"Clown" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Indians and tumbling men, and the Bounding Brothers of Borneo, and a clown and monkeys, and a little mite of a pony with blue eyes. Was he any ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... hysteria. Inflamed by the insinuations of Mynheer Olenikke—a kind of Dutch Mephistopheles and Iago combined—he is secretly jealous of his consort the Princess Joedi's preference for the society of Djoe, the Court Jester and Society Clown. Here ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... Marcelline, the clown at the Hippodrome—always pretending to help, but forever keeping underfoot. When it becomes necessary I raise the money to keep the ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... meanwhile her husband, Lord Winsleigh, was pressing a good-night kiss on the heated forehead of an excited boy, who, plunging about in his little bed and laughing heartily, was evidently desirous of emulating the gambols of the clown who had delighted him ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Oberon seeing a clown near her, who had lost his way in the wood, and was likewise asleep: 'This fellow,' said he, 'shall be my Titania's true love'; and clapping an ass's head over the clown's, it seemed to fit him as ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... point to all hours of the day at once, the candle to burn green or crimson, the door to open upon a lake or a potato-field instead of a London street. Upon any one who feels this nameless anarchism there rests for the time being the spirit of pantomime. Of the clown who cuts the policeman in two it may be said (with no darker meaning) that he realises ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... no one in the department but us toys," said a Calico Clown, and he banged together some shiny cymbals on the ends of his arms. "The Jack is right—we are ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... bit last week because the village clown was on his home leave. He is a lad of twenty-three with a young wife and a little three-year-old girl, who has learned to talk since "dada" saw her, and is her father right over—full ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... 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
... long wild 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
... Says the Clown, when I tell him to do what he ought, "Sir, whatever your character be, To obey you in this I will never be brought, And it 's wrong to be meddling with me." Says my Wife, when she wants this or that for the house, "Our matters to ruin must go: Your reading and writing is not worth ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... 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
... aggregation of actual, living Silurian monsters, any one of which would make a man a fortune to-day, if it could be kept on ice and exhibited for one season only. You could take a full grown mastodon to-day, and with no calliope, no lithographs, no bearded lady, no clown with four pillows in his pantaloons and no iron-jawed woman, you could go across this continent and successfully compete with the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... muttered Lieutenant Danvers. "They've ordered the Rhinds scooter to slow clown and fall ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... about midnight. He asked to be allowed to see the patient, but Merril wouldn't let him go into the room. I thought he behaved to the captain like a clown.' ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... all that Lucilla can tell. Permit me to reappear in these pages. Shall I say, with your favorite English clown, reappearing every year in your barbarous English pantomime, "Here I am again: how do you do?" No—I had better leave that out. Your clown is one of your national institutions. With this mysterious source of British amusement let no ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... tutors; then shall they That love their voices more than duty, learn With whom they deal, dismiss'd in shame to live No wiser than their mothers, household stuff, Live chattels, mincers of each other's fame, Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown, The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks of Time, Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels, But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum, To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour For ever slaves at ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... o' class distinctions from our shoulders shall be hurled, An' the influence of woman revolutionize the world; There'll be higher education for the toilin' starvin' clown, An' the rich an' educated shall be educated down; An' we all will meet amidships on this stout old earthly craft, An' there won't be any friction 'twixt the classes fore-'n'-aft. We'll be brothers, fore-'n'-aft! Yes, an' sisters, fore-'n'-aft! When the people work ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... versatile and omniscient dilettante, war-lord and peacemaker, Mohammedan and Christian—always a comedian, yet always in earnest. And we all know how the heir to the throne is the reverse of the Kaiser, and how this Crown Prince, with the fancies of a degenerate, has deserved to be called the "Clown Prince." ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... why authors and actors are ashamed of being funny?—Why, there are obvious reasons, and deep philosophical ones. The clown knows very well that the women are not in love with him, but with Hamlet, the fellow in the black cloak and plumed hat. Passion never laughs. The wit knows that his place is at the tail ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... am called Lord Fermain Clancharlie, but my real name is one of poverty—Gwynplaine. I have grown up in poverty; frozen by winter, and made wretched by hunger. Yesterday I was in the rags of a clown. Can you realise what misery means? Before it is too late try and understand that our system of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... "no room for mirth;" Much less for sigh and frown. "A vale of tears" may be this earth— 'Tis so to every clown. The desert blossoms as the rose, And joy flows everywhere; The star of hope in brightness glows, No room for ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... 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 ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Gall, founder of the system of phrenology. Born in Baden, 1758; died in Paris, 1825] was illustrated. I saw a troop passing the Place du Carrousel, composed of clowns, harlequins, fishwives, etc., all rubbing their skulls, and making expressive grimaces; while a clown bore several skulls of different sizes, painted red, blue, or green, with these inscriptions: Skull of a robber, skull of an assassin, skull of a bankrupt, etc.; and a masked figure, representing Doctor Gall, was seated on an ass, his head turned to the animal's tail, and receiving from ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the Meeting House windows. Suddenly her rustic Quaker lover, a kind of Ham Peggotty, lounges out of the Conventicle, which, as these persons seem to leave and enter just when it suits them, ought rather to be called a Chapel-of-Ease,—and, like the clown that he is, says in effect, "I'm a-looking at yer! I've caught yer at it!" Dismay of Dook and Dancer!! then Curtain on a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... matrimony is sure to raise it. This hath been attended with very pernicious consequences. Many a country squire, upon his setting up for a man of the town, has gone home in the gaiety of his heart and beat his wife. A kind husband hath been looked upon as a clown, and a good wife as a domestic annual unfit for the company or conversation of the beau monde. In short, separate beds, silent tables, and solitary homes have been introduced by your men of wit ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... Nor are sentiments of elevation in themselves turgid and unnatural. Nature is never more truly herself than in her grandest forms. 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 ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... time he and his brother had fastened the barrel staves to their shoes, winding and tying the cords and ropes, and even some old straps around and around. Their feet looked very queer—almost like those of some clown in the circus. But Laddie and Russ did not mind that. They wanted to walk ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope
... in accordance with his master's advice, to keep his tongue from between his teeth, as it would otherwise have been bitten off short. The worthy fellow bounced from the elephant's neck to his rump, and vaulted like a clown on a spring-board; yet he laughed in the midst of his bouncing, and from time to time took a piece of sugar out of his pocket, and inserted it in Kiouni's trunk, who received it without in the least ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... hospitably, and with increasing frequency, as his means became rapidly more ample. He was also fond of the theatres, taking special delight in comedies and farces, however broad, and even pantomimes. With what solemn drollery he would afterwards dwell on the feats of Clown and Pantaloon! I am here, however, speaking of several years ago; for latterly he said, "It was a very hard thing to find any thing to laugh at in a pantomime, however ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... contemptible even to be suspected of thinking of him; yes, I should despise myself for such a thought."—"To be sure, ma'am," said Slipslop. "And why to be sure?" replied the lady; "thou art always one's echo. Is he not more worthy of affection than a dirty country clown, though born of a family as old as the flood? or an idle worthless rake, or little puisny beau of quality? And yet these we must condemn ourselves to, in order to avoid the censure of the world; to shun the contempt of others, we must ally ourselves to those we despise; we ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... You're right. It's coming this way! Here come the chariots. [Gestures to the BATHOLOMMEYS to join him at the window. The music comes nearer and nearer—the parade is supposed to be passing. WILLIAM gives a cry of delight as a clown appears at the window with handbills under ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... forthwith; but ne'er was blundering clown Upon the boards more promptly hooted down; The sister flowers ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... come in, as papa seemed to be enjoying himself so. Boaler has given warning, but we can't think why. We have been out nearly every evening—once to Hengler's and once to the Christy Minstrels, and last night to the Pantomime, where papa was so pleased with the clown that he sent round afterwards and asked him to dine here on Sunday, when Sir Benjamin and Lady Bangle and Alderman Fishwick are coming. Won't it be jolly to see a clown close to? Should you think he'd come in his ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... very heavy, and the head is still more weighed down in winter, as it is protected from the cold by a thick and very warm cap of reindeer skin, bordered with dogskin, from the back part of which hang clown two straps set full of heavy ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... 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 a passion, and ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... described. But, to reduce this to a common-sense view, it is only saying,—what no one will deny,—that a man of education and refinement has not only more, but higher, pleasures of the mind than a mere clown. ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... said Barefoot to herself, stroking her disfigured face; "you have done me a good turn. Through you I can talk to him as if I were not here; I can speak behind a mask, like a clown on Shrove Tuesday. Hurrah—that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... when I was a reveryin'—right there, when we wuz a floatin' clown the still waters, their voices riz up in one of their inspired songs. They sung about their "Hard Trials," and how the "Sweet Chariot swung low," and how ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... return next summer. Went to the school to-day, and nicknamed all the fellows. 'Badger' for the principal, 'Red Shirt' for the head-teacher, 'Hubbard Squash' for the teacher of English, 'Porcupine' the teacher of mathematics and 'Clown' for that of drawing. Will write you many other things ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... reward of vice, directly opposite to the rules of their best critics, as well as to the practice of dramatic poets, in all other ages and countries. For example, a country squire, who is represented with no other vice but that of being a clown, and having the provincial accent upon his tongue, which is neither a fault, nor in his power to remedy, must be condemned to marry a cast wench, or a cracked chambermaid. On the other side, a rakehell of the town, whose character is set off with no ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... me for a text. Among others the Rev. Mr. Talmage, of Brooklyn. I have nothing to say about his reputation. It has nothing to do with the question. Some ministers think he has more gesticulation than grace. Some call him a pious pantaloon, a Christian clown; but such remarks, I think, are born of envy. He is the only Presbyterian minister in the United States who can draw an audience. He stands at the head of the denomination, and I answer him. He's a strange man. I believe he's orthodox, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... happy ... but how does one know one is happy? I suspect my happiness. It is a clown's suit in which my mourning disguises itself. Mallare has fallen out of his black heaven. And he picks himself up like a good burgher. He grunts and chuckles and looks at the skies, alas, without curiosity. Lucifer, fallen, finds diversion as a janitor ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... were supposed to have before them. The performers usually danced in pairs, and vanished behind the screen when their dance was finished. Thus one pair would follow another till the play was over. Besides the actors who played the serious and solemn part of the dead, there was usually a clown who skipped about and cut capers, tumbling down and getting up again, to make the spectators laugh and so to relieve the strain on their emotions, which were deeply stirred by this dance of death. The beat of the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... badly dressed man with long hair, who, under his dusty coat, resembled a clown, inspired so little confidence in him that he suspected a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... still fascinates and amuses us as she fascinated and amused her contemporaries. They were great sentimental comedians, these Peters, Elizabeths, and Catherines who played their Tsarships as eccentric character parts, and produced scene after scene of furious harlequinade with the monarch as clown, and of tragic relief in the torture chamber with the monarch as pantomime demon committing real atrocities, not forgetting the indispensable love interest on an enormous and utterly indecorous scale. Catherine kept this vast Guignol Theatre open for nearly half a century, not as a Russian, but ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... communicative, 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
... his permanent study a dark room in the courtyard. There it was that I saw him for the first time, surrounded by a great wilderness of books, and attired in an unpretentious indoor costume, the most striking feature of which was a tall, pointed felt cap, such as I had seen worn by the clown who belonged to the troupe of rope-dancers at Eisleben. A great love of independence had driven him to this strange retreat. He had been originally destined for the Church, but he soon gave that up, in order to devote himself entirely to philological studies. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... apparently aimless or sportive touches, we recognize that the beneficent Creator of all things, working through His handmaiden whom we call Nature, has deigned to mingle a charm of divine gracefulness even with so earthly an institution as a boundary-fence. The clown who wrought at it little dreamed what fellow-laborer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... as vouchsafed to look at Henry Howard, who is upon the point of being the first duke in England, and who is already in actual possession of all the estates of the house of Norfolk? I confess that he is a clown, but what other lady in all England would not have dispensed with his stupidity and his disagreeable person, to be the first duchess in the kingdom, with twenty-five ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... you who follow wealth and power, With unremitting ardour, O, The more in this you look for bliss, You leave your view the farther, O: Had you the wealth Potosi boasts, Or nations to adorn you, O, A cheerful honest-hearted clown I will prefer before ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... old primeval psalm. Woe for the leaf of human life! it flutters in the sere, And what avails its dance in air, with dust and down-come near? That airy dance, what signifies the madness that inspires? The king, the clown, alike is borne along, alike expires. Come let us try another weird—the tempest let us chain; A bridle for the passions ho! for giant pride a rein! Thus quelleth grace the master-craft that was the cause of all The ruin that befell us in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... leave of the young lady, who made him rich presents. Margutte, seeing this, and being always drunk and impudent, daubed his face like a Christmas clown, and making up to her with a frying-pan in his hand, demanded "something for the cook." The fair hostess gave him a jewel; and the vagabond skewed such a brutal eagerness in seizing it with his filthy hands, and making not the least acknowledgment, that when they got out of the house, Morgante ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... of space is not required, therefore not observed. In twelve lines the twilight is represented on a pond, tree, field, somewhere... its effect on the appearance of a young man, a wind, a sky, two cripples, a poet, a horse, a lady, a man, a young boy, a woman, a clown, a baby-carriage, some dogs is represented visually. (The expression is poor, but I can find ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... Street The City That Will Not Repent The Trap Where is David, the Next King of Israel? On Reading Omar Khayyam The Beggar's Valentine Honor Among Scamps The Gamblers On the Road to Nowhere Upon Returning to the Country Road The Angel and the Clown Springfield Magical Incense The Wedding of the Rose and the Lotos King Arthur's Men Have Come Again Foreign Missions in Battle Array Star of My Heart Look You, I'll Go Pray At Mass Heart of God The Empty Boats With a Bouquet of ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... him—young, emotional, without a doubt intellectual. But for his awful clothes he was well enough to look upon, he had no affectations, his instincts were apparently correct. His manners were hoydenish, but there was nothing of the clown about him. She asked him ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... there stood a noble pile, Wrought with pilaster, bay, and balustrade In tactful times when shrewd Eliza swayed. - On burgher, squire, and clown It smiled the long street down ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... hero was there in glory, followed about by an innumerable tag-rag and bobtail, and I am afraid that on two occasions at least he was tempted to swagger and 'show off,' as children say. He shambled up to one of the 'try your strength' machines: the figure of a circus clown, with a buffer to punch at in the neighbourhood of his midriff, and a dial on his chest to indicate the weight of the blow administered. The Slasher tossed a penny to the proprietor of the machine and waved him on one side; ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... frighted beast ran through the town, 55 All follow'd, boy and dad, Bull-dog, parson, shopman, clown: The publicans rush'd from the Crown, 'Halloo! hamstring him! cut him down!' THEY DROVE ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... by the 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 mind that men have shed the blood ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Expert opinion was called in, and the afternoon I had to make that drawing—with my own children as models—the "consultation" was being held in my wife's room. Carroll was on his way from Oxford to see the work, and I was drawing against time. It's the old story of the clown with the sick wife. Caricaturists are after all but clowns of the pencil. They must raise a laugh whatever their state of mind may be. For a long time I never would show Lewis Carroll my work, for the simple reason I did not do it. He thought I was at work, but ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... in the next. 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 it ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... debate; Peace, tim'rous goddess! quits her old domain, In sentiment and song content to reign. Nor are the nymphs that breathe the rural air So fair as Cynthia's, nor so chaste as fair: These to the town afford each fresher face, And the clown's trull receives the peer's embrace; From whom, should chance again convey her down, The peer's disease in turn attacks the clown. Here too the 'squire, or 'squire-like farmer, talk, How round their regions nightly pilferers walk; How from their ponds the fish are ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... literally, fiat-nosed, was a cant word, used for a clown; Galba being jeered for his rusticity, in consequence of his long retirement. See c. viii. Indeed, they called Spain ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... period of the North Hall scene, was new to the Court. He must soon have discovered that Ralegh was not to be spurned as a clown, or to be stormed out of the Queen's graces by insolence. He did not grow therefore the less hostile. He rejected Elizabeth's inducements to him to live on terms of amity with a rival in all essential respects infinitely his superior. Persuaded ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... the wiry, light-fingered, fighting-loving gentry spent much of their leisure there. Those confounded trowsers of theirs offered conveniences of stowage-room which they made rare use of. Nothing was too small, and few things too unwieldy, to ride in them; like the pockets of clown in a pantomime, they could accommodate a well-grown baby or a pound of sausages equally well. I have a firm conviction that they stuffed turkeys, geese, and fowls into them, and I positively know that ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... capital form, and talked freely, with a certain poignancy, being no fool. He told two or three stories verging on the improper, a concession to the company, for his stories were not used to verging. He proposed Irene's health in a mock speech. Nobody drank it, and Winifred said: "Don't be such a clown, Monty!" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... how all their plays be neither right tragedies nor right comedies, mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in the clown by head and shoulders to play a part in majestical matters, with neither decency nor discretion; so as neither the admiration and commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel tragi-comedy obtained. I know Apuleius did somewhat so, but that ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... d'industrie. Of this we have an example in "Le Gendre," in some respects one of the most objectionable of De Bernard's novels, certainly not well suited for a birth-day present to misses in their teens. A seemingly tame, insipid clown of a husband counteracts the base manoeuvres of a dashing Paris roue; and finally, after refusing to fight the would-be seducer, whom he has ascertained to be an arrant swindler, takes truncheon in hand, and belabours him in presence of his intended victim and of a roomful of company. But ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... nose has a bridge to it, this directly produces in some minds an image like Blackfriars Bridge; that it is straight, the AEginetan marbles; that it is retrousse, the dog in that Hogarth portrait. Suggest a cheerful countenance, and you stamp your subject for ever as a Shakespearian clown. So you must be content to know that Mr. Bradshaw was a good-looking young man, of dark complexion, and of rather over medium height and good manners. If he had not been, he would never, as an article of universal ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Paradise, the peasant O Moreno who knows the dances of Beira, the negro chattering in his pigeon-Portuguese 'like a red mullet in a fig-tree,' the deceitful negro expressing the strangest philosophy in Portuguese equally strange, the rustic clown Gon[c,]alo with his baskets of fruit and capons, who when his hare is stolen turns it like a canny peasant to a kind of posthumous account: leve-a por amor de Deos pola alma de meus finados, the Jew Alonso Lopez who had formerly been prosperous in Spain but is now a poor new Christian cobbler at ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... way; We soon shall know what he has to say. Courier! what are the tidings to-day? "Christ is arisen!" Whence come you? "From town." Then I do not believe it; away with you, clown. ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... thinking face Like the yellow moon. This one has a face with white blots: I call him the clown. Here goes one down the grass With a pretty look of plumpness; She is a little girl going to school With her hands in the pockets of her pinafore. Her name is Sue. I like this one, in ...
— Poems By a Little Girl • Hilda Conkling
... and His holy Word, even He who gave His own blood as the purchase-price, is held to be but mockery and fools' wit, I must likewise drop all seriousness, and see whether I, too, have learned how to play the fool and clown. Thou knowest, my Lord Jesus Christ, how my heart stands toward these arch-blasphemers. That is my reliance, and I will let matters take their course in Thy name. Amen. They must ever abide ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... does she know she wrecked us," suggested the other. He was a stunted, wiry little man of thirty-five. His head seemed slightly too large; he had a pasty face with the sloe-black eyes, button nose, and the widely chiselled mouth of a circus clown. ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... characters in the Hospital, one of them being Jefke, the orderly in Ward I, who at times could be tender as a woman, at others a veritable clown keeping the men in fits of laughter, then as suddenly lapsing into a profound melancholy and reading a horrible little greasy prayer book assuring us most solemnly that his one idea in life was to enter the Church. Though he stole jam right and left his heart was in the right place, for the ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown; Perhaps the selfsame song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home, She stood in tears amid ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... Galvanized by the darkies, I remember but two other bits of amusement we had while at Florence. One of these was in hearing the colored soldiers sing patriotic songs, which they did with great gusto when the weather became mild. The other was the antics of a circus clown—a member, I believe, of a Connecticut or a New York regiment, who, on the rare occasions when we were feeling not exactly well so much as simply better than we had been, would give us an hour or two of recitations of the drolleries with which he was wont to set the crowded ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... a funny man in a little, two-wheeled cart, driving a donkey. This was the clown. He bowed and smiled to everybody, right and left, and even threw kisses at some of the girls. His painted face, his bag-like clothes, and his odd little round, pointed hat made Johnnie Green laugh. And to Johnnie's great delight, when the clown ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey
... outshines Upon a fairer town Than Penafiel, or endows More richly farming clown; Nowhere a broader square reflects Such brilliant mansions, tall,— Away, ye ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... 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. ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... of the ballroom opened with a blatting of trumpets, and a circus parade rolled in. It was composed of the Zenith brokers, dressed as cowpunchers, bareback riders, Japanese jugglers. At the head was big Warren Whitby, in the bearskin and gold-and-crimson coat of a drum-major. Behind him, as a clown, beating a bass drum, extraordinarily happy and ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... who seemed in the present instance to do none, was seen among docks and nettles, solacing himself with the few gooseberries which remained on some moss-grown bushes. To him Mr. Touchwood called loudly, enquiring after his master; but the clown, conscious of being taken in flagrant delict, as the law says, fled from him like a guilty thing, instead of obeying his summons, and was soon heard hupping and geeing to the cart, which he had left on the other side ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... like to be a clown, Playing tricks around the town, Turning somersaults and springs, As if they were easy things, Laughing morning, noon and night, ...
— Songs for Parents • John Farrar
... system is the attitude naturally assumed by the judge. No one, says Fitzjames, 'can fail to be touched' when he sees an eminent lawyer 'bending the whole force of his mind to understand the confused, bewildered, wearisome, and half-articulate mixture of question and statement which some wretched clown pours out in the agony of his terror and confusion.' The latitude allowed in such cases is highly honourable. 'Hardly anything short of wilful misbehaviour, such as gross insults to the court or abuse of a witness, will draw upon ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... 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, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... begin! he who defers the hour of living well is like the clown, waiting till the river shall have flowed out: but the river still flows, and will run on, with constant course, to ages without end."—Horace, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... This is a sad-looking little girl, painted by WILLIAM CARTER. She has an unsettled expression. Is she suffering from what the Clown calls "teezy-weezies-in-the-pandenoodles," and, as Sir JOHN MILLAIS'S "Bubbles" served P**RS for an advertisement, is it beyond the range of probability that this, being associated with the name of "CARTER," should ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... upon the English Fairy court was the celebrated Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, who to the elves acted in some measure as the jester or clown of the company—(a character then to be found in the establishment of every person of quality)—or to use a more modern comparison, resembled the Pierrot of the pantomime. His jests were of the most simple and at the ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... to a small, up-country town, When we were boys at school, There came a circus with a clown, Likewise a bucking mule. The clown announced a scheme they had Spectators for to bring— They'd give a crown to any lad Who'd ride him ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... fool to say so. D' you think I haven't watched the young brute these many years? Self-sufficient, ignorant, hot-headed, always in the wrong. What d' you find to praise in the clown? Look at his life. Failure! failure! failure! and making of enemies at every turn. Where would he ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... expected attack; but all his efforts were weakened by the want of money; and at the close of the year his usurped throne was in danger of being overthrown. Insurrections were also, this year, prevalent in Italy. They occurred in Parma, Modena, and the Papal States, and were put clown by Austrian interference. Greece, during the same period, for whose pacification the powers of Europe had laboured so long, was a scene of violence and war. The popularity of Capo d'Istria, either from ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... not laugh if you do not want to," said Cutter. "I am used to being thought dull. Your gravity would not wound me though I were chief clown to the whole universe, and yours were the only grave face in the world. By the by, you are laughing, I see. I am much obliged for the appreciation. Shall I go on ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... appareil de chasse shot upward like a swallow. "A Nieuport," shouted the crowd as one voice. Eager to atone for his copain's failure, and impatient at his delay in getting out of the way, the tiny biplane tossed and tumbled about in the air like a clown in the ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... or grief, or indignation, of an enlightened and refined character is not only expressed in a different language, but is in itself a different emotion from the love, or grief, or anger, of a clown, a tradesman, or a market-wench. The things themselves are radically and obviously distinct.... The poor and vulgar may interest us, in poetry, by their situation; but never, we apprehend, by any sentiments that are peculiar to their condition, and still ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... 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, indeed, ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... marked him from head to foot with big, bright, red spots, he was as gaudy as a circus clown, and as nimble ...
— Denslow's Humpty Dumpty • William Wallace Denslow
... Bumpkin, "I can teach ee summat, can't I, though thee comes from town, and I be only a country clown farmer?" ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... pardon again and again, and I really mean no offence: clown as I am, I hope I know better than to say anything to hurt my own guest in my ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... at her in silence, and again her indignation arose full-armed against him. How dared he—this clown in woman's clothes—speak to her at such a moment of that which she rightly held to be the holiest thing ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... done so often. A few glanced at the antique valise to see what Coney "attraction" or brand of chewing gum he might be thus dinning into his memory. But for the most part he was ignored. Even the newsboys looked bored when he scampered like a circus clown out of the way of cabs and ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... 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
... the spade And all at once take up the poet's trade: To give a manuscript a fairer face, And all the beauty of poetic grace; Or give the most offensive flower that blows Carnation's sweets, and colours of the rose; And change the homely language of the clown To suit the courtly readers of the town— Just such a work, in fact, I mean to say, As well might please the critics ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... not have missed one." And so it was that the youngest member of the ballet corps came to be looked on as a general-utility person, who could be called on at a moment's notice to play the part of queen or clown, boy or elderly ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the Foe finds passage to the vital part Fear nought so much as Fear itself If thou wouldst fix remembrance—thwack! Nought credit but what outward orbs reveal The overwise themselves hoodwink The king without his crown hath a forehead like the clown Vanity maketh the strongest most weak Where fools are the fathers of every miracle Who in ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... to play the part of a clown or buffoon, acting in a very silly and stupid manner, while the others looked on laughing and pointing their fingers at him ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... us through that vera wundow there. Lord keep us a'!!' He next alarmed a little hamlet near the hills; appearing and disappearing to various individuals in a most mysterious manner; till at last a clown, with a few grains of more courage than the rest, loaded his gun and put a sixpence into it, with the intention of stealing upon him as he sat most mysteriously chattering on the top of a cairn of stones, and then shooting him with silver, which is known never to fail in finishing the imps ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... how he can," said Alexia, drawing a long breath. "Dear me, it would just tire me to death. Why, Polly Pepper!" Alexia threw clown her pen and stared at her. "When is ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... Marcadee. Blondel had grown from a minstrel-boy To a very romantic troubadour Whose soul was music, whose song was joy, Whose only motto was Vive l'amour! In lady's bower, in lordly hall, From the king himself to the poorest clown, A joyous welcome he had from all, And Care in his presence forgot to frown. Sadly romantic, fantastic and vain, His heart for his head still made amends; For he never sang a malicious strain. And never was known to fail his friends. Who but he, when the captive king, By a brother betrayed, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... we did doubt In which Scene we laught most two shillings out. Shakespeare to thee was dull, whose best jest lyes I'th Ladies questions, and the Fooles replyes; Old fashioned wit, which walkt from town to town In turn'd Hose, which our fathers call'd the Clown; Whose wit our nice times would obsceannesse call, And which made Bawdry passe for Comicall: Nature was all his Art, thy veine was free As his, but without his scurility; From whom mirth came unforced, no jest perplext, But without labour cleane, chast, and ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... at 'Douglas's notions.' He is far from prepossessing in personal appearance, and his voice is disagreeable; and yet he wins attention and good-will from the start. He indulges in no flowers of rhetoric, no eloquent passages. He is not a wit, a humorist, or a clown; yet so fine a vein of pleasantry and good-nature pervades what he says, gliding over a deep current of poetical arguments, that he keeps his hearers in a smiling mood, ready to swallow all he says. His sense of the ludicrous ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... 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," ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... life at all'. What is become of you? Are you married, hearing that I was dead (for so it has been reported)? Or are you gone into a nunnery? Or are you fallen in love with some of the amorous heroes of Boccaccio? Which of them is it? Is it with Chynon, who was transformed from a clown into a lover, and learned to spell by the force of beauty? Or with Lorenzo, the lover of Isabella, whom her three brethren hated (as your brother does me), who was a merchant's clerk? Or with Federigo Alberigi, an honest gentleman, who ran ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... humour often moves me to tears," said Mr. Amarinth musingly. "There is nothing so absolutely pathetic as a really fine paradox. The pun is the clown among jokes, the well turned paradox is the polished comedian, and the highest comedy verges upon tragedy, just as the keenest edge of tragedy is often tempered by a subtle humour. Our minds are shot with moods as a fabric is shot with colours, and our moods often seem ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... brown eyes were so deep in melancholy that I could not hold my wrath. "Was it a gentleman's part to lead me on to play the clown?" I asked. "I ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... Calvert, quietly, though he was white with unaccustomed anger, "I see that you are one destined to make mistakes. I am neither skating nor singing-master, nor clown nor coward. I am an American gentleman, and, should anyone be inclined to doubt that fact, I will convince him of it at the point of my sword—or with pistols, since English ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... stage as Julius Caesar, in the play of that name, may be accounted one. Neither has he envious characters, excepting the short part of Don John, in 'Much Ado about Nothing.' Neither has he unentertaining characters, if we except Parolles, and the little that there is of the Clown, in 'All's Well ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... granary, around which the corn is soon massed in long and high rows. When the whole crop has been got in, a moonlight night is selected for stripping off the shucks; and this is a gay occasion with the negroes, for they are allowed as much whiskey as they can carry under their belts. The leading clown among them is deputed to mount the pile and sing, while the rest sit below and work. As he ends each verse, they reply in a chorus that can be heard miles away through the clear, still, frosty air. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... those nice shades of manner which as effectually separate the gentleman from the clown with us as do these broader lines which mark these two classes among all other nations. They think that it is the grand characteristic of Columbia's children to be prejudiced, opinionated, selfish, avaricious, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... empty niches of the old Hotel de Ville, sketching the scene to the life, but with a [6] kind of grace—a marvellous tact of omission, as my father pointed out to us, in dealing with the vulgar reality seen from one's own window—which has made trite old Harlequin, Clown, and Columbine, seem like people in some fairyland; or like infinitely clever tragic actors, who, for the humour of the thing, have put on motley for once, and are able to throw a world of serious innuendo into their burlesque looks, with a sort of comedy which ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... left my face, but unfurling the big feather fan, she waved it slowly between us. I, who had, in the words of Dr. Theophilus, "no small wits in my head," who could stand, dumb and a clown, in a ballroom, who could even trip up my partner, had found words that could arrest the gaze of the woman before me. To talk at all I must talk of big things, and it was of big things that I now spoke—of poverty, of struggle, of failure, of aspiration. My mind, like my ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... stretch his limbs In homely freedom. I fulfil a doom. We who are topmost on this heap of life Are nearer to heaven's hand than you below; And so are used, as ready instruments, To work its purposes. Let envy hide Her witless forehead at a prince's name, And fix her hopes upon a clown's content. You, happy lowly, know not what it is To groan beneath the crowned yoke of state, And bear the goadings of the sceptre. Ah! Fate drives us onward in a narrow ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... 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 and delight. Behind him at a discreet distance came a small ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... burners, whose light showed that the walls were garnished with petronels, rapiers, poniards, and other murderous weapons; besides these there were hung from pegs long riding-cloaks, sombreros, vizards, and other robber accoutrements, including a variety of disguises, from the clown's frieze jerkin to the gentleman's velvet doublet, ready to be assumed on an emergency. Here and there was an open valise, or a pair of saddle-bags with their contents strewn about the floor, and on a bench were a dice-box and shuffle-board, showing, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... soul, master-shipman, this passes all patience!" he cried wrathfully. "If this ship of yours must needs dance and skip like a clown at a kermesse, then I pray you that you will put me into one of these galeasses. I had but sat down to a flask of malvoisie and a mortress of brawn, as is my use about this hour, when there comes a cherking, and I find my wine over my legs and the flask in ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... going to make 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
... remember, the law of wager by battle was unrepealed, and the rascally murderous, and worse than murderous, clown, Abraham Thornton, put on his gauntlet in open court and defied the appellant to lift the other which he threw down. It was not until the reign of George II. that the statutes against witchcraft were repealed. As for the English Court of Chancery, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... explained themselves, and came to an understanding. The poor devil did not come like a conqueror, for he was a wretched clown who had just been released from prison, where he had undergone three years' hard labor for an attempted outrage on a girl, but, with one exception, the best fellow in the world, so the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... whom twenty years ago the country lost an excellent clown without gaining a statesman, was in ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... outpourings even more circumspect, there was no limit to his disgust at the elephantine graces of Horace, at the prattle of this hopeless lout who smirkingly utters the broad, crude jests of an old clown. ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... characterized by such an excess of words, figures and ornaments as to be ridiculous and disgusting. It is like a circus clown dressed up in gold tinsel Dickens gives a fine example of it in Sergeant Buzfuz' speech in the "Pickwick Papers." Among other varieties of style may be mentioned the colloquial, the laconic, the concise, the ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... rest, ere the lips could close The sound of a listener's laughter rose. It was not the scream of a merry boy When harlequin waves his wand of joy; Nor the shout from a serious curate, won By a bending bishop's annual pun; Nor the roar of a Yorkshire clown;—oh, no! It was a gentle laugh, and low; Half uttered, perhaps, perhaps, and stifled half, A good old-gentlemanly laugh; Such as my uncle Peter's are, When he tells you his tales of Dr. Parr. The rider looked to the left and the right, With something of ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... with excitement, returned a timid salute, while Juanito bowed profoundly, took off his hat, and made the same gesture as the celebrated clown and caricaturist Panza ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... avenge the banished brother of the king of Thrace. After much fighting it is resolved to decide the issue by single combat, in the course of which explanations ensue which lead to a general recognition and reconciliation. The pastoral element is represented by old Antimon an antic shepherd, a clown his son, his daughter a careless shepherdess and her despised ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... most famous clown, In the country or the town; Never was a laugh so ringing, When the children ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... this," he whispered, his face very close to Ronnie's; blood streaming from his lip. "I would kill you for this, you clown! But I mean to kiss Helen again; and life, while it holds that prospect, is too sweet to risk losing for the mere pleasure of wiping you out. Otherwise, I would kill you ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... is so reasonable to condemn a poor fellow's play before you have heard it out." Then, with a change of tone, "Tom," muttered he, "they are losing their respect for specters; if they do, hunger will make a ghost of me." Next he fancied the clown or somebody had got ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... look you, it is all so easy; it is within every man's reach. No education is necessary, no nonsensical argumentation. I offer you a short cut to Glory. You may be the merest clown—cobbler, fishmonger, carpenter, money-changer; yet there is nothing to prevent your becoming famous. Given brass and boldness, you have only to learn to wag ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... the sick And a grave does it delve For the strong; mars the beauty of beauty itself, Makes a fool of the sage with its magic, A clown of the courteous knight, And a king of the ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... to Kramer?" he asked. And the German told him a strange story. Kramer was a queer mountebank sort of a chap who before conscription claimed him had been clown in a circus, and his antics and gymnastic feats had made him very popular with his fellow-troopers. He had been a good soldier too; and when he had become separated from his fellow-trooper in a sandstorm a day or more south of Swakopmund, and his ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... geography of Greece; a constant succession of surprises effected by the sudden substitution of low or incongruous terms in proverbs, quotations, and legal or religious formulas; scenes in dialect, scenes of excellent fooling in the vein of Uncle Toby and the Clown, girds at the audience, personalities that for us have lost their point,—about Cleonymus the caster-away of shields, or Euripides's herb-selling mother,—and everywhere unstinted service to the great gods Priapus ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... characteristic of good-breeding, a very necessary knowledge in our intercourse with men; for one of inferior parts, with the behaviour of a gentleman, is frequently better received than a man of sense, with the address and manners of a clown. Ignorance and vice are the only things we need be ashamed of; steer clear of these, and you may go into any company you will; not that I would have a young man throw off all dread of appearing abroad; as a fear of offending, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... inquiries into divine commands are required to be made personally, solemnly, prayerful. To 'prove all things,' and 'hold fast' and obey 'that which is good,' is a precept, equally binding upon the clown, as it is upon the philosopher. Satisfied from our observations of nature, that there is a God; our next inquiry is into the revelation of his will: which, when understood, must be implicitly obeyed, in defiance of any usages of society, and of every erroneous pre-conceived opinion. In this ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... persons. Maisie in particular, who would take too much on her brush at a time, had splashed and sprinkled herself all over, even to the tip of her small round nose; so that she looked like a funny little clown squatting on the grass. Even the dog Peter, hunting rats under the haystack near, his agitated hind-legs only just visible, bore a scarlet patch of ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... Don't play the clown just now. You can imagine how unpleasant my position in the Colonel's house has become. The worthy old gentleman either frigid or violent; the conversation spiced with bitter allusions; Ida suffering—I can often ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... * * * 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
... and her father said, "Do you think so? Well, I'm glad on't. I'd as soon she'd have him as anybody, and she's worthy of him too, for if she can love such a hideous old clown as I am, she'll stick to such a nice man as Dr. Lacey through thick and thin. But what do you ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... openly, Edith, that you know he has such a liking for you that he is becoming a clown in the hope that you ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... brother, sir, for want of education, sir, somewhat nodding to the boor, the clown; but I ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... clown was his especial delight. He fairly shouted at his quips and antics. When the mules were brought in and $5 offered to the boy or man who could ride one of them, Alfred was tempted to make the trial. He felt certain he could do ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... it shall make no cloud and no bitterness betwixt us twain. He is a fine lad and a noble one, and he deserves more at Dame Fortune's hands than such a clown as I. Shall I grudge him his luck if he gets her? never a whit! There may not be more than one Cherry in the world, but there are plenty of good wives and honest maidens who will brighten ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... 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 ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... twitched convulsively and her terrible eyes were like the vent-holes of internal fires; but she managed her rage with a skill that was high tribute to her will-power. "You are right in selecting this clown—this tag-rag," said she. "You and he, I see, are peculiarly suited to each other....My only regret is that in my blind affection I have wasted all these years and all those thousands of dollars on you." Madam Bowker affected ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... difference: my object is not to excite fear of supernatural tilings in my reader, but to show the effect of such fear upon the agents in the story—one a man of sense and firmness—one a man unhinged by remorse—one a stupid uninquiring clown—one a learned and worthy, but superstitious divine. In the third place, the book turns on this hinge, and cannot want it. But I will try to insinuate the refutation of Aldiboronti's exception into ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... intimate at college; two others endeavour to gain a subsistence by successively appearing as physicians, actors, and musicians: but the Man of Genius is disregarded, and at last prosecuted for his productions; the benefice is sold to an illiterate clown; and in the end three of the scholars are compelled to submit to a voluntary exile; another returns to Cambridge as poor as when he left it; and the other two, finding that neither their medicines nor their music would support them, resolve to turn shepherds, and to spend ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... pace. "You ugly, clumsy clown. You ape!" Tears began to spoil the flawless mask of her face. Blinded with anger, he grabbed roughly for her arm, but she broke ...
— The Happy Unfortunate • Robert Silverberg
... her back and side a severe twist, but she moved less painfully on more level ground, and, supported between Lucilla and the guide, whom the mischance had converted from a comedy clown to a delicately considerate assistant, she set out for the inn where the car had been left. The progress lasted for two doleful hours, every step worse than the last, and, much exhausted, she at length sank upon the sofa in the ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... As Speed after line 7 does not say a word during the whole of this long scene, we have sent him off the stage. It is not likely that the clown would be kept on as a mute bystander, especially when he had to appear in ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... importance and depth. The stage no longer offers a place for impossible deeds and the endless monologues of the hero, the important feature is harmonious concert of action. The hero, on a stage that conscientiously stands for real art and aims to produce life, is about as superfluous as the clown who amused the audience between the acts. After all the spectacle of one star display, one cannot help but hail the refreshing contrast, shown in the "Man of Destiny," by the clever Bernard Shaw, where he ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... sentiments of elevation in themselves turgid and unnatural. Nature 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 ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... the doeskin integuments, the stately form of Widdicomb, cased in martial apparel, advancing towards the centre of the ring, and commanding—with imperious gesture, and some slight flagellation in return for dubious compliment—the double-jointed clown to assist the Signora Cavalcanti to her seat upon the celebrated Arabian. How lovely looks the lady, as she vaults to her feet upon the breadth of the yielding saddle! With what inimitable grace does she whirl these tiny banners around her head, as winningly as ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... you, Howard," he said. "Do you think that poor devil would have bared his breast and shown that 'D' to even his dearest friend? Good God, man, why do you badger me! Am I to wear the cap and bells always, do you expect me to be dancing like a clown every moment of the day? Do I not play my part as well as I can? Who gave you the ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice |
