"Clown" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Song ('Let School-masters,' &c.) Epilogue to 'She Stoops to Conquer' Retaliation Song ('Ah, me! when shall I marry me?') Translation ('Chaste are their instincts') The Haunch of Venison Epitaph on Thomas Parnell The Clown's Reply Epitaph on Edward Purdon Epilogue for Lee Lewes Epilogue written for 'She Stoops to Conquer' (1) Epilogue written for 'She Stoops to Conquer' (2) The Captivity. An Oratorio Verses in Reply to an ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... and bobtail, and I am afraid that on two occasions at least he was tempted to swagger and 'show off,' as children say. He shambled up to one of the 'try your strength' machines: the figure of a circus clown, with a buffer to punch at in the neighbourhood of his midriff, and a dial on his chest to indicate the weight of the blow administered. The Slasher tossed a penny to the proprietor of the machine and waved him on one side; but ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... the same as good manners elsewhere—only a little more so. A club is for the pleasure and convenience of many; it is never intended as a stage-setting for a "star" or "clown" or "monologist." There is no place where a person has greater need of restraint and consideration for the reserves of others than in a club. In every club there is a reading-room or library where conversation is not allowed; there are books and easy chairs ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... "Silence, impudent clown!" roared the fat, fierce-looking Multiplicand. "Ignoramus! nothing of music! Why, you don't know ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... as a silver dollar. In the book we can smell the sawdust, hear the flapping of the big white canvas and the roaring of the lions, and listen to the merry "hoop la!" of the clown. ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... noise, the lights were turned out. The word "Johnnys" ran round the place, and there was a big rush for the door leading into Piccadilly Circus. Fortunately I got out at once, and I found myself marching clown Piccadilly in the second row of a procession. Foster was next to me, though how he got there I cannot conceive, and Ward and Dennison were in the front row. We sang as we walked, and people cleared out of our way. I heard one man who met us say "Poor fools!" and the fellow who ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... in the cloister-school again, with his smock up. 'Mea culpa, mea culpa! Hey, reverend father, have pity!' he began to roar. Dropping him at last, Richard tumbled him on to the bed. 'Blubber yourself to sleep, clown,' he told him. 'Blessed ass, I have heard you snoring these two hours, snoring and rootling over your jack-knife. Sleep, man. But if you rootle again I flog again: mind you that.' Gilles slept long, and was awoken in full light by ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... as a student of philology, I ought to know better. The greatest of Englishmen was so careless in the matter as to sign himself Shakspe, a fact usually emphasized by Baconian when speaking of the illiterate clown of Stratford-on-Avon. Equally illiterate must have been the learned Dr. Crown, who, in the various books he published in the latter half of the seventeenth century, spelt his name, indifferently Cron, Croon, Croun, Crone, Croone, Croune. The ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... was not a mere clown or blockhead; but beneath his "hodden gray" often carried good feeling, intelligence, and wit. He was rather humorous than ludicrous, and had some dignity of character. Since his time, consideration for the poor has greatly increased; we see it in the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... stands amidst some bushes, holding a handsome leash of hounds; dead kangaroos and other Australian animals lie around him. Then follow more lancers. After this comes a huge car, two stories high, with all sorts of odd characters in it: a clown, with his "Here we are again!" playing pranks on two sedate-looking Chinamen; a little fairy boy or girl, flirting with a magician; dragons snapping; strange birds screeching; three bears, one playing a violin, but the tune it plays is drowned by ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... had made a rabbit out of one of the girl's handkerchiefs, and was springing it from his hand against the wall. He seemed to have a fair appreciation of the character of his associates for the evening; and though himself perfectly competent to behave well in the best society, chose to act the clown in this. ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... many blessings upon your head," said the Clown; "the one he bestowed on me was the ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... surmounted this by saying, "Ladies and genelmen, I want you to stick closer than brothers. When you hear me a-talkin' don' you go turnin' over your Baedekers and lookin' out of the window. If I didn't know a great big sight more about Versailles than Baedeker does I wouldn't be here makin' a clown of myself; an' I'll show you the view out of the window all in good time. You see that lady an' two genelmen over there? They're listenin' all right enough because they don't belong to this party an' they want to get a little information cheap price. All right—I let ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... primitive both in style and material; the trousers and caps being made of sheepskin and the tunic of plaited wheat-straw. In contradistinction to the Yuraks the settled inhabitants of the country are called Turks. That term, however, which means rustic or clown, is never used by the Turks themselves except in derision or disdain; they always ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... right when I was a reveryin'—right there, when we wuz a floatin' clown the still waters, their voices riz up in one of their inspired songs. They sung about their "Hard Trials," and how the "Sweet Chariot swung low," and how ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... as foreign to the object of lawyers, as the extirpation of the fox is to that of sportsmen. The sportsman, because he hunts the fox, sees in the summary destruction of the fox by the hand of a clown, an offence foul, strange, and unnatural, little short of murder. The lawyer treats crime in the same way: his business is the chase of it; but, that it may exist for the chase, he lays down rules protecting it against surprises and capture by any methods ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... but I see not what I see. Damsel and lover? hear not what I hear. My father hath begotten me in his wrath. I suffer from the things before me, know, Learn nothing; am not worthy to be knight; A churl, a clown!' and in him gloom on gloom Deepen'd: he sharply caught his lance and shield, Nor stay'd to crave permission of the King, But, mad for ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... to be wise; begin! he who defers the hour of living well is like the clown, waiting till the river shall have flowed out: but the river still flows, and will run on, with constant course, to ages without ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... you every one; Pray take your answer, and be gone." One swore he'd send 'em to the stocks; A third could not forbear his mocks; But bawl'd as loud as he could roar "You're on the wrong side of the door!" One surly clown look't out and said, "I'll fling the p—pot on your head: You sha'nt come here, nor get a sous! You look like rogues would rob a house. Can't you go work, or serve the King? You blind and lame! 'Tis no such thing. That's but a counterfeit sore leg! For shame! two sturdy rascals beg! If I come ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... dance, and incline your head gracefully, and don't act as if it were glued immovably onto your shoulders." Sahwah dutifully grinned from ear to ear, and Gladys shook her head again. "No, not like that, it makes you look like a clown. Just smile slightly and naturally; act as if you were enjoying yourself." Thus the lesson proceeded. Gladys had undertaken the task of teaching Sahwah fancy dancing, and drilled her every morning in the shack. Sahwah was eager ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... Lascaris just heard enough of the naval hero's harangue, to acquaint them with the new danger with which they might be assailed by the possible misdirection of the weapons, and, rushing clown towards the lists at the head of a crowd half-desperate with fear, they hastily propagated the appalling news, that the Latins were coming back from Asia with the purpose of landing in arms, pillaging, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... profess it in Mahomet or Moses or Boodh are obedient to their precepts, if not in certain points of morality, in all things else. Carlyle is a vigorous thinker, but a vile writer, worse than Bulwer. I breakfasted in company with him at Milman's. Macaulay was there, a clever clown, and Moore too, whom I had not seen till then. Between those two Scotchmen he appeared like a glow-worm between two thistles. There were several other folks, literary and half literary, Lord Northampton, &c., &c. I forgot Rogers. Milman ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Regnier: "Le plaisir delicieux et toujours nouveau d'une occupation inutile." With Casella, he writes a musical "A la maniere de," parodying Wagner, d'Indy, Chabrier, Strauss and others most wittily. Something of Eric Satie, the clown of music, exists in him, too. And probably nothing makes him so inexplicable and irritating to his audiences as his ironic streak. People are willing to forgive an ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... and Melinda turned sharply upon him, with a look in her black eyes which made him wince as he replied: "Family interference—must have money, you know! But, zounds! don't I pity her!—tied to that clown, whom—" ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... Liston, having painted Fanny Kemble's face like a clown's, posted her at one of the stage side doors to confront her mother, poor Mrs. Stephen Kemble, entering at the opposite one to perform some dismally serious scene of dramatic pathos, who, on suddenly beholding this grotesque apparition of her ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... directions as to the way, a necessary proceeding in view of the fact that Selifan could hardly maintain his seat on the box. Twice Petrushka, too, had fallen headlong, and this necessitated being tied to his perch with a piece of rope. "What a clown!" had been Chichikov's ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... must suppose, lacking in balance and common sense. We are told that one winter Lord Chandos's players visited Evesham, and Jack Miller, our Fool, became greatly attached to the company and in particular to Grumball the clown; indeed, so greatly was he enamoured that he "swore he would goe all the world over with Grumball." The townspeople being loth to lose so popular a character, Jack was locked in a room at the back of the White Hart Inn from which he could see the players journeying ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... round red face and a bald pate whose curly fringe of grizzled, reddish hair made him look like a clown in a pantomime, motioned them with a surly thumb toward the back of the house, where clattering preparations for supper were audible and odoriferous. The old fellow sat in a splint-bottomed chair of extra size and with arms. This he had kicked back against ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... make or mar China issue from, or converge towards, the capital. There, on the dragon throne, beside, or rather above, the powerless and unhappy Emperor, the father of his people and their god, sits the astute and ever-watchful lady whose word is law to Emperor, minister and clown alike. There dwell the heads of the government boards, the leaders of the Manchu aristocracy, and the great political parties, the drafters of new constitutions and imperial decrees, and the keen-witted diplomatists who know so well how to play against ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... midnight. He asked to be allowed to see the patient, but Merril wouldn't let him go into the room. I thought he behaved to the captain like a clown.' ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... first act an order of the Prince of Dessau calls all the youngsters of Schilda to arms.—The chief magistrate with the characteristic name of Ruepelmei (RuepelClown), who has already given to the town so many wise laws, as for instance the one, which decrees that the Schilda maidens under thirty are not allowed to marry—now demonstrates to his two nieces, Lenchen and Hedwig, the benefit of his legislation, in as much ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... with quick movements and a breezy manner. He reminded one slightly of a clown leaping into the arena of a circus with the cry: Here we are again. His air seemed to indicate: What's all this nonsense about being ill? I'll soon put that right. He took his seat, asked if there were any old patients for him ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... rescuing party only three were citizens of Lawrence. Sam Wood was in his element. He was a man overflowing with patriotism, yet succeeded in doing more harm to his friends than to his enemies. He possessed unmistakable talent; he was a clown and a born actor, and as a public speaker was sure to bring down the house; he was a pronounced free State man; yet in this act he made himself the marplot ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... It was Fletcher's voice above her. "Leave him alone. He will soon come to his senses. Serves him right for acting the clown ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the dastard kestrel kite Aye hugs the earth in his stealthy flight. Hope gone! the pool at the otter's cave Will prove the Ladye Tomasine's grave. Ho! ho! see yonder comes rushing down A lithe young hind, though a simple clown— Off bonnet and shoes, and coat and vest, A plunge! and he holds her round the waist! Three strokes of his arm, with his beautiful prize All safe, although faint, on the bank she lies! A cottager's wife came running down, "Take care of the ladye," said the clown. He has donned his clothes, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... Says the Clown, when I tell him to do what he ought, "Sir, whatever your character be, To obey you in this I will never be brought, And it 's wrong to be meddling with me." Says my Wife, when she wants this or that for the house, "Our matters to ruin must go: Your reading and writing is not ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... benefit of that hoard of injurious language which he could not in decency bestow on his royal guest, even in his absence, and which was yet become too great to be altogether suppressed. The jests of the clown had some effect in tranquillizing the Duke's angry mood—he laughed loudly, threw the jester a piece of gold, caused himself to be disrobed in tranquillity, swallowed a deep cup of wine and spices, went to bed, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... lives of many personally known to me. At the same time I cannot but observe how signally, as regards the production of anything beautiful, religion fails in other cases. Its professor and defender is sometimes at bottom a brawler and a clown. These differences depend upon primary distinctions of character which religion does not remove. It may comfort some to know that there are amongst us many whom the gladiators of the pulpit would call 'atheists' ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... said Colonel Laporte, "although I am old and gouty, my legs as stiff as two pieces of wood, yet if a pretty woman were to tell me to go through the eye of a needle, I believe I should take a jump at it, like a clown through a hoop. I shall die like that; it is in the blood. I am an old beau, one of the old school, and the sight of a woman, a pretty woman, stirs me to the tips of ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... saunter through a wood! An old place, full of many a lovely brood, Tall trees, green arbours, and ground flowers in flocks; And Wild rose tip-toe upon hawthorn stocks, Like to a bonny Lass, who plays her pranks At Wakes and Fairs with wandering Mountebanks, When she stands cresting the Clown's head, and mocks The crowd beneath her. Verily I think, Such place to me is sometimes like a dream Or map of the whole world: thoughts, link by link Enter through ears and eyesight, with such gleam Of all things, that at last in fear I shrink, And leap ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... in a mountain town. The mountaineers swarmed from far and near, and lined the streets on every hand with open mouth and bated breath, as the grand procession, with band, and clown, and camels, and elephants, and lions, and tigers, and spotted horses, paraded in brilliant array. The excitement was boundless when the crowd rushed into the tent, and they left behind them a surging mass of humanity, unprovided with tickets, and ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... the rapid changes in religious thought betoken the early abrogation of all creeds. Lessing, the philosophers of the French revolution, James Mill, Schopenhauer and others fell into this error. They were not wiser than the clown of Horace, who seated himself by the rushing stream, thinking it must ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... English-reading world—judges on the bench and bishops in their studies, cobblers in their stalls and grooms in the stables—were all laughing over Pickwick, should have sued the Eatanswill Gazette for calling him a clown. Thackeray pronounces Cooper's Long Tom Coffin one of the prizemen of fiction. That is a final judgment by the chief-justice. But who knows what was the verdict in Cooper's lawsuits to vindicate himself, and who cares? When Cooper died there was a great commemorative meeting in New ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... Blackfriars Bridge; that it is straight, the AEginetan marbles; that it is retrousse, the dog in that Hogarth portrait. Suggest a cheerful countenance, and you stamp your subject for ever as a Shakespearian clown. So you must be content to know that Mr. Bradshaw was a good-looking young man, of dark complexion, and of rather over medium height and good manners. If he had not been, he would never, as an article ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... A, does not fulfil what its form requires. Nor does any mind ever think or form conceptions in accordance with this law, nor does any existence conform to it.' Wisdom of this sort is well parodied in Shakespeare (Twelfth Night, 'Clown: For as the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc, "That that is is"...for what is "that" but "that," and "is" but "is"?'). Unless we are willing ...
— Sophist • Plato
... could not recognise any one as she looked round upon Turks, clowns, Indians, the tinselled, sequined, beaded, ragged flutter of the room, then from the coloured and composite clothing of a footballer, clown or jockey grinned the round face and owlish eyes of little Duval, who flew to her at once to whisper compliments and stumble on the swelling fortress of her white skirt. She realised dimly from him that ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... shall I fancie, Amidst these gloomy dayes? Shall I goe court brown Nancy? In a countrey town They'l call me clown, If I sing them my outlandish playes. Let me inform their nodle with my heroick spirit, My language and worth besides transcend unto merit; They'l not believe one word, what mortal flesh can bear it? Alas! poor ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... actors are ashamed of being funny?—Why, there are obvious reasons, and deep philosophical ones. The clown knows very well that the women are not in love with him, but with Hamlet, the fellow in the black cloak and plumed hat. Passion never laughs. The wit knows that his place is at the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... his suit to her? And has she ever so much as vouchsafed to look at Henry Howard, who is upon the point of being the first duke in England, and who is already in actual possession of all the estates of the house of Norfolk? I confess that he is a clown, but what other lady in all England would not have dispensed with his stupidity and his disagreeable person, to be the first duchess in the kingdom, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... claims whatever beyond those assigned to it by the Patent of February 3rd, to which it owed its origin. In receiving the address of the Chambers, the King, while expressing a desire to see the Constitution further developed, repeated the principle already laid clown by his Ministers, and refused to acknowledge any obligation outside those which he ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... a cherished clown in that section of society in which the Newlyns had their being, was making believe to cry, his large mouth opened grotesquely, his ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... simple face Perennial youth possessed and winning grace; But who shall dare, in this refining age, With Nature's praise to soil his snowy page? What polish'd lover, unappall'd by sneers Dare court a beldame of six thousand years, When every clown with microscopick eyes The gaping furrows on her forehead spies?— 'Good sir, your pardon: In her naked state, Her wither'd form we cannot chuse but hate; But fashion's art the waste of time repairs, Each ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... overlook The nature of the office as laid down For Churches' guidance in the holy Book, And substitute opinions of their own. Such meet their fellow Christians with a frown If they insist upon the Scripture plan, And deem him little better than a clown Who has the courage their false views to scan: And should he not desist might place him ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... For that, or underneath his cloak He had concealed some grunting elf, Or was a real hog himself. A search was made—no pig was found— With thund'ring claps the seats resound, And pit, and box, and gall'ries roar With— "O rare! bravo!" and "encore." Old Roger Grouse, a country clown, Who yet knew something of the town, Beheld the mimic of his whim, And on the morrow challenged him Declaring to each beau and belle That he this grunter would excel. The morrow came—the crowd was greater— But prejudice and rank ill-nature Usurp'd the minds of men and wenches, Who came ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... Maria Colville found masks and dominoes filling the shop windows and dangling from the doors. A devil in red and a clown in white crossed the way in front of him from an intersecting street; several children in pretty masquerading dresses flashed in and out among the crowd. He hurried to the Lung' Arno, and reached the palace where Mrs. Bowen lived, with ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... both Houses of Parliament." Such weak and watery declamation won't do for a country that has had thirty-eight years of compulsory education. If our War Office wishes to rouse patriotic feeling, it should cease to contrast "the dull labour of the fields" with "the soft calm of Malta": the veriest clown would not be caught by such chaff. It would be more to the point to send gratuitous copies of The Barrack Room Ballads to all the ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... excitement, returned a timid salute, while Juanito bowed profoundly, took off his hat, and made the same gesture as the celebrated clown and caricaturist Panza ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... to see this greeting, this common phrase, this bit of old ware, this antique, come upon a dramatic scene and pulverise it. Nothing remained but a ridiculous dust. Coke, glowering, with his lips still trembling from heroic speech, was an angry clown, a pantaloon in rage. Nothing was to be done to keep him from looking like an ass. He, strode toward the door mumbling ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... the ways of God are thus rich, and so far above the gold and rubies of the world, so also is that sanctified and gracious heart, without which no man can walk in this golden street. It is not every clown with his clumping dirty shoes that is admitted into kings' privy-chambers and private palaces; neither doth, or will God, at the day of New Jerusalem, suffer any to trace about this golden street, but such as have golden feet, and that beautified with goodly shoes. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... white. These horses were ridden by ladies in wonderful blue and silver and pink and gold habits, and by knights in armor, all of whom carried umbrellas also. Pages walked beside the horses, waving banners and shields with "Visit Currie's World-Renowned Circus" painted on them. A droll little clown, mounted on an enormous bay horse, made fun of the pages, imitated their gestures, and rapped them on the back with his riding-stick in a droll way. A long line of blue and ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... trumpets, opened the King's commission twice a year. There were the markets at which the corn, the cattle, the wool, and the hops of the surrounding country were exposed to sale. There were the great fairs to which merchants came clown from London, and where the rural dealer laid in his annual stores of sugar, stationery, cutlery, and muslin. There were the shops at which the best families of the neighbourhood bought grocery and millinery. Some of these places derived dignity from interesting ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... life, even though he made some enemies. But he had many friends. There was Helen Morton. Then there was Benny Turton, who did a "tank act," and was billed as a "human fish." Jim Tracy, the ringmaster, Bill Watson, the veteran clown, and his wife, the circus "mother," Tom Layton, the elephant man who taught the big creatures many tricks, were only a few of ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... got abroad that Apollo was come, And intended to be, for that evening, "at home;" And that cards would be issued, and tickets be given, To all scholars and wits, for a dinner at seven. So he'd scarcely sat clown, when a legion came pouring Of would-be-thought scholars, his favor imploring. First, Buller stept in, with a lengthy oration About "scandalous usage," and "hard situation:" And such treatment as never, since Eton ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... That a clown such as that could have any chance of leaving the ground alive never entered his head. But willingly as he would have encompassed his death in this manner, the knowledge that his secret would not die with Quennebert restrained him, for ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "Confiteor Deo omnipotente beatae Mariae...." I have forgotten it all. It is thirty years since I have said a prayer. I must pray in the common tongue, like a clown begging in the market, like Teigue the Fool! [He prays.] Help me, Father, Son, ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... Flossy seemed to say as she sprang three times her length in the air, and turned head over heels like the clown in a circus. ...
— Crusoes of the Frozen North • Gordon Stables
... replaced by an enemy. 'Twas his fellow-feeling to me, both as a brother and a medicus, that made him declare me on the point of death when I was still as lusty as a false credo. For the rest, I had sufficient science to hold in my breath while the clown tied me with cords, else had I been too straitened to breathe. But thou needest a ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... sir, that you will oblige me very much by coming to see me sometimes: my husband is so ugly, so ill-behaved, and such a drunkard, that it is perfect martyrdom for me to be with him, and I ask you what pleasure one can have with such a clown ...
— The Jealousy of le Barbouille - (La Jalousie du Barbouille) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... a modest request for a beggarly English clown!' cried the King, aiming a blow at the lad with his whip, and pushing on his horse, so as almost to throw him back on the heath. 'Ho! ho! fit him out for ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with which nature has provided them. In cultivating the ground, also, man can do nothing without a spade or a plow; nor can he reap what he has sown till he has shaped an implement with which to cut clown his harvest. But the inferior animals provide for themselves and their young without any ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... inability—for all the rest of Maelzel's automata are evidence of his full ability to copy the motions and peculiarities of life with the most wonderful exactitude. The rope-dancers, for example, are inimitable. When the clown laughs, his lips, his eyes, his eye-brows, and eyelids—indeed, all the features of his countenance—are imbued with their appropriate expressions. In both him and his companion, every gesture is so entirely easy, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... men of mode, and which I cannot but look upon as very extraordinary. It was certainly one of the first distinctions of a well-bred man, to express every thing that had the most remote appearance of being obscene, in modest terms and distant phrases; whilst the clown, who had no such delicacy of conception and expression, clothed his ideas in those plain homely terms that are the most obvious and natural. This kind of good-manners was perhaps carried to an excess, so as to make conversation too stiff, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... suspecting what had really happened. But Mrs. Grivois, rather surprised than uneasy at her pug-log's insensibility to her affectionate appeals, and believing him to be sullenly crouching beneath the seat, stooped clown to take him up, and feeling one of his paws, drew it impatiently towards her whilst she said to him in a half-jesting, half angry tone: "Come, naughty fellow! you will give a pretty notion of your temper ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... lamb flies the wolf, or a dove the hawk. It is for love I pursue you. You make me miserable, for fear you should fall and hurt yourself on these stones, and I should be the cause. Pray run slower, and I will follow slower. I am no clown, no rude peasant. Jupiter is my father, and I am lord of Delphos and Tenedos, and know all things, present and future. I am the god of song and the lyre. My arrows fly true to the mark; but alas! An arrow more fatal than mine ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown,'" ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... the famous Doctor Gall [Franz Joseph Gall, founder of the system of phrenology. Born in Baden, 1758; died in Paris, 1825] was illustrated. I saw a troop passing the Place du Carrousel, composed of clowns, harlequins, fishwives, etc., all rubbing their skulls, and making expressive grimaces; while a clown bore several skulls of different sizes, painted red, blue, or green, with these inscriptions: Skull of a robber, skull of an assassin, skull of a bankrupt, etc.; and a masked figure, representing Doctor Gall, was seated on an ass, his head turned to the animal's tail, and receiving from the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... PAIN. "Oh, I must buy that!" she exclaimed. "I've seen him so often in the Pantomime at Drury Lane! And fancy his being an Author, too! But I don't so much wonder at it, because I remember that, when I was a little girl, there was a celebrated Shakspearian Clown at Astley's called BARRY, and he sailed in a tub drawn by geese down the Thames, and there was a wonderful Pantomime actor of the name of PAIN. And now this talented gentleman turns out to be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various
... first bein' that he was the most dignified and solemn guy I ever seen in my life. Stories that would put a victim of lockjaw in hysterics couldn't coax a snicker from that undertaker's face of his which would have made a supreme court justice look like a clown. In fact, if he'd been a judge and I ever come up before him, I would have took one flash at that face and asked him to gimme life and let it go at that! His favorite smokin'-room story was what causes spots on the sun or somethin' equally excitin', and ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... he proved to be a clown belonging to Bisset's habitation. His panic and surprise on seeing me made him aghast. In my present garb I should not have easily been recognised by my nearest kinsman, and much less easily by one who had ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... laugh was mostly out of register also. It had a sad lack of relevancy. He laughed on principle rather than provocation. Some sort of secret comedy of which the world knew nothing, was passing in his mind; it seemed to have its exits and its entrances, its villain, its clown and its miser who got all ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... striking originality of conception has crowned him with a thin yellow wig, in colour precisely like Dyson's, in curl and quantity resembling Mrs. Professor's, his Limbs rather stout, about such a man as my Brother or Rickman—but no Atlas nor Hercules, nor yet so bony as Dubois, the Clown of Sadler's Wells. This was judicious, taking the spirit of the story rather than the fact: for doubtless God could communicate national salvation to the trust of flax and tow as well as hemp and cordage, and could draw down a Temple with a golden tress as soon as with all the cables of the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... fascinating, cruel—a fanatic who neither feared God nor regarded man—an infinite egotist. The fires of a great distorted soul smoldered in his eyes. The broad, lofty forehead proclaimed a mind that might have placed him among the rulers of men—but instead he was little above the level of a clown. The destinies of a nation might have rested in the hands that he turned only to selfish fantasy. The whole appearance of him, arresting and almost awe-inspiring as it undoubtedly was, had in it the ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... the journals which cut her up, her nervous attacks and torrents of tears when they gave her parts with only fifteen lines in a new piece, had begun to annoy Amedee, when chance gave him a new rival in the person of Gradoux, an actor in the Varietes, the ugly clown whose chronic cold in the head and ugly face seemed for twenty years so delicious to the most refined public in the world. Relieved of a large number of bank-notes, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... seemed to be enjoying himself so. Boaler has given warning, but we can't think why. We have been out nearly every evening—once to Hengler's and once to the Christy Minstrels, and last night to the Pantomime, where papa was so pleased with the clown that he sent round afterwards and asked him to dine here on Sunday, when Sir Benjamin and Lady Bangle and Alderman Fishwick are coming. Won't it be jolly to see a clown close to? Should you think he'd come in his evening dress? Miss Mangnall has ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... in such true salt, that we did doubt In which Scene we laught most two shillings out. Shakespeare to thee was dull, whose best jest lyes I'th Ladies questions, and the Fooles replyes; Old fashioned wit, which walkt from town to town In turn'd Hose, which our fathers call'd the Clown; Whose wit our nice times would obsceannesse call, And which made Bawdry passe for Comicall: Nature was all his Art, thy veine was free As his, but without his scurility; From whom mirth came unforced, no jest perplext, But without labour cleane, chast, and unvext. Thou wert not like some, ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... and beaten, on the deck. Neither the sailors nor the Captain knew what to do with him. Presently up came the Commander's jester or clown, a man whose business it was to make the officers laugh. 'What,' said he, 'can't you make that Quaker work? Do you want him to draw ropes for you and he won't? Why you are going the wrong way ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... CLOWN. Come, fear not you; good counsellors lack no clients: though you change your place you need not change your trade; I'll be your tapster still. Courage; there will be pity taken on you: you that have worn your eyes almost out in the service, you ...
— Measure for Measure • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... to the palace as if he were flying, and going up the stairs he found the King, who was still paying compliments to the country clown. When the man saw the dog with the letter in his mouth, he ordered it to be taken from him; but the dog would not give it to any one, and bounding up to Menechella he placed it in her hand. Then Menechella rose ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... instruction of common people. Even amid the pathos of divine suffering the peasants must be amused. Care was taken that the character of Judas should meet this demand. So Judas was made at once a traitor and a clown. His pathway was beset by devils of the most ridiculous sort. And when at last he hung himself on the stage, his body burst open, and the long links of sausages which represented intestines were devoured ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... The deliberate clown Can never beat love's barriers down: 'Tis better to be like the owl, Comic because so grave a fowl. From him we well may take our cue— By him be taught, to ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... be more abject than the union of elaborate and recherche arrangements with an old and obvious point? The clown with the red-hot poker and the string of sausages is all very well in his way. But think of a string of pate de foie gras sausages at a guinea a piece! Think of a red-hot poker cut out of a single ruby! Imagine such fantasticalities ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... "Boys, jes' think of a real circus, with all the women folk, an' the tarletan, an' the spangles, an' the pink lemonade, an' the little fellers slipping under the ropes, an' the Grand Parade coming in, an' the big tent so hot everybody's fanning with their hats—Oh, Lord!" "Yes, and the clown—and the ring master—" "What d'ye think of our ring master?" "Who d'ye mean? Him? Think of him? I think he's a damned clown! Don't they call ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... dress you may have for half de monish," Rafael replied; "there's a splendid clown for eight bob; but for dat Spanish dress, selp ma Moshesh, Mistraer Lint, ve'd ask a guinea of any but you. Here's a gentlemansh just come to look at it. Look 'ear, Mr. Brownsh, did you ever shee a nisher ting dan dat?" So ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... capacity?' he persisted. 'Will ye risk your crowns in defence of King James's one, or will ye strike in, hit or miss, with these rogues of Devon and Somerset? Stop my vital breath, if I would not as soon side with the clown as with the crown, with all due ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Cupid, manage wily art? Whate'er stupidity we may discern, His pupils more within a day can learn, Than MASTERS knowledge in the schools can gain, Though they in study should ten years remain; The lowest clown he presently inspires, With ev'ry tendency that love requires; Of this our present tale's a proof direct, And none that ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... away on their lives and worrying themselves with themselves, cutting a wide swath of misery wherever they go, have suddenly stopped in a book—have purged away jealousy and despair and passion and nervous prostration in it. A paper-person with melancholia is a better cure for gloom than a live clown can be—who merely goes about reminding ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... badly dressed man with long hair, who, under his dusty coat, resembled a clown, inspired so little confidence in him that he suspected a snare, perhaps ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... before. Oh again bade him chop wood, but again he went to sleep. Then Oh again tied him to the wood and burnt him and scattered the ashes to the four winds and sprinkled the remnant of the coal with living water, and instead of the loutish clown there stood there such a handsome and stalwart Cossack[3] that the like of him can neither be imagined nor described but only told of ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... be to exhibit the "Yankee" character in its traditional deformities of stupidity and meanness,—otherwise denominated simplicity and shrewdness. Mr. Jonathan Slick is in no respect different from the ordinary fabulous Yankee. An illiterate clown he is, who, visiting New York, contrives by vice of impudence, to interfere very seriously with certain conventionalities of the metropolis. He overthrows, by his indomitable will, a great many ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... man of impious and scandalous habits, a wild, drunken, unmannerly clown, more inclined to look into the wine can than into the Bible. He would prefer drinking brandy two hours to preaching one; and when the sap is in the wood his hands itch and he wants to fight whomsoever he meets. The commandant at Fort Casimir, Jean Paulus Jacqet, brother-in-law of ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... degrading to man, derogatory to God.' As I have lately seen the remark quoted with approbation, it is worth noticing the argument by which Darnley supports it. He says that an honest able man is nobler than an honest man, and Aristides with the genius of Homer nobler than Aristides with the dulness of a clown. Undoubtedly! But surely a man might say that English poetry is the noblest in the world, and yet admit that Shakespeare was a nobler poet than Tom Moore. Because honesty is nobler than any other quality, it does not follow that all honest men are on a par. This bit of cavilling reminds one of De ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... remember Hans Andersen's clown Punchinello," said Erica. "He never laughed and joked so gayly as the night when his love died and his own heart ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... the galleries looked down, Village belle and country clown, Men with honest labour brown, Far removed ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... or of his verses, made, however, a grimace which he meant to be very sly and insinuating, but which was simply ugly and awkward; he fancied that the expression of his mouth, twisted about like a monkey's, conveyed, "Ah! who can resist your Eminence?" But his Eminence only read there, "I am a clown who knows nothing of the great world"; and, without changing his voice, he suddenly said, taking up ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... things in the room again presented their funny side to me and set me off laughing more furiously than ever. The bookcase was ludicrous, the arm-chair a perfect clown, the way the clock looked at me on the mantelpiece too comic for words; the arrangement of papers and inkstand on the desk tickled me till I roared and shook and held my sides and the tears streamed down my cheeks. And that footstool! Oh, ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... leads to the keeping of a debt and credit account with heaven; and to the saints is attributed the power of buying up a stock of works of supererogation, by which they acquire a mediatory power in themselves. Human reason has been likened to a drunken clown, who if you help him up on one side of his horse, falls over on the other. To deter men from the presumptuous sin of attributing merit to their actions, the reformers, and also individuals and even orders in the church, have labored to prove that man acts only in obedience to preordained ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... blurted in your face, There Yates with justice strict attention draws, Acts truly from himself, and gains applause. But when, to please himself or charm his wife, He aims at something in politer life, 360 When, blindly thwarting Nature's stubborn plan, He treads the stage by way of gentleman, The clown, who no one touch of breeding knows, Looks like Tom Errand[28] dress'd in Clincher's clothes. Fond of his dress, fond of his person grown, Laugh'd at by all, and to himself unknown, Prom side to side he struts, he smiles, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... 'No, sir.' 'Then learn this of me,' he makes reply, 'to have is to have; for all your writers do consent that ipse is he. Now you are not ipse, for I am he. He, sir, that hath married this woman. Therefore, you clown, abandon, which is—,' &c., &c. What a ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... still bubbling, giggled outright, and Peter's cheeks grew pink. He was innocently elated with this new role of clown. ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... is named Calico, because he is marked so queerly. His hair grows in such funny little streaks and stripes and patches that he looks as if he had been painted that way on purpose. He was a clown pony in a circus one time, and is supposed to know a lot of tricks. Joyce wanted him because he is so gentle, and she had never ridden any before. She didn't mind his ridiculous looks. So Lad fell to my share,—a pretty brown one that is as easy as a rocking-horse after the stiff-jointed ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Horse for ditto (if possible). 1 Goat to do Alpine feats of daring. 1 Donkey to play see-saw. 2 White pigs—one to be Learned, and the other to play with the clown. Turkeys, as many as possible, because they can make a noise that The dogs, for any odd parts. 1 Large black pig—to be the Elephant in the procession. Calves (several) to be camels, ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... as happy as a clown in a circus," declared Andy, and, in high spirits, he began a jig and ended by turning a flip-flap over one of the beds. Then he and his twin indulged in a pillow fight, ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... I am happy ... but how does one know one is happy? I suspect my happiness. It is a clown's suit in which my mourning disguises itself. Mallare has fallen out of his black heaven. And he picks himself up like a good burgher. He grunts and chuckles and looks at the skies, alas, without curiosity. Lucifer, ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... listening. But then suddenly his face beamed with felicity, his whole figure contracted in a frenzy of delight, one foot clutched at the air as though bewitched, as though he were playing a harp with his toes—Master Andres was all at once a musical idiot and a musical clown. And smack! the knife flew to the ground and he had the great tin cover in his hand— chin-da-da-da chin-da-da-da! Suddenly by a stroke of magic the flute had turned ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... mummers cry, Throughout old Torksey town; "We'll hasten!" they answer, joyfully, The gossip and the clown. ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... Bixiou with a kick for every one, like Pierrot at the Funambules. Bixiou had the whole history of his own times at his finger-ends, more particularly its scandalous chronicle, embellished by added waggeries of his own. He sprang like a clown upon everybody's back, only to do his utmost to leave the executioner's brand upon every pair ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... nothing but contempt and loathing for the mass of mankind, the aristocrat who in a dozen plays sneers at the greasy caps and foul breaths of the multitude, fell in love with Dogberry, and Bottom, Quickly and Tearsheet, clod and clown, pimp and prostitute, for the laughter they afforded. His humour is rarely sardonic; it is almost purged of contempt; a product not of hate but of love; full of sympathy; summer-lightning ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... country clown; We've better things to note in town. What's Nature's lore compared ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... O'Donnell's vengeance fled into Clanrickarde. Here he announced himself by a poem addressed to de Burgh, imploring his protection, setting forth the claims of the Bardic order on all high-descended heroes, and contending that his fault was but venial, in killing a clown, who insulted him. O'Donnell pursued the fugitive to Athenry, and de Burgh sent him away secretly into Thomond. Into Thomond, the Lord of Tyrconnell marched, but O'Brien sent off the Bard to Limerick. The enraged Ulsterman appeared at the gates ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... tried to throw the ball around the left end. Wadleigh, Hudson, Darrin and Prescott, backed by quarter and left half, presented such a stubborn block that the ball did not get another yard clown the field in two plays. But Pike, who was a hammerer, made a third attempt around that left end. This time he gained but two feet, and the ball ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... before uneducated and ignorant men, then we shall set before them profits, emoluments, pleasures, and the means of escaping pain; we shall also introduce the mention of insult and ignominy; for no one is such a clown, as not (even though honour itself may have no influence on him) to be greatly moved by insult ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... Oberon, seeing a clown near her who had lost his way in the wood and was likewise asleep, "This fellow," said he, "shall be my Titania's true love"; and clapping an ass's head over the clown's, it seemed to fit him as well as if it had grown upon his own shoulders. ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb |
