"Uncouth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Captain Hagberd's upright, hale person, clad in No. 1 sail-cloth from head to foot, would be emerging knee-deep out of rank grass and the tall weeks on his side of the fence. He appeared, with the colour and uncouth stiffness of the extraordinary material in which he chose to clothe himself—"for the time being," would be his mumbled remark to any observation on the subject—like a man roughened out of granite, standing in a wilderness not ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... instance, the gentlemen are so very small, and so completely entangled one with the other, that it is startling to think of the skill and patience requisite for making them all out, to say nothing of affixing the right name—uncouth as it may seem—to each grain of this almost imperceptible dust! He who first called man an epitome of creation, scarcely knew how truly he was speaking, for man bears about in his veins, ascertained samples of at least half the primitive substances from which all others are made, ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... say exactly that it is as soft as our own," I proceeded to say, for the benefit of Miss Spight, who appeared to be listening to our conversation.—"But, a good many people, who call the Teuton tongue uncouth, seem to forget its close resemblance both in style and expression, to English. Either language can be rendered in the vernacular of the other, without losing its force or even sound; and that ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... took the form of uncouth and disagreeable growlings. After that phase had passed he sat for some time with his hand placed protectingly in his trouser-pocket. Finally, in a fierce voice, he ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... still more disorder'd march advance, (Nor march it seem'd, but wild fantastic dance,) The uncouth ANAGRAMS, distorted train, Shifting, in double mazes, o'er the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... neither to look sillily, like a stupid pedant; nor unsettledly, with an uncouth morgue, like a new-come-over cavalier; not over sparing in your courtesies, for that will be imputed to incivilitie and arrogance; nor yet over prodigal in jowking or nodding at every step, for that forme of being popular becometh better aspiring Absaloms than lawful ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... of the now well-known jin-ti-ki-shas, and the air was full of a buzz produced by the rapid reiteration of this uncouth word by fifty tongues. This conveyance, as you know, is a feature of Japan, growing in importance every day. It was only invented seven years ago, and already there are nearly 23,000 in one city, and men can make so much more by drawing them ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... etiquette to assume any ungraceful or uncouth position, such as standing with the arms akimbo, sitting astride a chair, smoking in the presence of ladies, wearing your hat, leaning back in the chair, standing with legs crossed or feet on the chairs, leaning forward in the chair with elbows on ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... time I write of, when she was quite a little girl, and had come from the country with her brother, who, having taken a small farm close to the town, preferred residing in the town to occupying the farmhouse, which was not comfortable. She looked at first with some terror on his uncouth appearance, and with much wonderment on his strange dress. This wonder was heightened by a conversation she overheard one day in the street, between the fool and a little pale-faced boy, who, approaching him respectfully, said, "Weel, cornel!" "Weel, laddie!" was ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... are three—the grizzly (Ursus ferox), the brown (Ursus arctus), and the "polar" (Ursus maritimus). The hair upon other large bears (the polar excepted) is what may be termed "tufty," and their forms are different, being generally more uncouth and "chunkier." The black bear is, in fact, nearer to the polar in shape, as well as in the arrangement of his fur,—than to any other of the tribe. He is much smaller, however, rarely exceeding two-thirds the weight of large ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... fashioned down to the commonplace of conventionality will often exhibit a negative refinement, while a mind of real and subtile delicacy, but of rugged and irrepressible individuality, will occasionally shoot out irregular and uncouth branches. Yet between the symmetry of the one and the spontaneity of the other the choice cannot be doubtful. We are not defending coarseness in any guise. It is always to be assailed, and never to be defended. It is always a detriment, and never an ornament. No excellence can justify ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... of these happy people I have described already; and besides these, we saw several sheds inclosed within a wall, on the outside of which there were several uncouth figures of men, women, hogs, and dogs, carved on posts, that were driven into the ground. Several of the natives were from time to time seen to enter these places, with a slow pace and dejected countenance, from which we conjectured that they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... conquer the uncouth Connivings of our shamed indifference (We call it Christian faith!) are we to scan The racked and shrieking hideousness of Truth To find, in hate's polluted self-defence Throbbing, the pulse, ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... forms of fetichism, where the negro kneels in reverential awe before the shrine of some uncouth and misshapen idol, which his own hands, perhaps, have made, the act of adoration, degrading as the object may be, is nevertheless an acknowledgment of the longing need of the worshipper to throw himself upon ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... was aroused from her sleep by shrieks, and groans and curses, and the sound of a heavy blow, and she sprang from her little bed, to find her mother stretched senseless upon the floor, with the blood trickling from a wound in her head, and a group of uncouth, neighboring women gathered ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... name was an uncouth one—Jemima. It was partly for this reason, partly for its singular appropriateness, that her nickname had entirely transplanted the lawful ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... in creating the earth and providing for its illumination, a whole host of maggot-like creatures had been breeding in Ymir's flesh. These uncouth beings now attracted divine attention. Summoning them into their presence, the gods first gave them forms and endowed them with superhuman intelligence, and then divided them into two large classes. Those which were dark, treacherous, and cunning by nature were banished ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... of a somewhat soft and ugly-coloured jade is sent from Yarkand, also agates and carnelian; beads of these are strung into rather uncouth necklets, which may be bought for half the ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... fellow; and the self-abasement of his companion completely got the better of the passing feeling of personal vanity. He regretted the allusion he had made to the other's appearance, and endeavored to express as much, though it was done in the uncouth manner that belonged to the habits and ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... guessing, if I reply, they might also not have observed them as memorials of those by-past or present benefits, we say as much against him, and as truly, as he hath said against us. 2. His form of reasoning is very uncouth, for, to prove that the observation of days by the converted Jews was to a typical use, he allegeth, that they might have observed, &c. Thus proving a position by a supposition. O brave! 3. There is no sense in his conjecture, for he yields that ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... who beheld their fields and villages consumed with flames and deluged with indiscriminate slaughter. To these real terrors were added the surprise and abhorrence which were excited by the shrill voice, the uncouth gestures, and the strange deformity of the Huns. These savages of Scythia were compared (and the picture had some resemblance) to the animals who walked very awkwardly on two legs, and to the misshapen figures, the Termini, which ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... marches; dangers from bandit, Indian, and lurking Mexican; regrets for the home circle at Lagunitas, make Maxime Valois very grave. Individual sacrifices are not appreciated in war-time. As he rides through the Confederate camp, his heart sinks. The uncouth straggling plainsmen, without order or regular equipment, recall to him his old ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... most embarrassing situation. He could neither read nor write, and his speech was the basest dialect of the Negro quarter. His gait, his attitudes, his gestures, his bearing, his laugh—all were vulgar and uncouth; his manners were the manners of a slave. Money and fine clothes could not mend these defects or cover them up; they only made them more glaring and the more pathetic. The poor fellow could not endure the terrors of the white ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... poisonous shafts of his scorn. Our French Thersites was not always an honest opponent, it must be confessed; and many an attack was made upon the gigantic enemy, which was cowardly, false, and malignant. But to see the monster writhing under the effects of the arrow—to see his uncouth fury in return, and the blind blows that he dealt at his diminutive opponent!—not one of these told in a hundred; when they DID tell, it may be imagined that they were fierce enough in all conscience, and served almost ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... complete, and because the mornings, growing darker as they are continually doing, nobody felt in haste to leave their beds. Of course every one wore his Sunday clothes and I put on my very best waist of olive green satin with a good black skirt, which had a little train, thereby effectively hiding my uncouth feet, still clad as they are in the ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... heard of some that make a circle, and mumble over some uncouth words; and some that have been spiteful and suspicious persons, that have sent for a handful of thatch from the house or barn of him that they have owed a spite to, and the house have been burnt as they had burnt the thatch ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... country districts; what miserable roads had to be traversed by the nobleman's chariot and four, or by the ponderous waggons or strings of pack-horses which supplied the wants of trade and of the humbler traveller; and how the squire only emerged at intervals to be jeered and jostled as an uncouth rustic in the streets of London. He was not a great buyer of books. There were, of course, libraries at Oxford and Cambridge, and here and there in the house of a rich prelate or of one of the great noblemen who were beginning to form ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... understands Greek better than the language of a falconer. He has been used to a dark room, and dark clothes, and his eyes dazzle at a sattin suit. The hermitage of his study has made him somewhat uncouth in the world, and men make him worse by staring on him. Thus is he [silly and] ridiculous, and it continues with him for some quarter of a year out of the university. But practise him a little in men, and brush him over with good company, and he shall out-balance those glisterers, as far as a solid ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... they were called, seemed a strange and half savage race. All their knowledge was professional; and their professional knowledge was practical rather than scientific. Off their own element they were as simple as children. Their deportment was uncouth. There was roughness in their very good nature; and their talk, where it was not made up of nautical phrases, was too commonly made up of oaths and curses. Such were the chiefs in whose rude school were formed those sturdy warriors from whom Smollett, in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... got into the woman now?" muttered Jerry, stretching his arms, and yawning to the utmost capacity of his mouth. The children laughed at their father's uncouth gestures, and even Mrs. Cole's serious face relaxed into a smile, as ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... that might almost be a tower rising above the rest of the building. Then there were documents that seemed all names and dates, with here and there a coat of arms done in the margin, and she came upon a string of uncouth Welsh names linked together by the word 'ap' in a chain that looked endless. There was a paper covered with signs and figures that meant nothing to her, and then there were the pocket-books, full of old-fashioned writing, and much of it in Latin, ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... bands of Captain Bonneville's company had now been assembled for some time at the rendezvous; they had had their fill of feasting, and frolicking, and all the species of wild and often uncouth merrymaking, which invariably take place on these occasions. Their horses, as well as themselves, had recovered from past famine and fatigue, and were again fit for active service; and an impatience began to manifest ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... to his model, or Eureka, as Adam had fondly named his contrivance. The Nevile then perceived that it was from the interior of this machine that the sound which had startled him arose; to his eye the THING was uncouth and hideous; from the jaws of an iron serpent, that, wreathing round it, rose on high with erect crest, gushed a rapid volume of black smoke, and a damp spray fell around. A column of iron in the centre kept in perpetual and regular motion, rising and sinking successively, as the whole mechanism ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... allow my mother to reside in it, and Uncle John had been for years among the Indians in the far Northwest. We had heard of him sometimes, but we had never seen him, we hardly realized that he was a living person, till one day he suddenly appeared among us, rough-looking and uncouth in his hunter's dress, with his heavy beard and his long hair, bringing with him his multifarious assortment, so charming to our eyes, of buffalo-robes and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... clay passed, the last unsightly chasm crossed— how the waiting woods opened their long files to receive them! How the children—perhaps because they had not yet grown quite away from the breast of the bounteous Mother—threw themselves face downward on her brown bosom with uncouth caresses, filling the air with their laughter; and how Miss Mary herself—felinely fastidious and intrenched as she was in the purity of spotless skirts, collar, and cuffs—forgot all, and ran like a crested quail at the head of her brood, until, romping, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... high-class families, take it for granted that ignorant "servant girls" and "hired men" are representative of their kind. Therefore they put upper class servants in the same category—regardless of whether they are uncouth and illiterate, or persons of refined appearance and manner who often have considerable cultivation, acquired not so much at school as through the constant contact with ultra refinement of surroundings, and not infrequently ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... pieces of gold and some emeralds were discovered on the ground, and, as their eyes became accommodated to the darkness, they discerned in the most retired corner of the room the figure of the deity. It was an uncouth monster, made of wood, with the head resembling that of a man. This was the god, through whose lips Satan had breathed forth the far-famed oracles which had ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... the new boy said, to keep the other fellows from knowing what you were saying, which it certainly did. Yan practised hard at it and within a few weeks was an adept. He could handle the uncouth sentences better than his teacher, and he was singularly successful in throwing in accents and guttural tones that imparted a delightfully savage flavour, and he rejoiced in jabbering away to the new boy in the presence of others so that he might bask in the mystified ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... (Ward) in Arab. is masculine, sounding to us most uncouth. But there is a fem. form Wardah a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... caught in the dream of the thing and has little time to bargain for it. He feels for his glasses, when you call him forth; he sweats; he listens to the forge that calls him. The unfinished thing is not only on his bench, but in his mind—in its weakness, half-born and uncouth.... "Talk to my daughter. She knows about these things," he says. "I must go.... Yes, it is a ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... torch did no more than faintly illumine the rock he sat on and those close at hand, and cast a gigantic uncouth shadow of himself on the rough wall behind. All beyond was solid darkness, blacker even than ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... senseless curiosity about the other wayfarer. The man was walking rapidly, heels ringing with uncouth loudness, cane tapping the flagging at brief intervals. Both sounds ceased abruptly as their cause turned in beneath one of the porticos. In the emphatic and unnatural quiet that followed, Kirkwood, stepping more lightly, fancied that another ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... purple liquid; occasional groups of richly colored hot springs in an acre or more of dull yellows, the whole steaming vehemently and interchanging the pinks and blues of its hot waters as the passing traveller changes his angle of vision—these and other uncouth phenomena in wide variety and frequent repetition enliven the tourist's way. They are more numerous in geyser neighborhoods, but some of them are met singly, always with a little shock of surprise, in every ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... these holy prelates were Lugacius, Columbanus, Meldanus, Lugadius, Cassanus, Ceranus; but to mention the names of the bishoprics we for good reason omit—for in many instances we avoid the names of places and of persons, that we may not, by their uncouth barbarousness, occasion disgust or horror to cultivated ears. However, these prelates profited much the church of God by their conversation and by their example, and closed their lives in much holiness; for they were wont to relate many miracles to have been worked by ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... came on board the ship we ate where we were, and with those we found there, but afterwards the messes were regulated, and we were placed on deck with five or six uncouth youngsters; where, nevertheless, we continued. This so exercised the other passengers, seeing us submit so willingly, that they themselves could no longer endure it, and desired us to come with them, and make a mess of eight. We had been compelled to buy our stores ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... the King. "You see, gentlemen, he seeks the company of the wild boar so much that he has acquired his uncouth expressions. Well, Saint Simon, you ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... Chamber. He was answered by "Blunderbuss" Pepper, the new Senator who had turned every aristocrat out of office in his aristocratic Southern State and filled the vacancies with men of his own humble origin. He was a burly untidy- looking man, and frequently as uncouth in speech, a demagogue and excitable. But the Senate, now that three years in that body had toned him down, conceded his ability and took his abuse with the utmost good-nature. Betty recalled his biography as sketched by Senator Burleigh, and noted that almost ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... I am. And from what I hear, 'tis a dangerous place, full of fierce beasts and uncouth people. But go thither I must, for I seek a man I shall not find elsewhere. If thou wouldst find a hawk, needs must that thou find a hawk's nest; no other bird's will serve thy purpose—that is my position. Is there ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... beside the spring, gazing listlessly into its placid depths, an uncanny figure made its way through a breach in the bastion, and stood before me. At first I confess I was startled, the wild uncouth thing, bent and decrepit, with hair of long and tangled gray, fiery sunken eyes, seemed born of another world than this. He bent his gaze with searching scrutiny ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... undoubtedly a comfortable wardrobe at home, but that it was part of the etiquette of mourning to go for a season with neglected persons and blackened faces. All this was told me in the intervals of shaking hands, and offering and receiving condolences in the most uncouth, guttural language I had ever heard. Their Father at length dismissed them, with a promise of some presents to help dry up their tears. It must not be inferred that the grief of the poor little widow was not sincere. ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... her debut at church, with her masculine hat placed resolutely on the top of her head, and cane in hand, people could not say their prayers, or attend to the sermon, for staring and wondering at the uncouth apparition which had so unceremoniously appeared in the midst of them. This was not diminished, by her choosing to stand during those portions of the service, when pious females bend the knee. Miss Wilhelmina said, "that she was too big ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... for your behaviour is generally graceful, and unexceptionable; only the other night it was very rough and uncouth. I expected you to put your finger in your mouth the next thing, and stand as if you had never seen anybody. And Daisy Randolph! the heiress ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... not heard him, and he followed her doggedly, with an occasional snort or grunt or other inarticulate damn at the obstinate mud. She stopped at last, with a quick gasp. Looking at her, he chafed her limp hands,—his huge, uncouth face growing pale. When she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... in her resentment of the poor thing's uncouth sorrow, that she had spoken to her with the hope of getting, ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... been less great, that glorious shrine might never have been beaconed in the sky, or at least its proportions might have been uncouth ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... of an idolatrous worship. The antipathy to bishops and clerical vestments was equally strong, and a sweeping reform was carried on under the dictatorship of Knox. Elizabeth had no more sympathy with this bold, but uncouth, reformer and his movements, than had Mary herself, and never could forgive him for his book, written at Geneva, aimed against female government, called the "First Blast of a Trumpet against the monstrous Regiment of Women." But Knox cared not for either the English ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... impression of awkwardness, confusion and heaviness, but the detail is so minute and the animation so great that the attention of the spectator is forcibly arrested; these uncouth beings impress us with the sense of their self-reliance and their confidence in their master, as we watch them brandishing their weapons or hurrying to the attack, and see the shock of battle and the death-blows given and received. The human-headed bulls, standing on guard ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... innocent," said the Lady Ysolinde; "one that worships me, as you see. He is so great of stature and so uncouth that the children persecute him, and some day he may do one of them an injury. Years ago I rescued him from an evil pack of them and brought him hither. So that is the reason why ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Sallying forth with it at these times, far into the country, I seldom returned at night without a string of bullfinches, blackbirds, and linnets hanging in triumph round my neck. When I reflect on the immense quantity of powder and shot which I crammed down the muzzle of my uncouth fowling-piece, I am less surprised at the number of birds which I slaughtered, than that I never blew my hands, face, and old honey-combed gun, at one and the same time, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... quite sure of victory, placed himself opposite his adversary, and dealt him a blow heavy enough to kill an elephant. Phanes avoided it cleverly, in the same moment hitting the giant with his naked fist so powerfully under the eyes, that the blood streamed from his nose and mouth, and the huge, uncouth fellow fell on the ground with a yell. When they picked him up his face looked like a pumpkin of a greenish-blue color. The boys shouted with delight at his discomfiture; but we admired the dexterity ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... places, and in such perfectly barren cabins, I do not see," groaned Helen Cameron after a visit to one settler's family near a wild canyon to the west of Benbow Camp. "That woman and those girls! Not a decent garment to their backs, and the men so rough and uncouth. I would not stay there on a bet—not for the best ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... uncouth vessels, of considerable size, capable, each, of containing a very large crew. They might almost have been styled "life-boats," as they had hollow bamboos wrought into their structure in a manner which ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... a highly ludicrous effect, from the contrast in the fixed distortion of the rest of the countenance.] and notwithstanding the smallness of the theatre, I did not find that they were in any way prejudicial to vivacity. The mask was peculiarly favourable for the jokes of the roguish slave: his uncouth physiognomy, as well as his apparel, stamped him at once as a man of a peculiar race, (as in truth the slaves were, partly even by extraction,) and he might therefore well be allowed to act and speak differently from the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... this small house, and my bedroom is sweetened with lavender, has a clean sash-window, and the walls are, moreover, adorned with ballads of Fair Rosamond and Cruel Barbara Allan. The woman's accent, though uncouth enough, sounds yet kindly in my ear; for I have never yet forgotten the desolate effect produced on my infant organs, when I heard on all sides your slow and broad northern pronunciation, which was to me ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... his arrival. A servant-girl appeared, a true servant of the South, dirty and untidy, with her hair hanging in wisps and falling over her face, while her petticoat under the accumulation of stains which had soiled it had retained only a certain uncouth remnant of its old color, a hue suitable for a country fair or ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Mrs. Dunlop, "A solitary inmate of an old smoky spence, far from every object I love or by whom I am beloved; nor any acquaintance older than yesterday, except Jenny Geddes, the old mare I ride on, while uncouth cares and novel plans hourly insult my awkward ignorance and bashful inexperience." It takes a more even, better-ordered spirit than Burns' to stand such solitude. His heart, during those first weeks at Ellisland, (p. 097) entirely sank within him, and he saw all men and life coloured by his ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... ask protection from man. On such a night as this we will request the reader to follow us toward a district that trenches upon the foot of a dark mountain, from whose precipitous sides masses of gray rock, apparently embedded in heath and fern, protrude themselves in uncouth and gigantic shapes. 'Tis true they were not then visible; but we wish the reader to understand the character of the whole scenery through which we pass. We diverge from the highway into a mountain road, which resembles the body of a serpent when ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Fathers, includes, among other things, a string of complimentary rhymes addressed to the first Laird of Raeburn; and the copy which had belonged to that gentleman was in all likelihood about the first book of verses that fell into the poet's hand.[36] How continually its wild {p.054} and uncouth doggerel was on his lips to his latest day all his familiars can testify; and the passages which he quoted with the greatest zest were those commemorative of two ancient worthies, both of whom had had to contend against physical misfortune similar to his own. The ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... unequally matched, these two, the monarch of the Western plains, and the monarch of the northeastern forests. Both had something of the monstrous, the uncouth, about them, as if they belonged not to this modern day, but to some prehistoric epoch when Earth moulded her children on more lavish and less graceful lines. The moose was like the buffalo in having his hind-quarters relatively slight ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... equality. The great men of culture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time; who have labored to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanize it, to make it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated and learned, yet still remaining the best knowledge and thought of the time, and a true source, therefore, of sweetness and light. Such a man was Abelard ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... winds, pity will also fly away with it Must—that word is a ploughshare which suits only loose soil Tender and uncouth natural sounds, which no language knows There is nothing better than death, for it is peace Tone of patronizing instruction assumed by the better informed Wait, child! What ...
— Quotations From Georg Ebers • David Widger
... and triumphantly conquered by acknowledging each phantom as a friendly power—a creature on whose shoulders he had raised himself to higher and higher levels; he saw that though the blackness was peopled with uncouth and gigantic forms, out of all these there at last arose the being Man, who could put all ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... convoked; I trembled, I stood motionless, involuntarily contemplating the fate of this negro, in all its dismal latitude. The living spectre, though deprived of his eyes, could still distinctly hear, and in his uncouth dialect begged me to give him some water to allay his thirst. Humanity herself would have recoiled back with horror; she would have balanced whether to lessen such reliefless distress, or mercifully with one blow to end this dreadful scene ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... flourish of old heroic music, heard thirty years before—such scenes and sounds, perhaps, were all alive before his intellectual sense. Meanwhile, the merchants and ship-masters, the spruce clerks and uncouth sailors, entered and departed; the bustle of his commercial and Custom-House life kept up its little murmur round about him; and neither with the men nor their affairs did the General appear to sustain the most distant relation. He ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Delancy Grandcourt, uncouth and highly coloured, stood up to shake hands; Bunbury Gray, a wiry, bronzed little polo-playing squadron ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the inestimable boon of the trained nurse of education, refinement and ability. Before Florence Nightingale gave herself and initiated the movement for the training of young women of standing as nurses, such work had been left to the rough, uncouth, and often low-lived men and women, of whom the unspeakable Sairey Gamp, immortalized by Charles Dickens, is ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... his lighted cigar, at the same time darting a searching look at his questioner, but in the handsome, well-dressed, almost dandified young man before him, he failed to recognize the uncouth, grimacing Scip of ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... mean merely that they felt themselves more removed from its tone and spirit; their altered circumstances might explain this; but I am convinced that they found a greater difficulty and strangeness in the language of Spenser and Shakespeare than we find now; that it sounded in many ways more uncouth, more old-fashioned, more abounding in obsolete terms than it does in our ears at the present. Only in this way can I explain the tone in which they are accustomed to speak of these worthies of the near past. I must again cite ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... bringing into notice, and who will owe his fortune (if he makes it) to him. Lord Egremont is enormously rich, and lives with an abundant though not very refined hospitality. The house wants modern comforts, and the servants are rustic and uncouth; but everything is good, and it all bears an air of solid and aristocratic grandeur. The stud groom told me there are 300 horses of different sorts here. His course, however, is nearly run, and he has the mortification ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... He next chanted a song for the purpose of making chiefs for the sky and the earth, and at its close sent Ndidilhkizn, the Lightning Maker, to encircle the world. Ndidilhkizn departed at once, but returned in a short time with three very uncouth persons, two girls and a boy, whom he had found in the sky in a large turquoise bowl. Not one of them had eyes, ears, hair, mouth, nose, or teeth, and though they had arms and legs, they ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... child's joy and peace. She did not yet recognize it as love, saw only the ministration; but it was what she sorely needed: she said the sort of thing suited her, and at once began to fall in with it. What it cost her entertainers, with organization as delicate as uncouth, in the mere matter of bodily labor, she had not an idea—imagined indeed that she gave them no trouble at all, because, having overheard the conversation between them upon her arrival, she did herself a part of the work required for her comfort ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... their melancholy symbolism. When St. George left him it was in the hope that Olivia would consent to have him sent down the mountain, although St. George himself was half inclined to agree with Amory's "But, really, I would far rather talk with one madman with this madman's manners than to sup with uncouth sanity" and "After all, if he should murder us, probably no one could do it with greater delicacy." And Olivia had no intention of sending old Malakh back to Med. "How could one possibly do that?" she wanted to know, and ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... in command?"—"Transpose the letters of their names, and nothing will be more easy. There is not a single colonel or general whom I do not know, and I shall soon be able to recompose their names."—"But, Sire, the anagrams which I shall make will perhaps be so uncouth, that it will be seen at the post-office, that the names are disguised on purpose."—"Do you think then, that they amuse themselves at the post-office by opening and reading all the letters of business which ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... hands, his unkempt, bristling hair, His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, His lack of all we prize as debonair, Of power or will to shine, of art ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... learned to get along very well by simply making the best of it," continued Lydia. "And to tell the truth, I have learned to respect these rugged fellows. They are uncouth; they have no manners, but their hearts are honest and true, and that is of much greater importance in frontiersmen than the little attentions and courtesies upon which women are apt to ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... excused as being delirium, due to physical suffering. Nagel, in Mysterier, is shown as a fool, an eccentric intolerable in ordinary society, though he is disconcertingly human, paradoxically sane. Glahn, in Pan, apologizes for his uncouth straightforwardness by confessing that he is more at home in the woods, where he can say and do what he pleases without offence. Johannes, in Victoria, is of humble birth, which counts in extenuation of his unmannerly frankness in early years. Later he becomes a poet, and ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... a somewhat uncouth and wiry specimen of the Canadian farmer who evidently paid little attention to the subject of dress. He said nothing, but looked in a lowering way at Yates, with something of contempt and ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... an academy than with that of the usher of a school; we need not wonder, therefore, that he did not keep his academy more than a year and a half. From Mr. Garrick's account he did not appear to have been profoundly reverenced by his pupils. His oddities of manner and uncouth gesticulations could not but be the subject of merriment to them; and in particular, the young rogues used to turn into ridicule his awkward fondness for Mrs. Johnson, whom he used to name by the familiar appellation ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... exhibiting the full length of the gaunt person and sable steed of that Sir Piers de Mordaunt who had so signalized himself in the field in which Henry of Richmond changed his coronet for a crown. Through this hall Clarence was led to a small chamber clothed with uncouth and tattered arras, in which, seemingly immersed in papers, he found ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with Coldevin between them. Coldevin was talking. He nodded to the others and finished what he was saying before he paused. The Attorney, this peculiar nonentity, who neither said nor did anything himself, took a wicked pleasure in listening to this uncouth person from the backwoods. He had happened upon Coldevin far up in Thranes Road; he had spoken to him, and Coldevin had said that he was going away soon, perhaps to-morrow. He was going back to Torahus; he was mainly going in order to resign his position; he had accepted a situation ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... operated upon life with their full force. He might therefore have displayed a series of subordination and a form of government, which, in more luminous and improved regions, have been long forgotten, and have delighted his readers with many uncouth customs that are now disused, and wild opinions that prevail no longer. But he probably had not knowledge of the world sufficient to qualify him for judging what would deserve or gain the attention of mankind. The mode of life ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... was sure that the little hump-backed oddity had risen to its feet and was a veritable creature: an actual uncouth, shambling grotesque, instead of a mere flat ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... described Jackson as he first saw him in his seat in the House: "A tall, lank, uncouth looking individual, with long locks of hair hanging over his brows and face, while a queue hung down his back tied in an eelskin. The dress of this individual was singular, his manners and deportment that of a backwoodsman." Bartlett's ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... the last survivor of the genuine race of Grub Street hacks; the last of that generation of authors whose abject misery and whose dissolute manners had furnished inexhaustible matter to the satirical genius of Pope. From nature he had received an uncouth figure, a diseased constitution, and an irritable temper. The manner in which the earlier years of his manhood had been passed had given to his demeanour, and even to his moral character, some peculiarities appalling to the civilised ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... went out with a crowd of roystering chaps, the lie was passed, and—it was the old story,—he came to Texas for a refuge. The great civil war was just over, the country in a chaotic state, and there he had remained ever since. Thrown with wild, uncouth men, and being reckless in the extreme, ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... me the more pleasure, as I received it among barbarians, and an uncouth set of people. Since you received my last letter I have not slept above three or four nights in a bed; but after walking a good deal all the day, I have lain down before the fire upon a little hay, straw, fodder, or a bear-skin—whichsoever ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... music; not such, indeed, as Milton's echo, with Henry Lawes's notes, would have made,—of which the night and the scene had made me dream; but the voice of the slaves on this their night of holiday, beguiling their cares with uncouth airs, played on rude African instruments. Taking one of my ship-mates with me, I immediately went to the huts of the married slaves, where all merry-makings are held; and found parties playing, singing, and dancing to the moonlight. A superstitious ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... desiring, Tenements uncouth I was fain to house in; "Let such lodging be for a breath-while," thought ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... of the bank brought him in sight of a gaudily-painted barge, oil board of which armed men, in uncouth and foreign dresses, were chasing with barbaric shouts some large object in the water. In the bows stood a man of gigantic stature, brandishing a harpoon in his right hand, and in his left holding the line of a second, the head of which was fixed ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley |
