"Clumsily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the happy and irresponsible punchers gravitated to the far end of the bar and proposed that they "have a little fun with the tall guy." One of them drew his gun and stepped quietly behind the tramp. About to fire into the floor he hesitated, bolstered his gun and tiptoed clumsily back to his companions. "Got a better scheme," ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... the coffee grinder between her knees and ground so hard that her two braids bobbed and her face flushed under its broad spattering of freckles. He noticed on her middle finger something that had not been there last night, and that had evidently been put on for company: a tiny gold ring with a clumsily set garnet stone. As her hand went round and round he touched the ring with the tip of his ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... face hardened as he took it. He thrust it clumsily into his pocket. "How did you happen to—to get it?" he asked, almost angrily. "I see it ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... Elf-land poets stretch their sway, And win their dearest crowns beyond the goal Of their own conscious purpose; they control With gossamer threads wide-flown our fancy's play, And so our action. On my walk to-day, A wallowing bear begged clumsily his toll, When straight a vision rose of Atta Troll, And scenes ideal witched mine eyes away. 'Merci, Mossieu!' the astonished bear-ward cried, Grateful for thrice his hope to me, the slave Of partial memory, seeing at his side A bear immortal. The glad dole I ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... was the clasp of a baby's hand on his finger. He noticed the spring beauty round him as he had not noticed such things for many a day, stooping to pick a big, tasselled, gold-freckled cowslip, and stopping to let a newly-fledged, awkward, young bird hop clumsily out of the way, with a sort of tenderness and consideration for young things unusual ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... that it moved clumsily, as if wounded; but it was passing through the long grass, and I could not get a ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... much depends on the way you do a thing. The proposition we made to the bay mare was far better than that offered by our companion; but ours failed and hers succeeded. Not the first nor the last time that a wash-basin has beaten a pail. So some of us go all through life clumsily coaxing and awkwardly pursuing things which we want to halter and control. We strain every nerve, only to find ourselves befooled and left far behind, while some Christian man or woman comes into the field, and by easy art captures that ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... alliteration and parallelism do not run quite side by side, the second half of each alliterative couplet being parallel with the first half of the next couplet. Accordingly, each new sentence begins somewhat clumsily in the middle of the couplet. All these peculiarities are not, however, always to be distinguished in ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... far from true that because "objects are grasped clumsily" by monkeys, "a much less specialised organ of prehension" would have served them (70. 'Quarterly Review,' April 1869, p. 392.) equally well with their present hands. On the contrary, I see no reason to doubt that more perfectly constructed hands would have been ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the ridge, looking toward us as if her eyes had been quick to see a strange object in the familiar emptiness of the field. William stood up in the wagon, and I thought he was going to call or wave his hand to her, but he sat down again more clumsily than if the wagon had made the familiar motion of a boat, and we ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... from a train gliding into a great town, and looks into back windows and yards sheltered from the street. We philosophise, most of us, about anything but life; and one of the reasons why published sermons have such vast sales is because, however clumsily and conventionally, it is with life that ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... invest the unknown with the terrors of the supernatural, and to deter the explorer of the great ocean. The half-decked vessels that crept along the Mediterranean shores were but ill-fitted to bear the brunt of the furious waves of the Atlantic. The now indispensable sextant was but clumsily anticipated by the newly invented astrolabe. The use of the compass had scarcely become familiar to navigators, who indeed but imperfectly understood its properties. And who could tell, it was objected, that a ship which might succeed in sailing down the waste of waters ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... and bring them up to me." He leaned back and finished his cigar, while the men clumsily cleared the table and placed two ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... up to the last hurdle every eye was fixed on the horses. Handy Man stumbled on to his knees as he landed, but Dan Rowton cleverly kept his seat, made a fine recovery, set his mount going again, and was deservedly applauded. Milkmaid landed clumsily, staggering along for the winning post—-beaten but ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... exceedingly brittle). By examining the white species I understand some little of the internal structure. There are two small parcels of seeds. There are some plants which I hope may interest you, or at least those from Patagonia where I collected every one in flower. There is a bottle clumsily but I think securely corked containing water and gas from the hot baths of Cauquenes seated at foot of Andes and long celebrated for medicinal properties. I took pains in filling and securing both water and gas. If you can find any one who likes to analyze them, I should think ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... desk Eric found a torn bit of paper, on which was clumsily scrawled, "I'll teach you to grin when ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... disposition. She thought of other kidnappings, but she chose to dwell rather on those that ended happily. This note spelled hope. She sobbed in an access of relief, being held close in her brother's arms. Jack was clumsily and tenderly patting her shoulder, ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... nervousness, of sleepless nights, of untouched meals, culminating in the emotional crisis and Rosalind's abrupt decision—the strain of it had drugged the foreground of his mind into a merciful coma. As he fumbled clumsily with the olives at the free-lunch table, a man approached and spoke to him, and the olives dropped from his ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... There is therefore much room left for critical comparison and selection. We are, in fact, still somewhat in the same position as Michelangelo the younger. Whether any application of the critical method will enable us to do again successfully what he so clumsily attempted—that is, to reproduce a correct text from the debris offered to our selective faculty—I do not feel sure. Meanwhile I am quite certain that his principle was a wrong one, and that he dealt most unjustifiably with his material. For this reason I cordially accept Signor Guasti's ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... brought into connection with these pitiful blunders and often monstrous perversions of the moral sense, the better. What we see is just man's mind in possession of the idea that his conduct must be regulated by law, and clumsily working out the correct application of that idea as his intelligence grows and his social life becomes more complex. It is not a question of the mind of the savage imperfectly seeing the law. It is a plain case of the ideas of the savage reflecting and changing with his environment ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... at the key critically, turning it over in order to examine the workmanship. It was clumsily enough made, and he doubtless guessed how she had obtained it. Then he glanced at her as she stood breathless with a ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... context—'I follow after'; 'I press toward the mark'; and that picturesque 'reaching forth,' or, as the Revised Version gives it, 'stretching forward.' The full force of the latter word cannot be given in any one English equivalent, but may be clumsily hinted by some such phrase as 'stretching oneself out over,' as a runner might do with body thrown forward and arms extended in front, and eagerness in every strained muscle, and eye outrunning foot, and hope clutching ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the best prattler. He had caught the language, surprised it in Stella when she was veritably a child. He did not push her clumsily back into a childhood he had not known; he simply prolonged in her a childhood he had loved. He is "seepy." "Nite, dealest dea, nite dealest logue." It is a real good-night. It breathes tenderness from that moody ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... post the soldiers had scrawled inscriptions and protests. A croix de guerre, cut clumsily of wood, was nailed to it, and read: "A. Cajard, mobilized in August, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... the following reason: he was an evil man who did great mischief to every one, in consequence of which he was murdered and beheaded. But Ciaran had shriven him, and in order to deliver his soul from demons he restored him to life, replacing his head—so clumsily, however, that it was ever ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... a bit of a snort and followed the man in a slow deliberate way, born of custom, right out into the yard to where the trestle-supported cart stood. Then as I held the lantern the great bony creature turned and backed itself clumsily in between the shafts, and under the great framework ladder piled up with baskets till its tail touched the front of the cart, when it heaved a long sigh ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... felt intuitively that something disastrous had happened, and his heart was wrung. He stroked the dear body, feeling it over for bruises or broken bones, but finding none. He fed it with what remained of the sandwiches and milk, but the creature clumsily upset the saucer and lost the sandwiches between its paws, so that the doctor had to feed it with his own hand. And all the while Smoke ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... each sentence he would surely stumble deeper into difficulty. Yet the silence was electrical. Unsaid things seemed rustling in ambush. He dared not look again at Mary, and he felt that she dared not look at him. But it was necessary to go on, and he took up the narrative clumsily, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... hand he clambered clumsily from beneath the boot and disappeared. Inside the vehicle was blackness, dense, ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to, and laughed to see how clumsily Hermas set to work to unbuckle the greaves; but the gay laugh died upon her lips when the gate flew open, the greyhound and the senator's watch-dogs barked loudly, and she recognized her husband's voice as he ordered the dogs to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a light canoe with its paddles, and over against me, on the wall, hung some Indian fishing implements, and a long—barrelled Spanish gun. Underneath lay a corpse, wrapped in a boat—sail, on which was clumsily written, with charcoal,—"The body of John Deadeye, Esq. late Commander of his ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... not mentioned any name. You should not think me awkward enough to put you forward clumsily; it would not be a good way to make you acceptable to an intelligent woman, and I value your dignity too much to lower it. I believed that another doctor than Monsieur Balzajette would find a remedy, some way, a miracle if you will, to enable Madame Dammauville to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... unceremoniously into a corner of the room, and taking the pigtail in his huge hand, clumsily unfastened it. Out from the thick part, some two inches below the point at which it had been cut from the Chinaman's head, a great diamond dropped upon ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... officer had seen him. This was doubtless an outpost, however clumsily placed it might be for strategic purposes. To pass it was Barney's only hope. He had passed through one Austrian army—why not another? He approached the outpost at a moderate rate of speed—to tear toward it at the rate his heart desired would be to awaken not suspicion ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Inspector Whiteleaf rather clumsily removed his cap. The odor of Seton's cheroot announced itself above the oriental perfume with which ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... been served, when a man, whose dress very much resembled his own, lounged into the wine-shop. He was a tall, clumsily built fellow, with an insolent expression upon his beardless face. His coat and cap were in an equally dilapidated condition; and in the squeaky voice of the rough, he ordered a plate of beef and half a bottle of wine, and, as he brushed past Andre, upset his glass of brandy. ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... of their merriment the outer door had opened and closed; the tread of overshoes pattered quietly along the hall—she stood in the doorway plump and puffing, her finery bundled clumsily under her coat. She wasn't very pretty. It didn't seem as if she'd ever been young, and it seemed as though she was the angriest woman in the world. And her voice thin, soprano, nasal, rose above the joyous ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... orchards and trilling their nesting songs, the peach tree buds were showing their pink noses, and the promise of spring was everywhere. In the big, wide hall of Pierre Delarue's house Marguerite stood beside the door of her room, talking with Emerson Mead, while he clumsily buttoned her gloves. She was dressed in a traveling gown, and as his glance wandered over her figure his eyes shone with admiration. Tall though he was and superb of physique, her head reached his shoulder and her figure matched his in its own ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... daughter pass through," bawled old Grangioia; then, receiving no response, struck clumsily at Lapo. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... popular with children of all ages; but on the very first attempt she blundered into an awful one of murder and vengeance, in which, if the drawing was untrue, the colour was strong, and had to blunder clumsily out of it again, with a hot face and a cold heart. At length she betook herself to the Thousand and One Nights, which she had never read, and found very dull, but which with Leopold served for what book ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... beautiful," she said clumsily, avoiding his question, ignoring it. "Yet when I go there it is always more beautiful on the ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... that in my lord's absence I took his football, and, in trying to play with it, clumsily kicked it over your wall. I beg you to excuse my carelessness, and to be so good as to give ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... of white ants. It is characteristic of all these colonial insects that, from the experience of ages, they have learned the great principles of the division of labor and of profit sharing towards which mankind are now clumsily stumbling; the great work which their societies are able to do is accomplished by a complete specialization of function and a perfect share in the commonwealth. So far has this elaboration gone, that in the bees the work of reproducing ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... and the two worked their way under the elbows of the grown people until they reached the very centre, where they were thrilled to find a dark, swarthy man, holding a bear by a rope. The bear was dancing clumsily on his hind legs, and near by a woman with black eyes and hair and great rings in her ears was grinding an organ. On top of the organ sat a monkey in a red cap shaking a tambourine. Behind the group stood a yellow van, drawn by two donkeys gayly tricked out with scarlet ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Palazzo Vendramin, a peaceful and most united family life goes on without monotony. But I cannot speak of the things which touch me most, except clumsily. So it is better to keep from doing so. The Princess writes to me from Rome that she shall be delighted to obtain possession of the two water-colors of Gleichen for the splendid portfolios of drawings belonging to her daughter, of which the mother, since the years at Weimar, has ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... that this account is based upon and clumsily accommodated to the idea, prevalent in Vasari's time throughout Italy, that Van Eyck not merely improved, but first introduced, the art of oil-painting, and that no mixture of color with linseed or nut oil had taken place before his time. We are only informed ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... was again in motion. One by one, the huge brutes swung about and galloped clumsily toward more usual pastures, their long necks ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole
... client was involved in litigation, his patron would plead his cause in person or by deputy; he was sometimes asked to dinner, where his solecisms in good breeding and his unfashionable dress, the rustic cut of his beard, thick shoes, gown clumsily draped, made him the butt of the higher guests. Juvenal, in a biting satire, describes the humiliation of a poor client at a rich man's table. "The host," he says, "drinks old beeswinged Setian wine, served to him in a gold goblet by a beautiful ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... reluctantly, but surely, towards such a thoroughness of mobilisation. There need be no doubt that she will completely socialise herself, completely reorganise her whole social and economic structure sooner than lose this war. She will do it clumsily and ungracefully, with much internal bickering, with much trickery on the part of her lawyers, and much baseness on the part of her landlords; but she will do it not so slowly as a logical mind might anticipate. ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... at him from her low seat with brilliant, mocking eyes. "I have thought of that. It would not be the worst thing that could happen. Would you think it possible—Marion?" he asked clumsily. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... wind grew stronger and began to howl; the sun lost its heartening power and the sky became gray and somber. I took off my long woolen comforter and wound it around Yulka's throat. She got so cold that we made her hide her head under the buffalo robe. Antonia and I sat erect, but I held the reins clumsily, and my eyes were blinded by the wind a good deal of the time. It was growing dark when we got to their house, but I refused to go in with them and get warm. I knew my hands would ache terribly if I went near a fire. Yulka forgot to give me back my comforter, and I had to drive ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... was burning; her mild eyes gleamed. She had pleaded her little cause like a Webster; she had ranged from severity to pathos; but her opponent employed that obstinate silence which makes eloquence futile with mocking echoes. Adoniram arose clumsily. ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... dashed with stars and a sick moon. It was trying to snow. I tripped down the steps from the door, and ran lightly into a girl who stood at the gate, looking up at the room I had just left. The cheek that was turned toward me was clumsily daubed with carmine and rouge. Snowflakes fell dejectedly about her narrow shoulders. She just glanced at me, and then back at the window. I looked up, too. The piano was at it again, and some one was singing. The thread of light just showed you the crimson curtains and the heavy oak beams. ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... lustre is lead. You had better talk trifles elegantly to the most trifling woman, than coarse in elegant sense to the most solid man; you had better, return a dropped fan genteelly, than give a thousand pounds awkwardly; and you had better refuse a favor gracefully, than to grant it clumsily. Manner is all, in everything: it is by manner only that you can please, and consequently rise. All your Greek will never advance you from secretary to envoy, or from envoy to ambassador; but your address, your manner, your air, if good, very probably may. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Wilson, clumsily, "I mean I was his attendant up to the Retreat. It was a real high-toned place, and they did not take any dangerous ones, only folks like him. His people ain't the kind that stand for price. They've got plenty, and they don't care what they pay. I dare say you've been in his ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... disposing of it started out again, only to make a trip as disastrous as the former had been fortunate. There was a week of the "dirtiest" kind of weather,—head-winds, fogs, and treacherous "breezes," which strained every timber in the old tub of a Nautilus, as she rolled clumsily ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... of beautiful color grows by exercise and discrimination, just as naturally as fine perception of music or literature. Each is an outlet for the expression of taste,—a language which may be used clumsily ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... an orderly untidiness, and at the far end a fire was burning and five or six men in Darkovan clothing—loose sleeved shirts, tight wrapped breeches, low boots—were squatting around it, talking. They got up as Forth and Kendricks and I walked toward them, and Forth greeted them clumsily, in bad accented Darkovan, then switched to Terran Standard, letting one of the ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... architecture is named The John Bunyan. Roman Catholics have printed large editions of the Pilgrim, with slight omissions, for circulation among the young under the care of the nuns. Our English fanatics have committed a crime that would make a papist blush. A Rev. E. Neale has clumsily altered the Pilgrim's Progress, that Bunyan might appear to teach the things which Bunyan's righteous heaven-born soul abhorred. It is a piece of matchless self-conceit to think of mending that which has been admired by the wisest of the human race in all nations, and which has ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... comfortable news for me, poor manacled wretch; and with a great bayonet-wound in my side to boot, that had been but clumsily dressed by a village Leech, who was, I suspect, a Farrier and Cow Doctor as well. But I have always found, in this life's whirligig, that when your Case is at the worst (unless a Man indeed Dies, when there is nothing more to be ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... as some lazy fellow eases his stroke in the beating vats; the cracking of whips as the bullocks tear round the circle where the Persian wheel creaks and rumbles in the damp, dilapidated wheel-house; the-dripping buckets revolving clumsily on the drum, the arriving and departing carts; the clang of the anvil, as the blacksmith and his men hammer away at some huge screw which has been bent; the hurrying crowds of cartmen and loaders with their burdens of fresh green plant or dripping refuse;—form such a medley of sights and sounds ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... clumsily enthusiastic. Gosh, if she would do that—if she could stand its being a ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... zebra was somewhat more clumsily shaped than a pony's colt, and about the size of one three or four weeks old. A pen had been built for the koodoo, and into this the two animals were now introduced. Koodoo gazed at them with looks of astonishment, ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... pretty maiden in the whole world, ma petite coquette; they're all alike as peas, cruel as blue jays and as sweet as apple-blossoms." He stroked her hair clumsily with his large hand, as a heavy and roughly fond man is apt to do, adding in an ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... to think was to act. He grasped the branch tightly and swung himself down at full length, so that his dangling feet were almost within the bear's reach. The grizzly, with an exultant "whuff," galloped clumsily back to the tree and made a ferocious swipe at his enemy, who pulled himself up just in time. Snarling and mouthing horribly, the bear once more moved toward the lake, torn between the desire to investigate and the fear that his victim might escape. Once more Bert ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... Bartja out of the way, he had induced a Greek merchant to dispatch a letter to the prince, asking him, in the name of her he loved best, to come alone in the evening to the first station outside the Euphrates gate. Unfortunately, the messenger managed the matter clumsily, and apparently gave the letter to Gaumata. But to counteract Bartja's proof of innocence, Boges had managed to get hold of his dagger, which was conclusive evidence. And now Nitetis was sentenced to be ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... done. Let us grant as much. But obviously it suits his pride to assume that nothing can be done. To admit the contrary would be to admit that he was leaving something undone, that he had organized his existence clumsily, even that he had made a fundamental miscalculation in the arrangement of his career. He has confessed to grave dissatisfaction. It behoves him, for the sake of his own dignity and reputation, to be quite sure that the grave dissatisfaction is unavoidable, inevitable, and that the blame for it ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... tender and joyous, lurked perilously in his throat. His feet would have pirouetted in gay abandon had he not, with much responsible feeling of control, forced himself to walk with dignity and calm. But his nervous flying fingers fumbled clumsily with string and paper and taxed ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... scratched his head. Then he clumsily unbuttoned the wet waist, glancing rather sheepishly at the window to see if ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Mind, in his eighth year, was placed at the academy for poor children, which Pestalozzi had previously instituted at Neuenhof, near Bern, Aargau; but, in the year 1778, we find, in the authentic account of that institution, published by the Economic Society of Bern, the following short and somewhat clumsily expressed notice:—"Friedly Mynth of Bossi (Mind of Pizy), of the bailliwick of Aubonne, resident in Worblaufen, very weak, incapable of hard work, full of talent for drawing, a strange creature, full of artist-caprices, along with a certain roguishness: drawing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... falsehoods, in almost every sentence. Indeed, they had not been put together with ordinary skill, the writer having evidently presumed on the easiness of the class of readers who generally swallowed his round assertions, and were so clumsily done that any one who had not the faith to move mountains would have seen through most of them without difficulty. But Mr. Howel belonged to another school, and he was so much accustomed to shut his eyes to palpable mystification mentioned by Mrs. Bloomfield, that a lie, which, advanced in most ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... microscopes at a time than by using one. "Now" (added Johnson), "every one acquainted with microscopes knows that the more of them he looks through, the less the object will appear." "Why" (replied the King), "this is not only telling an untruth, but telling it clumsily; for if that be the case, every one who can look through a microscope will ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... well-ordered tomb into the outer sunshine with a sense of personal oppression and of human ineffectiveness. How slowly and how clumsily do the feet of History slouch along! And yet, if Napoleon III. had kept faith with Cavour, the fighting here might have liberated Venetia without the necessity for another war a few years later. How quiet and silent lie these battlefields of yesterday! Even so, one ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... appearance of the country is therefore very bleak. In the immediate neighbourhood of Boulogne, it is better clothed, and varied by some pasture fields and gardens. The ploughs go with wheels. They are drawn by only two horses, but are clumsily made, and evidently inferior to the Scotch ploughs. They, as well as the carts, are made generally of green unpeeled wood, like those in the Scotch Highlands, and are never painted. This absence of all attempt to give an air of neatness or smartness to any part ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... animals, there wouldn't be any joy left in the world. What isn't the dog compelled to do and learn! The horse! They are foolish animals to show their intelligence, they must give way entirely to their vanity; we cats still continue to be the freest race because, with all our skill, we can act so clumsily that human beings quite give up the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... was too remote to be feared. The guard had done his part nobly, and it was now the prisoner's turn to act as resolutely and as unflinchingly. Sorry to leave the poor fellow in what seemed an inhuman manner, he strode into the corridor, closed and locked the doors clumsily, and began the descent of the stairs. He had been instructed to act unhesitatingly, as the slightest show of nervousness ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... are nearly a century behind their Gallic brethren in the craft; they work more clumsily—with less art, less means, and less desire to please; they have no invention in the higher parts of their science, and they are abominably dear. We do not wish to disparage any thing in our native country—far from it; but take the hint, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... supposititious case, the couple—not necessarily a guilty couple—realize after the murderer is gone that they have placed themselves in a position in which it may be difficult for them to prove that they did not themselves either do the deed or connive at it. They rapidly and rather clumsily met the situation. The mark was put by Barker's bloodstained slipper upon the window-sill to suggest how the fugitive got away. They obviously were the two who must have heard the sound of the gun; so they gave the alarm exactly as they would ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... up at length, and Deborah entered upon her task. Whether she accomplished it clumsily, or whether Sibylla's ill-disciplined mind was wholly in fault, certain it is that there ensued a loud and unpleasant scene. The scene to which you were a witness. Scarcely giving herself time to take in more than the ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... abruptly from the plain without fence or yard. It was dark and silent, and he was glad to remember that it had only one door, though there were one or two buildings close behind it. He was so numbed that it was difficult to dismount, but he got down clumsily and beat on the door for several minutes without getting an answer. This confirmed his suspicions, for he was convinced that Jepson had heard his vigorous knocking. Then the moonlight, which might have been useful now, died away, and the plain faded into ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... killed two men, stole a sum of money, killed a policeman and another man, and took refuge in a dugout in the sand hills below the city, comporting themselves according to the most accepted dime-novel standards. Clumsily arrested by one hundred men or so, instead of being tidily killed by three or four, as would have been the case on the frontier, they were put in jail, given columns of newspaper notice, and worshiped by large crowds of maudlin individuals. These men probably ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... a young sailor entered a shop in Glasgow, to make a purchase. As he was about to leave, he placed a letter upon a counter near the window, and was sticking a postage stamp upon it, when he clumsily knocked his elbow against the window and broke one of its panes. The poor fellow was much confused when he saw the damage which he had done. He had no money to pay for a new pane, as he had spent his few last coppers in preparing this ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... to stay behind in her chair and think, she said, and each time he turned back she was sitting in the same attitude looking at him as he receded, and she had one hand on the chair back and her arm drawn up to it. The third time he waved his hat clumsily, and she started and then answered with her hand. Then ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... all in his power to make it successful, by stationing relays of soldiers along the road, procuring passports, and other necessary details. But those intrusted with its execution had, aside from keeping the project a secret, clumsily managed its details. The carriage procured was of great size, and loaded like a furniture van with luggage. There was a day's delay in the start. Even the setting out was awkwardly managed; the queen leaving the palace ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... fine moustaches. He was very discreet, but severe in his behaviour, confident in his criticisms and utterances, and dignified in his silence. It was obvious that he thought a great deal of himself. Asanov rarely laughed, and then with closed teeth, and he never danced. He was rather loosely and clumsily built. He had at one time served in the —th regiment, and was spoken ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... said, alto, in the Baptist choir that Nell and I became friends. She was so gay and grown up, so busy with parties and dances and picnics, that I would scarcely have seen much of her had we not sung together. She liked me better than she did any of the older girls, who tried clumsily to be like her, and I felt almost as solicitous and admiring as did Mrs. Dow and Mrs. Spinny. I think even then I must have loved to see her bloom and glow, and I loved to hear her sing, in "The Ninety ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... her clumsily for a moment, and kissed the hair of her bowed head, and then thrust her away, and turned towards ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... that I use your language not too clumsily. Our teleprobes may leave something to be desired in the matter of semantics. You will, I hope, forgive us for taking the liberty of their use. But since you employed no protective screens, and because of the necessity ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... the post-offices, both of England and France, are not unknown to you. The former are the most rascally, because they retain one's letters, not choosing to take the trouble of copying them. The latter, when they have taken copies, are so civil as to send the originals, re-sealed clumsily with a composition, on which they had previously taken the impression of the seal. England shows no dispositions to enter into friendly connections with us. On the contrary, her detention of our posts, seems to be the speck which is to produce a storm. I judge that a ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... head cracked, even if they wished to save their own—and he took the stoutest and heaviest of all. He made a sorry enough figure as he climbed awkwardly upon the stage, but when he had gained it, he towered full half a head above the other, for all his awkwardness. Nathless, he held his stick so clumsily that the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... indulgences, and other things of that kind which, if held in great esteem among the people, would be a source of more plentiful profit to gentlemen of that order. But he did this so stupidly, so clumsily, that you would swear he had been some street buffoon: although the author of so silly a piece is said to be a certain divine of the Dominican order, by nation a Saxon. Of what avail is it to add his name and ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... cosmopolitan aplomb. Neither our speech nor our outlook upon life could be taken as typical of our great and noble-hearted nation. Yet she did take us in that sense, with the result that in her conception of the United Kingdom it was a rather fantastic and clumsily-fashioned small-scale model ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... away at once," said Lord Bargrave. "And don't do it clumsily. Say you'll go away for a few days, and then gradually lengthen it out. She mentioned Italy, you say. Well, let it be Italy. Clear out for ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... LOCKWOOD whispered, keeping his eye closely fixed on game. "It's Baccarat. (Ah! CLARKE! I saw you. Come, pay up. You did that very clumsily.) It's the Tranby Court case you know. I'm not in it, but my learned brethren here hold briefs on either side, and they say they are bound, in the interests of their clients, to master the intricacies ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various
... he, during the course of that evening, "how plain I see it all now! The boy that stutters is a model of obedience and tenderness; I ought to have dwelt upon and imitated that, and, oh! I thought only of his stuttering. The boy that walks so clumsily, as well as the great fellow that lisps, are such industrious lads, and so advanced in learning, that the master thinks both will be distinguished hereafter; and I, who—(oh, my poor mother, I must confess to you)—hated to labour at any thing, and have got the boys to do ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... up with a snort and, getting off the couch, gamboled clumsily up to Betsy, wagging his tail and jumping up on her, ready for a frolic. That was almost too much for Betsy! To think that after tomorrow she would never see Shep again—nor Eleanor! Nor the kittens! She choked as she bent over Shep and put her arms ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... damage the carriage had sustained was made good. As to Glenarvan's horse, it was soon disposed of. The blacksmith had had the forethought to bring the shoes with him. These shoes had a peculiarity which did not escape the Major; it was a trefoil clumsily cut on the back part. McNabbs pointed it ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... Starr rushed to the vault and both of them strove clumsily and ineffectually with the mechanism, giving up their attempts after ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... separately. The dip had proved a cooler to the fierce wolverene; and while the wapiti was seen to strike boldly out into the lake and swim off, the latter—evidently out of his element—kept plunging about clumsily, and struggling to get back to ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Lady's pale face there sat the look of one resigned with fatalism to whatever issue might appear. She made no further speech, but was the first to step into the boat. Madame Delchasse, still grumbling, followed clumsily. Eddring helped them in, took up the oars, and the two deck-hands, who had been holding the skiff, clambered back aboard the Queen. Eddring settled himself to the oars, and they cast off. The little skiff rocked, tossed, turned, and headed toward ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... nor less; with a fellow named Crispin. It appears it all came off last evening, and she had her own reasons for doing it in the most offensive way—publicly, clumsily, with the vulgarest bravado. Laura has told me what took place, and you must permit me to express my surprise at your not having divined the ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... Gauls doubtless employed in the Channel in Caesar's time, as for long afterwards, a species of portable leathern skiffs, which seem to have been in the main common oared boats, but on the west coast of Gaul the Santones, the Pictones, and above all the Veneti sailed in large though clumsily built ships, which were not impelled by oars but were provided with leathern sails and iron anchor-chains; and they employed these not only for their traffic with Britain, but also in naval combat. Here therefore we not only meet ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... covering, nor with any one looking after it. Next half-a-dozen men, sleeping bolt upright or leaning against one another in their sleep. In one place a family group, a child asleep in its sleeping mother's arms, and the husband (or male mate) clumsily mending a dilapidated shoe. On another bench a woman trimming the frayed strips of her rags with a knife, and another woman, with thread and needle, sewing up rents. Adjoining, a man holding a sleeping woman in his arms. Farther on, a man, his clothing caked with gutter mud, asleep, ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... them!" she told him, her spirit shining like fire in her eyes. "The whole six of them. I knew they were not our cattle. I saw how the brands had been worked, clumsily worked. Oh, my God, Steve Packard, what ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... rentre ou retire is an excellent method to use for working a raised bar. Fig. 129 shows the front and reverse sides of a bar worked by it. The gold thread comes cleanly through from the back of the material instead of being clumsily doubled upon the surface, and the durability is evidently great. The linen thread, it will be seen, runs to and fro at the back, at each turn securing ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... I make for you, I hope will be made less clumsily. Take care! You are biting the nib ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... what first obtained for it the villanous name of sloth, a title which is certainly justified by its gait when on the ground; for it is so ill-made that it cannot stand upright on its legs, but moves clumsily forward by dragging itself on its elbows. It seems, however, that when once in a tree it is a different creature altogether, and can scramble lightly from branch to branch. Moreover, if its claws ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... old. It was an embarrassing moment as he entered the low, hot room, and the young people stared at him suspiciously; but there were also elderly people scattered about who were meekly curious and interested, and one of these got clumsily upon his feet and hastened to grasp the handsome stranger by ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Clumsily the boy fumbled with the fastenings; eagerly his eyes sought the charm. His face went blank; tears sprang to his eyes. He was holding a tiny gourd, no larger than a monkey-nut, suspended from a necklace of polished ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... no sign of it, as yet. With every month and every year that's added to his age he grows more companionable, more able to bridge the chasm between two human souls. We have more interests in common, more things to talk about. And day by day Dinkie is reaching up to my clumsily mature way of looking at life. He can come to me with his problems, knowing I'll always give him a hearing, just as he used to come to me with his baby cuts and bruises, knowing they would be duly kissed and cared for. Yet some day, I have just remembered, ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... to convey Mr. Pierce's plenipotentiaries safe to Ostend. Buck was in a sad state of excitement when we stopped; he resembled an individual just escaped from a perilous adventure. He discharged himself clumsily from the wagon, his face undergoing singular changes of color the while, and cast a few savage glances at Saunders, who very composedly sat on the box endeavoring with might and main to suppress a vagabond ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... cannot cheat me. He had found another cafe and another girl.... Non, non, monsieur, it is not correct;" and the girl drew herself up with a curiously changed air as Harold clumsily reached out towards her, protesting. "And you have a cure here—how do you say, a chapelain?" and Marie ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... glow-worms displayed their phosphorescent beauty; the lampyrid beetles plied between gloom and obscurity, impatient for the mirror of night to flaunt therein their illumined finery. In the distance was heard the lusty song of the blowsy yokels, as they clumsily carted homeward the day's gathering. The erudite nightingale threw wide the throttle of his throat and taught some nestling kin the sweetness ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... not to understand! Clemence handed her her iron; the apprentice finished up the irons on the stockings and the dish-cloths when they were not hot enough for the starched things. But she took hold of this one so clumsily that she made herself a cuff in the form of a long burn on the wrist. And she sobbed and accused Clemence of having burnt her on purpose. The latter who had gone to fetch a very hot iron for the shirt-front consoled her ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... drawn a man thus far, does He stop? Not so. He does not leave His work half done. If the work is half done, it is that we stop, not that He stops. Whoever comes to Him, however confusedly, or clumsily, or even lazily they may come, He will in no wise cast out. He may afflict them still more to cure that confusion and laziness; but He is a physician who never sends a patient away, or keeps him waiting for a ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... force and placed their reliance thereon. He had come from Durham with a contingent of malcontents, and was now returning thither on foot in company with the local leaders. These were intelligent mechanics seeking clumsily and blindly enough what they knew to be the good of their fellows. At their heels tramped the rank and file of the great movement. The assembly was a subtle foreshadowing of things to come—of Newport and the ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... it known that I am no champion of weaklings. I have no liking for the troubles of others; enough of my own, say I. I was but angered that the ditch-tender should have done the trick so clumsily, and upon an old man, at that. I cared not for the gray beard, nor what became of the chit. I clapped the trickster upon the ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... brought his case of medicines from mere force of habit, but by way of special prescription he had taken also a generous handful of his best cigars, and wrapped them somewhat clumsily in one of the large sheets of letter-paper which lay on his study table near by. Also he had stopped before the old sideboard in the carefully darkened dining-room, and taken a bottle of wine from one of its cupboards. "This will do him more good than anything, poor old ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... This was all performed clumsily enough, as far as appearance went, I allow; but cleverly and confidently, though with leaders hardly within calling distance: and four snaffle-bits, and a pig-whip, being the only means of dictation and control possessed by the coachman. The ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... about us while we talked away the afternoon. The woman child at last put me to thinking—to thinking that perhaps butterflies are not meant to be happily caught. With many shouts she had clumsily enough imprisoned one—a fairy thing of green and bronze—in a hand so plump that it seemed to have been quilted. A moment she held it, then set it free, perhaps for its lack of spirit. It crawled and fluttered up the vine, ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... Itzig; for, generally speaking, the effect of a search is to make the parties uncomfortable. And though I am not quite sure how Hippus will take it, I am inclined to believe it will perplex him. That may help you on. I will see, too, that the first search be clumsily and ostentatiously made. Fortunately, he has now a settled abode again; for some time he has had a respite from us, and has grown bold. I hear, too, that he is getting old and feeble. All this may help you to catch Itzig ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... she could answer I would speak again, Still kneeling there. What! they have frighted you, By hanging burs, and clumsily carven puppets, Round my good name; but afterwards, my love, I will say what this means; this moment, see! Do I kneel here, and can you doubt me? Yea: For she would put her hands upon my face: Yea, ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris |
