boats in all the world. They floated slowly past us— big boats, little boats, those that went by sail, and those that went by oar. There were the boats of mandarins and merchants, those for passengers, and great unwieldy boats for rice. We saw the fishing-boats with their hungry, fierce-eyed cormorants sitting quietly in their places, waiting for the master to send them diving in the water for the fish they ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... homage, and of generous emulation, among all the nobler spirits of the world? We pass over the records of Oriental empire as we pass over the ruins of their capitals; we find nothing but masses of wreck, unwieldy heaps of what once, perhaps, was symmetry and beauty; fragments of vast piles, which once exhibited the lavish grandeur of the monarch, or the colossal labour of the people; but all now mouldered and melted down. The mass essentially wants the interest of individuality. A ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... devise plans by which we may become more rich or more powerful. We must also tax our ingenuity to find ways for the equitable division of the wealth and the just use of power. We are no longer satisfied with increase in the vast unwieldy bulk of our possessions, we eagerly seek to direct them to definite ends. Even here in America we are beginning to feel that "progress" is not an end in itself. Whether it is desirable or not, depends on the direction of it. Our glee over ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... craft, oil, and fixtures in one common ruin. In this fleet the form and variety of boats beggars all description. Sometimes there is the orthodox flatboat, filled with iron-bound barrels, with an air of respectability hovering around it. Next will follow a rude scow, and close upon it an unwieldy 'bulk,' into which the oil has been pumped at the well. After this, perhaps, may be seen a rude nondescript, that surely was never dreamed of outside the oil region. It consists of a series of rough ladders, constructed of tall saplings. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... generous dainties of the earth. When they had feasted, as two grateful-tempered giants might have done, they stirred the fire, drew back the glowing curtain from the window, and making each a sofa for himself, by union of the great unwieldy chairs, gazed blissfully ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... suggests that the committee, as it stands, is too unwieldy to draft a platform, and makes a motion that the chairman be empowered to appoint a sub-committee of five to outline one and submit it to the ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... English ships in the fight of 1588," says Camden, "charged the enemy with marvellous agility, and having discharged their broadsides, flew forth presently into the deep, and levelled their shot directly, without missing, at those great ships of the Spaniards, which were altogether heavy and unwieldy." Moreover, the Spanish fashion, in the West Indies at least, though not in the ships of the Great Armada, was, for the sake of carrying merchandise, to build their men-of-war flush decked, or as it was called "race" (razs), which left those on deck exposed ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... world." Dr. Knott looked down at the floor, shrugging his unwieldy shoulders. "The sooner we learn to accept that fact the better, Lady Calmady. I know it is sharp discipline, but it saves time and money, let alone disappointment.—Now as to all these elaborate contrivances I've brought down from London, they're the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... event, but also that of the void which his disappearance has left in the too thin ranks of those who, filled with reverence and enthusiasm for the great traditions of the past, seem nevertheless eager and capable of grappling with the unwieldy present. Let and restricted had been the recognition of his maturing worth, and now we must do without both him and the impetus of ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... long-winded. And just then came out a caustic review which showed him that he had committed other sins than those of prolixity.[67] Nevertheless he did not now have recourse to that drastic surgery whereby, in the edition of 1801, he reduced the unwieldy play to more manageable dimensions.[68] Without any radical revision of the part already in print, he completed the last two acts as best he could, with Minerva often unwilling. Posa was made to gain the king's confidence, to become ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... time with the water running out of their mouths, idly lashing their sides with their short tails, enjoying the bright warmth of the early sunshine; then, with much splashing and the gurgling of soft mud, they left the pool and clambered up the bluff with unwieldy agility. As soon as they turned, my brother and cousin ran for their rifles, but before they got back the buffaloes had crossed the bluff crest. Climbing after them, the two hunters found, when they reached the summit, that their game, instead of halting, had struck straight off across ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... and pass without engaging these monsters of the deep, of which he had had no experience. Even so their heavy guns did considerable damage to the nearest vessels, and created some confusion in the pasha's line of battle. They were, however, but unwieldy craft, and, having accomplished their object, seem to have taken no further part in the combat. The action began on the left wing of the allies, which Mehemet Siroco was desirous of turning. This had been anticipated by Barberigo, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... genera. Names of such "hybrid genera" are usually "manufactured" from a combination of the names of the parent genera (e.g. x Heucherella, from Heuchera and Tiarella); in the case of hybrids between more than two genera, however, where a "combination" name would be unwieldy, it is permissible to make a new name by adding the termination ara to the name of a person connected with the plant concerned (e.g. x Sanderara for a tri-generic orchid hybrid). Before making a new "hybrid generic" name, a botanist should be consulted, as a Latin description ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... scarcely less marvellous than those he encountered in his youth. Many a hard blow he got, which he still was able to return with interest, ably seconded by De Fistycuff, though, it must be confessed, his Squire had grown somewhat obese and unwieldy. ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... house that has got him. As I understand it, that was a valid objection urged by Momus against the house which Minerva made, that she "had not made it movable, by which means a bad neighborhood might be avoided"; and it may still be urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them; and the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves. I know one or two families, at least, in this town, who, for nearly a generation, have been wishing to sell their houses in the outskirts and move into the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... forms. The animated earth seemed to paw the verdant mead, and to despise the mould from which it came. A disdainful horse, it shook its flowing mane, and snuffed the enlivening breeze, and stretched along the plain. The red-eyed wolf and the unwieldy ox burst like the mole the concealing continent, and threw the earth in hillocs. The stag upreared his branching head. The thinly scattered animals wandered among the unfrequented hills, and cropped the untasted ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... later on. Sometimes there would be a raid, the driver would be killed, and the stage would not depart again for some days, the company being unable to find a man to take the reins. The stages were large and unwieldy, but strongly built. They had to be big enough to hold off raiders should they attack. Every stage usually carried, besides the driver, two company men who went heavily armed and belted around with numerous cartridges. One sat beside the driver on the box-seat. In the case of the longer ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... but the nimble hero rushed into a chapel which chanced to be near, and jumped quickly out of a window on the other side. The boar ran after him, and when he got inside the door shut after him, and there he was imprisoned, for the creature was too big and unwieldy to jump out of the window too. Then the little tailor called the huntsmen that they might see the prisoner with their own eyes; and then he betook himself to the king, who now, whether he liked it or not, was obliged to fulfil his promise, and give him his daughter and the half ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... saying: "I did not know that you wanted to pay $1200 a pair for your horses. These six horses will cost you $750, and they are worth it." They were a sturdy lot, young, well matched, not so large as to be unwieldy, but heavy enough for almost any work. The lightest was said to weigh 1375 pounds, and the heaviest not more than a hundred pounds more. Two of the teams were bay with a sprinkling of white feet, while the other pair was red roan, and, to my mind, ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... my Pope, Have Wits Immortal more to fear or hope? Wits toil and travail round the Plant of Fame, Their Works its Garden, and its Growth their Aim, Then Commentators, in unwieldy Dance, Break down the Barriers of the trim Pleasance, Pursue the Poet, like Actaeon's Hounds, Beyond the fences of his Garden Grounds, Rend from the singing Robes each borrowed Gem, Rend from the laurel'd Brows the Diadem, And, if one Rag of Character ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... with the wind abeam, had now drawn abreast of her unwieldy adversary. The merchant captain, apparently, finding himself out-speeded and being unable to spare his gun crews to trim sails, had put the head of his ship into the wind, where she stood, with canvas flapping, her bows offering a steady ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... call, one almost literally fulfilled Eunice's prophecy of a rude, unkempt, common man. His name was Shane and he strode into the room with a bumptious, self-important air, his burly frame looking especially awkward and unwieldy in ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... benefit to the race that the Mission Fathers lived and had their fling of divine audacity for the good of the helpless aborigines than that any score one might name of the "successful captains of industry" lived to make their unwieldy and topheavy piles of gold. With all their faults and failures, all their ideas of theology and education,—which we, in our assumed superiority, call crude and old-fashioned,—all their rude notions of sociology, all their errors ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... British settlements were confined to trading factories on the shores of the Indian Ocean, the problems of administration were simple. The three "Presidents" who with their large and rather unwieldy Councils carried on at the beginning of the eighteenth century the affairs of the East India Company on the west coast, at Madras and in Bengal were chiefly concerned with commercial operations, and they provided in their own way and out of their own resources ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... wears a huge rosary, sometimes so large as to be uncomfortable. I saw several that were so unwieldy that they went over the shoulders and formed a huge line, larger indeed than a string of sleigh bells. These are ornamental rosaries and are not used for prayer. The praying rosary is as small and dainty as those used by fashionable women in our own Roman Catholic churches. Besides the fan and ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... later they could see enough to determine that the assailants consisted of four Indians, on a raft. Two of them, on their knees, were paddling the unwieldy craft, and the others appeared to ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... little in advance, when an extraordinary figure, rising from the grain beyond, began to gesticulate to him wildly. Checking the driver of the first carriage, Clarence bore down upon the stranger. To his amazement it was Jim Hooker. Mounted on a peaceful, unwieldy plough horse, he was nevertheless accoutred and armed after his most extravagant fashion. In addition to a heavy rifle across his saddle-bow he was weighted down with a knife and revolvers. Clarence was in no mood for trifling, and almost rudely ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... awaiting with eager hope the result of the fight. The ram attack was unexpected, and, by its suddenness and evident determination, produced some wavering in the Confederate line, which had expected to do only with the sluggish and unwieldy gunboats. Into the confusion the Queen dashed, striking the Lovell fairly and sinking her in deep water, where she went down out of sight. The Queen herself was immediately rammed by the Beauregard and disabled; she was then run upon ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... because in survey of a work so vast and so many sided as foreign missions we might easily include every human activity, unless we defined beforehand the end to be served and selected carefully only the appropriate factors. Carefully defined, missionary survey is not the unwieldy, amorphous thing which people often imagine. There is indeed a dangerous type of survey which starting with a hypothesis proceeds to prove it by collecting any facts which seem to support it to the neglect ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... given to the disguise of her own feelings. She was plausible enough to the outer world. To herself she was quite frank, and hardly seemed to recognise this as the event she had most desired. It is to be presumed that her heart was like her physical self, a large, unwieldy thing, over which she had not a proper control. The organ mentioned had a way of tripping her up. It tripped her now, and she quite forgot that this quarrel was precisely what she had wanted for years. She had looked forward to it as ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... great Herrenhausen avenue, and at first would not quit the place. Schulenberg, in fact, could not come on account of her debts; but finding the Maypole would not come, the Elephant packed up her trunk and slipped out of Hanover unwieldy as she was. On this the Maypole straightway put herself in motion, and followed her beloved George Louis. One seems to be speaking of Captain Macheath, and Polly, and Lucy. The king we had selected; the courtiers who came in his train; the English nobles who came to welcome ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... close. Nearer and nearer I approached, until at last my feet rested on the hard caked soil. For the first few minutes after my arrival I was too overwhelmed with fear to do other than remain stationary. The ground beneath my feet swarmed with myriads of foul and long-legged insects, things with unwieldy pincers and protruding eyes; things covered with scaly armour; hybrids of beetles and scorpions. I have a distinct recollection of one huge-jointed centipede making a vicious grab at my leg; he failed to make his teeth meet in anything tangible, and ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... streets are clear, so that there can be no obstacle to the thoughtful."—A builder in heat hurries along with his mules and porters: the crane whirls aloft at one time a stone, at another a great piece of timber: the dismal funerals dispute the way with the unwieldy carriages: here runs a mad dog, there rushes a sow begrimed with mire. Go now, and meditate with yourself your harmonious verses. All the whole choir of poets love the grove, and avoid cities, due votaries to Bacchus delighting in repose and shade. ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... social relations are slight, should chance to find you toying with the coppers in his till, you may possibly explain that you are interested in Numismatics and are a Collector of Coins; and he may possibly believe you. But if you tell him afterwards that you pitied him for being overloaded with unwieldy copper discs, and were in the act of replacing them by a silver sixpence of your own, this further explanation, so far from increasing his confidence in your motives, will (strangely enough) actually decrease it. And if you are so unwise as ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... number of its representatives, the House of Representatives passed a bill providing for an increase of 42 members. The new ratio of representation would then be one representative to 211,877 inhabitants. Effort was made to prevent this increase, for it was argued that the House had already become unwieldy, requiring great effort on the part of members to make themselves heard. The bill failed to pass the Senate at the regular session, but subsequently, at the special session, it became a law. Party lines were closely drawn in the Senate, for, on account of this increase, the Republicans would probably ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... was sea; sea without shore. Here and there some one remained on a projecting hill-top, and a few, in boats, pulled the oar where they had lately driven the plough. The fishes swim among the tree-tops; the anchor is let down into a garden. Where the graceful lambs played but now, unwieldy sea- calves gambol. The wolf swims among the sheep; the yellow lions and tigers struggle in the water. The strength of the wild boar serves him not, nor his swiftness the stag. The birds fall with weary wing into the water, having ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... carried after The Giant, one of the Ghat merchants adding two more dollars. I was pleased with this trait of the Ghateen, who were determined we should not go off in this uncomfortable plight. The Giant I did not see again; I regretted to part with him in this manner. Under his huge and unwieldy exterior he concealed the most tender and generous disposition. His Giantship never begged of me; and when I gave him a little tobacco, he thanked me a thousand times. He was always cheerful with, and ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... a huge machine moving upon wheels, and including several platforms or stages, which held various parties of armed soldiers, who were defended by a strong roofing of boards and hides, beneath which they could work their battering-rams with impunity. To co-operate with this unwieldy and bulky instrument, which, from its shape and covering, they called a "sow," movable scaffolds had been constructed, of such a height as to overtop the walls, from which they proposed to storm the town; and, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... been made at Blois. This Blois is a very little town, and the king can draw it after him; but Paris is a damned unwieldy bulk; and when the preachers draw against the king, a parson in a pulpit is a devilish fore-horse. Besides, I found in that insurrection what dangerous beasts these townsmen are; I tell you, colonel, a man had better deal with ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... This papyrus was very expensive and heavy, and not at all suitable for printing. Parchment, the dressed skins of certain animals, especially sheep, which became the standard material for the hand- written documents of the middle ages, was extremely durable, but like papyrus, it was costly, unwieldy, and ill ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... cabin, containing 170 berths. This is lighted by artificial light, and is used for meals. An enclosure for the engine occupies the centre, but is very small, as the machinery of a, high-pressure engine is without the encumbrances of condenser and air- pump. The engines drove the unwieldy fabric through the calm water at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. I have been thus minute in my description, because this one will serve for all the steamers in which I subsequently travelled in the United States ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... the snow off my coat." And they fetched their brooms and swept him clean. Then he stretched himself before the fire and grumbled out his satisfaction, and in a little while the children became familiar enough to play tricks with the unwieldy animal. They pulled his long shaggy skin, set their feet upon his back and rolled him to and fro, and even ventured to beat him with a hazel-stick, laughing when he grumbled. The Bear bore all their tricks good-temperedly, and if they hit too ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... corner by labeling him crank and long-haired prophet; even the silence that greeted his pamphlets, his letters to the Press, and all the rest, hurt him for others rather than for himself. His pain was altruistic, never personal. His dream and motive, his huge, unwieldy compassion, his genuine love for humanity, all ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... bawling just as lustily as doubtless those coxswains of old shouted; no one, however, struck on the rocks, as we are told the unfortunate "Centaur" did. Still the little mahogany-built Abercorn continued to forge ahead of her unwieldy French competitors. The Frenchmen splashed and spurted nobly, but the little Oxford-built boat increased her lead, her silken "Union Jack" trailing in the water. All the muscles of the French fleet came into play; the admiral's barge churned the water into creaming foam; "mes braves" were incited ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... elaborate form of lyric poetry invented comparatively late. But, even allowing it is the Spring Song, are we much further? Why should the Dithyramb be bull-driving? How can driving a Bull help the spring to come? And, above all, what are the "slender-ankled" Graces doing, helping to drive the great unwieldy Bull? ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... Petersburg embraced with enthusiasm the new doctrines, and declared war against "classicism," under which term they understood all that was antiquated, dry, and pedantic. Discarding the stately, lumbering, unwieldy periods which had hitherto been in fashion, they wrote a light, elastic, vigorous style, and formed a literary society for the express purpose of ridiculing the most approved classical writers. The new principles found many adherents, and ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace |
