"Lout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said, "that my heart bodes ill of this match? Eric is a mighty man, and, great though thou art, I think that thou shalt lout low before him." ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... admiration, nay almost of adoration, wanting. I observed one fellow, as the landlord advanced, take the pipe out of his mouth, and gaze upon him with a kind of grin of wonder, probably much the same as his ancestor, the Saxon lout of old, put on when he saw his idol Thur dressed in a new kirtle. To avoid the press, I got into a corner, where, on a couple of chairs, sat two respectable-looking individuals, whether farmers or sow- ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... say what hard work being a good farmer meant. And I thought: What a stupid, lazy lout! When we talked seriously he would drag it out with his awful drawl—er, er, er—and he works just as he talks—slowly, always behindhand, never up to time; and as for his being businesslike, I don't believe it, for he often keeps letters given him ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... themselves up in cheap royal finery and did the Richard III swordfight with maniac energy and prodigious powwow, in the presence of the village boys. This blacksmith cub was there, and the histrionic poison entered his bones. This vast, lumbering, ignorant, dull-witted lout was stage-struck, and irrecoverably. He disappeared, and presently turned up in St. Louis. I ran across him there, by and by. He was standing musing on a street corner, with his left hand on his hip, the thumb of his right supporting ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... I'll be allowed To realize that 'three can make a crowd.' I do not like to feel myself de trop. With two girl cronies would I not be so? My ring would interrupt some private chat. You'd ask me in and take my cane and hat, And speak about the lovely summer day, And think—'The lout! I wish he'd kept away.' Miss Trevor'd smile, but just to hide a pout And count the moments till I was shown out. And, while I twirled my thumbs, I would sit wishing That I had gone off hunting birds, or fishing. No, thanks, Maurine! The iron hand of Fate, (Or otherwise Miss Trevor's dainty ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... coil was I in; how blackly deceitful I called her! How keenly I watched for any token of understanding and kindness more than ordinary that might chance to pass between them. But I could see none, for though the great soft lout of a ruddy beer-vat tried often to look under the brim of her hat, yet she kept her eyes down—only once, that I could observe, raising them, and that was more towards the Red Tower than in the direction of ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... scarlet! Broad are thy shoulders and thick thy head; is not thy lass fair enough for thee to take cudgel in hand for her sake? In truth, I believe that Nottingham men do turn to bone and sinew, for neither heart nor courage have they! Now, thou great lout, wilt thou not ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... Haena, have not. "Hae 't," have it. Haill, whole. Hantle, a great deal. Harry, to rob, to break in upon. Hash, a clumsy lout. Hand, to hold, to have. Hauld, a habitation. Hempie, giddy. Heugh, a dell; also, a crag. Hinny, a term of endearmenthoney. Holme, a hollow, level low ground. "Horse of wood, foaled of an acorn," a form of punishment. Howf, a retreat. Hunder, a hundred. Hup! used to a horse in ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Grammatophyllum with bulbs some times over eight feet in length. The length of the name is certainly suitable for so large an orchid. I saw plenty of water-birds, including white egrets and a long-necked diver which is called the "snake-bird," owing to its long neck projecting lout of the water and thus greatly resembling a snake. I shot several of each kind of bird, plucking the fine plumes from the backs of the egrets. We ate some of the divers that evening and found them first-class food, tasting much like goose. We later in the day disturbed ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... The lout never said a word in reply, but his horse carried him swiftly out of sight in the wake of the runaway. Then the girl turned again to Hiram and the young farmer knew that he was being keenly examined by ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... firewood in the courtyard with the scolding assistance of a maid-servant. When the troopers entered to search for the master of the house, they heard the maid vehemently "flyting" the great hulking lout for his awkwardness, and threatening to "draw a stick across his back" if he did not work ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... something of all this in his face. It was a transfigured face, with great shining eyes that gazed beyond the veil of sound and saw behind it the leap and pulse of life and the gigantic phantoms of the spirit. She was startled. The raw, stumbling lout was gone. The ill-fitting clothes, battered hands, and sunburned face remained; but these seemed the prison-bars through which she saw a great soul looking forth, inarticulate and dumb because of those feeble lips ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... blacksmith to learn smith's work. But there too he did not remain long, but ran away home again, so what was that poor father to do? "I'll tell thee what I'll do with thee, thou son of a dog!" said he. "I'll take thee, thou lazy lout, into another kingdom. There, perchance, they will be able to teach thee better than they can here, and it will be too far for thee to run home." So he took him and set out ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... al the tyme whyle Vertu was away. A my{gh}ty conflycte kept they {with} Vycys rout. And yet neuertheles for al that grete afray. Hope stod vpryght & feyth wold neuer lout And euermor{e} sayd Baptym syres put no dout. Vertu shal return & haue his entent. This feld shal be ours ...
— The Assemble of Goddes • Anonymous
... confines wander out, Where the old gun, bucolic lout, Commits all day his murderous crimes: Though cherries ripe are sweet, no doubt, Sweeter thy song amid ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... it says, he is merciful to his beast. In the Hills there was no surer way to find trouble than to strike the horse of the cattle-drover. I have seen an indolent blacksmith booted across his shop because he kicked a horse on the leg to make him hold his foot up. And I have seen a lout's head broken because the master caught him swearing ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... 'Ah! white-livered lout! I wonder what the devil made such a quaking pudding poltroon think of taking to our trade! Come: I am hungry: let us go into the kitchen, and get some grub; and then to bed. Pimping Simon, here, will see his grandmother's ghost, if we stay five ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... defiant or less energetic, entered the shop and attained some proficiency in the work. But as he grew toward manhood, he became, as the old man called it, "trifling"; a word which bore with it in the local dialect no suggestion of levity or vivacity, for Luke Matchin was as dark and lowering a lout as you would readily find. But it meant that he became more and more unpunctual, did his work worse month by month, came home later at night, and was continually seen, when not in the shop, with a gang ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... here. Or, to be more accurate, something jars. The orchestra plays Grieg and Moszkowski; a smell of chocolate is in the air; that tall, pink lieutenant over there, with his cropped head and his outstanding ears, his backfisch waist and his mudscow feet—that military gargoyle, half lout and half fop, offends the roving eye. No doubt a handsome man, by German standards—even, perhaps a celebrated seducer, a soldier with a future—but the mere sight of him suffices to paralyse an American esophagus. Besides, there is the smell of chocolate, sweet, sickly, effeminate, and at two ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... a hard blow in wanton play; I growl with new-born ecstasy; Then speaks she in a sweet vain jest, I wot "Allons lout doux! eh! la menotte! Et faites serviteur Comme un joli seigneur." Thus she ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... What's that?" Then my footman walks in [draws himself up and imitates] and an-nounces: "Ivan Aleksandrovich Khlestakov of St. Petersburg. Will you receive him?" Those country lubbers don't even know what it means to "receive." If any lout of a country squire pays them a visit, he stalks straight into the drawing-room like a bear. Then you step up to one of their pretty girls and say: "Dee-lighted, madam." [Rubs his hands and bows.] Phew! [Spits.] I feel positively ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... again, and with a lout [the old English courtesy, now considered rustic] of the deepest veneration, ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... to Robert Hagburn?" said he. "He looks like another man than the lout I knew a few ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... doest line the earth, With purseld streames of blew and white: Or, as a line doth guide, So thou doest leuell slide, And throw'st into the sea thy mite? Is't, that with twisted line, The Angler doth vntwine The fishes life, by giuing breath. Or, as the threshing lout, Rusheth his Lyners out, So Lyner on his course rusheth: Or, as some puppy seat, Lineth a mastiue great, And getteth whelps of mongrell kinde: Lyner, the sea so lines, And streame with waue combines, Begetting waters ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... mynde settyth god truly to serve And his sayntes: this worlde settynge at nought Shall for rewarde everlastynge joy deserve, But in this worlde he that settyth his thought All men to please, and in favour to be brought, Must lout and lurke, flater, laude, and lye: And cloke in knavys counseyll, though it ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... John. A trifle more liquor, if you please. Thank you. Yes, I used to call her the wild plum. Sweet thing, and I had no idea that she was married until her lout of a husband came down to the landing with a double-barrel gun. Ah, Lord, if she had been single and worth money I could have made her very happy. Fate hasn't always been ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... son; and if, after the great shock and agitation of the previous evening, he had not suffered the reaction of rage, indignation, and rebellion which Mme. Roland had feared, it was because he had long been unconsciously chafing under the sense of being the child of this well-meaning lout. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... tree were mere sport. The giant, after dragging the heavy weight for some time, could get on no further, and shouted out: "Hi! I must let the tree fall." The tailor sprang nimbly down, seized the tree with both hands as if he had carried it the whole way and said to the giant: "Fancy a big lout like you not being ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... boys at, I wonder?" she said. "There's that big lout of a Wigglesworth boy. He's up to no ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... this creature fair In God's sight had a smaller worth Than that dull lout who watched it there, And in its death found cause ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... old-fashioned place and it and its inhabitants were made the target for the jests and witticisms of the people of Judea. The word "Nazarene" was synonymous with "lout"; "boor"; "peasant"; etc., to the residents of the more fashionable regions. The very remoteness of the town served to separate it in spirit from the rest of the country. But this very remoteness played an important part in the early life of Jesus. ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... huge lout of a fellow with a lowering countenance, ventured to expostulate. "Ye want to be careful of him. He's ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... plunger, but I shall be glad, doctor, if you will take that and give it to her.... I was almost starving myself once—-you know, Walters, when I got the sack from the 'Morning Star' Mine for plugging the English manager when he called me a 'damned colonial lout.'" ...
— In The Far North - 1901 • Louis Becke
... great lord outbroke in one sudden curse like a blast from a horn. He tore his sword from its black sheath; he called to the hovering landlord: "A sword there, for this lout!" He turned to the lady, with a laugh that chilled her heart, and said: "You put much labour upon me, madame. It seems I must find you a husband and make you a ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... than Peru, Our Princess bartered wealth untold, For the Magician's lamp quite new: So when this change the eunuch made In scorn the rabble 'gan to shout; Beholding such a silly trade, They deemed the wizard fool and lout. ...
— Aladdin or The Wonderful Lamp • Anonymous
... smoked and pored over a pocket-map of the department, a lout of a lad shambled out of the auberge wearing a fixed scowl in no degree mitigated by the sight of the customer. In the dooryard, which was also the stableyard, the boy caught and saddled a dreary animal, apparently a horse designed by a Gothic architect, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... (choking with rage): Hear his arrogance! A country lout who. . .who. . .has got no gloves! Who goes ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... room—a cheerless place of hewn stone. What kind of a man could he have been? What were his reflections as he went about his farm-work and thought of his sister at the head of armies? Was he merely a lout or something worse—the prototype of our Conscientious Objector: a coward who disguised ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... it was for twa shillin' a week that I first worked. I was a strappin' lout of a boy then, fit to work harder than I did, and earn more, and ever and again I'd tell them at some new mill I was past fourteen, and they'd put me to work at full time. But I could no hide myself awa' from the inspector when he came around, and each time he'd send me ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... everything;' and the more he scolded, the worse they became. The 'minx' shook her curls, and flirted through the window with a handsome but ill-tempered looking man on a fine horse, who praised her 'golden locks,' as he called them; and oddly enough, when Melchior said that the man was a lout, and that the locks in question were corkscrewy carrot shavings, she only seemed to like the man and his compliments the more. Meanwhile, the untidy brother pored over his book, or if he came to the window, it ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... blank, and seemed so unable to return Oonah's fond greeting, that she felt the pique which every pretty woman experiences who fancies her favours disregarded, and thought Andy the stupidest lout she ever came across. Turning up her hair, which had fallen down in the excess of her friendship, she walked out of the cottage, and, biting her disdainful lip, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... walked to the table with a bold step; there was nothing now of the country lout about him; on the contrary, he moved with remarkable dignity, and bore himself so well that many a pair of feminine eyes watched him kindly, as he took his seat at the ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... hue and cry arose, As if the beasts were all his foes: A Wolf, haranguing lawyer-wise, Denounced the Ass for sacrifice— The bald-pate, scabby, ragged lout, By whom the plague had come, no doubt. His fault was judged a hanging crime. "What? eat another's grass? O shame! The noose of rope and death sublime, For that offence, were all too tame!" And soon poor ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... HIM for a while," said Polynesia coming out from her hiding-place. "Now let him teach navigation to the side-board. Gosh, the cheek of the man! I've forgotten more about the sea than that lumbering lout will ever know. Let's go upstairs and tell the Doctor. Bumpo, you will have to serve the meals in the cabin for the next couple ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... had left undone. Its sense of bodily beauty was rudimentary; its knowledge of the nude alternately insufficient and pedantic; the forms of Donatello's David and of Benedetto's St. John are clumsy, stunted, and inharmonious; even Michelangelo's Bacchus is but a comely lout. This sculpture has, moreover, a marvellous preference for ugly old men—gross, or ascetically imbecile; and for ill-grown striplings: except the St. George of Donatello, whose body, however, is entirely encased in inflexible leather ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... repeating my professions and again reminding him of my taking him up at Paris, I was successful. Though I had more trouble in gaining the compliance of this lout than would have been sufficient, were I prime minister, and did I bribe with any thing like the same comparative liberality, to gain ten worthy members of parliament, though five knights of the shire had been of ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... "You lout!" cried Gard, his blood up and dripping also from his nose. "If you must have it, you shall;" and he squared up to him to ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... Mersch, standing between those two, he seemed like a country lout between confederate sharpers. It struck me that she let me see, made me see, that she and Gurnard had an understanding, made manifest to me by glances that passed when the Duc had his unobservant eyes ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... Andor at one time. Andor was his only brother's only child, and I suppose Pali bacsi[3] was suddenly struck with the idea that he really had no one to leave his hoardings to. He was always a fool and a lout. If Andor had lived it would have been all right. I think Pali bacsi was quite ready to do something really handsome for him. Now that Andor is dead he has no one; and when he dies his money all goes to the government. It is a pity," he added, with a shrug of the ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... at the door of the Fortune, where we shall have matchless Will speaking for himself.—Goblin, and you other lout, leave the horses to the grooms, and make way ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... not, however, get so far as the Consul, but one of the clerks, a stupid lout with an eyeglass, had come out and told him that he would get no employment on a ship belonging to the firm, until he had been to the Seamen's school, and gave up drinking. As he told his story there was an evil glare in his eyes, ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... the Bristol road. I was stopped, as I supposed I should be, by a small band of Tory partisans, but after exhibiting my British pass I was permitted to proceed. Between Trenton and Amboy I met a party of our own horse, and had some trouble until I allowed their leader, a stupid lout, to read my open despatch, when he seemed satisfied, and sent on two troopers with me, whom I left ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... the crew gave a cheer at this, Ben Boltrope's lusty voice being conspicuously to the fore; but some, amongst whom was a lazy lout named Bill Moody, who was the chief grumbler in the forecastle, expressed their discontent audibly; saying that they "hadn't signed articles to be ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... Mr. Clare. "There is my theory, in few words. Now for the remarkable application of it which this letter suggests. Here is my lout ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... discontent; Or was it for mankind a generous shame, As of a luck not quite legitimate, Since fortune snatched from wit the lion's part? Was it a college pique of town and gown, As one within whose memory it burned That not academicians, but some lout, Found ten years since the Californian gold? And now, again, a hungry company Of traders, led by corporate sons of trade, Perversely borrowing from the shop the tools Of science, not from the philosophers, Had ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... gentleman who had laid his whip across the saucy lout's back at the time the French prisoners were marching into the barracks. He was possessed of a fair competence; but loving a country life and something to do, had hired the Manor Farm in Yaxley. The house was of no great size, but built of stone, picturesque, and of considerable antiquity; and it ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... revolutionists of the crusading type, such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Brown, or Mazzini. When a man abandons his business or job and complacently leaves the clothing of his children to wife or neighbors in order to drink flip and talk politics, ordinary folk are content to call him a lazy lout, ne'er-do-well, worthless fellow, or scamp. Samuel Adams was not a scamp. He might have been no more than a ne'er-do-well, perhaps, if cosmic forces had not opportunely provided him with an occupation which his contemporaries and posterity could regard as a high service to ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... such another lazy lout in all the village as my husband, it's as much as I can do to get him up in the morning by pulling him out of bed by the hair. The scoundrel knows to-day is market-day, and yet he lies there asleep at this hour of the morning. ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... and speak my opinion in this matter.—Thou art welcome, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby—speak,—speak what thou thinkest upon the subject, man, without fear.—Why then, replied Trim, (not hanging his ears and scratching his head like a country-lout, but) stroking his hair back from his forehead, and standing erect as before his division,—I think, quoth Trim, advancing his left, which was his lame leg, a little forwards,—and pointing with his right hand open towards a map of Dunkirk, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... nothing better than a good drubbing, you filthy cattle lout! If you don't pay up your bets, we'll take it out of your hide. I, for one, have a special use for my money at the ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... of march recline Dead gods devoid of feeling; And thick about each sun-cracked lout ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... practising both arts, and having, moreover, precocious linguistic gifts. Our cricket-field was bald about the wickets, and we played without style and disputed with the umpire; and the teaching was chiefly in the hands of a lout of nineteen, who wore ready-made clothes and taught despicably. The head-master and proprietor taught us arithmetic, algebra, and Euclid, and to the older boys even trigonometry, himself; he had a strong mathematical ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... jolly comfortable perhaps—or perhaps the right man hasn't turned up. Florrie Hensor is several cuts above a malingering lout like Steadbolt. Well there, poor devil! Maybe, it's not unnatural that I should feel a sneaking sympathy for an unsuccessful lover. That abominable lie was a bit too strong though—and before you! The man must have been ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... house. I hadn't the heart on your account, Dr. Perry, to hurry matters faster than necessity compels. What a lout he is! Pardon me, but what a lout he is to have had two ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... stagnate: there's always movement; but—putting aside the religious question—my stage at present is yours of twenty years ago. Yet, not even that; for you started better than I did. You were never a selfish lout—a ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... absurd—the Hebrew fetich was dead—dead as Mumbo Jumbo. "Thank God!" he added inconsequently. He walked faster and faster, and on more than one occasion he brushed hurriedly against some of the brutal frequenters of that part of the world on foggy evenings. A rough lout growled belligerently at him, but shrank from the gladsome light of battle which leaped instantly into John Arniston's eye. To strike some one would have been a comfort to ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... about the rich field, just across the road, in front of the house, which Septimius had neglected the cultivation of, unwilling to spare the time to plough, to plant, to hoe it himself, but hired a lazy lout of the village, when he might just as well have employed and paid wages to the scarecrow which Aunt Keziah dressed out in ancient habiliments, and set up in the midst of the corn. Then came an old codger from the village, talking to Septimius ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fellow, Lothair," said St. Aldegonde; "or is it the dress that turns them out such swells? I feel quite a lout by ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... the young lady must have gone away with the idea that I was a combination of longshore lout and effeminate dilettante, with the financial resources of the former. She might as well have that idea as any other, I supposed, but, in her eyes, I must be more of a freak than ever. I should take care to keep out of the sight of ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... upstart lout, rich without deserving it for any competence he had, was giving himself the airs of an intelligent dealer, presuming to approach Rafael, "his deputy," with a proposal for a freight-rate bill to promote the shipping ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... English lout,' retorted Scudamore. 'But, all things being lawful in love and war, not to mention hate and rebellion, this mare, if I am blessed with a chance, shall be—well, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... who rode behind me, "clumsy lout, whoever you are! That is over near to be sportsmanlike. ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... Brownie sits in the Scotchman's room, And eats his meat and drinks his ale, And beats the maid with her unused broom, And the lazy lout with his idle flail; But he sweeps the floor and threshes the corn, And hies him away ere the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... of May, Noel and I, drifting about the town, heard many a wide-mouthed lout let go his joke and his laugh, and then move to the next group, proud of his wit and happy, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... casual, but she was beginning to be afraid. Why, she could not have said. Certainly she did not anticipate violence on Tom's part. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps it was just because he was so quiet that she was afraid. She had always looked on him contemptuously as an amiable, transparent lout, and now he was puzzling her. She got an impression of something formidable behind his stolidity, something that made her ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... and all the tricks we had to play to get out of prison. At last, however, we managed to get free and stand outside the walls of the town. He could talk French like a Frenchman, but I could not say a word. We were both dressed as countrymen—he of the better sort, and I, as a lout, born deaf and dumb. This did very well for some time, and whether or no the country people suspected us I cannot say, but I rather think they did, though many of them were very kind to Englishmen, and would gladly have helped them ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... doubtless make you welcome with a better grace. But since you take the thing so well, it matters not. To me, indeed, it seems discourteous. But you will find yourself the gainer. The family will not much tempt you. A mother, a son, and a daughter; an old woman said to be half-witted, a country lout, and a country girl, who stands very high with her confessor, and is, therefore," chuckled the physician, "most likely plain; there is not much in that to attract the fancy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... physiognomist, and singled out an unsophisticated-looking giant, who was patrolling a certain beat, as the best man among the line of sentries on whom to practise an imposition. This individual was evidently a good-natured lout, not long in the service, and very much resembling our conception of "Jonas Chuzzlewit," in respect to his having been "put away and forgotten for half a century." It is only necessary to add that ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... no end in the next few rounds by following Acton's advice, his good efforts seemed wasted. The lout's face was as hard as a butcher's block. Acton saw that Bourne was visibly tiring, and that it was an almost foregone conclusion that in the end he would be beaten. He could hardly stall ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... sweet, John Brown; And I hate a false pretence, And the want of common sense, And arrogance, and fawning, and deceit, John Brown; I love the meadow flowers, And the brier in the bowers, And I love an open face without guile, John Brown; And I hate a selfish knave, And a proud, contented slave, And a lout who 'd rather borrow than he 'd ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Lance, considering, 'you said that possibility was not to make any difference to us. Wouldn't it be making the wrong sort of difference to let it keep a great lout like me in idleness while Bernard is going ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... riotous fun, one of the best of all Paul de Kock's books—is Jean, also an example of his middle and ripest period. If translated into English it might have for second title "or, The History of a Good Lout." The career of Jean Durand (one of the French equivalents for John Brown or Jones or Robinson) we have from the moment of, and indeed a little before, his birth to that crowning of a virtuous young Frenchman's hopes, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... stern discipline of the post took Lenihan off to his troop at tattoo, but Katty lacked not for company. "It wasn't becoming," said her mother, "that she should be left to herself at the dead of night with no one but that lout Barnickel to look after her." So she came up from Sudsville at taps to discuss Mrs. Davies's tea and preserves and, incidentally, her character with her blooming daughter, and Barnickel was sociably disposed, and the ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... him like a kind of prophetic mirror, revealing to him the true meaning of all he had ever felt for Dennet Headley, and of his vexation and impatience at seeing her bestowed upon a dull and indifferent lout like her kinsman, who not only was not good enough for her, but did not even love her, or accept her as anything but his title to the Dragon court. He now thrilled and tingled from head to foot with the perceptions that all this meant love—love to Dennet; and in every act of the ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... handles from me,—his own handles, mind you, of his own barrow,—and trundled it solemnly along. I was struggling with hysterics. I am not in the least hysterical by nature, but the combination—the professor taken for a lout and commanded to trundle his own barrow, stolen by a sophomore, the twig in my eye and the stone in my foot—was too much for me. Besides, there seemed nothing in particular to say. I could not begin 'Please, sir, I thought you were the janitor's boy!' ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... clue would have sufficed to lead to the conviction of so besotted a traitor, than many an incautious hint of his, and many a tale-telling vaunt of his irresistible egotism, afforded her; for, like all the weak wretches of his sort, there was not a more bungling lout, to try the patience of a clever man, than Philip Withers, when his game lay between his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... between: but anyhow, even the most unsuspicious bumpkin of a lover, would be inclined to ask a few questions about this finery. However, her performance was as fine as the dress, and she looked quite the ZELIE-ZERLINA, so fascinating to the Lord and the Lout. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... man who kept it had often accompanied them on their excursions, and though the boys of the city streets considered him a dumb lout, they respected him somewhat owing to his inside knowledge of dog ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... word," he said, earnestly, "I thought you did. And now I have made you unhappy. Babbie, I wish I were anybody but myself; I am a hopeless lout." ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... dull-eyed, gin-sodden lout leaning against the post out there is immeasurably your intellectual superior? Do you know that every little-minded selfish scoundrel, who never had a thought that was not mean and base—whose every action is a fraud and whose every utterance is a lie; do you know that these are as much superior ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... the various geniuses have developed which, in a manner almost spectacular, rise before us as we study the literatures of the past? The youthful years of Shakespeare were spent under circumstances which might have produced in him one dull and unaspiring British country lout, like, as one egg to another, to a hundred thousand others who lived in his age. What made this one country boy the most astonishing genius in all the history of literature? Study the youth of Robert Burns, of Heinrich Heine, or Coleridge, and then tell me why the first ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... some of the "sights": for that great lout of a country lad (as Reuben could not help counting him, though he liked his big, honest heart for all that) had found him out, when he came to New York to take ship ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... Queen of Portugal clasped that of the Regent's wife; indeed there were gala entertainments from the halls of the governor's residence to the lowest hut, and the pirates went from one to another, here a gentleman and there a lout, carousing, dancing, fighting, and love-making all day long. For an entire fortnight there was neither night nor day, only one continuous revel, a sea of pleasure whose depths no ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... answer and anxious exclamation: "How badly you look, Philip!" he answered crossly: "Like a man who deserves a kick rather than a welcome; a booby who has submitted to have his nose pulled; a cur who has licked the hand of the lout who has ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... skipper may give him a good wigging for that boarding business yesterday. I hope he won't be very hard upon you, old chap," he added, in a tone of deep sympathy, turning to me, "for somehow I have taken quite a liking to you, and if I had been at your elbow yesterday, instead of that over-grown lout, Harvey, I would have kept you out of the serape. You must be very quiet and submissive when he pitches into you, and plead ignorance—say you will be a good boy and not ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... confined within the brilliant enclosure, enjoying the silence of the groves, listening to the murmuring waters and the rustling leaves, admiring the blue gaps outlined above my head by clouds of pearly sheen and gold, wandering fancy free in dreams of my future, I heard some lout or other, who had arrived the day before from Paris, playing on a violin with the violence of a man who has nothing else to do. I would not wish for my worst enemy to hear anything so utterly in discord with the sublime harmony of nature. If the distant ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... paroxysm had passed, it left him weak. He sank into a chair and lay there stupid, inert, until again those fires began to lick at him and again he twisted in dumb agony. Buddy Briskow! Buddy, of all people! That lout; that awkward simpleton, who owed him everything! But Buddy ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... the gods, Rag, get thee to sleep once more, thou stupidest lout in Britain! It is a scurvy trick to waken thus at the wrong time and trumpet thy nonsense in such fashion. Good youth canst not skip that bit for peace's sake, and get on to ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... too partick'ler," rejoined Captain Snaggs; "fur this 'll be the last dinner thet air conceited darkey, Sam, 'll cook fur ye, Flinders. He goes in the fo'c's'le to-morrow, an' this hyar lout of a stooard shall take his place ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the free movement of a disdainful princess. "Oh, he's just a lout," she said. "He doesn't know any better. It isn't as ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... Boy to get off, and got on himself. But they hadn't gone far when they passed two women, one of whom said to the other: "Shame on that lazy lout to let his poor ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... in love with a star. "'Tis better to have loved and lost." Although the moon should have nothing to say to Endymion, although he should settle down with Audrey and feed pigs, do you not think he would move with a better grace, and cherish higher thoughts to the end? The lout he meets at church never had a fancy above Audrey's snood; but there is a reminiscence in Endymion's heart that, like a spice, keeps ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... scarce looked at him," she said. "He is a lout, with great eyes staring, and a red nose. It does not need that one should look at men to win them. They look at us, and that ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Once let loose on that field, imagination soon saw shapes enough to confirm any doubt. Ottilie's manner certainly had seemed less tender—nay, somewhat indifferent—during the last few days. Had the arrival of that heavy lout, her cousin, anything to ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... minute," said she, "and see if he hain't got nothin' to set the lazy lout a-doin'." So saying, the old lady waddled into the house, and going upstairs, knocked ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... lout. He means, you grace, the banquet waits without. If at our humble board you'll deign ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... cigar, our mild Cavannah, has at length met with his deserts, and left the sage savans of the fool's hotbed, London, the undisturbed possession of the diligently-achieved fool's-caps their extreme absurdity, egregious folly, and lout-like gullibility, have so splendidly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... sir. The party struck turns to me and says, "Come in. I give this man in charge for assault." I moves accordingly with the words: "I saw you. Come along with me." The defendant turns to me sharp and says: "You stupid lout—I'm a magistrate." "Come off it," I says to the best of my recollection. "You struck this woman in my presence," I says, "and you come along!" We were then at close quarters. The defendant gave me a push with the words: "Get out, you idiot!" "Not at all," I replies, and took ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... my head, and reddened foolishly, but he gave a loud laugh and said, "I can well understand. There was some country lout that your father would have wedded you to. That is the way with the ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... like those long trials of the old-fashioned chivalry. That lout of a young lord, who took offence because his sovereign-lady sent him down among the lions to fetch her glove, was, in my opinion, very impertinent, and a fool too. Doubtless the lady had in reserve for him some exquisite flower of love, which he lost, as he well ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... thou now apace Unto thy love that made thee low to lout; Thy love is present there with thee in place; Thy love is there advaunst ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... she but a vampire, draining the blood of the weak? The upshot of such atrocities we may gather from the tale itself. Saintre becomes a perfect knight, but so utterly frail and weak as to be dared and defied by the lout of a peasant priest, in whom the lady, become better advised, has seen something that will suit ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... king, "just you two younger ones look at Prigio! You see how hot it is, and how coolly he takes it, and the country suffering; and all on account of a Firedrake, you know, which has apparently built his nest not far off. Well, I have asked that lout of a brother of yours to ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... he walked to Lowick. Fred's light hopeful nature had perhaps never had so much of a bruise as from this suggestion that if he had been out of the way Mary might have made a thoroughly good match. Also he was piqued that he had been what he called such a stupid lout as to ask that intervention from Mr. Farebrother. But it was not in a lover's nature—it was not in Fred's, that the new anxiety raised about Mary's feeling should not surmount every other. Notwithstanding his trust in Mr. Farebrother's generosity, notwithstanding ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... within me like an old nut kernel. I would have turned but for the stupidity and ill-breeding such a movement would evidence, yet as I held on my way at a slower pace and the pair approached, I felt every limb an encumbrance, I felt the country lout throbbing in ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... remarked with respectful firmness, 'That instruction would place them under an omnibus; you had better confine your attention to yourself—you will want it all;' and has driven his charge away, with an intelligence of ears and tail, and a knowledge of business, that has left his lout of a man very, very ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... I saying? Her poor coquetries did not deceive me, but she never meant them to deceive me. They accomplished, after all, just that for which she intended them. They deceived and maddened her half-drunken lout of a husband. Her dress, too, was something shameless. She wore above her scarlet skirt (which I verily believe was the same she had ridden in) a bodice of the same bright colour, low as a maid-of-honour's, that displayed her young neck and bust. About her neck she had fastened ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... carefully avoided walking in the sun; but this could not everywhere be the case: for in the next broad street I had to cross, and, unfortunately for me, at the very hour in which the boys were coming out of school, a humpbacked lout of a fellow—I see him yet—soon made the discovery that I was without a shadow, and communicated the news, with loud outcries, to a knot of young urchins. The whole swarm proceeded immediately to reconnoitre me, and to ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... was all intent upon that lout, who stood there before me shifting uneasily upon his feet, his air mutinous and sullen. Over his shoulder I had a glimpse of his father's yellow ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... prudent—who can hear the dew fall and the grass grow, and smell here in Memphis the smoke of every fire that is lighted in Alexandria or in Syria or even in Rome—that you, my mother's daughter, should be caught over head and ears by a broad-shouldered lout, for all the world like a clumsy town-girl or a wench at a loom. This ignorant Adonis, who knows so well how to make use of his own strange and resolute personality, and of the power that stands in his background, thinks no more of the hearts he sets in flames than I of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... cakes that were baking, with instructions to turn them at the proper time. His mind wandered in thought and he forgot his trust. The good wife returned, found the cakes burning, and the guest dreaming by the fireside; she lost her temper, and expressed a decided opinion about the lazy lout who was ready enough to eat, but less ready to work. In the seventeenth century there was found in the marshes here a jewel that Alfred had lost: it is of gold and enamel, bearing words signifying, "Alfred had me wrought." The following spring (878) he sallied ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... you, in the affair at Brignais some four years back, when the companies slew James of Bourbon, and put his army to the sword, there was scarce a man of ours who had not count, baron, or knight. Peter Karsdale, who was but a common country lout newly brought over, with the English fleas still hopping under his doublet, laid his great hands upon the Sieur Amaury de Chatonville, who owns half Picardy, and had five thousand crowns out of him, with his horse and harness. 'Tis true that ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which peers and peeresses had become weary. They therefore welcomed this rustic candidate for the honour of giving wings to their hours of lassitude and weariness, with a welcome more than common; and when his approach was announced, the polished circle looked for the advent of a lout from the plough, in whose uncouth manners and embarrassed address they might find matter both for mirth and wonder. But they met with a barbarian who was not at all barbarous: as the poet met in Lord Daer feelings and sentiments as natural as those of a ploughman, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Why talk rubbish, lout that you are—a real peasant!" came rebukes from all sides addressed to the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... whom he was coaching in his county duties, was far too much inclined to bring him home to luncheon; and in the clash and crisis, without any one's quite knowing how it happened, it turned out that Mrs. Evelyn had been so imprudent as to sanction an attachment between her daughter and that great lout of a young doctor, Lady Fordham's brother! Not only the M.P., but all the family shook the head and bemoaned the connection, for though it was to be a long engagement and a great secret, everybody found it out. Lucas had long made up his mind that so it would ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the plain field, protesting he would not hold out with me; for, indeed, my pace in dauncing is not ordinary. As he and I were parting, a lusty country lasse being among the people, cal'd him faint-hearted lout, saying, "If I had begun to daunce, I would have held out one myle, though it had cost my life." At which words many laughed. "Nay," saith she, "if the dauncer will lend me a leash of his belles, I'le ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... pathway to his throne—and he forgot the matron's pies. And then the cowherd's wife came in; she smelled the smoke, she gave a shout; she biffed him with the rolling pin, and cried: "Ods fish, you useless lout! You are not worth the dynamite 'twould take to blow you off the map! Your head is not upholstered right—you are ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... him, making the muscles of his face tense and his voice metallic. "Get to your room," he said fiercely, "get to your room. I've wasted time enough on you and your brat of a brother, and now a Western lout is to spoil what I've done? I've a mind to wash my hands of all of you—and sink you. Get to your room, and stay there, while I make up my mind which of the two I ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... Under the influence of drink many of the privates, and not a few officers, lost all sense of decency. Some of the bolder among them entered the house, roamed through kitchen, parlor, library, bedrooms. One drunken lout smashed the rare violincello, another brought the gilded harp out into the barnyard and used it as a gridiron on which to roast a confiscated pig. The oil portrait of Blennerhassett, set up as a target, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... be able to send word how matters went on after their departure. In this emergency, while Isoult and John were talking over the subject, Barbara presented herself with a deprecatory courtesy, or rather lout. ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... were in his shirt, and the unnatural shine on his tawny hair too plainly revealed the perfumeries that crowded the young squire's dressing-table. With the purest intentions of kindness Eustace had done his best to disguise a demigod as a lout. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said gently. "I envy them, I can tell ye, Jack. What's an idle lout like me good for? Will I ever be able to make a home for myself, or for any one else? They do!" He spoke earnestly, and then suddenly relapsing into an imitation of Alister's accent, which was his latest joke, he added ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... But there is another kind that goes under the name of slang, the offspring rather of mental sloth, and current chiefly among those idle, jocular classes to whom all art is a bugbear and a puzzle. There is a public for every one; the pottle-headed lout who in a moment of exuberance strikes on a new sordid metaphor for any incident in the beaten round of drunkenness, lubricity, and debt, can set his fancy rolling through the music-halls, and thence into the street, secure of applause and a numerous sodden ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... terrapin, Who lately found his speech, Like many another simple lout, Concluded he ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... to Mr. De Mousa, who abruptly tore open the envelope, read the contents of the note, and handed it to his wife. Lady Angora, seeing it was an invitation from the Tortoshells to dinner on that day week, tossed her head as she gave it back, and Mr. De Mousa blandly informed the servant—a stupid lout, who had been bred in a farm-yard—that he would ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... grand duke decided all the questions, shut up with two others in the bedchamber," the noble was promptly arrested, condemned to death, and executed. He interrupted the objection of a high noble with, "Be silent, lout!" His court displayed great splendor, but it was semi-Asiatic. The throne was guarded by young nobles called ryndis, dressed in long caftans of white satin, high caps of white fur, and carrying ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... air about him seemed to tingle with it. We had all done something, we others; we were no shirks or sluggards: but the force in him put us out, penny candles before the sun. I deem not Jeanne the Maid did any marvel when she recognized King Charles at Chinon. Here was I, a common lout, never heard a heavenly voice in all my days, yet I knew in the flick of an eye that this was ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... hour was she arrested?" said the man, thrusting his beak-like nose closer to Armand's face. Evidently the piece of silver had done its work well; he meant to be helpful to this country lout. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... abominations; *unnatural Nor I will none rehearse, if that I may. But of my tale how shall I do this day? Me were loth to be liken'd doubteless To Muses, that men call Pierides (Metamorphoseos wot what I mean), But natheless I recke not a bean, Though I come after him with hawebake*; *lout I speak in prose, and let him rhymes make." And with that word, he with a sober cheer Began his tale, and said as ye ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... brazen-looking woman with a black eye, who answered the question of the officer, "Where did you get that shiner?" with a laugh. "I ran up against the fist of me man," she said. Her "man," a big, sullen lout, sat by, dumb. The woman answered for him that ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... self-made men of the need of the social graces for their sons, and nine out of ten stampede—for all the world as though it were suggested to put them in petticoats. Do they think a poor unlettered lout who shambles at the door, who stands unable to speak, who turns his cap in his hands, who sidles into the room, and can't for the life of him get out again, well trained for the ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... there's no sense in it! If I had been your reverence, I should have refused to do it. You haven't had your proper sleep, and you may have caught cold in the church. It is that which has upset you. Besides which it would be better to marry brute beasts than that Rosalie and her ugly lout. That brat of theirs dirtied one of the chairs.—But you ought to tell me when you feel poorly, and I could make you something warm.—Eh! Monsieur ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... were dawning upon him, the farm duties seemed more insignificant and tedious than ever. Had it been Gethin who stretched himself and yawned as he attacked the first swathe of corn, Ebben Owens would have called him a "lazy lout," but as it was Will, he only jokingly rallied him upon ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... with a skin like thin, rose-tinted ivory. Her eyes were big and so dark a blue that they sometimes looked black, and her mouth was sweet and had a tired droop to match the mute pathos of her eyes. Her husband was a coarse lout of a man who seldom spoke to her when they were together. The Little Doctor had felt that all the tragedy of womanhood and poverty and loneliness was synthesized in this woman with the unusual hair and skin and eyes and expression. She had been coming every day ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... head, it is that notable mark of his master's holiness, that same lantern-jawed lout of ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... any man who goes fishing with any sort of ignorant lout, and who spends a whole day in a boat with him, to tell me when I am lacking ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... a lady is very like a king—she never does wrong or needs pardon; 'tis this great lout of a boy ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... git rid of the old man! If I could! Aw! come t' think, what I got that lout of a brother for? Easy—with Indians to lay it on. Blaze the way for 'Babe'—he's a saphead—but he knows enough to follow a ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... strange character was that of an overgrown country lout with boorish manners and silly mind. He did not and would not go to school, and he asserts now that if he had done so he "would have become as big a fool as other people." A shiftless fellow, left ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... a laugh in her voice, "ye will do well to seek the nut tree, first as last." She nonchalantly crushed another shell in her mouth. "Neither Cunora nor I can spare good food to a kiss-hungry lout like thee!" ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... a matter-of-fact way). Helen, ask yourself this question: what choice is left to a man in such a case? You are generally known as the most beautiful woman in this city. Now shall I, an artist, allow myself to acquire the reputation of an unsociable lout who shuts himself up in his four walls and denies himself to all visitors? The second possibility would be to receive you while at the same time pretending not to understand you. That would give me the wholly undeserved reputation ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... "and it will be long before she loses it, if she ever does. She shrinks from me as from something coarse and rough. She feels that I don't belong to her world at all. In fact, her father's fine bearing, his erect, elegant carriage make me feel as if I were but a country lout in very truth." The reception given to Mr. Jocelyn satisfied Mrs. Atwood thoroughly that his prolonged absence did not result from any alienation from his family. They overwhelmed him with caresses, and either Fred or Minnie ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... now of Roister Doister somewhat to express, That ye may esteem him after his worthiness, In these twenty towns, and seek them throughout, Is not the like stock whereon to graff a lout. All the day long is he facing and craking[49] Of his great acts in fighting and fray-making; But when Roister Doister is put to his proof, To keep the Queen's peace is more for his behoof. If any woman smile, or cast on him an eye, Up is he to the hard ears in love by and by: And in all the ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... more akin to our human souls, to gentleness of bringing up, Christianity of belief and chivalry of all kinds, to be, rather than a hunter, a shepherd. Yet the shepherd is the lout in our idle times; the shepherd, and the tiller of the soil; and alas, the naturalist, again, is apt ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... was reported by a lout of a countryman, Samuel Johnson by name, who had come up to London to make his fortune, and found his first work in reporting speeches in the House of Commons. Pitt did not write out his speeches for the press, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard |
