"Clownish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hasjelti and Hostjoghon performed their antics with fawn skin and wands. The third series embraced all the dances exactly like the above. The fourth series embraced nineteen dances. The only variation in this was that the leaders were often more clownish in their performances, and upon several occasions only four men representing women appeared. In this case two men danced together. Some of the dancers dropped out from weariness, which caused diminution in some of the sets. The last dance closed at ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... reposed in our bosoms could not be disappointed, but ample redemption, with interest, was secure with us. Lastly, our common captivatrix of the love of all men (money), did not neglect the rectors of country schools, nor the pedagogues of clownish boys, but rather, when we had leisure to enter their little gardens and paddocks, we culled redolent flowers upon the surface, and dug up neglected roots (not, however, useless to the studious), and such coarse digests ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... course, to her stepson, and in a sense she and her daughter are dependent on him, but it is not a united household. I know very little about the young man, except that he is industrious and fond of out-of-door pursuits, and farms his own estate; but I hear he is a little clownish in appearance. Now we are stopping, because I have a patient to see here, but I shall not be ten minutes, and we will resume our ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... silent, stupid dinners, with the massive plate and the dark oak wainscoting, and the servants gliding about like ghosts at a festival in Acheron! What a relief it would have been even to have had a clownish footman spill soup over one's dress, or ice-cream down one's back, or anything to break the monotony of the entertainment! But, no; there we sat, Aunt Horsingham remarking that the "weather was dull" and the "crops looking very unpromising;" Aunt Deborah with ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... hats, and homely English calicoes. It is true that the change among the men was not quite as striking, for their attire admits of less variety; but the black stock had superseded the check handkerchief and the bandanna; gloves had taken the places of mittens; and the coarse and clownish shoe of "cow-hide" was supplanted by the ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... are none. But any London visitor who might imagine that he was about to find himself in a company of clownish provincials would be much mistaken. A very large proportion of colonists have travelled and even lived in more lands than one. They have encountered vicissitudes and seen much that is odd and varied in nature and human nature. In consequence ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... too much neatness in Pastoral is not to be allow'd, so rusticity (I do not mean that which Plato, in his Third Book of a Commonwealth, mentions which is but a part of a down right honesty) but Clownish stupidity, such as Theophrastus, in his Character of a Rustick, describes; or that disagreeable unfashionable roughness which Horace mentions in his Epistle to Lollius, must not in my opinion be endur'd: On this side Mantuan ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... Address to the King, and went over much of the {90} same historical ground that Pulteney had traversed in the Commons. The Duke of Newcastle replied in his usual awkward and bungling fashion, with the uneasy attitudes and clownish gestures which were characteristic of him. He was not able to make any effective use of the King's message, and the Lord Chancellor read it for him. The division in the House of Lords showed seventy-nine votes ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... him, as they had failed his father in law, and might well wish to surround himself with men who were not of our blood, who had no reverence for our laws, and no sympathy with our feelings. Such imputations could find credit with no body superior in intelligence to those clownish squires who with difficulty managed to spell out Dyer's Letter over their ale. Men of sense and temper admitted that William had never shown any disposition to violate the solemn compact which he had made with the nation, and that, even if he were depraved enough ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... leaving port we were all busy as usual except the four men in the "crow's-nests," when a sudden cry of "Porps! porps!" brought everything to a standstill. A large school of porpoises had just joined us, in their usual clownish fashion, rolling and tumbling around the bows as the old barky wallowed along, surrounded by a wide ellipse of snowy foam. All work was instantly suspended, and active preparations made for securing a few of these frolicsome fellows. A "block," or pulley, was hung out at the bowsprit end, a whale-line ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... was Mis in the twilights that followed the hatching of his children; and, though he was as much in the air as ever, it was not the fun of frolic and clownish tricks that kept him there. For, besides his own keen appetite, he had now the hunger of the twins to spur him on. Such a hunter as he was in those days! Why, he caught a thousand mosquitos on one trip; and ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... night; when, after supper, he would go into some by-alehouse in town, or else to one in some village near, and there by himself take his pipe and pot," &c. "But so it is that, notwithstanding our author's great merits, he was but little regarded in the University, being observed to be more clownish than courteous, and always to go in an old antiquated dress. Indeed he was a mere scholar, and consequently must expect, from the greatest number of men, disrespect; but this notwithstanding, he was always a true lover of his mother, the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... owl have shrieked and the cricket cried in my very title-page? and could it have been possible for me, with a moderate attention to decorum, to introduce any scene more lively than might be produced by the jocularity of a clownish but faithful valet, or the garrulous narrative of the heroine's fille-de-chambre, when rehearsing the stories of blood and horror which she had heard in the servants' hall? Again, had my title borne, 'Waverley, a Romance from the German,' what head so obtuse as not to image forth a profligate ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... short clownish grub, would beare the whole carkase of an Oxe, and yet neuer tugged with him, like that so famous Milo, when hee was ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... yet our fires with joy could Plautus hear; Gay were his jests, his numbers charm'd their ear." Let me not say too lavishly they prais'd; But sure their judgment was full cheaply pleas'd, If you or I with taste are haply blest, To know a clownish ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... streaming from the death-ship and the curving river is the thought of the older South: the sincere and passionate belief that somewhere between men and cattle God created a tertium quid, and called it a Negro,—a clownish, simple creature, at times even lovable within its limitations, but straitly foreordained to walk within the Veil. To be sure, behind the thought lurks the afterthought,—some of them with favoring ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... from his surprise he returned my assault with interest. I was nothing in his hands. I was game to be sure, for I was a gentleman; but he had the clownish advantages of bone and muscle. I felt as if I could have fought even unto the death; and I was likely to do so; for he was, according to the vulgar phrase, "putting my head into Chancery," when the gentle Columbine flew to ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... about four o'clock twirling his hat on the end of a stick in an annoyingly care-free manner. Tom Slade saw him passing Council Shack intent upon his acrobatic enterprise of tossing the hat into the air and catching it on his head, as if this clownish feat were the chief ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... drawn a capital picture of the ease and perfection with which the clownish chrysalis may be metamorphosed into the scarlet moth of war. Catch the animal young, and you may turn him into any shape you please. He will learn to wear silk stockings, scarlet plush breeches, collarless coats, with silver buttons; and swing open a gate with a grace, or stand behind ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... famille Bearbinder, parents and daughter, together with Sir Hector Rumbush and a clownish son, who the former insists shall marry the sentimental Barbara Bearbinder, but who, accordingly, does no ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... undoubtedly—remarkably plain:—but that is nothing compared with his entire want of gentility. I had no right to expect much, and I did not expect much; but I had no idea that he could be so very clownish, so totally without air. I had imagined him, I confess, a degree or two ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... and the one who was still holding Hayoue's hand began to pull him along, urging him to go to the village with them. The adventurers from the Rito felt that they might be welcome. Zashue even made an eccentric, clownish ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... while another is speaking to you. You will not of course be so rude as to dig in the earth with your feet, or take your penknife from your pocket and pair your nails; but there are a great many other little movements which are scarcely less clownish. ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... imprisoned damsel, whom he releases from the tree, Maudlin and Douce retiring the while to watch his success, which is small. Baffled, he again shuts the girl up in her natural cell, and his mother, coming forward, rates him soundly for his clownish ways, reading him a lecture for his guidance in his intercourse with women, in which she seems little concerned by the presence of her daughter. This latter, so far as it is possible to judge from the few speeches assigned ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... the first. His clownish ways pleased the judge, the jury and the spectators. His ready tongue and infinite good humor made him a favorite. There may not be much law in Justice-of-the-Peace proceedings, but there is a certain rude equity which possibly answers the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... Bess went her way, throwing her tainted money back to the town as fast as the town threw it into her purse, roaring, swearing, laughing—a thumping sentimentalist, a clownish Samaritan, a Madam Aphrodite by Rube Goldberg. There are many stories that used to go the rounds. But when I read the coroner's report there was one tale in particular that started up in my head again. A mawkish tale, perhaps, and if I write it with too maudlin a slant I know who will ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... spoke in thunder: "Over there behold A man who for the truth withstood his wife— Such is our spirit—when that A. D. Blood Compelled me to remove Dom Pedro—" Quick Before Jim Brown could finish, Jefferson Howard Obtained the floor and spake: "Ill suits the time For clownish words, and trivial is our cause If naught's at stake but John Cabanis, wrath, He who was erstwhile of the other side And came to us for vengeance. More's at stake Than triumph for New England or Virginia. And whether rum be sold, or for two years As in the past two years, this town ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... equally pleasing (tho' less loquacious) society of a husband, who, with a complaisance peculiar to husbands, responds—sometimes by a doubtful shrug, sometimes a stupid yawn, a lazy stretch, an unthinking stare, a clownish nod, a surly no, or interrogates you with a—humph? till bed time, when, heaven defend us! you are doom'd to be snor'd out of your wits ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... separated in pairs by the comma; as, "Interest and ambition, honour and shame, friendship and enmity, gratitude and revenge, are the prime movers in public transactions."—W. Allen. "But, whether ingenious or dull, learned or ignorant, clownish or polite, every innocent man, without exception, has as good a right to liberty as to life."—Beattie's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... connected with such an advantage, the fanatic democratic ruler could never acquire, or else disdained to practise, the courtesies usually exercised among the higher classes in their intercourse with each other. His demeanour was so blunt as sometimes might be termed clownish, yet there was in his language and manner a force and energy corresponding to his character, which impressed awe, if it did not impose respect; and there were even times when that dark and subtle ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... [from the name of a TV clown even more losing than Ronald McDonald] Resembling or having the quality of a bozo; that is, clownish, ludicrously wrong, unintentionally humorous. Compare {wonky}, {demented}. Note that the noun 'bozo' occurs in slang, but the mainstream adjectival form would be 'bozo-like' ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... going in, a giant that did not yet know its own strength, a somewhat clownish giant, singing ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... country, finds himself, for the first time, amongst well-bred gentlemen. Of all here present you are probably the sole person ignorant that I am Sir Giles Mompesson. But it is scarcely likely that they should be aware, as I chance to be, that the clownish insolent who has dared to wag his tongue against me, is the son of a ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... side of Trent only found its opportunity when the age of machinery began; its civilization, long delayed, differs in obvious respects from that of older England. In Sussex or in Somerset, however dull and clownish the typical inhabitant, he plainly belongs to an ancient order of things, represents an immemorial subordination. The rude man of the north is—by comparison—but just emerged from barbarism, and under any circumstances would show less smooth a front. ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... tell him where I lived, you knave?" said the Lord Nigel, angrily. "'Sdeath! I shall have every clownish burgher from Edinburgh come to gaze on my distress, and pay a shilling for having seen the motion of the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Bull-calf, recruits; Feebee, at once a recruit and a woman's tailor, Pilch and Patch-Breech, fishermen (though these last two appellations may be mere nicknames); Potpan, Peter Thump, Simple, Gobbo, and Susan Grindstone, servants; Speed, "a clownish servant"; Slender, Pistol, Nym, Sneak, Doll Tear-sheet, Jane Smile, Costard, Oatcake, Seacoal, and various anonymous "clowns" and "fools." Shakespeare rarely gives names of this character to any but the lowly in life, altho perhaps we should cite as exceptions Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Ague-Cheek ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... with her children she talked English and Italian in equal perfection, and when she heard young Carminatti's facetious remarks she laughed with marked impudence. Signer Carminatti was tall, with a black moustache, a hooked nose, well-formed languid eyes, lively and somewhat clownish gestures; he was at the same time sad and merry, melancholy and smiling, he changed his expression every moment. He was in the habit of appearing in the salon in a dinner-jacket, with a large flower in his button-hole and two or three ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... A very clownish Provencal rustic heard of the extremity of the King, while on his way from Marseilles to Paris, and came this morning to Versailles with a remedy, which he said would cure the gangrene. The King was so ill, and the doctors so at their wits' ends, that they consented ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... equal by the brilliant circle of men of letters which the city then boasted—Dugald Stewart, Robertson, Blair, etc., and was a guest at aristocratic tables, where he bore himself with unaffected dignity. Here also Scott, then a boy of 15, saw him and describes him as of "manners rustic, not clownish. His countenance ... more massive than it looks in any of the portraits ... a strong expression of shrewdness in his lineaments; the eye alone indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast, and literally glowed when he ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... in Streatham, Miss Western would have been a lady condescending to her inferiors. These people were to her, certainly clownish—in short, the working classes. How ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... to be esteemed really polished and courteous, who bow and scrape, and salute each other by certain prescribed gestures, then the Quakers will appear to have contracted much rust, and to have an indisputable right to the title of a clownish and inflexible people. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... slow, shadowed, natural growth, finally fossilized in print, from the rhythmic cries of a barbaric dance-circle in its festal hour, there is a weighty school of critics who hold them to be the mere rag-tag camp-followers of mediaeval romance. See, for instance, the clownish ballad of Tom Thumbe, with its confused Arthurian echoes. Some of the events recorded in our ballads, moreover, are placed by definite local tradition at a comparatively recent date, as Otterburne, Edom o' Gordon, Kinmont Willie. ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... doubtful humor set me musing over the possibility of a duty new to Americans. It is the French who have stood for gaiety. We have warmed ourselves in their quick wit. Perhaps it is time for us to do our little clownish ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... Lucius Manlius aggravated the misfortune of his son by severity, and further clogged the slowness of his intellects; and if there were in him even the least spark of natural ability he extinguished it by a rustic life and a clownish education, and ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... genius in sportive fancy—what, but for the self-rectifying spirit of fiction, would have been an outrage on nature, and in the number not only of forbidden but unhallowed things. The passages interpolated by Mr Horne's own pen are as bad as possible—clownish and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... and get lent a magazine, and, as likely as not, you may hear the whole tragedy and comedy of a ham and beef carver's life. So you will get a view of the world as oddly coloured as Harlequin's clothes, with puffs of sentiment dear to the soul of Columbine, and Clownish fun with Pantaloonish wisdom and chuckles. When you were young, you used, I think, to enjoy a butterfly's kiss; and that, you remember, was when your mother brushed your cheek with her eye-lashes. And also when ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... remember. Well, he was better than most. But the faces of your young people in general are not interesting—I don't mean the children, but the young men and women—and they are awkward and clownish in their manners, without the quaintness of the elder generation, who are the funniest old dears ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... only not 'toned,' but rough and inelegant in the extreme; and the edges, which, ought to have been smooth and gilded, were rugged and uneven like a ploughed field. It was hopeless to expect that a most discerning public should pay six shillings for a book of pastorals of such clownish appearance, when the sweetest rhymes, jingling like silver bells, and descriptive of angels and cupids, and the whole heaven of Greek and Roman mythology, were offered for a lesser sum, in settings resplendent with all the colours of the rainbow. There ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... after his assassination. And this it is that makes him now the less able, poor fellow, to understand and endure the shame he is put to. 'Stat rex indignatus.' He does try to assert himself now—does strive, by day and by night, poor petrefact, to rip off these fell and clownish integuments. Of his elder brother in Paris he has never heard; but he knows that Lazarus arisen from the tomb did not live in grave-clothes. He forgets that after all he is only a statue. To himself he is still ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... would protect them peacefully and with justice. The chiefs answered not a word to this. Thereupon, the bishop spoke again and asked them whether they had understood the words he had spoken to them, and if they would answer. Thereupon a clownish Indian arose and said: "We answer that we wish the king of Espana to be our king and sovereign, for he has sent Castilians to us, who are freeing us from the tyranny and domination of our chiefs, as well as fathers who aid us against the same Castilians ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... lackey of muchachas, an attendant on children to amuse them, or—why not?—an appendage to his daughter's state! Ah, Jesus Maria! such a state! such a muchacha! A picked-up foundling—a swineherd's daughter—to be ennobled by his, Pedro's, attendance, and for whose vulgar, clownish tricks,—tricks of a swineherd's daughter,—he, Pedro, was to be brought to book and insulted as if she were of Hidalgo blood! Ah, Caramba! Don Juan Peyton would find he could no more make a servant of him than he could make a ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... there occurs at this point a short transition based on the rhythm of the first theme; followed by a lovely cantabile melody—the second theme proper—that typifies the romantic love pervading the play. This theme also is expanded into several sections; the first of which may portray the clownish Athenian tradespeople, and the second, the brays of Bottom after he has been ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... you do not attempt to rise above the level of ordinary life and colloquial speaking. You do not assume, indeed, the solemnity of the pulpit, or the tone of stage-declamation; neither are you at liberty to gabble on at a venture, without emphasis or discretion, or to resort to vulgar dialect or clownish pronunciation. You must steer a middle course. You are tied down to a given and appropriate articulation, which is determined by the habitual associations between sense and sound, and which you can only hit by entering into ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... you are unjust, Roger. If he has been fonder of study than you, and if he has learnt to govern his temper, don't be jealous or cruel. Better try and emulate him. You call yourself boorish and clownish. Try and improve yourself; and then, perhaps, you will not feel so much ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... than ever at finding he had given him such an easy advantage, moved with his movement, and kept rudely in front of him, provoking a quarrel—in clownish fashion, it must ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... Abbot of Unreason Forgets not that the blythe Yule season Demands his paunch at church; And he useth his staff While the rustics laugh,— And, still, as he layeth his crosier about, Laugheth aloud each clownish lowt,— And the lowt, as he laugheth, from corbels grim, Sees carven apes ever laughing ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... scintilla. Bluff, blunt, outspoken, downright, brusk, curt, crusty. Boast, brag, vaunt, vapor, gasconade. Body, corpse, remains, relics, carcass, cadaver, corpus. Bombastic, sophomoric, turgid, tumid, grandiose, grandiloquent, magniloquent. Boorish, churlish, loutish, clownish, rustic, ill-bred. Booty, plunder, loot, spoil. Brittle, frangible, friable, fragile, crisp. Building, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... xii. severall dayes, the occasions of the xii. several adventures hapned, which being undertaken by xii. severall knights, are in these xii. books severally handled and discoursed. The first was this. In the beginning of the feast, there presented him selfe a tall clownish younge man, who, falling before the Queen of Faries, desired a boone (as the manner then was) which during that feast she might not refuse: which was that hee might have the atchievement of any adventure, which during that feaste should happen: that being graunted, he rested him on the floore, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... exclusive, studious and cultured; no rotten borough of the arts. All classes rub shoulders on the greasy benches. The raffish young gentleman in gloves must measure his scholarship with the plain, clownish laddie from the parish school. They separate, at the session's end, one to smoke cigars about a watering-place, the other to resume the labours of the field beside his peasant family. The first muster of a college class in Scotland is a scene ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... silence, sir, and do not outrage my sufficiently harrowed feelings by adding worse to bad. I shall go to the inn on terra firma, and leave you in charge of what you seem so able to manage in your own clownish, pantomimic way. Be good enough to bring my fish, and do not distinguish yourself by upsetting them into their native element." With these words, and in great apparent scorn, the draggled dominie took his ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... possibly have possessed De Guiche to go to a wild boar-hunt by himself; that is but a clownish idea of sport, only fit for that class of people who, unlike the Marechal de Gramont, have no dogs and huntsmen, to hunt as gentlemen ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... few forms upon which the mantle of mystery and romance could seem to hang more ungracefully than upon that of the uncouth and clownish Schalken—the Dutch boor—the rude and dogged, but most cunning worker in oils, whose pieces delight the initiated of the present day almost as much as his manners disgusted the refined of his own; and yet this man, so rude, so dogged, so slovenly, I had almost said so savage, in mien and ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... innovators, and the champions-until-death of the old cause, sat side by side. The still living merit of the oldest New England families, glowing yet after several generations, encountered the founders of families, fresh merit emerging and expanding the brows to a new breadth, and lighting a clownish face with sacred fire. The Assembly was characterised by the predominance of a certain plain sylvan strength and earnestness' (Dial, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... be compared with the episode of Tappe-coue or Tickletoby in Pantagruel:—"Villon, to dress an old clownish father grey-beard, who was to represent God the Father [at the performance of a mystery], begged of Friar Stephen Tickletoby, sacristan to the Franciscan Friars of the place, to lend him a cope ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... that you are participating in a carnival, portends that you are soon to enjoy some unusual pleasure or recreation. A carnival when masks are used, or when incongruous or clownish figures are seen, implies discord in the home; business will be unsatisfactory ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... always the case in towns, that some one in it is foolish or clownish. It happened to be so here; for a Maujeekewis was in the lodge; and after the young man had given his father-in-law presents, as he did to the first, this Maujeekewis jumped up in a passion, saying, "Who is this stranger, that he should have her? I want her myself." The chief told him ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... investigations tend to show that honest Izaak's account is prejudiced, as Hooker in his will makes his "wel-beloved wife" sole executrix and residuary legatee, and his father-in-law was one of the overseers. Nevertheless Wood calls her "a clownish, silly woman, and withal a ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... my elder," he said. Perhaps an existence like his, always solitary, reduced to the satisfaction of mere needs, deprived of money and all pleasures in youth, may explain to physiologists and thinkers the clownish expression of the face, the feebleness of mind, the vacant silliness of the man. His sister had steadily prevented him from marrying, afraid perhaps to lose her power over him, and seeing only a source of expense and injury in some woman who would certainly be younger and undoubtedly ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the reach of hope The careless lips that speak of s[)o]ap for s[o]ap; Her edict exiles from her fair abode The clownish voice that utters r[)o]ad for r[o]ad; Less stern to him who calls his c[o]at, a c[)o]at And steers his b[o]at believing it a b[)o]at. She pardoned one, our classic city's boast. Who said at Cambridge, m[)o]st instead of m[o]st, But knit ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... measures. The horror of cruelty more inclines me to clemency, than any example of clemency could possibly do. A good rider does not so much mend my seat, as an awkward attorney or a Venetian, on horseback; and a clownish way of speaking more reforms mine than the most correct. The ridiculous and simple look of another always warns and advises me; that which pricks, rouses and incites much better than that which tickles. The time is now proper for us to reform backward; ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... clownish, matter-of-fact man; he wanted some person to assist him in looking after the farm, and taking care of the stock; and he brought up Mary to fill the place of the son he had lost, early inuring her to take an active part, in those manual labors which ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... an account of her feeling for children; it was something like the sacred awe of the lover. "Whenever I see Florence and Julia again I shall feel like a fond but bashful suitor, who views at a distance the fair personage to whom, in his clownish awe, he dare not risk a near approach. Such is the clearest idea I can give you of my feeling towards children I like, but to whom I am a stranger—and to what children am ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... seemed to have settled upon him, and day after day he remained at home, sometimes in a deep study in his own room, and sometimes sitting in the parlor, where his very unlover-like deportment frequently brought tears to Mabel's eyes, while Carrie loudly denounced him as the most clownish ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... the Nottingham Mercury, and the editorial department rests with him. He is a heavy, thick set sort of man; of a stature below the middle size; complexion dark; and, in years about eight and thirty. His physiognomy would be clownish in expression, if his eyes did not redeem his other features. He spoke of 'Festus,' and of its fame in America, of which he seemed very proud. In England, it has only reached the third edition, while ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... out—in a way that banishes far from our fickle minds all thoughts of the first lady and her mistaken child—with a medley of singing and dancing, a bit of breakdown, of cancan, of jig, a bit of "Le Sabre de mon Pere," and of all memorable slang songs, given with the most grotesque and clownish spirit that ever inspired a woman. Each member of the company follows in his or her pas seul, and then they all dance together to the plain confusion of the amateur trio, whose eyes roll like ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... tumbled hair and grimy hands, and he will go tumbled and grimy to his grave. Put a hundred boys together where they will have the appurtenances of a clown, and I do not believe there will be ten out of the hundred who will not become precisely to that degree clownish. I am not battling for the luxuries of life, but I am for its decencies. I would not turn boys into Sybarites, but neither would I let them riot into Satyrs. The effeminacy of a false aristocracy is no nearer the heights of true manhood than the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... remains of ancient art gave him a power of talking on the subject, which unfortunately bore more than due proportion to his talents of execution. His companion, a magnificent-looking man in form, and so far resembling the young barbarian, but more clownish and peasant-like in the expression of his features, was Stephanos the wrestler, well known in ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... tree to tree? or to the shrill cat birds? The sublime accents of the thrush from on high always retard my steps that I may listen to the delicious music. The variegated appearances of the dew drops, as they hang to the different objects, must present even to a clownish imagination, the most voluptuous ideas. The astonishing art which all birds display in the construction of their nests, ill provided as we may suppose them with proper tools, their neatness, their convenience, always make me ashamed ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... the behaviour of even the better classes. We readily concede that their manners were rather raw and lacking in refinement. Sir William Temple, in his "Observations," published three years after Rembrandt's death, calls the Hollanders "clownish and blunt," and this typifies them in their attitude towards intellectual foreign people. Amongst themselves, even in circles where a taste for art and science was well developed, coarse festivals, excessive meals, and gross humour was often met with, peculiarities, however, which the Dutchman ...
— Rembrandt's Amsterdam • Frits Lugt
... excursions from the steeple, and tamer fowls have gone home from the darkening and dewy green. But old Bunyan's donkey is still browzing there, and yonder is old Bunyan's self—the brawny tramper dispread on the settle, retailing to the more clownish residents tap-room wit and roadside news. However, it is young Bunyan you wish to see. Yonder he is, the noisiest of the party, playing pitch-and-toss—that one with the shaggy eyebrows, whose entire soul is ascending in the twirling penny—grim ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... Siluia. Valentine. Protheus. the two Gentlemen. Anthonio: father to Protheus. Thurio: a foolish riuall to Valentine. Eglamoure: Agent for Siluia in her escape. Host: where Iulia lodges. Outlawes with Valentine. Speed: a clownish seruant to Valentine. Launce: the like to Protheus. Panthion: seruant to Antonio. Iulia: beloued of Protheus. Siluia: beloued of ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... heavy, loutish air, and the most pitiful little woman you ever saw, hardly taller than his knee. Her arms were not longer, than a baby's, and her poor little legs trotted along as fast as they could, to keep up with his sluggish stride. In a clownish, lubberly sort of way, he seemed to be taking good, kind care of her. They were on exhibition, it appeared, and (their own show being over for the night) were going, poor things, to see a certain famous ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... jargon of expressions from all classes of society and every country under the sun—pedantic, slangy, classical, lyrical, precious, prurient, and low—a mixture of bawdy jests, affectations, coarseness, and wit, all of which seemed to have a foreign accent. Ironical, and gifted with a certain clownish humor, they had not much natural wit: but they were clever enough, and they manufactured their goods in imitation of Paris. If the stone was not always of the first water, and if the setting was always strange and overdone, at least it shone ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... is no little enemy." "Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead." "He is no clown who drives the plough, but he that does clownish things." "Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it." "The noblest question in the world is, 'what good may I do in it.'" "Keep your eye wide open before ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... dawned the Brahmin cultivator came to yoke his cattle and water the wheat, when he found the richly-dressed form of one whom he speedily recognized as having but lately refused him redress when plundered by the Pathan soldiery. "Salam, Nawab Sahib!" said the man, offering a mock obeisance, with clownish malice, to his late oppressor. The scared and famished caitiff sate up and looked about him. "Why do you call me Nawab?" he asked. "I am a poor soldier, wounded, and seeking my home. I have lost all I have, but put me in the road to Ghausgarh, and I will ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... talking, When as I ruminate On my untoward fate, Scarcely seem I Alone sufficiently, Black thoughts continually Crowding my privacy; They come unbidden, Like foes at a wedding, Thrusting their faces In better guests' places, Peevish and malecontent, Clownish, impertinent, Dashing the merriment: So in like fashions Dim cogitations Follow and haunt me, Striving to daunt me, In my heart festering, In my ears whispering, "Thy friends are treacherous, Thy foes are dangerous, Thy ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... fruits of the prosecution.[348] However opinions may differ respecting the merits of the cause for which they suffered, there can be but one view taken of their deportment in the trying hour of execution. In the presence of the horrible preparatives for torture, the most clownish displayed a fortitude and a noble consciousness of honest purpose, contrasted with which the pusillanimous dejection, the unworthy concessions, and the premeditated perjury of Francis, during his captivity at Madrid not ten years before, appear in no enviable light. The monarch who bartered ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... deportment, until, learning the desires of the volatile Italians, they improvised a vastly more vivid pantomime depicting a mock battle, with huge success. Assuredly the early Roman comedian must have acted with greater abandon and clownish drollery, if not with the elaborate histrionic technique of the later actor.[69] We have heard Dr. Charles Knapp relate that the performance of the Ajax of Sophocles by a troupe of modern Greek players went with amazing ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... reports, Daughter of two-horn'd Granicus, brought forth, By stealth, AEsacus 'neath thick Ida's shade. Wall'd cities he detested; and remote From glittering palaces, secluded hills Inhabited, and unambitious plains; And scarce at Troy's assemblies e'er was seen. Yet had he not a clownish heart, nor breast To love impregnable. By chance he saw Cebrenus' daughter, fair Hesperie—oft By him through every shady wood pursu'd— As on her father's banks her tresses, spread Adown her back, in Phoebus' rays she dry'd. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... woman before. She was in harmony with the June evening and a part of it, while he, in his working clothes, his rugged, sun-browned features and hair tinged with gray, was a blot upon the scene. She who was so lovely, must be conscious of his rude, clownish appearance. He would have faced any man living and held his own on the simple basis of his manhood. Anything like scorn, although veiled, on Alida's part, would have touched his pride and steeled his will, but the words and manner of this gentle woman who ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... of toil and the entire want of society, Burns might have grown up the rude and clownish and unpopular lad that he has been pictured in his early teens. But in his fifteenth summer there came to him a new influence, which at one touch unlocked the springs of (p. 008) new emotions. This incident ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... is sufficiently apparent from its locality upon the farm itself; that its interior arrangement be for the convenience of the in-door farm work, and the proper accommodation of the farmer's family, should be quite as apparent; but, that it should assume an uncouth or clownish aspect, is as unnecessary as that the farmer himself should be a boor in his manners, or ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... that she was swayed by a pure and mystic passion. De Seze, on the other hand, believed this mystic passion to be genuine love. Coming to visit her at Nohant, he was revolted by the clownish husband with whom she lived. It gave him an esthetic shock to see that she had borne children to this boor. Therefore he shrank back from her, and in time ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... pretending to be noble, actually lived like peasants; that the count's brother had for some years been a servant to a gentleman he knew of; that the count himself was an exceedingly handsome man, but ignorant and clownish; that he could not even speak Italian; and that Margaret Fuller had become a good deal demoralized in Rome, and could neither write nor converse with her former brilliancy. Hawthorne accepted this statement and entered it in his diary with inferences of his own ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... best, "I fear," if any say. A free-born wench, no right 'tis up to lock, So use we women of strange nations' stock. Because the keeper may come say, "I did it," She must be honest to thy servant's credit. He is too clownish whom a lewd wife grieves, And this town's well-known custom not believes; Where Mars his sons not without fault did breed, Remus and Romulus, Ilia's twin-born seed. 40 Cannot a fair one, if not chaste, please thee? Never can these by any means agree. Kindly thy ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... shreddings of heads and paws of meek wild beasts, and nondescript vegetables. And the lowest of all are those which have not even graceful models to recommend them, but arise out of the corruption of the higher schools, mingled with clownish or bestial satire, as is the case in the latter Renaissance of Venice, which we were above examining. It is almost impossible to believe the depth to which the human mind can be debased in following this species of grotesque. In a recent Italian garden, the favorite ornaments frequently consist ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... great satisfaction to all the hearers, and the canon especially enjoyed it, for he had remarked with particular attention the manner in which it had been told, which was as unlike the manner of a clownish goatherd as it was like that of a polished city wit; and he observed that the curate had been quite right in saying that the woods bred men of learning. They all offered their services to Eugenio but he who showed ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... lady was armed with a fan of nearly equal dimensions. Addison observes that 'women are armed with fans, as men with swords, and sometimes do more execution with them.' The graceful carriage of each weapon was considered a test of high breeding. The clownish man was in danger of being tripped up by his sword getting between his legs: the fan held clumsily looked more of a burden than an ornament; while in the hands of an adept it could be made to speak a language of its own. {35} It was not everyone who felt qualified to make ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... hands and set up such a shout that his shrill outcry was not even heard. And the simple country bumpkins, standing in a grinning row like so many Old Aunt Sallys at a fair, pulled off their caps and bowed, thinking it some company of great lords, and fetched a clownish cheer ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... small house here, but a very comfortable one, and the people are exceedingly obliging. Their demeanor in these country parts is invariably morose, sullen, clownish, and repulsive. I should think there is not, on the face of the earth, a people so entirely destitute of humor, vivacity, or the capacity of enjoyment. It is most remarkable. I am quite serious when I say that I have ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... LUBBART. An awkward unseamanlike fellow; from a northern word implying a clownish dolt. A boatswain defined them as "fellows fitted with teeth longer than their ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... urbe condita CCCXC.)—those actors, I say, were therefore called histriones: and that name has since remained, not only to actors Roman born, but to all others of every nation. They played, not the former extempore stuff of Fescennine verses or clownish jests, but what they acted was a kind of civil cleanly farce, with music and dances, and motions that were proper ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... non dur habit (otherwise non durabit, it shall not last), un lit sans ciel, that is, a bed without a tester, for un licencie, a graduated person, as bachelor in divinity or utter barrister-at-law; which are equivocals so absurd and witless, so barbarous and clownish, that a fox's tail should be fastened to the neck-piece of, and a vizard made of a cowsherd given to everyone that henceforth should offer, after the restitution of learning, to make use of any such fopperies ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... not show my CHARACTERS in so low and clownish a degree of Life; For if I draw 'em so rough, and Porter-like, in one place, I cannot give 'em Tenderness and Simplicity in another; without ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... of these gates, leading out of the town in a northerly direction, several of the men on guard were assembled, amusing themselves at the expense of the departing peasantry, whose uncouth physiognomy and strange clownish appearance afforded abundant food for the quaint jokes and comical remarks of the soldiers. The market people were, for the most part, women, old men, and boys; the able-bodied men from the country around Pampeluna, having, with few exceptions, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... was for a moment silent. Then he laughed a little laugh—not a pleasant one. "Another of Time's clownish tricks!" he said to himself: "the earl the factor on the family-estate!" Donal did not like the way he took it, but saw how ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... tall, clownish youth falls before the queen and desires a boon, which she might not refuse, viz. the achievement of any adventure which might present itself. Then appears a fair lady, habited in mourning, and riding on an ass, while behind her comes a dwarf, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... education that we give makes the boys a little less clownish in their manners, and more intelligent when spoken to by strangers. On the other hand, it has made them less contented with their lot in life, and less willing to work with their hands. The form which discontent takes in this country is not of a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... offence to any man." Wit Shakspeare had in common with his ingenious contemporaries; but theirs, to speak out plainly, "was not that of gentlemen; there was ever somewhat that was ill-natured and clownish in it, and which confessed the conversation of the authors." "In this age," Dryden declares the last and greatest advantage of writing proceeds from conversation. "In that age" there was "less gallantry;" and "neither did they (Shakspeare, Ben, and the rest) ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... say) used the common country phrase according to the person of the speakers in every Eclogue, as though indeed the man himself should tell his tale. If there be anything herein that thou shalt happen to mistake, neither blame the learned poet, nor control the clownish shepherd (good reader) but me that presumed rashly to offer so unworthy matter to thy survey."[336] Another phase of "decorum," the necessity for employing a lofty style in dealing with the affairs of great persons, comes in for discussion in connection ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... possibly have possessed De Guiche to go to a wild-boar hunt by himself; that is but a clownish idea of sport, and only fit for that class of people who, unlike the Marechal de Grammont, have no dogs and huntsmen to hunt as gentlemen ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... And I'll have you know, the women's wants shall be considered, as well as yours. I think my lord and the colonel do you too much honour in offering to represent such a set of clownish, dirty, beggarly animals—Ah! I wish we ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... Robin Goodfellow, who has dropped the juice of love-in-idleness upon the eyes of the wrong lovers. King Oberon tricks his capricious and resentful little queen, by the aid of the same juice, into the absurdest infatuation for a clownish weaver, who has come out with his mates to rehearse a play to celebrate Theseus's wedding, but has fallen asleep and {150} wakened to find an ass's head planted upon him. All comes right, as it ever must in fairyland; the true lovers ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... As a clownish fellow was driving his cart along a deep miry lane, the wheels stuck so fast in the clay, that the horses could not draw them out. Upon this he fell a-bawling and praying to Hercules to come and ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various |
