"Lout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I do. A man who would tell me that I am pretty, unless he is over seventy, ought to be kicked out of the room. But a man who can't show me that he thinks me so without saying a word about it, is a lout. Now in all those matters, your friend, Mr. Finn, seems to know what he is about. In other words, he makes himself pleasant, and, therefore, one ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... to be afraid. Why, she could not have said. Certainly she did not anticipate violence on Tom's part. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps it was just because he was so quiet that she was afraid. She had always looked on him contemptuously as an amiable, transparent lout, and now he was puzzling her. She got an impression of something formidable behind his stolidity, something that made her ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Are kneading pasty, making pies and tarts; Or, clad in motley coat, the footman neat Is dangling after Miss with shuffling feet, Bearing in state to church her book of pray'r, Or the light pocket she disdains to wear;{1} Or in a parlour snug, 'the powdered lout The tea and bread and butter hands about. Where are the women, whose less nervous hands Might fit these lighter tasks, which pride demands? Some feel the scorn that poverty attends, Or pine in meek dependance on their friends; Some ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... sir. The party struck turns to me and says, "Come in. I give this man in charge for assault." I moves accordingly with the words: "I saw you. Come along with me." The defendant turns to me sharp and says: "You stupid lout—I'm a magistrate." "Come off it," I says to the best of my recollection. "You struck this woman in my presence," I says, "and you come along!" We were then at close quarters. The defendant gave me a push with the words: "Get out, you idiot!" "Not at all," I replies, and took 'old ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... slowly away through the park, "and, if it were not that he is husband to my cousin Celia, I would have nought to do with him. She is my only kinswoman, and, were aught to happen to Charlie, that lout, her son, would be the heir of Lynnwood. I should never rest quiet in my grave, were a ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... their embrasures; to the left, dipping to the south, the steep grey crags, curve after curve. The streets were alive with an abundance of merry young sailors and soldiers, brisk, handsome boys, with the quiet air of discipline that converts a country lout into a self-respecting citizen. An old bronzed sergeant led a child with one hand, and with the other tried to obey her shrill directions about whirling a skipping-rope, so that she might skip beside him; he looked at us with a half-proud, half-shamefaced smile, calling down a rebuke for ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... workmanlike manner in which the locks had been restored, and the care that had evidently been taken to remove the more obvious and brutal traces of burglary. This somewhat staggered his theory that Seth Davis was the perpetrator; mechanical skill and thoughtfulness were not among the lout's characteristics. But he was still more disconcerted on pushing back his chair to find a small india-rubber tobacco pouch lying beneath it. The master instantly recognized it: he had seen it a hundred ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... know that dull-eyed, gin-sodden lout leaning against the post out there is immeasurably your intellectual superior? Do you know that every little-minded selfish scoundrel, who never had a thought that was not mean and base—whose every action is a fraud and whose ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... grown good for nothing, and ought to be sent off, as I have often told my master; but the lout is as obedient to him as possible—he knows the length of his foot—while to every one else he is cross-grained, and gives me ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... there were numbers of people, both lackeys and officers, of various descriptions, who were awaiting the commands of the fool. The fool, seeing that all these people had a decent and honourable appearance, and that he alone was a lout, wished to be made better, and ...
— Emelian the Fool - a tale • Thomas J. Wise
... business yesterday. I hope he won't be very hard upon you, old chap," he added, in a tone of deep sympathy, turning to me, "for somehow I have taken quite a liking to you, and if I had been at your elbow yesterday, instead of that over-grown lout, Harvey, I would have kept you out of the serape. You must be very quiet and submissive when he pitches into you, and plead ignorance—say you will be a good boy and not do it ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... thou didst allow thy ill-bred dwarf to strike my lady's damsel. It is disgraceful to strike a woman. And afterwards he struck me, taking me for some common fellow. Thou wast guilty of too great insolence when thou sawest such an outrage and didst complacently permit such a monster of a lout to strike the damsel and myself. For such a crime I may well hate thee; for thou hast committed a grave offence. Thou shalt now constitute thyself my prisoner, and without delay go straight to my lady whom thou wilt surely find at Cardigan, if thither thou takest thy way. Thou ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... something lacking here. Or, to be more accurate, something jars. The orchestra plays Grieg and Moszkowski; a smell of chocolate is in the air; that tall, pink lieutenant over there, with his cropped head and his outstanding ears, his backfisch waist and his mudscow feet—that military gargoyle, half lout and half fop, offends the roving eye. No doubt a handsome man, by German standards—even, perhaps a celebrated seducer, a soldier with a future—but the mere sight of him suffices to paralyse an American esophagus. Besides, there is the smell of chocolate, ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... as tender-hearted a lout as ever lived. In a moment he was on his knees with his arm round the girl's waist, pouring out such halting words of love and devotion as came to his unready brain, cursing his fate, his earldom, and his mother, and assuring Mary that his only chance of happiness lay in ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... manifestly absurd—the Hebrew fetich was dead—dead as Mumbo Jumbo. "Thank God!" he added inconsequently. He walked faster and faster, and on more than one occasion he brushed hurriedly against some of the brutal frequenters of that part of the world on foggy evenings. A rough lout growled belligerently at him, but shrank from the gladsome light of battle which leaped instantly into John Arniston's eye. To strike some one would have been a comfort to him at ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... stated times and that Boris did not avoid school; on the other, his aunt contented herself with seeing that he was in good health, ate and slept well, was decently dressed, and as a well-brought-up boy should, did not consort with every village lout. ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... is about twenty miles from any railway station, but, on the last occasion when I visited it, three louts were worming their way up it, within twenty yards of each other, each lout, with his huge rod, showing himself wholly to any trout that might be left in the water. Thirty years ago the burns that feed St. Mary's Loch were almost unfished, and rare sport we had in them, as boys, ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... resolution shrivelled and shook within me like an old nut kernel. I would have turned but for the stupidity and ill-breeding such a movement would evidence, yet as I held on my way at a slower pace and the pair approached, I felt every limb an encumbrance, I felt the country lout throbbing in every vein. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... not, however, get so far as the Consul, but one of the clerks, a stupid lout with an eyeglass, had come out and told him that he would get no employment on a ship belonging to the firm, until he had been to the Seamen's school, and gave up drinking. As he told his story there was an evil glare in his eyes, which were large ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... the sun; a number of old white-headed men smoking their pipes, and leathery-faced women on household duties intent, with a score or so of little cotton-headed children running about over the manure pile in the neighborhood of the barn, to keep the pigs company; here and there a strapping lout of a boy swinging on a gate and whistling for his own amusement; while cows, sheep, goats, chickens, and other domestic animals and birds browse, nibble, and peck all over the yard in such a lazy and rural manner as would delight an artist. This is ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... arranged," he continued; "my uncle would have given you a hearty welcome, and made our peace with my father, or if not, he would have left us all his goods, and secured my career. What call had that great lout, with a wife of his own too, to come thrusting between us? I thought I should make short work of him, and give him a lesson against meddling—great unlicked cub as he was, while I had had the best training at Berlin and Paris ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pathway to his throne—and he forgot the matron's pies. And then the cowherd's wife came in; she smelled the smoke, she gave a shout; she biffed him with the rolling pin, and cried: "Ods fish, you useless lout! You are not worth the dynamite 'twould take to blow you off the map! Your head is not upholstered right—you are a worthless ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... God knows—but all my life he has been put in front of me. He has had all the chances; I've had none. With my father when he was alive, with my mother, it has always been Austin this and Austin that. He was the head of the school when I, the elder, was a lout in the lower fourth. He had a brilliant University career and went into the world and is making a fortune. I'm only able to ride and shoot and do country things. I've stuck here with only this mortgaged house ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... am a lout and not a courtier," he smiled. "Well, a lout may look at a princess. We have no court etiquette in the hills, I am ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... all lies, gentlemen! There, gentlemen, he's a most dishonorable man himself, gentlemen; he isn't worth your notice! Bah, my boy, what a lout you are! Well, I never knew you—and not for any blessings on earth would I have anything to do ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... slave, as a mindless automaton, and by encouraging the public (whom he protects) to regard him as a low criminal ruffian to be classed with the broad-arrowed convict, and to be excluded from places where any loafing rotten lout may go.... When would a lawyer-ridden Army Council realize that there is a trifle of significance in the fact that there are four times as many soldier suicides as there are civilian, and that the finest advertisement for the dwindling ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... and freckled and sandy, face of a country lout", and, like Middleton's rouse-about, "hadn't any opinions, hadn't any ideas", but possessed sufficient instinct and common bushcraft with which, by hard slogging, to amass money. He was developing a moustache, and had a "gu-r-r-r-l"; he ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... both arts, and having, moreover, precocious linguistic gifts. Our cricket-field was bald about the wickets, and we played without style and disputed with the umpire; and the teaching was chiefly in the hands of a lout of nineteen, who wore ready-made clothes and taught despicably. The head-master and proprietor taught us arithmetic, algebra, and Euclid, and to the older boys even trigonometry, himself; he had a strong mathematical ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... marlinspike was sent down with the thread as a line. An inquisitive lout of a seal did all it could to bite through the thread, but whether this was too strong or its teeth too poor, we managed after a lot of trouble to coax the marlinspike up again, and the interfering rascal, who had to come up to the surface now and then to take breath, got ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... size Of angels' wings, an' think, and gawp, An' wonder how they make 'em flop. He'd calkerlate how long a skid 'Twould take to move the sun, he did; An' if the skid was strong an' prime, It couldn't be moved to supper-time. An' w'en his wife 'd ask the lout Ef he wouldn't kinder waltz about An' take a rag an' shoo the flies, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... body by the collar, spinning the dignity of the law round face down prone upon the log. "A'll not take my fist t' y' as A wud t' a Man! Ye dastard, drunken, poltroon, coward, whiskey sodden lout an' scum o' filth, an'," each word was emphasized by the thud of the empty whiskey bottle wielded ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... damning our souls at the heel of it. Where he got his blackguardly ways from I'm not saying, but it wasn't from my side of the house anyway, so it wasn't, and that's a moral. Get out of my sight you sniffling lout, and if ever I catch you at your practices again I'll lam you till you won't be able to wink ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... you idiots," retorted the captor, who had now released both young men. "Besides being a mean, detestable trick, it's as old as the world. That red-pepper trick was invented by some stupid lout who lived thousands ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... by my head, it is that notable mark of his master's holiness, that same lantern-jawed lout of ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... usually utterly inexperienced in wild backwoods life, in spite of their early surroundings—exactly as to-day any town in the Rocky Mountains is sure to contain some half-educated men as ignorant of mountain and plains life, of Indians and wild beasts, as the veriest lout on an eastern farm. Accordingly they accepted the wildest stories of frontier warfare with a faith that forcibly reminds one of the equally simple credulity displayed by the average classical scholar concerning early ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Which piped there unto that merry rout; That jolly shepherd that there piped was Poor Colin Clout; (who knows not Colin Clout?) He piped apace while they him danced about; Pipe, jolly shepherd, pipe thou now apace, Unto thy love that made thee low to lout; Thy love is present there with thee in place, Thy love is there advanced ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... purseld streames of blew and white: Or, as a line doth guide, So thou doest leuell slide, And throw'st into the sea thy mite? Is't, that with twisted line, The Angler doth vntwine The fishes life, by giuing breath. Or, as the threshing lout, Rusheth his Lyners out, So Lyner on his course rusheth: Or, as some puppy seat, Lineth a mastiue great, And getteth whelps of mongrell kinde: Lyner, the sea so lines, And streame with waue combines, Begetting waters ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... and repeated Tom's volunteer statement. The picture, though his intentions were far from designing it so, had to Richard, whose perception of humour was infinitely keener, a horrible chaw-bacon smack about it. Visions of a grinning lout, open from ear to ear, unkempt, coarse, splay-footed, rose before him and afflicted him with the strangest sensations of disgust and comicality, mixed up with pity and remorse—a sort of twisted pathos. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was capable of great and prolonged muscular exertion. He was big-boned and deep-chested, and had nervous as well as muscular strength. The timidity in him was strange in such a man. What could it spring from? It was not like ordinary shyness, the gaucherie of a big, awkward lout unaccustomed to woman's society but able to be at his ease and boisterous in the midst of a crowd of men. Domini thought that he would be timid even of men. Yet it never struck her that he might be a coward, unmanly. Such a quality would have sickened her at once, and she ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... what had happened. To him all criticism was "rudeness": he never heeded it, for he never needed it: he was never wrong. All his life he had ordered little human beings about, and now he was equally magisterial to big ones: Stephen was a fifth-form lout whom, owing to some flaw in the regulations, he could not send up to the ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... energetic, entered the shop and attained some proficiency in the work. But as he grew toward manhood, he became, as the old man called it, "trifling"; a word which bore with it in the local dialect no suggestion of levity or vivacity, for Luke Matchin was as dark and lowering a lout as you would readily find. But it meant that he became more and more unpunctual, did his work worse month by month, came home later at night, and was continually seen, when not in the shop, with a gang of low ruffians, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... and set to cleaving firewood in the courtyard with the scolding assistance of a maid-servant. When the troopers entered to search for the master of the house, they heard the maid vehemently 'flyting' the great hulking lout for his awkwardness, and threatening to 'draw a stick across his back' if he did not work to a ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... had it in mind to make trial with this mute, since with others I may not, if it be so. And indeed he is the best in the world to that end, for that, e'en if he would, he could not nor might tell it again. Thou seest he is a poor silly lout of a lad, who hath overgrown his wit, and I would fain hear how thou deemest of the thing.' 'Alack!' rejoined the other, 'what is this thou sayest? Knowest thou not that we have promised our virginity to God?' 'Oh, as for that,' answered the ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... novelists mentioned above would have made chapters of this); the dramatic and risky passages at the castle en Barrois; the contrast of Katherine's passion and Gerard's sluggishness; and the fashion in which this latter at once brings on the lout's defeat and saves the lady from danger at his hands—all this is novel-matter of almost the first class as regards incident, with no lack of character-openings to boot. Nor could anybody want a better "curtain" than the falling back of the scorned and baffled false lover, the concert ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... tears of rage in his voice. "Ginseng! You and your imagination, you swine, you! Get off my ship, you lout, or I'll murder you." ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... omnibus; you had better confine your attention to yourself—you will want it all;' and has driven his charge away, with an intelligence of ears and tail, and a knowledge of business, that has left his lout of a ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... field, imagination soon saw shapes enough to confirm any doubt. Ottilie's manner certainly had seemed less tender—nay, somewhat indifferent—during the last few days. Had the arrival of that heavy lout, her cousin, anything to ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... he hated the Hamleys and Roger especially, with a very choice and particular hatred. 'That prig,' as hereafter he always designated Roger—'he shall pay for it yet,' he said to himself by way of consolation, after the father and son had left him. 'What a lout it is!'—watching the receding figure. 'The old chap has twice as much spunk,' as the squire tugged at his bridle-reins. 'The old mare could make her way better without being led, my fine fellow. But I see through ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... at the door of the Fortune, where we shall have matchless Will speaking for himself.—Goblin, and you other lout, leave the horses to the grooms, and make way for us ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... they sprinkle the Leaf Man with water and feast on the food they have collected. In the Fricktal, Switzerland, at Whitsuntide boys go out into a wood and swathe one of their number in leafy boughs. He is called the Whitsuntide-lout, and being mounted on horseback with a green branch in his hand he is led back into the village. At the village-well a halt is called and the leaf-clad lout is dismounted and ducked in the trough. Thereby he acquires the right of sprinkling water on everybody, and he exercises the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... moment, came she in to me, How would I for the fault atonement render! How small the giant lout would be, Prone at her feet, relaxed ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... any good to pretend. I'm an interfering lout, I know, and I shouldn't have done it. I have made out all that it says, and, oh God!—but you're a game sport—even if you have been a darned ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... came to the Serbian schools, but were denounced as ungrateful and impossible. A Montenegrin, I was told, was a lout who would sit all day on the doorstep wearing a revolver and doing nothing, and would expect high pay or at least good keep for so doing. In 1898 the Serb Government had actually forbidden ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... labour of love with him, and now that fresh hopes and prospects were dawning upon him, the farm duties seemed more insignificant and tedious than ever. Had it been Gethin who stretched himself and yawned as he attacked the first swathe of corn, Ebben Owens would have called him a "lazy lout," but as it was Will, he only jokingly rallied him ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... there was no one in sight, and if there had been half a regiment they could have passed (and would have passed) without interference. I had scarcely written three lines when the pencil flew up the page, some hulking lout having brushed against me. He could not find room for himself. A hundred yards of width was not room enough for him to go by. He meant no harm; it did not occur to him that he could be otherwise than welcome. He was the sort of man who calmly sleeps on your shoulder in a train, and merely replaces ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... Ellen when, after more debating, the signature was finally inscribed, "I'm clean beat out. Why, I could have deeded away the whole United States in the time it's taken this lout of a boy to scribble his name. Is it any wonder that with only a stupid idiot like this for help, my garden's always behind other folks', ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... of her voice. The sun shone brightly, but its blessed light only served to remind me of the beautiful girl whom I had left in darkness. The light were worthless to me if I could not share it with her. What a mooning lout was I! ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... dared swear that I should succeed with ease in making his lubberly lumber, while he would never be successful in my brothel gewgaws. [3] Thus I flung off in a passion, telling him that I would soon show him that I spoke truth. The bystanders openly declared against him, holding him for a lout, as indeed he was, and me for a man, as I had ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... we all felt very blue; because he had been the joy of our lives. He left the command to Kleber—a great lout of a fellow who soon afterward lost the number of his mess. An Egyptian assassinated him. They put the murderer to death by making him sit on a bayonet; that's their way, down there, of guillotining a man. But he suffered so much that one of our soldiers felt sorry ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... the manager with a disgusted accent. "He always was an awkward lout. Of course there's a doctor—why didn't ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... various geniuses have developed which, in a manner almost spectacular, rise before us as we study the literatures of the past? The youthful years of Shakespeare were spent under circumstances which might have produced in him one dull and unaspiring British country lout, like, as one egg to another, to a hundred thousand others who lived in his age. What made this one country boy the most astonishing genius in all the history of literature? Study the youth of Robert Burns, of Heinrich Heine, or Coleridge, and then tell me why the first two ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... this in his face. It was a transfigured face, with great shining eyes that gazed beyond the veil of sound and saw behind it the leap and pulse of life and the gigantic phantoms of the spirit. She was startled. The raw, stumbling lout was gone. The ill-fitting clothes, battered hands, and sunburned face remained; but these seemed the prison-bars through which she saw a great soul looking forth, inarticulate and dumb because of ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... revolutionists of the crusading type, such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Brown, or Mazzini. When a man abandons his business or job and complacently leaves the clothing of his children to wife or neighbors in order to drink flip and talk politics, ordinary folk are content to call him a lazy lout, ne'er-do-well, worthless fellow, or scamp. Samuel Adams was not a scamp. He might have been no more than a ne'er-do-well, perhaps, if cosmic forces had not opportunely provided him with an occupation which his contemporaries and ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... table with a bold step; there was nothing now of the country lout about him; on the contrary, he moved with remarkable dignity, and bore himself so well that many a pair of feminine eyes watched him kindly, as he took his ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... throughout; There sits the King, that holds Douce France in pow'r; White is his beard, and blossoming-white his crown, Shapely his limbs, his countenance is proud. Should any seek, no need to point him out. The messengers, on foot they get them down, And in salute full courteously they lout. ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... a laboring man, and set to cleaving firewood in the courtyard with the scolding assistance of a maid-servant. When the troopers entered to search for the master of the house, they heard the maid vehemently "flyting" the great hulking lout for his awkwardness, and threatening to "draw a stick across his back" if he did not ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... great lord outbroke in one sudden curse like a blast from a horn. He tore his sword from its black sheath; he called to the hovering landlord: "A sword there, for this lout!" He turned to the lady, with a laugh that chilled her heart, and said: "You put much labour upon me, madame. It seems I must find you a husband and make you a widow in the ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... a hue and cry arose, As if the beasts were all his foes: A wolf, haranguing lawyer-wise. Denounced the ass for sacrifice— The bald-pate, scabby, ragged lout, By whom the plague had come, no doubt. His fault was judged a hanging crime. "What? eat another's grass? O shame! The noose of rope and death sublime, For that offence, were all too tame!" And soon poor ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... for a while," said Polynesia coming out from her hiding-place. "Now let him teach navigation to the side-board. Gosh, the cheek of the man! I've forgotten more about the sea than that lumbering lout will ever know. Let's go upstairs and tell the Doctor. Bumpo, you will have to serve the meals in the cabin for the next ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... contention Have fill'd, and with their steps the earth's dimension. Then those shall have no less authority, That have no faith, than those that will not lie; For all shall be governed by a rude, Base, ignorant, and foolish multitude; The veriest lout of all shall be their judge, O horrible and dangerous deluge! Deluge I call it, and that for good reason, For this shall be omitted in no season; Nor shall the earth of this foul stir be free, Till suddenly you in great store shall see The waters issue out, with whose streams the Most moderate of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... matter-of-fact way). Helen, ask yourself this question: what choice is left to a man in such a case? You are generally known as the most beautiful woman in this city. Now shall I, an artist, allow myself to acquire the reputation of an unsociable lout who shuts himself up in his four walls and denies himself to all visitors? The second possibility would be to receive you while at the same time pretending not to understand you. That would give me the wholly undeserved reputation of a simpleton. Third possibility—but ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... disfigured them. So much strength residing in so spare a frame was proof sufficient of the accuracy of his shape. He must have been built somewhat after the pattern of Jack Sheppard; but the famous housebreaker, we may be certain, was no lout. It was by the extraordinary powers of his mind no less than by the vigour of his body, that he broke his strong prison with such imperfect implements, turning the very obstacles to service. Irvine, in the same case, would have sat down and spat, and grumbled ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a man was floundering in a morass of wrath and amazement it was this loud-voiced youngster. He was a slow-witted lout, but the veriest dullard must have perceived that the disappearance of the weapon which presumably killed his father was a ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... time, this friendly advice pulled Dick up in his profitless career. The dread of being considered a "lout" by your senior is a motive which appeals forcibly to most boys; and for a week or so Dick made a feverish show of returning to his outdoor ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... reasons, but for aesthetic. Stick to the rules, not because they are right or profitable, but because they are seemly—nay, beautiful. We are not telling you to be respectable, we are inviting you not to be a lout. We are offering you, free of charge, a trade mark that carries credit all the world over. "How French he (or she) is!" Many a foreigner would pay handsomely to have as ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... sooty lout with quick assent Laughed, picked me up, and off we went. A little more, and from my throat Toward heaven I'd sent a joyous note. Within the manse the strange new guest Astounded all from most to least; But soon each face, before afraid, The glowing light of joy displayed. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... to show abject respect. When one of the boyards complained that "The grand duke decided all the questions, shut up with two others in the bedchamber," the noble was promptly arrested, condemned to death, and executed. He interrupted the objection of a high noble with, "Be silent, lout!" His court displayed great splendor, but it was semi-Asiatic. The throne was guarded by young nobles called ryndis, dressed in long caftans of white satin, high caps of white fur, and carrying ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... find it so hard to do!" confessed young Nisbet. "I'm a stupid sort of lout, you know, Miss Rathbawne. I've never had half a chance to practice talking to dames, and where other lads fuss like experts, I just can't make good. I foozle every stroke. ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... respect, admiration, nay almost of adoration, wanting. I observed one fellow, as the landlord advanced, take the pipe out of his mouth, and gaze upon him with a kind of grin of wonder, probably much the same as his ancestor, the Saxon lout of old, put on when he saw his idol Thur dressed in a new kirtle. To avoid the press, I got into a corner, where, on a couple of chairs, sat two respectable-looking individuals, whether farmers or sow- gelders, I know not, but highly respectable-looking, who were discoursing about the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... unused bosses, red ribands, lead-ruled parchment, and all most evenly pumiced. But when thou readest these, that refined and urbane Suffenus is seen on the contrary to be a mere goatherd or ditcher-lout, so great and shocking is the change. What can we think of this? he who just now was seen a professed droll, or e'en shrewder than such in gay speech, this same becomes more boorish than a country boor immediately he touches poesy, nor is ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... but harsh to those whom he liked not, and from the first he scorned the young man. "For none," said he, "but a low-born lout would crave meat and drink when he might have asked for a horse and arms." But Sir Launcelot and Sir Gawain took the youth's part. Neither knew him for Gareth of the Orkneys, but both believed him to ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... you are to be always offending and I always pardoning? Don't fancy it, impious scoundrel, for that beyond a doubt thou art, since thou hast set thy tongue going against the peerless Dulcinea. Know you not, lout, vagabond, beggar, that were it not for the might that she infuses into my arm I should not have strength enough to kill a flea? Say, scoffer with a viper's tongue, what think you has won this kingdom and cut off this giant's ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a time he does not seem to change at all; then one morning you notice that his legs have come out half a yard or more from his pantaloons, and soon your bright little page is a gawky, long-limbed lout, who comes to ask for leave that he may go to his country and get married. If you do not give it he will take it, and no doubt you are well rid of him, for the intellect in these people ripens about the age of fourteen or fifteen, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... of him: "He talks almost like a gentleman with a hat." Fauchelevent belonged, in fact, to that species, which the impertinent and flippant vocabulary of the last century qualified as demi-bourgeois, demi-lout, and which the metaphors showered by the chateau upon the thatched cottage ticketed in the pigeon-hole of the plebeian: rather rustic, rather citified; pepper and salt. Fauchelevent, though sorely tried and harshly ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... ordered his Boy to get off, and got on himself. But they hadn't gone far when they passed two women, one of whom said to the other: "Shame on that lazy lout to let his poor little ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... equal rights with the mightiest potentates of the universe."[1125] Petion's account of the journey in the king's carriage, on the return from Varennes, must be read to see how far self-importance of a pedant and the self-conceit of a lout can be carried.[1126] In their memoirs and even down to their epitaphs, Barbaroux, Buzot, Petion, Roland, and Madame Roland[1127] give themselves certificates of virtue and, if we could take their word for it, they would pass for Plutarch's model characters.—This infatuation, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Beguiles the rustic's closing day, When drawn the evening fire about, Sit aged crone and thoughtless lout; Come, show thy tricks and sportive graces, Thus circled round with merry faces. Backward coiled, and crouching low, With glaring eyeballs watch thy foe. The house wife's, spindle whirling round, Or thread, ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... this," he told himself. "I'm neither a savage like Bizco nor a brazen, carefree lout like Vidal. What am I going ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... most demoralizing forms of gambling in New York was policy-playing. The policy slips consisted of papers with three rows of figures written on them. The officer in question was a huge pithecoid lout of a creature, with a wooden face and a receding forehead, and his accuser whom he had arrested the preceding evening was a little grig of a red-headed man, obviously respectable, and almost incoherent with rage. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... in them, for Gaelic literature, until to-day, never approached nearer to the drama than the dialogue, the racy give-and-take of two characters, alike of lively imagination, whether gentle or simple. But even had the colloquies of St. Patrick and Oisin, of Dean Swift and his man Jack, of the Lout and his Mother, been developed, by 1890, to a drama as finished as that of Congreve or Goldsmith, Sheridan or Wilde, those who would have their plays abreast of our time would have gone, just as, with the conditions as they are, the dramatists of the Renaissance did go, to Ibsen ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... up in cheap royal finery and did the Richard III swordfight with maniac energy and prodigious powwow, in the presence of the village boys. This blacksmith cub was there, and the histrionic poison entered his bones. This vast, lumbering, ignorant, dull-witted lout was stage-struck, and irrecoverably. He disappeared, and presently turned up in St. Louis. I ran across him there, by and by. He was standing musing on a street corner, with his left hand on his hip, the thumb of his right supporting his chin, face bowed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is a task I would leave to my enemies. Besides, whenever I have come to grief, some other fellow has been to blame. When I fell into Hampton Lock, before the eyes of a multitude, it was because that ungainly lout Jones let the boat swing. Jones laughed then, and many times after when he told the story; but why should I help him to spread it? But that is neither here nor there. If I had been always as lucky as the other members ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... in the streets, The honest workman spurning, Know this—a living to be sweet Is better for the earning. To loaf and lounge and lie about, On others' toil to riot, Is only practiced by a lout; No honest ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... is very like a king—she never does wrong or needs pardon; 'tis this great lout of a boy here that is ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... very few holes, into which they dropped their neighbours, and they must go into one or the other. Nothing was more distressing than a specimen which, notwithstanding all the violence which might be used to it, would not fit into a hole, but remained an exception. Some lout, I believe, reckoning on the legitimacy of his generalisation, and having heard of this and other observations accredited to Miss Leroy, ventured to be slightly rude to her. What she said to him was never known, but he was always shy afterwards of mentioning her name, and when he did he was ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... Hollins! He identified the youth, a yellow-headed, pink-faced lout in flannels who was always riding over, and who seemed to "go in" for nearly everything. He had detected a romping intimacy between the two. So it was Tommy Hollins. At once he felt a great relief; he need worry no longer over ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... hate a false pretence, And the want of common sense, And arrogance, and fawning, and deceit, John Brown; I love the meadow flowers, And the brier in the bowers, And I love an open face without guile, John Brown; And I hate a selfish knave, And a proud, contented slave, And a lout who 'd rather borrow than he ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... better to be this poor Peggotty, or his lout of a nephew,' he said, getting up and leaning moodily against the chimney-piece, with his face towards the fire, 'than to be myself, twenty times richer and twenty times wiser, and be the torment to myself that I have been, in this Devil's ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... metamorphoses are sometimes wrought even on the most hopeless subjects, by seeing something of the world, by serving a campaign or two. How many a light, empty shell of a young man comes home full, if not of sense, at least of something bearing the semblance of sense! How many a heavy lout, a dull son of earth, returns enlivened into a conversable being, who can tell at least of what it has seen, heard, and felt, if not understood; and who for years, perhaps for ever afterwards, by the help of telling of other countries, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... the world is acquainted with the full particulars of his shame, and to sport with his jealous agonies. Congreve was the first dramatic author who put an English seaman on the stage; and, after his characteristic fashion, he made his Ben Legend a selfish, coarse, and ruffianly lout. But if one cannot admire many of Congreve's characters, on the other hand one cannot help admiring every sentence they speak. The only fault to be found with their talk is that it is too witty, too brilliant, for any manner of real life. Society would have to be all composed of male ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... this teaching his more recent writings plainly tend; and alike in Tess and Life's Little Ironies the part played by the "President of the Immortals" is no sublimer—save in the amount of force exerted—than that of a lout who pulls a chair suddenly from under an old woman. Now, by wedding Necessity with uncouth Jocularity, Mr. Hardy may have found an hypothesis that solves for him all the difficulties of life. I am not concerned in this ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bellringer carrying off a wench, like a vicomte! a lout poaching on the game of gentlemen! that is a rare piece of assurance. However, he paid dearly for it. Master Pierrat Torterue is the harshest groom that ever curried a knave; and I can tell you, if it will be agreeable to you, that ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... inclined to bring him home to luncheon; and in the clash and crisis, without any one's quite knowing how it happened, it turned out that Mrs. Evelyn had been so imprudent as to sanction an attachment between her daughter and that great lout of a young doctor, Lady Fordham's brother! Not only the M.P., but all the family shook the head and bemoaned the connection, for though it was to be a long engagement and a great secret, everybody found ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about fifteen feet deep near the made embankment, was alive with the tiny fish, squirming in a mass as they were pursued by larger fish. The son of Prince Hinoe, a round-shouldered lout, very tall, awkward, and merry, held a bamboo pole. His white suit was soiled and ragged, and he whistled "All Coons Look alike to Me!" The peanut-vender had brought a rod, and was fishing with difficulty and mostly by feel. He could keep one ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... bachelor you know I am, would have cried shame on me if I had lingered behind. I told her that if I stayed it would be for her sake, and you should have seen how she flouted me, saying that she would have no tall lout hiding behind her petticoats, and that if I stayed, it should not be as her man. And now I must be off to my supper, or I shall find that there is not a ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... thought of what Joe had caused of wreckage in her life by his meddling, her resentment rose against him. But for him, slow-mouthed, cold-hearted lout, she would have been safe and happy with Morgan that hour. Old Isom would have been living still, going about his sordid ways as before she came, and the need of his money would have been removed out of her ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... met the drover, and he was drunk, or made most marvelous pretense—a great six-foot, blue-eyed lout in smock and boots, reeking of Bull's Head gin, his drover's whip a-trail in the dust, and he a-swaggering down Nassau Street, gawking at the shop-windows and whistling Roslyn Castle with ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... on to say what hard work being a good farmer meant. And I thought: What a stupid, lazy lout! When we talked seriously he would drag it out with his awful drawl—er, er, er—and he works just as he talks—slowly, always behindhand, never up to time; and as for his being businesslike, I don't believe it, for he often keeps letters given him to post for ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... Jack's Tom. If he, in his turn, happened to have a son whom he chose to name Henry, the youth was known as Jack's Tom's Harry. Our friend Tommy's father had been called Hob, and hence the name of the ill-tempered lout who was gazing on the unsullied sea. Tommy watched the green water breaking over the brown sand, and far out at sea he saw the thick haze still brooding low. He knew the evening would be fine, and he knew that he would have a good basket for next day's market. He put his ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... in a shrill tone of disgust; "you'd never even our lad to a great fullish lout like Eli Redrup, with a head like a turmut! If Frank isn't just so fierce as some lads of his age, he's got more ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... it was for twa shillin' a week that I first worked. I was a strappin' lout of a boy then, fit to work harder than I did, and earn more, and ever and again I'd tell them at some new mill I was past fourteen, and they'd put me to work at full time. But I could no hide myself awa' from the inspector when he came ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... young Bourne scored no end in the next few rounds by following Acton's advice, his good efforts seemed wasted. The lout's face was as hard as a butcher's block. Acton saw that Bourne was visibly tiring, and that it was an almost foregone conclusion that in the end he would be beaten. He could hardly stall ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... Glazier had become a tolerably expert physiognomist, and singled out an unsophisticated-looking giant, who was patrolling a certain beat, as the best man among the line of sentries on whom to practise an imposition. This individual was evidently a good-natured lout, not long in the service, and very much resembling our conception of "Jonas Chuzzlewit," in respect to his having been "put away and forgotten for half a century." It is only necessary to add that his owners "had stuck a musket in his hand, and placed him ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... part, I like those long trials of the old-fashioned chivalry. That lout of a young lord, who took offence because his sovereign-lady sent him down among the lions to fetch her glove, was, in my opinion, very impertinent, and a fool too. Doubtless the lady had in reserve for him some exquisite flower of love, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... for yourself, sonny, and don't waste valuable time in stopping to ask silly questions," was the ungracious reply I received; and I suppose it was the reflection that it served me right for persisting in my attempts to be civil to the lout that drove out of my head the thought which had flashed into it for an instant, that it was rather queer that the skipper should have sent for me at a moment when Bainbridge was actually on the spot ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... tutelage of Abner Sage. It was his boasting of his froward pupil, doubtless, that had suggested the idea, and Leander understood now that he was to do the work of the store and the post-office under the nominal incumbency of this unlettered lout. Had the whole transaction been open and acknowledged, Leander would have had scant appetite for the work under this master; but he revolted at the flimsy, contemptible sham; he bitterly resented the innuendoes against the piety of ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the moon should have nothing to say to Endymion, although he should settle down with Audrey and feed pigs, do you not think he would move with a better grace, and cherish higher thoughts to the end? The lout he meets at church never had a fancy above Audrey's snood; but there is a reminiscence in Endymion's heart that, like a spice, keeps it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... glad to hear it. This Rivers is such a lout, that I could not tell how it might be. I did not look to see you turn homesick all ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... fellow, Lothair," said St. Aldegonde; "or is it the dress that turns them out such swells? I feel quite a lout ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... light hopeful nature had perhaps never had so much of a bruise as from this suggestion that if he had been out of the way Mary might have made a thoroughly good match. Also he was piqued that he had been what he called such a stupid lout as to ask that intervention from Mr. Farebrother. But it was not in a lover's nature—it was not in Fred's, that the new anxiety raised about Mary's feeling should not surmount every other. Notwithstanding his trust ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... them into the Church the superstitions floating about among the people, and the Feast of Fools may be regarded as a recoil of paganism upon Christianity in its very sanctuary. "An ebullition of the natural lout beneath the cassock" it has been called by Mr. Chambers, and many of its usages may be explained by the reaction of coarse natures freed for once from restraint. It brought to light, however, not merely personal vulgarity, but a whole range of traditional customs, ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... have. Haena, have not. "Hae 't," have it. Haill, whole. Hantle, a great deal. Harry, to rob, to break in upon. Hash, a clumsy lout. Hand, to hold, to have. Hauld, a habitation. Hempie, giddy. Heugh, a dell; also, a crag. Hinny, a term of endearmenthoney. Holme, a hollow, level low ground. "Horse of wood, foaled of an acorn," a form of ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... If your judgment agrees That he did not embark Like an ignorant spark, Or a troublesome lout, To puzzle and bother, and blunder about, Give him a shout, At his first setting out! And all pull away With a hearty huzza For success to the play! Send him away, Smiling and gay, Shining and florid, With ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... On the ensanguined corse, in sorrow drowned, The damsel throws herself, in her despair, And shrieks so lout that wood and plain resound For many miles about; nor does she spare Bosom or cheek; but still, with cruel wound, One and the other smites the afflicted fair; And wrongs her curling lock of golden grain, Aye calling on the ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... woman to put out. I don't wish to discourage you; I don't say the changes are against us. But with Mrs. Milroy threatening me on one side, and Mr. Midwinter on the other, the worst of all risks to run is the risk of losing time. Young Armadale has hinted already, as well as such a lout can hint, at a private interview! Miss Milroy's eyes are sharp, and the nurse's eyes are sharper; and I shall lose my place if either of them find me out. No matter! I must take my chance, and give him the interview. Only let me get him alone, only let me escape the prying eyes of the women, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... you half that sum, you lying lout," returned Brush, fiercely. "But to get rid of such a pest, and prevent your going round town with that lie in your mouth, I'll give you all you ask; and there they are!" he continued, pulling out and disdainfully tossing the coins down at the other's feet. ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... group of anxious watchers. This time he had more friends. They swarmed respectfully but enthusiastically after him out of Hoffmuller's place, a dozen at least of our ne'er-do-wells. One of these, "Big Joe" Kestril, a genial lout of a section-hand, ostentatiously carried the bag and had an arm locked tenderly through one of the Colonel's. These two led the procession. It halted at the corner, where the Colonel began to read his Argus notice to ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... "Am I some lout who has spent his days herding swine, think you, that you could trick me into believing this creature to be Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye—this creature with the mien of a peasant, with a breath reeking of garlic like a third-rate eating-house, and the walk of a woman who has never known footgear ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... I had been your reverence, I should have refused to do it. You haven't had your proper sleep, and you may have caught cold in the church. It is that which has upset you. Besides which it would be better to marry brute beasts than that Rosalie and her ugly lout. That brat of theirs dirtied one of the chairs.—But you ought to tell me when you feel poorly, and I could make you something warm.—Eh! Monsieur ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... upon a brazen-looking woman with a black eye, who answered the question of the officer, "Where did you get that shiner?" with a laugh. "I ran up against the fist of me man," she said. Her "man," a big, sullen lout, sat by, dumb. The woman answered for him that ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... impression among the many; a misconception which we regret to say is shared by the judge on the bench with the workingman on the construction gang, and the idiotic observation that "if women expect to vote they must expect to stand up in the street-car," is not, alas! confined to the lout, but is quite often voiced by ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... which peers and peeresses had become weary. They therefore welcomed this rustic candidate for the honour of giving wings to their hours of lassitude and weariness, with a welcome more than common; and when his approach was announced, the polished circle looked for the advent of a lout from the plough, in whose uncouth manners and embarrassed address they might find matter both for mirth and wonder. But they met with a barbarian who was not at all barbarous: as the poet met in Lord Daer feelings and sentiments as natural ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... I answered, "but not to-day. We will wait until everybody has had time to get completely sober again. I do not choose that the lady should be subjected to the annoyance of encountering, and perhaps being insulted by, some half-drunken lout. But you will not require all the boats, I suppose, so you had better send off the smallest one, with a pair of oars, that we may have the means of going to and from the ship and the shore at our own pleasure, and ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... of his forefathers, and to lay his old bones in the family vault; but the place was poisoned to him for evermore, he told Angela. He could not stay where he and his had been held in highest honour, to have his daughter pointed at by every grinning lout in hob-nailed shoes, and scorned by the neighbouring quality. He only waited till Denzil Warner should be pronounced out of danger and on the high-road to recovery, before he crossed ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... there is the chance of a ransom. Why, look you, in the affair at Brignais some four years back, when the companies slew James of Bourbon, and put his army to the sword, there was scarce a man of ours who had not count, baron, or knight. Peter Karsdale, who was but a common country lout newly brought over, with the English fleas still hopping under his doublet, laid his great hands upon the Sieur Amaury de Chatonville, who owns half Picardy, and had five thousand crowns out of him, with his horse and ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... feelings, vague in the house, were scarcely clearer in the cold and in the open spaces of the night, and Julian was conscious of a sense of irritation, of anger against himself. He felt as if he were an oaf, a lout. Was it, could it be, Cuckoo who had made him feel so? After all, what was she? Julian tried to hug and soothe himself in the unworthy remembrance of Cuckoo's monotonous life and piteous deeds, to reinstate himself in contented ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... said, "that my heart bodes ill of this match? Eric is a mighty man, and, great though thou art, I think that thou shalt lout ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... Peter Van Horn galloped up, halted, and turned his head, following the direction of my outstretched arm. Others came, blinking into the ruddy evening glow, craning their necks to see, and from the wretched tavern a lank lout stumbled forth, rifle shouldered, pewter a-slop, to learn the news that had brought ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... 'you said that possibility was not to make any difference to us. Wouldn't it be making the wrong sort of difference to let it keep a great lout like me in idleness while Bernard is going ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... beneath the bridge Sleep in a row the outcasts, Packed in a line with their heads against the wall. Their feet, in a broken ridge Stretch out on the way, and a lout casts A look as he stands on the edge of ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... modified berquinade—indeed, except for the absence of riotous fun, one of the best of all Paul de Kock's books—is Jean, also an example of his middle and ripest period. If translated into English it might have for second title "or, The History of a Good Lout." The career of Jean Durand (one of the French equivalents for John Brown or Jones or Robinson) we have from the moment of, and indeed a little before, his birth to that crowning of a virtuous young Frenchman's hopes, which ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... from suburban alleys, Stretched under seaweed in the treacherous punt; Knows every lazy, shiftless lout that sallies Forth to waste powder—as he ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... line of march recline Dead gods devoid of feeling; And thick about each sun-cracked lout Dried ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... I don't stagnate: there's always movement; but—putting aside the religious question—my stage at present is yours of twenty years ago. Yet, not even that; for you started better than I did. You were never a selfish lout—a ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... he remarked to Princess Edna, after their visitor had taken his departure, "what on earth induced the Mater to tell that lanky overgrown lout we should be pleased to see him any time he cared to drop in? We shall have the beggar running in and out here like a bally rabbit, ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... shall go. It so happens that I know one of those goatherds—a rough lout of a fellow called Petruccio. I could tell him that a youngster had got into trouble in the city and wanted to lie quiet for a week or two. I can do ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... Mersch, standing between those two, he seemed like a country lout between confederate sharpers. It struck me that she let me see, made me see, that she and Gurnard had an understanding, made manifest to me by glances that passed when the Duc had ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... gods, Rag, get thee to sleep once more, thou stupidest lout in Britain! It is a scurvy trick to waken thus at the wrong time and trumpet thy nonsense in such fashion. Good youth canst not skip that bit for peace's sake, and get on to the ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... time before Beverley could again secure Alice for a dance, and he found it annoying him atrociously to see her smile sweetly on some buckskin-clad lout who looked like an Indian and danced like a Parisian. He did not greatly enjoy most of his partners; they could not appeal to any side of his nature just then. Not that he at all times stood too much on his aristocratic traditions, or lacked the virile ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... fulfilled its mission, And Roland not availed him of his targe, There would have been no need of a physician[344]. Orlando set himself in turn to charge, And in his bulky bosom made incision With all his sword. The lout fell; but o'erthrown, he However by no means ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron |
