"Clown" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sufferings to be greater merely on this account. They were often abused and beaten by others, and sometimes put in danger of their lives. It was a common question put to a Quaker in those days, who addressed a great man in this new and simple manner, "why you ill bred clown do you thou me?" The rich and mighty of those times thought themselves degraded by this mode of address, as reducing them from a plural magnitude to a singular, or individual, or simple station in life. "The use of thou, says George Fox, was a sore cut ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... I am not a foe. Do not fly me as a lamb flies the wolf, or a dove the hawk. It is for love I pursue you. You make me miserable, for fear you should fall and hurt yourself on these stones, and I should be the cause. Pray run slower, and I will follow slower. I am no clown, no rude peasant. Jupiter is my father, and I am lord of Delphos and Tenedos, and know all things, present and future. I am the god of song and the lyre. My arrows fly true to the mark; but alas! An arrow more fatal than mine has pierced ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... globe of Menippe, I saw the giant, partly in profile against the sky, with his back bent and his hands upon his knees, watching me with an occasional approving nod of his big head. He looked so funny standing there on his little seven-by-nine world, like a clown on a performing ball, that, despite my terrible situation, I shook my sides with laughter. There was no echo in the profundity of ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... sweet country school-girls working at one flower, warbling one song, growing together like a double cherry. Of England, is the picture of the hounds with "ears that sweep away the morning dew"; from England, all this out-door woodland life, the clown's play and the clowns themselves,—Bottom with his inimitable conceit, and his fellows, Snug, Quince, and the rest. English is all Puck's fairy lore, the cowslips tall, the red-hipt humble-bee, Oberon's bank, the pansy love-in-idleness, and all ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... I suppose, is intended for our ears by the Duke of Styria. He probably wishes us to know that he is against us," said Charles. "He wanted our daughter for his clown of a son, and our contempt for his claims rankles in his heart. He cannot inflame Wuertemberg, and Wuertemberg cannot ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... thanksgiving. Following a curious custom of the day, which shows Folly and Wisdom side by side, just as we find them in Calderon's and Shakespeare's dramas, Lucretia presented the costly robe which she wore when she offered up her prayer, to one of her court fools, and the clown ran merrily through the streets of Rome, bawling out, "Long live the illustrious Duchess of Ferrara! Long live Pope Alexander!" With noisy demonstrations the Borgias and their retainers celebrated ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... the street in the bright spring sunshine, followed by the performers, mounted on well-groomed horses, some of which were beautifully mottled. There were other horses, many of them—a few drawing chariots, driven by Amazons. Then came the funny clown, in his little cart, with his jokes and grimaces ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... me! Just look and see That pink-cheeked lady in skirts of gauze And the great big lion with folded paws! O me! O my! I'm glad that I Am not in that lion's cage, because Suppose he'd open his horrible jaws! —But look! the clown is coming! Of course Facing the tail of a spotted horse And shouting out things to make folks laugh, And grinning up at the tall giraffe That placidly paces along and looks Just ...
— Child Songs of Cheer • Evaleen Stein
... He seemed to be saying: "This water is much too cold for me." The mamma bear was dressed in a poke bonnet and white apron, and resembled the wolf who frightened Little Red Riding-Hood, and Ikey, the baby bear, wore rakishly over one eye the pointed cap of a clown. To those who knew their vaudeville, this was indisputable evidence that Ikey would furnish the comic relief. Nor did Ikey disappoint them. He was a wayward son. When his parents were laboriously engaged in a boxing-match, or dancing to the "Merry Widow Waltz," or balancing on step-ladders, Ikey, ...
— The Nature Faker • Richard Harding Davis
... through space in astral bodies, and produce matter out of nothing at all. (Here the group endeavour to look as if these facts were familiar to them from infancy, while the Comic Coachman assumes the intelligent interest of a Pantomime Clown in the price of a property fish.) Very well; but perhaps some of you may not be aware that at this very moment the air all around you is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... available sleeping-places are occupied. The clown, trapeze performers, bareback riders, and various acrobatic artists are compelled to sleep on deck. This is but little inconvenience in such warm weather. They are stretched and curled in different shapes on benches ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... these ruffians, or wandering comedians that were hated, or scorned, pitied, embraced, conventionalized. There's not a notion in this book that has a more frightful, or ridiculous, mien than had the notion of human footprints in rocks, when that now respectabilized ruffian, or clown, was first heard from. It seems bewildering to one whose interests are not scientific that such rows should be raised over such trifles: but the feeling of a systematist toward such an intruder is just about what anyone's would be if a tramp from ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... a simultaneous advance, we and the French on our right," he wrote in one place. "Our sector will bear the brunt of it. The thing has been kept wonderfully quiet, and so far the enemy knows nothing. All their attention is turned on the 'Clown' Prince's insane operations against Verdun, and the German General Staff seem to have forgotten the Somme region altogether, and to underrate the British as usual. But there will be ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... violent sobs of little Alice. In his earnestness he had neglected to soften clown the narrative so that it might not terrify the heart of this unworldly infant. Since Grandfather began the history of our chair, little Alice had listened to many tales of war. But probably the idea had never really impressed itself upon her ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it were, it is so ugly and worn. It is too bad to expect Mr and Mrs Thornton to do all the hard, depressing work of the parish and keep bright and cheerful themselves, when their home is enough to give the blues to a clown! It looks as if it hadn't been touched for ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... it is nevertheless the fact that scene after scene may be cited from Tristram Shandy, and those the most delightful in the book, which are not only free from even the momentary intrusion of either the clown or the caricaturist, but even from the presence of "comic properties" (as actors would call them) of any kind: scenes of which the external setting is of the simplest possible character, while the humour is of that deepest and most penetrative kind which springs from the eternal ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... prate of God and know nothing whatsoever about Him! The horse, dog, cat,—even the wild animals, whose vices, perchance, pale beside your own, may go to Heaven before you. The Supreme Architect is neither a Nero, nor a Stuart, nor a clown. He will recompense all who deserve recompense, be they great ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... exists a cast, without perceiving at once its capabilities. It was indeed small, but at the same time it was thin, light, delicately articulated, and, if I may say so, highly expressive. Chopin's whole body was extraordinarily flexible. According to Gutmann, he could, like a clown, throw his legs over his shoulders. After this we may easily imagine how great must have been the flexibility of his hands, those members of his body which he had specially trained all his life. Indeed, the startlingly ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... and jerking his tail, in an indescribable fashion, and chattering all the while. His "inner consciousness" at such a moment would be worth perusing. Possibly he has some feeling for the grotesque. But I suspect not; probably what we laugh at as the antics of a clown is ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... subject? but I see not what I see. Damsel and lover? hear not what I hear. My father hath begotten me in his wrath. I suffer from the things before me, know, Learn nothing; am not worthy to be knight; A churl, a clown!' and in him gloom on gloom Deepen'd: he sharply caught his lance and shield, Nor stay'd to crave permission of the King, But, mad for ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... intelligence, was a relief to the eye, as was the vivid face of Shorty, who came out of the forecastle with a leap and a gurgle of laughter. But there was something wrong with him, too. He was a dwarf, and, as I was to come to know, his high spirits and low mentality united to make him a clown. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... by the lure of a pretty and winsome wife, who should, if any power on earth could, have made a man again of him. She laughed, indeed, at his maudlin tales of past heroism and adventure in love and battle; to her he was a plaster hero, and she let him know it. She was "mated to a clown," and a drunken clown to boot—and, well, she would make the best of a bad bargain. If her husband was the sorriest lover who ever poured thick-voiced flatteries into a girl-wife's ears, there were others, plenty of them, who were eager to pay more acceptable ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... manfully combated with these intrusive sensations of awe. He summoned to his side the brace of large greyhounds, who were the companions of his sports, and who were wont, in his own phrase, to fear neither dog nor devil; he looked at the priming of his piece, and, like the clown in Hallowe'en, whistled up the warlike ditty of Jock of the Side, as a general causes his drums be beat to inspirit the doubtful courage of ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... Mozart's thought. Not Giovanni but Zerlina was the principal figure; the climax of the drama was not the final Statue scene, but "Batti, batti"; Leporello's part was exaggerated until the Statue scene became a pantomime affair with Leporello playing pantaloon against Giovanni's clown. Such an opera could interest none but an Elephant and Castle audience, and probably only the beauty of the music prevented it reaching the Elephant and Castle long ago. So low had "Don Giovanni" ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... clown such as that could have any chance of leaving the ground alive never entered his head. But willingly as he would have encompassed his death in this manner, the knowledge that his secret would not die with Quennebert ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... dangerous, his visit to Rome, and his conversion to Romanism; and, in short, disgusted the cautious Mr. Walpole. There is something delightfully impudent about all these acts of Wharton's; and had he only been a clown at Drury Lane instead of an English nobleman, he must have been successful. As it is, when one reads of the petty hatred and humbug of those days, when liberty of speech was as unknown as any other liberty, one cannot but admire the impudence of his Grace of Wharton, and wish that most dukes, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... her little gloved hand through his arm, and drawn very near to him, moved by tender thoughts of the past. He looked clown at her with eyes from which all anger had vanished. There was only love in them—deep love; love such as a very affectionate brother might perchance give his only sister—but it must be owned that brothers capable of such ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... but it is dreadfully dull this afternoon, no one else seems to be coming, this book is the worst ever, he might prove entertaining; I'm twenty-nine and can't be so particular; I'll go down and see how the clown talks." ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... patients kept streaming into the already crowded room, and one gentleman, reversing the order assigned to him by nature, walked gravely in on the palms of his hands, with his legs elevated in air. He had been a clown at a theatre, and still retained some of the proclivities of the boards. A wizen-faced man, who seemed to have no name beyond the conventional one of "Billy," strutted in with huge paper collars, like the corner man in a nigger troupe, and a tin decoration on his breast the size ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... his ways, though they were far from suspecting what had really happened. But Mrs. Grivois, rather surprised than uneasy at her pug-log's insensibility to her affectionate appeals, and believing him to be sullenly crouching beneath the seat, stooped clown to take him up, and feeling one of his paws, drew it impatiently towards her whilst she said to him in a half-jesting, half angry tone: "Come, naughty fellow! you will give a pretty notion of your temper to these ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... many of them speak? "Oh, all ye that can pray, tell all the Lord's people to try, by mourning and prayer, if ye can taigle him, taigle him especially in Scotland, for we fear, he will depart from it." This is the theology of a savage, in the style of a clown, but it is quoted by Walker as Mr. Alexander Peden's.' Mr. John Menzie's "Testimony" (1670) is all about "hardened men, whom though they walk with you for the present with horns of a lamb, yet afterward ye may hear them speak with the mouth ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... ever a tragedy in which clown is wholly absent? As he steps over the graves, up comes a man as drunk as a goat, and cries out, "Ah! Mr. Gladstone will you take the duty off the whiskey?" Upon which he of Hawarden Castle turns him round and says slowly—"My friend, the ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... wonderful blue and silver and pink and gold habits, and by knights in armor, all of whom carried umbrellas also. Pages walked beside the horses, waving banners and shields with "Visit Currie's World-Renowned Circus" painted on them. A droll little clown, mounted on an enormous bay horse, made fun of the pages, imitated their gestures, and rapped them on the back with his riding-stick in a droll way. A long line of blue and red ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... morning Sloan found the essay in his pocket and looked around the city-room for D.K.T. The staff poet-clown was no daylight saver; professing to burn the midnight oil in the interest of his employer, he seldom drifted in ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... of the darkness, coming as silently as a shadow. He was no longer the bumbling clown. The idiotic grin was gone and his eyes were green fire, slanted and catlike, his teeth flashing white in a snarl as he looked back toward the sound ...
— —And Devious the Line of Duty • Tom Godwin
... remember my telling you about him. He had to be killed, and father sent for the butcher. I was only a lad, and I was all of a shudder to have the life of the creature I had known taken from him. The butcher, stupid clown, gave him eight blows before he struck the right place. The ox bellowed, and turned his great black eyes on my father, and I fell ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... for a beggarly English clown!' cried the King, aiming a blow at the lad with his whip, and pushing on his horse, so as almost to throw him back on the heath. 'Ho! ho! fit him out for a ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... observes, "About nine-tenths of what we say is of no earthly importance to anybody." Further light is thrown on this confession by the claim of an Islington applicant for exemption: "Once I was a circus clown, but now I ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... the thing! The clown! If one must be a philosopher, let him be Aristophanes. And no one at the table thinks I am jingled. I am in fine fettle, that is all. I tire of the labour of thinking, and, when the table is finished, start practical ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... eye, unless he were a professor like himself. A stroke of wit will sometimes produce this effect, but there is no such power or superiority in sense or reas hardly know the professor from the impudent pretender or the mere clown.(1) ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... her. Again she strove, in her natural voice, to plead that to stop her would imperil a man's life, and to implore for release. "We know all that," she was told. It was not rudely said. The voice was not that of a clown; it was a gentleman's pronunciation, and this was in some ways more inexplicable and alarming. The horses were put in rapid motion; she heard the trampling of many hoofs, and felt that they were on soft turf, and she knew that for many miles round Winchester it was possible to keep on the downs so ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... knowledge fits the country clown; We've better things to note in town. What's Nature's lore compared ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... part of M. Segmuller required not a little courage. There had been so much laughter about M. Segmuller's grand seigneur, disguised as a clown, that many men would have sacrificed their convictions ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... If we except him, there was no other member of the family old enough to govern except Tiberius Claudius Nero, the brother of Germanicus and the only surviving son of Drusus and Antonia. He was generally considered a fool, was the laughing-stock of freedmen and women, and such a gawk and clown that it had been impossible to put him into the magistracy. Indeed, he was not even ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... floated in these brilliant waves, and our admiration increased as we watched the marine monsters disporting themselves like salamanders. I saw there in the midst of this fire that burns not the swift and elegant porpoise (the indefatigable clown of the ocean), and some swordfish ten feet long, those prophetic heralds of the hurricane whose formidable sword would now and then strike the glass of the saloon. Then appeared the smaller fish, the ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... the wretch ordain'd by fate, Neal Gahagan, Hibernian clown, With hatchet blunter than thy pate, To hack my hallow'd ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... grant an honour to be Neptune's child, A grace to be so near with Jove allied. But yet, sweet nymph, with this be not beguiled; Where nature's graces are by looks decried, So foul, so rough, so ugly as a clown, And worse than this, a monster with one eye! Foul is not graced, though it wear a crown, But fair is beauty, none ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... Bert's whip, and out from a side place, back of a big screen, came Jack Hopkins dressed like a real clown, leading our old friend ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... spurs, rode a wooden ass, in which the speaker was concealed. The ass and the devil were favorite characters. The former sometimes appeared in monkish garb and brayed responses to the intonations of the priests, while the latter, arrayed in fantastic costumes, seems to have been the prototype of clown in the pantomime. As late as 1783 the buffoonery of this kind of exhibition continued. An English traveller, describing a mystery called the "Creation" which he saw at ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... Punch had a pet Whom we must not forget, A dog known as Toby by name; A clown from a show One day came to know If Punch would not sell ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown
... many years, to have survived only in the performances of circuses and menageries. Between acts the extravaganzaist in cork and wool would appear, and to the song of "Coal-Black Rose," or "Jim along Joe," or "Sittin' on a Rail," command, with the clown and monkey, full share of admiration in the arena. At first he performed solus, and to the accompaniment of the "show" band; but the school was progressive; couples presently appeared, and, dispensing with the aid of foreign ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... in silence, and then ran to fetch the keys. While he ran, the driver sat motionless, leaning sideways and looking at the closed door; and Lavretsky's man-servant remained in the picturesque attitude in which he found himself after springing clown to the ground, one of his arms resting on the box seat. The old man brought the keys and opened the door, lifting his elbows high the while, and needlessly wriggling his body—then he stood on one side, and again bowed down to ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... If it takes three generations to make a gentleman one will not make a thinker. Instruction is acquired, but capacity for instruction is transmitted. The brain that is to contain a trained intellect is not the result of a haphazard marriage between a clown and a wench, nor does it get its tractable tissues from a hard-headed farmer and a soft-headed milliner. If you confess the importance of race and pedigree in a race horse and a bird dog how dare you deny ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... is never more truly herself than in her grandest form. The Apollo of Belvedere (if the universal robber has yet left him at Belvedere) is as much in nature as any figure from the pencil of Rembrandt, or any clown in the rustic revels of Teniers. Indeed, it is when a great nation is in great difficulties that minds must exalt themselves to the occasion, or all is lost. Strong passion, under the direction of a feeble reason, feeds a low fever, which serves only to destroy the body that entertains it. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... I will Let Webster's lofty face Like vaulters in a circus round Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown Long I followed happy guides Love asks nought his brother cannot give Love on his errand bound to go Love scatters oil Low and ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... with the haute ecole, and weary us with Shakespearean clowns?—Still, at least, they give us acrobats, and the acrobat is an artist. The mere fact that he never speaks to the audience shows how well he appreciates the great truth that the aim of art is not to reveal personality but to please. The clown may be blatant, but the acrobat is always beautiful. He is an interesting combination of the spirit of Greek sculpture with the spangles of the modern costumier. He has even had his niche in the novels of our age, and if Manette Salomon be the unmasking of the model, Les ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... robed in scarlet and escorted by javelins and trumpets, opened the King's commission twice a year. There were the markets at which the corn, the cattle, the wool, and the hops of the surrounding country were exposed to sale. There were the great fairs to which merchants came clown from London, and where the rural dealer laid in his annual stores of sugar, stationery, cutlery, and muslin. There were the shops at which the best families of the neighbourhood bought grocery and millinery. Some ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... propagandists of women's rights confined themselves to the exhibition of short petticoats and long-legged boots, and to the holding of conventions and speech-making in concert rooms, the people were disposed to be amused by them, as they are by the wit of the clown in the circus, or the performances of Punch and Judy on fair days, or the minstrelsy of gentlemen with blackened faces, on banjos, the tambourine, and bones. But the joke is becoming stale. People are getting cloyed with these performances, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Hamlet. Shakespeare had all the prejudices of his age. He accepted the world as it is with its absurd moralities, its conventions and institutions and social classes. A gravedigger is naturally inferior to a lord, and if he is to be presented at all, he must come on as a clown. The people are always a mob, the rabble. Tolstoy, is the revolutionist, the iconoclast. He has the completest independence of mind. He utterly refuses to accept established opinions just because they ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... Favourite'—with a ring and a rush, a spirit and swiftness of colour, not approached by the best verse of Egerton Warburton or Whyte-Melville. Especially vivid and terse is the description of the latter part of the race, where the favourite (The Clown) overtakes Iseult, the mare ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... and Tilda, after trying the patient unsuccessfully with a few jokes from the repertoire of her own favourite clown, had fallen back upon "I love my love"—about the only game known to her ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... mode of catching trout by tickling them with the hands under rocks or banks. Shakspeare makes the clown in "Measure for Measure" say ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... appeared to me to thrive no better in the Mediterranean provinces than at Rome. Half citizen, half clown, the people representing it are plunged in a crass ignorance. Having just sufficient means to live without working, they lounge away their time in homes comfortless and half-furnished, the very ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... that was too terrible; he would not allow himself to think of it. He turned away, went back up the chamber, and crossed over again to the air-way. Moving back a little to search for foot-prints, he came to an old door-way and sat clown by it to rest—yes, and to weep. He could no longer think of the torture the child must have endured in his wanderings through the old mine and keep the tears from his eyes. He almost hoped that death had long ago come to the ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... own advantage to do the same, and cited instances of persons who had not allowed the greatest griefs to keep them from the exercise of their calling. He knew of a scholar, he said, who delivered his lecture while his wife was dying, of a clown who cracked his jokes on the stage, though his wife had eloped with another man and ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... maternal instincts: I had that still greater reliance common to our sex in the general tender-heartedness of pretty women. But I confess I was alarmed. Yet, with a feeble smile, I tried to introduce the subject with classical ease and lightness. I even said, "If Shakspeare's Athenian clown, Mrs. Brown, believed that a lion among ladies was a dreadful thing, what must"—But here I broke down; for Mrs. Brown, with the awful intuition of her sex, I saw at once was more occupied with my manner than my speech. So I tried a business brusquerie, and, placing the telegram ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... obedient to their precepts, if not in certain points of morality, in all things else. Carlyle is a vigorous thinker, but a vile writer, worse than Bulwer. I breakfasted in company with him at Milman's. Macaulay was there, a clever clown, and Moore too, whom I had not seen till then. Between those two Scotchmen he appeared like a glow-worm between two thistles. There were several other folks, literary and half literary, Lord Northampton, &c., &c. I forgot Rogers. Milman has written the two best volumes of poetry ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... a clown, and certainly looked very funny; but his bad cold prevented him from speaking his jokes distinctly, and so ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... contains a large quantity of the history of songs in the 16th century, and is one of the most important to be found in Shakespeare. Autolycus sells ballads 'of all sizes' among his wares; the country folk, Mopsa, Dorcas, and the Clown, buy them, and afterwards sing them; and the rustic servant distinctly prefers the pedlar's vocalisation to their accustomed 'tabor and pipe,' or even ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... be a champion and a high up man that had died for her sake. It is what broke her down in the latter end, hearing him to be no big man at all, but a clown! ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... (the miller's second son) is really an exquisite droll, and I don't remember to have seen him in better form. He has some of the authentic ingredients of the old circus clown—a very ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... two small oval bodies will be replaced a little lower clown by a string or bundle of eggs, very minute in some seasons, but strongly marked and large in the breeding season. It is sometimes difficult to tell the sex—in young birds especially; but a good plan is to get a bird, known by its plumage to be a male—say ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... the Colonel to Win as he sat clown again, a discolored roll of papers in his hand, "the original Manor house has been added to from time to time. Let us see what it comprised in the days when Richard Lisle read his Psalter and wrote his letter. It is possible that something then ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... Clown Bows low before the belle, Whose modest face, And simple grace, In starry robe ...
— The Adventure of Two Dutch Dolls and a 'Golliwogg' • Bertha Upton
... as a silver dollar. In the book we can smell the sawdust, hear the flapping of the big white canvas and the roaring of the lions, and listen to the merry "hoop la!" of the clown. ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... French poodles. Michael could not see them, save when he was being taken out or brought back, but he could smell them and hear them, and, in his loneliness, he even started a feud of snarling bickeringness with Pedro, the biggest of them who acted as clown in their turn. They were aristocrats among performing animals, and Michael's feud with Pedro was not so much real as play-acted. Had he and Pedro been brought together they would have made friends in no time. But through the slow monotonous drag of the hours ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... performance had commenced before we entered, and at that time the act in progress was that of jumping and turning somersets over a poor and patient quadruped of the equine species. There was no clown in "propria persona," but a poor Mestizo supplied the place of one, for being so unfortunate as to make some awkward leaps at the commencement, and showing some concern at his failure, whenever his ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... gives her a stagey look, which I think in her particular profession it is most important not to have, as people are in any case so inclined to doubt the genuineness of those who deal in the occult. Besides, what an odd practice that painting the face black in patches is! As unlike real life as a clown's red nose, though I suppose less unbecoming. I myself only use a little powder, which is so necessary in hot, or, ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... Alvan Stewart of Cherry Valley was the clown of the court room, and to such good purpose that the ablest lawyers of Cooperstown dreaded him as an opponent. He was a master of absurd wit and ridicule. In Proctor's Bench and Bar he is referred to as "one of the most powerful adversaries that ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... perilously near the edge of the steep rock. His lips moved though no sound could be heard for the tumult of the falls which was rending the air. What connection had such a man with his surroundings? No boor or clown was he, for the simple dignity of face and manner marked him as one ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... you lescue," replied John doggedly. "All li; you name Collin; you b'long-a Gullamen Clown; all li; you killee me bimeby; all li." With this the discomfited Mongol turned his horse in the direction of Mondunbarra homestead, and, like a driver starting an engine when there is danger of the belt flying off, gradually worked up his pace to a canter, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... change was worked in Ellis. He no longer looked like the same boy. The alteration in his appearance was almost as striking as that which takes place in a country clown caught by a recruiting sergeant, half drunk at a fair, as he rolls on, looking every moment as if he was going to topple over, from public-house to public-house, and when he has been under the drill-sergeant's ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... life is subject, a glance over a wide range of human experience proves that God helps those who help themselves, and whatever be the tenor of our fortune, levity is more seemly than moodiness, and under any circumstances there is more virtue in being a clown than a cynic. But in adversity, a subdued cheerfulness and quiet humor are, next to Christian fortitude, the golden mean of feeling that makes the loss of worldly things rest lightly on the heart, and spreads out before the hopeful eye the vision of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... your suit, For of your courting you'll reap no fruit. I would rather give a crown Than be married to a clown; Go for a booby, go, no-a-no,— ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... printed it as a sort of motto to his beautiful poetic play (1902), Such Is Life. However, the truth is that our poet is often disconcerting. His swift transition from mood to mood disturbs the spectator, especially when one mood is lofty, the next shocking. He has also been called "the clown of the German stage," and not without reason, for his mental acrobatics, his grand and lofty tumblings from sheer transcendentalism to the raw realism, his elliptical style, are incomprehensible even to the best trained of audiences. As Alfred Kerr rightfully puts it, you must learn ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... building. The window at the rear end of it overlooked the roof of the back kitchen. This window was open, and when Ruth reached the corridor Bella was going head-first through the open window, like a circus clown diving ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... arquebussiers and their leader marched off; while Bess, kneeling down, supported the head of the wounded man upon her knee, and Demdike, taking a small phial from his doublet, poured some of its contents clown his throat. The wizard then took a fold of linen, with which he was likewise provided, and, dipping it in the elixir, applied it to ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... OF THE CONQUEST: persons dressed as cavalrymen in steel armor of 1066, when William the Conqueror became King of England. PARTY-COLORED MERRY ANDREW: an old term for a clown dressed in garments having several colors. FALSTAFF: an important character in several of Shakespeare's plays. He is always represented as fat and ridiculous. DON QUIXOTE: the chief character of the celebrated Spanish satire "Don Quixote" (1605) by Cervantes. Don Quixote is a simple-minded ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... we see a dark mass, that glows dully. We can hardly believe that here is the origin of the explosions that shake the island, and are inclined to consider the demon of the volcano rather as a mischievous clown than a thundering, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... yourself, you beggarly wretch!" replied Anastasia, showing her teeth. "You are a low-bred fellow. Alfred, your boot-tree, till I take the length of his muzzle, to teach him to come and play the Joe Miller at his age, old clown!" ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... story of The Vagabonds is the story of a husband and of a young wife who does not love him, but discovers that she loves another man—a story as old as the hills and common to every rank and every calling. Mrs. Woods has made the husband a middle-aged clown, the wife a girl with strict notions about respectability, and the lover, Fritz, a handsome young German gymnast. But there was no fundamental reason for this choice of professions. The tale might be every bit as true ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... endeavouring to make the poor orphan girl curtsey instead of crying, and while Dandie, in his rough way, was encouraging them both, old Pleydell had recourse to his snuff-box. It's meat and drink to me, now, Colonel," he said, as he recovered himself, "to see a clown like this—I must gratify him in his own way,—must assist him to ruin himself—there's no help for it. Here, you ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... always the case in an assembly or gathering that some one of the number is foolish, and disposed to play the clown. It happened to be so here. One of this very sort was in the lodge, and, after Maidwa had given the old chief presents, as he had to the other, this pretender jumped up in ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... illustrations of manners; for his exposure of the tricks of foreign merchants, and for the humour and drollery which he has thrown into his principal comic personage. The name of this character is Simplicity, who is the fool or clown of the performance, and who, in conformity with the practice, not only of our earlier but sometimes of our later stage, makes several amusing appeals to the audience. We may pretty safely conclude, although we are without any hint of the kind, that ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... years had passed, Jasmin, being a spirited fellow, was allowed to accompany his father at night in the concerts of rough music. He placed a long paper cap on his head, like a French clown, and with a horn in his hand he made as much noise, and played as many antics, as any fool in the crowd. Though the tailor could not read, he usually composed the verses for the Charivari; and the doggerel of the father, mysteriously ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... Miss Fairfield," Ethel said; "you see, everybody is an animal or a clown or a bareback rider, or something that belongs to a circus. Bob Riggs is ringmaster, and they all obey him. He's awfully funny, and whatever he has to do with, is sure to be ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... braced against a hummock, the walrus at the other end has no advantage. Indeed, the odds are in favor of Oxeomadiddlee. His singular name is self-imposed, and is an Inuit expression of greeting, or rather when one unexpectedly arrives, as the clown says, "Here we are again," and occurred in this way. Several years ago he was hunting walrus in the pack-ice, when the wind changed and blew the ice away from shore. This is a contingency to which the hunters are constantly liable, and is the greatest danger to which ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... must know—had been flitting around with Hiawatha and the clown, but toward the end the latter had attached himself to her, to the exclusion of the Indian youth, and now Walter Pennington, with a shake of his head which set all the foolish little bells to ringing, told Paul's sister how delighted he was to renew his ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose
... chap!" the showman said, "Your day at last is done, No more you'll fly at Punch's head, Or cause the Clown to run, Poor little chap! you're weak, too weak ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... the circus life, even though he made some enemies. But he had many friends. There was Helen Morton. Then there was Benny Turton, who did a "tank act," and was billed as a "human fish." Jim Tracy, the ringmaster, Bill Watson, the veteran clown, and his wife, the circus "mother," Tom Layton, the elephant man who taught the big creatures many tricks, were only a few ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... Achille Pigoult; "but he is, without knowing it, like the clown of a circus, the centre of the eyes of the two thousand inhabitants of this town. I know one thing about him," ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... Miss NITA COLE as Nance, with Mr. DENNY as The McCrankie, may be considered as the real hit of the evening, having in itself about as much to do with whatever there is of the plot as would have the entrance of Mr. JOEY GRIMALDI, in full Clown's costume, with "Here we are again!" Of the music, as there was very little to catch and take away, one had to leave it. Of course this seriously comic or comically serious Opera is drawing—["Music," observes Mr. WAGG, parenthetically, "cannot ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... Mary, speaking still with resentment in her voice, "that the papers you held are the key to the situation. Have you no more sense than to trust them to the care of a red-headed clown from whom they can be taken as easy as if they were picked up off ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... quick change, you know. I came back—in tights, playing a big trombone, prancing round and making an awful noise. Lady Webling gave a little scream; nobody heard her because I made a loud blat on the trombone in the ear of the black-face clown, and he gave a shriek and ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... suit of mediaeval court clothes, black from head to foot, and fashioned according to the period of the play in which he was acting. But if he had worn the garments of a pierrot or a clown, one would never have noticed it. The man's individuality, magnetic and irresistible, triumphed easily. Mr. Grooten had passed away. It was the great Feurgeres, whose sad shining eyes lingered so wistfully ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... term, shed by religion on the minds and lives of many personally known to me. At the same time I cannot but observe how signally, as regards the production of anything beautiful, religion fails in other cases. Its professor and defender is sometimes at bottom a brawler and a clown. These differences depend upon primary distinctions of character which religion does not remove. It may comfort some to know that there are amongst us many whom the gladiators of the pulpit would call 'atheists' and 'materialists,' whose lives, nevertheless, as tested by any ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... the history of Foscari which would lead us to expect anything particularly noble in his face; but I trust, nevertheless, it has been misrepresented by this despicable carver; for no words are strong enough to express the baseness of the portraiture. A huge, gross, bony clown's face, with the peculiar sodden and sensual cunning in it which is seen so often in the countenances of the worst Romanist priest; a face part of iron and part of clay, with the immobility of the one, and the foulness of the other, double ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... return and the great moving shed of the Romans was brought nearer and nearer to the southern side of the temple, screening the miners from the rare missiles which the few men remaining with him cast clown by his orders. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... riotous flame. With utter abandonment she flung herself into the merriment of the moment, romping through the dances with any one who asked her, slapping the face of an elderly knight who went too far in his gallantries, dancing a hornpipe with a fat clown to the accompaniment of a hundred clapping hands. Up and down the crowded hall she raced, a hoydenish little tom-boy, drunk with youth, with freedom, and with the pent-up vitality ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... police reports, in the Sunday papers; he had heard a street preacher declaim against it, and warn young women of the serpent-like wiles of tempters of the Stratton variety. But even now Jack failed to recognize Stratton as a serpent, or indeed anything but a blundering cheat and clown, who had left his dirty 'prentice work on his (Jack's) hands. But the girl was helpless and, it seemed, homeless, all through a certain desperation of feeling which, in spite of her tears, he could not but respect. That momentary shadow of death had exalted her. ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... by overpowering weight of gorgeous spectacle, there should re-appear in our midst a revival of the ancient Pierrot who pantomimed himself into public favour with the Parisians towards the close of the seventeenth century. Red-hot poker, sausages, and filching Clown have had their day, and lo! when everyone said we were tired of the "comic business" of Pantomime, here in our midst re-appear almost in their habits as they lived, certainly with their white faces and black skull-caps "as they appeared," a pair of marvellously ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... whillaloo That oft smacked of "Killaloe," The contagious wrath of Buskin and of Sock Hath abated for awhile, And no more the Emerald Isle On the stage and in the green-room seems to shock. The curtain is rung down, The comedian and the clown, With the sombre putter-on of tragic airs, Are gone, with all the cast, And the Theatre, at last, Is "Closed for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... however, than the stranger. Still his head and heart, alike, were full, and he talked more freely than was altogether consistent with his Yankee character. He told of Ralph's predicament, and the clown sympathized; he narrated the quest which had brought him forth, and of his heretofore unrewarded labors; concluded with naming the ensuing Monday as the day of the youth's trial, when, if nothing in the meantime could be discovered ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... this sculpture, you are to learn what a "Master" is. Here was one man at least, who knew his business, once upon a time! Unaccusably;—none of your fool's heads or clown's hearts can find a fault here! "Dog-fancier,[49] cobbler, tailor, or churl, look here"—says Master Jacopo—"look! I know what a brute is, better than you, I know what a silken tassel is—what a leathern belt is—Also, what a woman is; and also—what a Law of God is, if you ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... streets silent as the grave—not a person, not a lamp, not so much as a barking dog, as queer and as creepy as some made-up thing in a theatre. Once we stumbled past a naked and dismembered trunk set up beside a doorway—a physician's manikin that chance or some sinister clown had left there. Once—and one of the strangest sounds I ever heard—behind the closed up-stair shutters of an apothecary's shop, whose powders and poisons were strewn over the sidewalk, a piano haltingly ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... deluded. Why, even the old Catholic cathedrals with their holy-water stoups, their occasional altars of stone, still remaining, their Lady chapels, and their niches for the images of the saints, as ill befit the present occupiers, and their modern English services, as a Court dress befits a clown. ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... from the genius of Elia. Jaques, it will be remembered, after hearing the "motley fool" moral on the time, declared that "motley's the only wear"; and I opine that Lamb would consider it no small praise to be likened, in wit, wisdom, and eloquence, to Touchstone, or to the Clown ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... although they were pale and woe- begone. The troopers at the lower table were noisy and rude enough, and Ranulph suspected that his entertainment had been ordered partly to keep them from getting out of hand with drinking and rioting. He had contrived a clown's costume from some of his belongings, aided by a little flour and paint, and a bauble made of a toasting fork stuck through an apple. When he pranced into the hall the soldiers yelled with surprise ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... The following clay was Sunday, but it was no day of rest for the rioters, except those who were too drunk to move; they went into the country, it is true, but it was only to destroy chapels, and to plunder, and burn clown houses. On this day, however, their work of destruction was stopped. By the evening of the day, probably not finding sufficient drink in the cellars of the Dissenters, they had begun to break open and to destroy the houses of churchmen. They were busy in breaking open the house of Dr. Withering, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... wild At his too near approach, Her fear of him such, And to shriek and to howl And return scowl for scowl. Indeed few dare him face, And all shun his embrace; For though pleasant his smile, Yet one thinks all the while Of that terrible frown, Which the hardiest clown, Though a stout hearted man, Will avoid if he can. And though many maintain That he gives needless pain, I confess I admire This venerable sire. True his language is harsh, And his conduct oft rash, ...
— The Kings and Queens of England with Other Poems • Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow
... his gabble, took the larger portion for read, after muttering the first words of the rubric. A little carven image of an acolyte—a weird boy who seemed to move by springs, whose hair had all the semblance of painted wood, and whose complexion was white and red like a clown's—did not make matters more ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... wasted and almost motionless a long time; but slowly, as the springtime drew near, and the snows on the lower hills loosened, and the abounding waters coursed green and crystal clear clown all the sides of the hills, Findelkind revived as the earth did, and by the time the new grass was springing and the first blue of the gentian gleamed on the ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... wos patriots playing the clown, there was magistrates playing the fool; There wos jugginses teaching the trombone to kids at a bloomin' Board School. "This is Free Hedgercation in Shindy," sez I. "They're as mad as March hares, All these Limboites, dear Miss DIANNER. We ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... inquire after the health of old "Von Woodenburg," old "One O'clock," the "Clown Prince," or "One Bumstuff." Hans would take this in a jocular way, slamming back something about Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Lloyd George, or Sir Sham Shoes, but when we really wanted to get Fritz's goat we would tease him about ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... whole nation. Of the rescuing party only three were citizens of Lawrence. Sam Wood was in his element. He was a man overflowing with patriotism, yet succeeded in doing more harm to his friends than to his enemies. He possessed unmistakable talent; he was a clown and a born actor, and as a public speaker was sure to bring down the house; he was a pronounced free State man; yet in this act he made himself the ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... turned somersaults, and performed conjuring tricks, and was really the most witty, fascinating little fellow. Even Miss Nelson laughed at Eric, and Mr. Wilton openly regretted that the old established position of the family at Wilton Chase prevented his making his son a clown ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade |
