"Clumsily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unseasonably blunt, that curiously enough, I had almost suspected him of taking that odd sort of interest in one's welfare, which leads a philanthropist, all other methods failing, to frustrate a project deemed bad; by pretending clumsily to favor it. But no inuendoes; Jarl was a Viking, frank as his fathers; though not so ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... entrance. Iemon, carrying fishing rod and basket, and followed by Natsume Kyuzo[u] and Imaizumi Jinzaemon, burst into the room. All three were more or less drunk. Dumfounded O'Iwa looked from one to the other. Imaizumi carried a tub. Kyuzo[u] knocked it from his shoulders. Then tumbled clumsily down on the cask. None of them had removed the dirty waraji (straw sandals) they wore. "Why do so in such a barn?" hiccoughed Kyuzo[u]. "And this sake; Kyuzo[u] found it without, at the kitchen door. Jinzaemon shouldered it. Whence does it come, Iemon ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... King tell his men to drive a goat toward them, and the King did so, and one of the men struck one of the goats with his spear, and it ran clumsily across ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... phraseology of the Dialogue (compare opos melesei tis...kaka: oti pas aphron mainetai): and the writer seems to have been acquainted with the 'Laws' of Plato (compare Laws). An incident from the Symposium is rather clumsily introduced, and two somewhat hackneyed quotations (Symp., Gorg.) recur. The reference to the death of Archelaus as having occurred 'quite lately' is only a fiction, probably suggested by the Gorgias, where the story of Archelaus ...
— Alcibiades II • An Imitator of Plato
... his fate, drawn down the river in his magic boat by the Swan from a far mysterious land, a land of perpetual freshness and beauty, is an infinitely more poetic notion than the commonplace angel flapping clumsily down from heaven; and even if we feel it to be absurd that he should have to beg his wife to take him on trust, yet, after all, he takes his wife on trust, and he tells her at the outset that he cannot reveal the truth about himself. ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... the first time that I understood how shrewdly, and yet how clumsily now and then, the man had weaved together his information. He spoke with an abundance of detail that astonished me; he spoke of names and places with the greatest precision; he related how himself had been sent from St. Omer's with fifty pounds ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... somewhat unworldly wisdom. Now her faith in his discernment was shaken. His treatment of her on the night of the ball had shocked, confused her. She was ready to make allowance for him: she had told her story clumsily, and had afterwards been both cross and obstinate; while part of his violence was certainly to be ascribed to his coming breakdown. But this did not cover everything; and the ungenerous spirit in which he had met her frankness, his doubt of her word, of her good faith—his utter unreasonableness ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... she's gone," said Adam, clumsily trying to soothe the mother's anguish, but finding that a tongue long accustomed to expressions of haughty pride and bigotry, could but poorly lend itself to softer words of comfort. "There, there, don't cry, let her go. That scoundrel ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... vengeance on this sole party in the secret: shame is inventive. They are not the worst things of which one is most ashamed: there is not only deceit behind a mask—there is so much goodness in craft. I could imagine that a man with something costly and fragile to conceal, would roll through life clumsily and rotundly like an old, green, heavily-hooped wine-cask: the refinement of his shame requiring it to be so. A man who has depths in his shame meets his destiny and his delicate decisions upon paths which few ever reach, and with regard ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... "The painting is but clumsily done," he said, "though maybe it would pass without close examination. He is a stranger, and comes of a race unknown to me but, as you said, it matters not to me who he is; suffice that he is a friend ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... completely filled the figure. In this way a definite filled-in figure remains on the paper, similar to the figures on the cards of the first series. This figure can be in any of the ten colors. At first the children fill in the figures very clumsily without regard for the outlines, making very heavy lines and not keeping them parallel. Little by little, however, the drawings improve, in that they keep within the outlines, and the lines increase in number, grow finer, and are parallel ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... time the grave disadvantages of redundance in speech, of unnecessary verbiage. There had been no earthly need for my last words, and now that my fatal fluency had found me out, for the life of me I could not think of the name of a likely place. At length, with clumsily affected carelessness, I had to say, 'Oh, just down south a bit ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... Menzikoff who gave her to the czar. There was a secret marriage which was confirmed by a public ceremony in 1712, in reward for her services at Pultowa. Peter also instituted the Order "For Love and Fidelity," in her honor. A German princess describes her thus:—"The czarina was small and clumsily made, very much tanned, and without grace or air of distinction. You had only to see her to know that she was lowborn. From her usual costume you would have taken her for a German comedian. Her dress had ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... man; show them how you can spurt). I never thought they'd try Porter in their boat. They might as well try Riddell. Just shows how hard-up they must be for men. How are you?" he cried, as the schoolhouse tub went clumsily past, both rowers looking decidedly nervous under the critical eye ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... I would have gone in my grave-clothes sooner than not go at all, and belike he knew it. I began arraying myself sullenly and clumsily ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... themselves more liberty. It struck me that Keredec at first dreaded that they might be traced to the inn, and I'm afraid his fear was justified, for one night, before I came to know them, I met Mr. 'Percy' on the road; he'd visited Madame Brossard's and pumped Amedee dry, but clumsily tried to pretend to me that he had not been there at all. At the time, I did not connect him even remotely with Professor Keredec's anxieties. I imagined he might have an eye to the spoons; but it's as ridiculous to think him a burglar as it would be to take ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... of his hero, just as we were to see later, at the beginning of a book destined to make some noise in the world, the portrait of "Captain Lemuel Gulliver of Redriff." Undoubtedly his opinions on men and life, his analysis of sentiment, are rather clumsily blended with the story and savour of the awkwardness of a first attempt; but there was however merit in making the attempt, and it is not impossible at distant intervals to discover under the crust of pedantry some well-turned passage, possessing eloquence, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... were not the only game under the logs. One day when he had turned over a larger log than usual, he was astonished to see a tiny four-footed creature run squeaking out. Black Bruin hopped clumsily after the field-mouse. Pat, pat went his heavy paws, but the mouse ran this way and that, dodging and squeaking, and several times he missed, although by this time he was quite expert with his paws. Finally he landed ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... plantain leaves, in a low, smoky hut, with my faithful dog lying beside me, whining and licking my hands and face. Underneath the joists, that bound the rafters of the roof together, lay a corpse, wrapped in a boatsail, on which was clumsily written with charcoal, "The body of John Deadeye, Esq., late commander of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... that ships of the line are often unwieldy and clumsily deep in the water; but if you ever do need a gunboat with a howitzer or two on deck, may I hope ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... that it moved clumsily, as if wounded; but it was passing through the long grass, and I could not get a ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... of Grub street, intent on getting a comfortable livelihood by agricultural labor; or, Coleridge's projected Pantisocracy in full experiment; or Candide and his motley associates, at work in their cabbage-garden; or anything else that was miserably out at elbows, and most clumsily patched in the rear. We might have been sworn comrades to Falstaff's ragged regiment. Little skill as we boasted in other points of husbandry, every mother's son of us would have served admirably to stick up for a scarecrow. And the worst of the matter was that the first ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... whole rested on a misconception; the limitary idea of knowledge was confounded with the infinite idea of power. To have a quickness in copying or mimicking other men, and in learning to do dexterously what they did clumsily,—ostentatiously to keep glittering before men's eyes a thaumaturgic versatility such as that of a rope-dancer, or of an Indian juggler, in petty accomplishments,—was a mode of the very vulgarest ambition: ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... a silent man at best, came in to supper much as usual. In the midst of the meal there was a rap upon the kitchen door and Marty clumsily ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... often it was the confused murmur of the herd itself—the click of a horn, the friction of heavy bodies, the stamp of a hoof, with now and then the low, complaining note of a cow with a calf, or the subdued noise of a steer as it lay down, first lurching to the knees, then rolling clumsily upon the haunch, with a long, stertorous ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... flight as he talked rapidly and brokenly, kissing her cheek, her neck, straining her so close to him that she could hardly breathe. Suddenly it poised above the memory of an old book of Renan's, "The Abbess Juarre," in which the eminent skeptic had somewhat clumsily attempted to demonstrate that if the world unmistakably announced its finish within three days the inhabitants would give themselves up to an ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... to get the effect of Blackletter with the Roman form is likely to result clumsily. The celebrated Roman faces designed by William Morris (too familiar to require reproduction here) are, despite their real beauty, over-black on the page, and awkward when examined in detail. While the stimulus Morris's work gave to typography was much needed at that time, the ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... fact about him was the improvement in his spirits: he was losing his air of gloomy savagery; often he smiled—at a dish which took his fancy, and on setting out for the sands to join Pollyooly. At times, when he had performed some small feat, clumsily indeed, but not with a quite incredible clumsiness, he would turn to her a triumphant, but appealing, eye which begged for a word, or a smile of approval. The humane Pollyooly rarely failed to give him that word or smile to brace him to fresh efforts. With other little ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... for the boy, for there were long days of sickening, throbbing pain, that darted up and down about his eye, and painted strange, lurid pictures against the darkness of his closed lids. Then came the time when he was allowed to sit up once more, and to wander clumsily about his narrow quarters, bruising himself by frequent collisions with the unseen furniture, until Allie's heart ached for him, and she longed to tear away the bandages, and let him have one short hour of daylight again. His piano was his main solace in these ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... the ice was movement! Living figures were there! And at the sight Kenneth Torrance's lips spread in their first real grin for days. The plan had worked! The sealmen had been destroyed, and already some of the Peary's men were up there and fumbling clumsily across the hundred feet which separated them from the hole in the ice that was the last step to ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... collecting the stories and making a novel of his life.' In the first edition of his book something strong had clearly been written, but it was wisely suppressed at the last moment when the book was bound, for the new pages are but clumsily pasted on the guard between leaves 166 and 169. The first edition had accordingly this account, which was even toned ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... Meg bustled about, removing from the small oven the belated "steak an' 'taties" which had long been drying there. In this removal, she clumsily tilted the boiler in which her "wash" was bubbling and flavored the meal with a dash of soapsuds, but Glory was more hungry than critical, and far more grateful than either. Smiles and tears both came as she caught Meg's wet hand and kissed ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... think you can," I said very clumsily, I know. "Walters knows what a brute he has been, and of course he is horribly sorry, and bad now, and keeps on speaking about there being no hope for him, and wanting to die. I can't talk to him, because I don't seem ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... observe that this account is based upon and clumsily accommodated to the idea, prevalent in Vasari's time throughout Italy, that Van Eyck not merely improved, but first introduced, the art of oil-painting, and that no mixture of color with linseed or nut oil had taken place ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... a brown patch upon the girl's faded skirt at the knee; the shortness of the garment indicating its age to be something over three years, as well as permitting the knowledge to become more general than befitting that her cotton stockings had been clumsily darned in several places. Her pursuer was in as evil case; his trousers displayed a tendency to fringedness at pocket and heel; his coat, blowing open as he ran, threw pennants of torn lining to the breeze, and made it too plain that there were but ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... which some later Jewish poet or fabulist of Alexandria wove the ridiculous and frigid machinery, borrowed from the popular superstitions of the Greeks (though, probably, of Egyptian origin), and accommodated, clumsily enough, to the purer monotheism of the Mosaic law. The Rape of the Lock is another instance of a simple tale thus enlarged at a later period, though in this case by the same author, and with a very different result. Now unless Mr. Hillhouse is Romanist enough ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... by the frog making a lazy leap to one side, tumbling heavily over on its back, and rolling clumsily on to its legs again, as if it wished to escape from its tormentor, but had scarcely vigour enough to make the effort. Peterkin quietly lifted it up and placed it deliberately before him again in the same ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... together and confess this to our Father, in each other's hearing. I can unite cordially with anyone, man, woman or child, who really prays. A very illiterate person could win my heart if I knew he truly loved the Lord Jesus, no matter how clumsily he expressed that love; and his prayers would edify me. Perhaps you can not look at this matter exactly as I do. I know I suffered for years, whenever I prayed with others, old or young; but I persevered in what I believed to be a duty, until, not so very long ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... man and his beard were not as clean as might be. He wore a black gown and an ordinary high silk hat, although pushed much farther back on his head than an Englishman would have worn it. He walked heavily and clumsily inside the railing, and stood before the desk, slowly turning over backward the leaves of the great book. Then suddenly he began to chant in the Hebrew tongue. His voice fell mellow and sweet upon the silence, filling it with drowsy sound, as the soft music of a humble-bee ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... many a long day. To see the dignified animal make such an exhibition of himself over a trifle of this sort was too ludicrous. But at last he managed to get rid of the hoops, stood erect on his hind legs, and then waddled clumsily towards the hut. ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... continued to gaze at her in speechless astonishment. She skipped clumsily round the table and stood before him with her ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Keeping a hand on the rock until he was clear of the shrubs, he crept forward on thievish feet. His assistants, moving more clumsily to their allotted station, were audible enough to him, but to a man unconscious of their presence, and actively climbing a tree, they were remote and still as ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... alliteration and parallelism do not run quite side by side, the second half of each alliterative couplet being parallel with the first half of the next couplet. Accordingly, each new sentence begins somewhat clumsily in the middle of the couplet. All these peculiarities are not, however, always to be distinguished in ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... crashed clumsily against the Sausalito ferry-slip, and in the sudden confusion of landing Claire was swept along ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... told him, her spirit shining like fire in her eyes. "The whole six of them. I knew they were not our cattle. I saw how the brands had been worked, clumsily worked. Oh, my God, Steve Packard, what ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... her across the hall. He had not been in the dining-room since the dance started, and he was amazed and shocked to find half a dozen couples in the big chairs or on the divans in close embrace. He paused, but Hester led him to an empty chair, shoved him clumsily down into it, and then flopped ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... features, his clear enunciation and well-modulated voice, his easy carriage of an accomplished fencer—a fencer with muscles of steel—seemed to be a man of another kind from the slow-moving detective, with his husky voice, his common, slurring enunciation, his clumsily moulded features, so ill adapted to the expression of emotion and intelligence. It was a contrast almost between the hawk and the mole, the warrior and the workman. Only in their eyes were they alike; both of them ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... orderly untidiness, and at the far end a fire was burning and five or six men in Darkovan clothing—loose sleeved shirts, tight wrapped breeches, low boots—were squatting around it, talking. They got up as Forth and Kendricks and I walked toward them, and Forth greeted them clumsily, in bad accented Darkovan, then switched to Terran Standard, letting one of ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... deep regret, sir, for that accident the other day—I set down the penholder clumsily, in equilibrium—unstable equilibrium—besides, I had no notion there was a reader behind the desk. Of course, if I had been aware, I ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... Mortimer not only to think of the hidden penknife, and will me toward it, but also to look toward it himself. Now, to look toward any object, a man usually turns his whole body in that direction. So, groping about, clumsily, I managed to get sight of the toes of those well-remembered boots. Seeing which way they were pointed was all the information I needed just then. So, with all sorts of hesitating movements and false starts, ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... possibility of taking Telnitz easily, and then crossing the Goldbach and going on to Gross-Raigern in order to control the road from Brunn to Vienna and so cut off our line of retreat. The Austro-Russians fell headlong into the trap, and, thinning out the rest of their line, they clumsily piled up a considerable force in the lower part of Telnitz, and in the narrow, marshy defiles around the meres of Satschan and Menitz. They thought, for some unknown reason, that Napoleon was considering withdrawing, without ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... outside. He recalls that he was greatly interested at one time in some workmen who were repairing the church, and that he constantly turned from his post of observation to try and imitate their labors, but his only building material was the furniture of the room, and chairs and tables clumsily resisted his efforts to pile them up into suitable form. He tells us that this strong desire for building and the bitter disappointment of his repeated failures were still keenly remembered when he was a grown man, and thus suggested to him that children ought to be provided with materials ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... embrace, she must have been once much stouter, for her skin appeared from the colour and texture to have come to her at second hand, and to have originally belonged to a much larger person, for it bagged and hung in flaps about her jowls and bosom, like an ill—cut maintopsail, which sits clumsily about the clews. I think I could have reefed her with advantage, below ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... triumph. Mad laughter, tender and joyous, lurked perilously in his throat. His feet would have pirouetted in gay abandon had he not, with much responsible feeling of control, forced himself to walk with dignity and calm. But his nervous flying fingers fumbled clumsily with string and paper and taxed his ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... generation of your ancestors ever carried. The article in question was more like the shelter which we see represented in Chinese paintings as carried over the heads of persons of high rank among the Celestials. It was very large, not much curved into the shape of a dome when expanded, very clumsily and coarsely put together, but of gorgeous magnificence of material. It was made of a very thick and rich damask silk, additionally ornamented by embroidery in gold and silver thread, and the handle and points of the supports were richly gilt. In a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... course, therefore, she knew nothing whatever about it when Mr. Upjohn toward the end of the evening, actually allowed himself to be decoyed into the gay whirl by one of the youngest and most daring of the girls, and galloped clumsily around like a sportive and giddy elephant set free for the first time in its native jungle, and finding it very much to its liking. His daughter Maria, faithfully at her mother's side, sat with one ear grudgingly lent to the prosy heaviness of Mr. Webb's light talk, and ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... said he, during the course of that evening, "how plain I see it all now! The boy that stutters is a model of obedience and tenderness; I ought to have dwelt upon and imitated that, and, oh! I thought only of his stuttering. The boy that walks so clumsily, as well as the great fellow that lisps, are such industrious lads, and so advanced in learning, that the master thinks both will be distinguished hereafter; and I, who—(oh, my poor mother, I must confess to you)—hated ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... getting away from it—the one thrush on the summer-house who, you will note, had never moved. But when he looked he found that thrush was not on the summer-house, but on the lawn, eating bread; and when he flew down to the lawn to investigate—he flew and landed very clumsily—he made a discovery that seemed to surprise him; or did he already know it? Anyway, the thrush on the lawn was a lady, and—well, what would you? The cripple balanced as well as he could, and looked foolish. It was all ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... leave early next morning, so Peter Masters bade Aymer good-bye that night. He apologised clumsily for taking Christopher away so soon after his ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... cat with a twisted stump of a tail and feet like small boxing gloves and ears almost as big as rabbits' hopped clumsily in view. He lifted it down, gave it a pat. Then, nodding familiarly to Effie, he unstrapped a little pack from his back and laid it on ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... darkness of the hall. There was neither movement nor sound. He ventured out and peered down the staircase into the dark chasm marking the lower hall. He heard distinctly the sound of a key being fitted rather clumsily into the lock, then an inrush of air as the door was thrown open and someone entered, clutching at the wall as though unable ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Averell, Jr., who worked his tannery by slave labor. One of his slaves, known as Tom Bronk, was for many years well known in Cooperstown as the servant of the former owner's son, William Holt Averell, and lived to a great age. The clumsily written bill of sale by which Tom Bronk became the property of James Averell, Jr., is still ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... feminine should fail to inspire in all men that which she inspired in him. The obvious, therefore, was gratifying. Granted that she had had proposals, here was the proof that the poor fools who laid their hearts at her feet had gone about it clumsily. Such would not be the case with him. Oh no! He would bide his time, he would watch for the first break in her enchanted ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... of Pierre and the girl. A man could do little but look out for his own interests, when he worked in the dark. Which would be the better man for Jane?—this Jane so trained, so educated, so far removed superficially from the ungrammatical, bronzed, clumsily dressed, graceful visitor. In every worldly respect, doubtless, Prosper Gael. Only—there were Pierre's eyes and the soul ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others' advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as being ashamed of our high calling. Then shall we be rid of the rank and pestilent truth that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... into the twentieth century. They enjoy the honour of being the only ethical fallacies worth the powder and shot of a writer on art. I can imagine no more delicate or convincing piece of logic than that by which Mr. G.E. Moore disposes of both. But it is none of my business to do clumsily what Mr. Moore has done exquisitely. I have no mind by attempting to reproduce his dialectic to incur the merited ridicule of those familiar with the Principia Ethica or to spoil the pleasure of those who will be wise enough to run out this very minute and order a masterpiece ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... honestly convinced that nothing can be done. Let us grant as much. But obviously it suits his pride to assume that nothing can be done. To admit the contrary would be to admit that he was leaving something undone, that he had organized his existence clumsily, even that he had made a fundamental miscalculation in the arrangement of his career. He has confessed to grave dissatisfaction. It behoves him, for the sake of his own dignity and reputation, to be quite ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... clumsily arranged affair, although the forgery is a masterpiece of penmanship," said Mr. Smith; "and if it passes first through your office, and is entered in your books with the false amount, it is clear that some one in your employ has committed the offence. I leave the matter ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... reappeared upon the scene she wore an old side-saddle of ancient pattern, and was clumsily bridled with headgear too large for her. Jarvis gave her one ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... He had caught the language, surprised it in Stella when she was veritably a child. He did not push her clumsily back into a childhood he had not known; he simply prolonged in her a childhood he had loved. He is "seepy." "Nite, dealest dea, nite dealest logue." It is a real good-night. It breathes tenderness from that moody ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... and happy imaginations.' At the sight of his little children seated round the table, he called to mind the exhortation of Jesus, that we must 'become as little children;' and added, 'Ah! dear God! Thou hast done clumsily in exalting children—such poor little simpletons—so high. Is it just and right that Thou shouldst reject the wise, and receive the foolish? But God our Lord has purer thoughts than we have; He must, therefore, refine us, as said the fanatics; He must hew great boughs and chips from us, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... some scores of young and old, intermingled, now began to scream, squawk, and honk, and clumsily to take wing as best they could. Thus they rose in a confused brown mass, almost in the face of the young hunter, who advanced rapidly, whirling the weighted cords about his head. At precisely the right instant, and not upset by the sudden ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... rested a light canoe with its paddles, and over against me, on the wall, hung some Indian fishing implements, and a long—barrelled Spanish gun. Underneath lay a corpse, wrapped in a boat—sail, on which was clumsily written, with charcoal,—"The body of John Deadeye, Esq. late Commander of his Britannic ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... ear three or four large artificial roses, taken from an old hat of her mother's, which she had found in a trunk in the store-room. Possessing no slippers, she carefully blacked and polished her shoes, which had been clumsily resoled, and fastened into the strings of each small rosettes of red ribbon; after which she practised swinging the train of her skirt until she was proud of ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... the girthy Gannette, glancing toward the vacant seat, and clumsily attempting to tuck his napkin ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... clumsily. He ran into sticks and things. A twig that he thought a long way off, would the next instant hit him on the nose or rake along his ribs. There were inequalities of surface. Sometimes he overstepped and stubbed his nose. Quite as often he understepped and stubbed his feet. ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... through the guns at Amdheran like a devil possessed of devils. (Leans over G.) But this is worse than the guns, old pal—worse than the guns, isn't it? (G. turns in his sleep, and M. touches him clumsily on the forehead.) Poor, dear old Gaddy! Going like the rest of 'em-going like the rest of 'em—-Friend that sticketh closer than a brother—- eight years. Dashed bit of a slip of a girl-eight weeks! And-where's your friend? (Smokes disconsolately ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... of women-writers, love naturally tends to be depicted from the humanitarian point of view. It is the one matchless gift which the woman has to offer, the supreme opportunity of exercising influence, the main chance of what is clumsily called self-effectuation. The old proverb says that all women are match-makers; and Mr. Bernard Shaw goes further and maintains that they act from a kind of predatory instinct, however much that instinct may ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... rather than the understanding of methods is what the young student needs. The processes with which he may put on canvas the effect he sees in nature are secondary matters to him. Let him really see the thing and find his own way of expressing it, clumsily, rudely most probably, it is still the best thing for him. He may take such help as he can find, as he needs it; get such suggestions as the work of good painters can give to him, when he cannot see his own way. But the searching of nature ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... But as the other turned toward his wagon, Fausch came slowly and clumsily out of the workshop and motioned to him. The trader's horse had already started. Hallheimer reined him in sharply. Fausch came over to him and leaned his blackened arms on the rack of ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... nervousness, of sleepless nights, of untouched meals, culminating in the emotional crisis and Rosalind's abrupt decision—the strain of it had drugged the foreground of his mind into a merciful coma. As he fumbled clumsily with the olives at the free-lunch table, a man approached and spoke to him, and the olives dropped from his ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... to Louis; this stirring up of strife. Fancy a son of de Montespan on the throne of France. Yes, yes, yes, here is the awkward work of our old friend Crozat, the tradesman, who would purchase an empire of the King. See how clumsily he ...
— 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
... Clumsily the boy fumbled with the fastenings; eagerly his eyes sought the charm. His face went blank; tears sprang to his eyes. He was holding a tiny gourd, no larger than a monkey-nut, suspended from a necklace of polished crocodile teeth. ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... and as she was not ready to start when the rest of the fleet did, she sailed alone down the river through the quiet bay, and out into the ocean, and as she sailed, she bore little resemblance to our war vessels of to-day, so clumsily fashioned was she, being made of wood, with only one covered deck, and the open forecastle and quarter-deck above it, and had but two tiers of guns—the largest frigates carried sixty guns, besides a large pivot gun at the bow, and were noted for their speed, though in comparison ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... cut and hacked about, until, after they had been bereft of all their spirit, they were held to be nearer the professional singer's plane. But when people tried to follow Wagner's instructions to the letter, they proceeded so clumsily and timidly that they were not incapable of representing the midnight riot in the second act of the Meistersingers by a group of ballet-dancers. They seemed to do all this, however, in perfectly good faith—without the smallest evil ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... sunshine with which they are soaken top full—the same quickening emanation that inspires the growing tree and upheaves the hill. And, if I err not, there is sound Scripture for the belief that these self same eminences have capacity to skip for joy. The peasant dances—a trifle clumsily—at harvest feast when the grain is garnered. The stars in heaven dance visibly, the firefly dances in emulation of the stars. The sunshine dances on the waters. The humming bird and the bee dance about the flowers ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... ground at the edge of some stream. A line of boulders reaching diagonally across the stream answered for a dam, by diverting a portion of the volume of water to a channel at the side, where it moved a clumsily constructed wheel, that turned two small stones, not larger than good-sized grindstones. Over this would be a shed made by resting poles in forked posts stuck into the ground, and covering these with clapboards held in place by large flat stones. They resembled the mills ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... malaise of body, and soul, and spirit—and do as you would be done by; instead of reproving and fault-finding, encourage. In God's name, encourage. They scramble through life's rocks, bogs, and thornbrakes, clumsily enough, and have many a fall, poor things! But why, in the name of a God of love and justice, is the lady, rolling along the smooth turnpike-road in her comfortable carriage, to be calling out all day long to the poor soul who ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the ego; our souls in the strait-jacket of self; no freedom of thought or word or deed to our fellows. Ego, the tyrant, rules us. Only we of the Free Brotherhood are seeking to tame ours. Do I put it clumsily?" ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... though a superlative good actor, laboured under ill figure, being clumsily made, having a great head, a short thick neck, stooped in the shoulders, and had fat short arms, which he rarely lifted higher than his stomach. His left hand frequently lodged in his breast, between his coat and waistcoat, while with ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... therefore much room left for critical comparison and selection. We are, in fact, still somewhat in the same position as Michelangelo the younger. Whether any application of the critical method will enable us to do again successfully what he so clumsily attempted—that is, to reproduce a correct text from the debris offered to our selective faculty—I do not feel sure. Meanwhile I am quite certain that his principle was a wrong one, and that he dealt ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... the little girl was tying up his feet that she made slow progress. And when she was done, he tried vainly to pull off his new stockings with his sharp teeth, grunting his disapproval at every tug. He worked himself into a perfect fury as he bit and tore, and finally rolled clumsily to the back of the cave, where he ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... dearly beloved, a dazed helpless creature, unable to do a hand's turn for herself, while her husband crept in and out, quiet, resourceful, comforting, full of unselfish compassion. Margot had hard work to keep back her own tears, as he clumsily pressed his own services upon her, picking up odd garments, folding them carefully in the wrong way, and rummaging ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to fall from the tree Answer "No," but with a little kiss which means "Yes" As regards love, intention and deed are the same Clumsily, blew his nose, to the great relief of his two arms Emotion when one does not share it Hearty laughter which men affect to assist digestion How rich we find ourselves when we rummage in old drawers Husband who loves you and eats off the same plate is better I came here for that express ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... second thwart facing him. The rod rendered this necessary, and A. told me afterwards that Ben spent most of his time winking and contemptuously gesticulating over my shoulder. Probably this accounted for the number of times he pummelled the small of my back with the clumsily ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... heard on the stairs. They were slow and clanking because the carpets were up and the house full of echoes. To Thor's fevered imagination it seemed as if Claude dragged his feet like a man wearing chains, going haltingly and clumsily before some ominous tribunal. The sensation—it was more that than anything else—caused the elder brother to withdraw into the depths of the library, where he turned ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... soft red lumps of mud in our laps at every step. But, despite these trifling drawbacks, it was delightful to be drawn without effort by a pair of fat horses in splendid harness. It was a great contrast to our poor skinny old horse at home, crawling along in much-broken harness, clumsily and much mended with string and bits ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... I hate women!" he kept mumbling to himself as he struggled clumsily all alone into the torn sleeve lining of his thousand dollar ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... have built a boat in the time Loftus takes to fetch one," he said to himself, and he looked round him. No sign of Doll. He was alone in the world. The cold was gaining on him slowly, surely. Why had he on such heavy gloves, which made him fumble so clumsily. He looked at his bare cut hands, and realized that their grip was leaving them. He felt that he was in measurable distance ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... unnoticed through his palsied fingers. He sat down with heavy stupefaction. So this was the sud-spray of his beautiful bubble? It was incomprehensible! Bettina! Bettina! Oh, how could she? Where was her faith? No small voice answered from within the depths of his breast; and Mr. Strumley got clumsily to his feet. He was painfully conscious that he must do something—think something. But what was he to do? What was he to think? Could he ever make her understand? Make her believe? At least he could go ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... As he clumsily tried to unfasten Shaver's hood, Mary pushed him aside and with shaking fingers removed the child's wraps. Shaver's cheeks were rosy from his drive through the cold; he was a plump, healthy little shaver and The Hopper viewed ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... the wall with both hands, wildly and clumsily, for the button which she had seen the doctor press when he was showing the room to the visitors. Twice she missed it. The third time her eyes helped her hands; she found the button and pressed on it. The ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... plan by which I was enabled to touch at once, and without the disagreeable necessity of previously expiring and being buried, the whole of the money for which I was insured. Other people have attempted the same design, I believe, but the thing has hitherto been managed clumsily. In my own case, it has been managed with great dexterity and artistic skill. As you will naturally be curious on a subject which interests you so closely I have no objection to reveal the method. It is not enough to write to your office and state that a certain person is dead. ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... "antiquity," so defined, says about canonicity; thirdly, to prove that canonicity means infallibility. And when science, largely in the shape of the abhorred "criticism," has answered this appeal, and has shown that "antiquity" used her own methods, however clumsily and imperfectly, she naturally turns round upon the appellants, and demands that they should show cause why, in these days, science should not resume the work the ancients did so imperfectly, and carry it ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... carried 30 such warriors, and often various Greek admirals have crowded their decks with these heavy marines; but the true Athenian sea warrior disdains them. Given a good helmsman and well-trained rowers, and you can sink your opponent with your ram, while he is clumsily trying to board you. Expert opinion considers the EPIBATi somewhat superfluous, and their use in most naval battles ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... glared at one another with horror in their eyes, and he saw one or two of the oldest of them clumsily making an old sign upon their breasts. Then they began to speak again, and he remembered fragments of ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... a most peculiar sound. It couldn't be called a squeal, nor a grunt, nor a gurgle, nor a gasp. It was a little like all four. And springing clumsily upon her son, Mrs. Pig upset him before ...
— The Tale of Grunty Pig - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... a bit of a snort and followed the man in a slow deliberate way, born of custom, right out into the yard to where the trestle-supported cart stood. Then as I held the lantern the great bony creature turned and backed itself clumsily in between the shafts, and under the great framework ladder piled up with baskets till its tail touched the front of the cart, when it heaved a long sigh as if ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... a young sailor entered a shop in Glasgow, to make a purchase. As he was about to leave, he placed a letter upon a counter near the window, and was sticking a postage stamp upon it, when he clumsily knocked his elbow against the window and broke one of its panes. The poor fellow was much confused when he saw the damage which he had done. He had no money to pay for a new pane, as he had spent his few last coppers in preparing this ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... they could hardly restrain their impatience, and Smith introduced the topic, rather clumsily, as soon as the fish appeared. Brown stared at them and said nothing. Jones, plucking up courage, presently asked him a question about the dominant fifth of the scale used by the natives of Quang-Tung. He ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... years Walpole read Miss Clara Reeve's Old English Baron (1777), and as in another celebrated case "thought it a bore." It is rather a bore. It has more consecutiveness than Otranto, and escapes the absurdities of the copiously but clumsily used supernatural by administering it in a very minute dose. But there is not a spark of genius in it, whereas that spark, though sometimes curiously wrapped up in ashes, was always present (Heaven knows where he got it!) ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... a pasture, not a county," growled Endicott, as he clumsily shifted his weight to bear ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... roomy, enough to admit clumsily-shaped shoes, such as are made in the bush; they must be broad under the sole of the foot, and also at the place which rubs against the little toe. Unless they are heavy, it is not easy to find them with the foot; travellers in South Africa cut them out ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... clumsily, as he paused before me, rubbing his head, his eyes wandering below. "Did Ah hear right whut yer sed las' night, 'bout how dat young woman was a nigger, a runaway frum Massa Kirby? 'Pears like Ah don't just seem fer ter git dat ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... had forgotten, looked on at first in gaping, silent awe, staring and blinking at his travelling companion, who had undergone such a metamorphosis. But restraint and silence were impossible to him for long, and in time he ambled clumsily into the conversation. It jarred, of course, but he could not be ignored, and gradually he claimed more and more of the talk until the young couple yielded to the monologue, smiling at each ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... Mr. Longman has informed me that, by your orders, the pamphlet itself has been left for me at his house. The extracts which I saw pleased me much, with the exception of the introduction, which is incorrectly and clumsily worded. But, indeed, I have often observed that, whatever you write, the first page is always the worst in the book. I wish that instead of six days you had employed six months, and instead of a half-crown pamphlet, had given us a good half-guinea octavo. But you may yet do this. It ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... from the bank safe, whilst giving the theft the appearance of a night burglary; granting that he was disturbed in his nefarious project by his wife, who, failing to persuade him to make restitution, took his side boldly, and very clumsily attempted to rescue him out of his difficult position—why should he, at nine o'clock the following morning, fall in a dead faint and get cerebral congestion at sight of a defalcation he knew had occurred? ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... disks just under the surface. Sea-birds in clouds clamored all day long about the shore and sand-pits. At long intervals flying-fish skittered over the water like skipping-stones. Shoals of porpoises came in from outside, leaping clumsily along the edges of the kelp. Bewildered land-birds perched on the schooner's rigging, and in the early morning the whistling of quail could be heard on shore near where a little fresh-water stream ran down ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... him a keen, covert stare, as he slowly and clumsily accepted the tendered chair and his host threw another log on the fire. Hanway had seen him previously, when Selwyn testified before the coroner's jury, but to-day he impressed his visitor differently. He was tall and ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the comic tone. It is not his purpose to direct our feelings to a sense of the dignity or meanness, the innocence or corruption, the goodness or baseness of the acting personages; but to show us whether they act stupidly or wisely, adroitly or clumsily, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... of the courtier and the beau were his. One could but admire the sparkle and the versatility of the man. His wit was brilliant as the play of a rapier's point. Set down in cold blood, remembered scantily and clumsily as I recall it, without the gay easy polish of his manner, the fineness is all out of his talk. After all 'tis a characteristic of much wit that it is apposite to the occasion only and loses point ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... legends are grouped about his childhood. They are for the most part clumsily constructed and unconvincing, though probably we shall be justified in accepting the evidence they bear of a mind singularly well ordered and resourceful. At the age of sixteen he was employed by a Buddhist priest to assist in distributing amulets, and by the agency of this priest he obtained ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... he clambered clumsily from beneath the boot and disappeared. Inside the vehicle was ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the soldier to the sailor, "That was very well done of you, my man, and right well deserves a glass of grog. Say so to the gun-room steward as you pass; and tell him it is my orders to fill you out a stiff nor-wester." The soldier's offer was kindly meant, but rather clumsily timed, at least so thought Jack: for though he inclined his head in acknowledgment of the attention, and instinctively touched his hat when spoken to by an officer, he made no reply till out of the marine's hearing, when he laughed, or rather chuckled ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... you know," he said clumsily, but this time sincerely. "I don't suppose it makes any difference to you that your father—well, I'd better not talk about it. But you see—Elizabeth might marry anybody. She might have married heaps of times since Merton died, if she ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... large, and some are small; some long, some short; a few elegant, a few clumsy; and one or two peculiarly remarkable. Most of them are narrow, and liable to upset; in order to prevent which catastrophe the natives have ingeniously, though clumsily, contrived a sort of "outrigger," or plank, which they attach to the side of the canoe to keep it upright. They also fasten two canoes together ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... for the bunk house, to emerge a few moments later,—bent, padded forms, fighting clumsily against the sweep of the storm. Ghosts they became almost immediately, snow-covered things that hardly could be discerned a few feet away, one hand of each holding tight to the stout cord which led from waist-belt to waist-belt, ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... my Lord Megacles. We were trying, with a view to the pageant, how a number of young men of Cherson would look in the array of Bosphorus; but we gave it up, since we feared that they would bear them so clumsily that they would mar ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... trembling hand. For a moment he could not speak. Then he said some vague thing about getting stronger. He did not know what he said; he was sorry, as one is sorry for a suffering child. The figure in the bed looked at him with scared eyes. One of the pillows slipped a little, and Samuel pulled it up, clumsily to be sure, but with the decided touch of pity and purpose, the touch of the superior. That fixing the pillow behind the shaking helpless head, swept away the last traces of the quarrel. He sat down by the gloomy catafalque of a bed, and when Benjamin Wright began to say again, "M-m-my ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland |
