"Lout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mates, you often boast. You distance out-and-out; Still, in the abstract, you're a most Uncompromising lout!" ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... you apprehend," said the reverend lout, after solemn reflection, "would indeed seriously affect our friend's interest and endanger his soul. I had not expected Brother Dobsho so soon to ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... to depress me, and I carefully avoided walking in the sun; but this could not everywhere be the case: for in the next broad street I had to cross, and, unfortunately for me, at the very hour in which the boys were coming out of school, a humpbacked lout of a fellow—I see him yet—soon made the discovery that I was without a shadow, and communicated the news, with loud outcries, to a knot of young urchins. The whole swarm proceeded immediately to reconnoitre ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... intent upon that lout, who stood there before me shifting uneasily upon his feet, his air mutinous and sullen. Over his shoulder I had a glimpse of his father's ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... yet. There's the Governor with an attack of gout, screaming like a wounded horse, and you nowhere to be found. Be off, man—away with you at speed to Government House! You're awaited, I tell you. Best lend him a horse, Kent, or the lout'll be all night ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... jolly shepheard, pype thou now apace Unto thy love that made thee low to lout; Thy love is present there with thee in place; Thy love is there advaunst to ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... like those long trials of the old-fashioned chivalry. That lout of a young lord, who took offence because his sovereign-lady sent him down among the lions to fetch her glove, was, in my opinion, very impertinent, and a fool too. Doubtless the lady had in reserve for him some ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... worn and old More worth commanded than Peru, Our Princess bartered wealth untold, For the Magician's lamp quite new: So when this change the eunuch made In scorn the rabble 'gan to shout; Beholding such a silly trade, They deemed the wizard fool and lout. ...
— Aladdin or The Wonderful Lamp • Anonymous
... with grass, and the guns peeping from their embrasures; to the left, dipping to the south, the steep grey crags, curve after curve. The streets were alive with an abundance of merry young sailors and soldiers, brisk, handsome boys, with the quiet air of discipline that converts a country lout into a self-respecting citizen. An old bronzed sergeant led a child with one hand, and with the other tried to obey her shrill directions about whirling a skipping-rope, so that she might skip beside him; he looked at us with ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and dropped a "lout" to the bride, whom she was disposed to regard with great reverence as a real lady. At that time, "lady" was restricted to women of title, the ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... blanks few readers could fill in, and for the meaning of which no equivalent can even be hinted. The actual substance of the occurrence, that filters through the cries of panic and of some woman or child, or both, in agony, the brutal bellowings and threats of a predominant drunken lout, presumably Mr. Salter, the incessant appeals to God and Christ by terrified women, and the rhetorical use of the names of both by the men, with the frequent suggestion that some one else should go for the police—this actual substance may be drily stated thus: Mr. Salter, a plumber by ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... surprised him at his work. In the room he had occupied I came upon a brazen-looking woman with a black eye, who answered the question of the officer, "Where did you get that shiner?" with a laugh. "I ran up against the fist of me man," she said. Her "man," a big, sullen lout, sat by, dumb. The woman answered for him ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... princesses of ancient France? Why, the dark-skinned old-clo' men, who hang their cast-off raiment in Brattle Street, would be mobbed, if they paraded such vestments at their doors; and Papanti would break his fiddle-bow over the head of any awkward lout who should unfortunately ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Bristol road. I was stopped, as I supposed I should be, by a small band of Tory partisans, but after exhibiting my British pass I was permitted to proceed. Between Trenton and Amboy I met a party of our own horse, and had some trouble until I allowed their leader, a stupid lout, to read my open despatch, when he seemed satisfied, and sent on two troopers with me, whom I left ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... should be ever so much better off in a tidy little house where I could see all that came and went than up in your lane with nought to go by but the market folk. 'Tis not everyone that would have kept true to a big country lout like you, like that lady among the salvage men that the King spoke of; and I get nothing by it but wait, wait, wait, when there's stores of silver ready ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... punish you I won't say anything more, and wouldn't you like to know though? Take this alone, that that lout is not a simple captain now but a landowner of our province, and rather an important one, too, for Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch sold him all his estate the other day, formerly of two hundred serfs; and as God's above, I'm not lying. I've only just heard it, but it was ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... was Joan's brother's room—a cheerless place of hewn stone. What kind of a man could he have been? What were his reflections as he went about his farm-work and thought of his sister at the head of armies? Was he merely a lout or something worse—the prototype of our Conscientious Objector: a coward who disguised his cowardice with ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... should have refused to do it. You haven't had your proper sleep, and you may have caught cold in the church. It is that which has upset you. Besides which it would be better to marry brute beasts than that Rosalie and her ugly lout. That brat of theirs dirtied one of the chairs.—But you ought to tell me when you feel poorly, and I could make you something warm.—Eh! Monsieur ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... wondering ef that fire out'n the water would burn," observed a fat, greasy, broad-faced lout, with a foolish, brutal grin. "It mought make out ter singe this stranger's hair an' hide, ef we war ter gin him ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... jars. The orchestra plays Grieg and Moszkowski; a smell of chocolate is in the air; that tall, pink lieutenant over there, with his cropped head and his outstanding ears, his backfisch waist and his mudscow feet—that military gargoyle, half lout and half fop, offends the roving eye. No doubt a handsome man, by German standards—even, perhaps a celebrated seducer, a soldier with a future—but the mere sight of him suffices to paralyse an American esophagus. Besides, there is the smell of chocolate, sweet, sickly, effeminate, and at two in ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... Reilly, a huge lout of a fellow with a lowering countenance, ventured to expostulate. "Ye want to be careful of ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... all this in his face. It was a transfigured face, with great shining eyes that gazed beyond the veil of sound and saw behind it the leap and pulse of life and the gigantic phantoms of the spirit. She was startled. The raw, stumbling lout was gone. The ill-fitting clothes, battered hands, and sunburned face remained; but these seemed the prison-bars through which she saw a great soul looking forth, inarticulate and dumb because of those feeble lips that would not give ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... confines wander out, Where the old gun, bucolic lout, Commits all day his murderous crimes: Though cherries ripe are sweet, no doubt, Sweeter thy song amid ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... repeating my professions and again reminding him of my taking him up at Paris, I was successful. Though I had more trouble in gaining the compliance of this lout than would have been sufficient, were I prime minister, and did I bribe with any thing like the same comparative liberality, to gain ten worthy members of parliament, though five knights of the shire had been of ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... smoking their pipes, and leathery-faced women on household duties intent, with a score or so of little cotton-headed children running about over the manure pile in the neighborhood of the barn, to keep the pigs company; here and there a strapping lout of a boy swinging on a gate and whistling for his own amusement; while cows, sheep, goats, chickens, and other domestic animals and birds browse, nibble, and peck all over the yard in such a lazy and rural manner as would ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... usurp a privilege which has no other basis than our inner task. We must never stand before our own picture. It seems to me that an artist should be of exalted modesty, and that without this modesty he is nothing but a more or less remarkable lout." ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... John Brown, or Mazzini. When a man abandons his business or job and complacently leaves the clothing of his children to wife or neighbors in order to drink flip and talk politics, ordinary folk are content to call him a lazy lout, ne'er-do-well, worthless fellow, or scamp. Samuel Adams was not a scamp. He might have been no more than a ne'er-do-well, perhaps, if cosmic forces had not opportunely provided him with an occupation ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... as of custom, on palimpsest: regal paper, new boards, unused bosses, red ribands, lead-ruled parchment, and all most evenly pumiced. But when thou readest these, that refined and urbane Suffenus is seen on the contrary to be a mere goatherd or ditcher-lout, so great and shocking is the change. What can we think of this? he who just now was seen a professed droll, or e'en shrewder than such in gay speech, this same becomes more boorish than a country boor immediately he touches poesy, nor is the ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... called grace, was goodly to look upon. Eustace's studs were in his shirt, and the unnatural shine on his tawny hair too plainly revealed the perfumeries that crowded the young squire's dressing-table. With the purest intentions of kindness Eustace had done his best to disguise a demigod as a lout. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Hollins! He identified the youth, a yellow-headed, pink-faced lout in flannels who was always riding over, and who seemed to "go in" for nearly everything. He had detected a romping intimacy between the two. So it was Tommy Hollins. At once he felt a great relief; he need worry no ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... he remarked to Princess Edna, after their visitor had taken his departure, "what on earth induced the Mater to tell that lanky overgrown lout we should be pleased to see him any time he cared to drop in? We shall have the beggar running in and out here like a bally rabbit, you see ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... who goes fishing with any sort of ignorant lout, and who spends a whole day in a boat with him, to tell me when ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... slighter clue would have sufficed to lead to the conviction of so besotted a traitor, than many an incautious hint of his, and many a tale-telling vaunt of his irresistible egotism, afforded her; for, like all the weak wretches of his sort, there was not a more bungling lout, to try the patience of a clever man, than Philip Withers, when his game lay between his safety ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... to have you out there in that store for these folks to look over and pick to pieces, my girl," he said decidedly. "You stay aft and I'll 'tend to things for'ard and handle this crew. Besides, there's that half-grown lout, Amiel Perdue. Abe said he sometimes helped around. He knows the ship, alow and aloft, and how the ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... nothing to do with the quarrel; but if I were walking along the streets and saw a big lout pick a quarrel with a weaker one and then proceed to smash him up altogether, I fancy I should take a hand in the business. The Germans deliberately forced on the war. They knew perfectly well that when they put up ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... gifts of food such as eggs, cream, sausages, and cakes. Lastly, they sprinkle the Leaf Man with water and feast on the food they have collected. In the Fricktal, Switzerland, at Whitsuntide boys go out into a wood and swathe one of their number in leafy boughs. He is called the Whitsuntide-lout, and being mounted on horseback with a green branch in his hand he is led back into the village. At the village-well a halt is called and the leaf-clad lout is dismounted and ducked in the trough. Thereby he acquires ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... in petty finance, some quite mites, to make up the accounts for Tripoli. Whilst seated near his Excellency, a big lout of a fellow was brought up, charged with beating a little urchin, who was present to substantiate the charge. The Rais, after gravely hearing the case, had the big clown turned round with his hands tied behind him, and then told the little ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... practising both arts, and having, moreover, precocious linguistic gifts. Our cricket-field was bald about the wickets, and we played without style and disputed with the umpire; and the teaching was chiefly in the hands of a lout of nineteen, who wore ready-made clothes and taught despicably. The head-master and proprietor taught us arithmetic, algebra, and Euclid, and to the older boys even trigonometry, himself; he had ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... that the various geniuses have developed which, in a manner almost spectacular, rise before us as we study the literatures of the past? The youthful years of Shakespeare were spent under circumstances which might have produced in him one dull and unaspiring British country lout, like, as one egg to another, to a hundred thousand others who lived in his age. What made this one country boy the most astonishing genius in all the history of literature? Study the youth of Robert Burns, of Heinrich Heine, ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... his county duties, was far too much inclined to bring him home to luncheon; and in the clash and crisis, without any one's quite knowing how it happened, it turned out that Mrs. Evelyn had been so imprudent as to sanction an attachment between her daughter and that great lout of a young doctor, Lady Fordham's brother! Not only the M.P., but all the family shook the head and bemoaned the connection, for though it was to be a long engagement and a great secret, everybody found it out. Lucas had long made up his mind that so it would end, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... instruction would place them under an omnibus; you had better confine your attention to yourself—you will want it all"; and has driven his charge away, with an intelligence of ears and tail, and a knowledge of business, that has left his lout of a man very, very ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... dead—dead as Mumbo Jumbo. "Thank God!" he added inconsequently. He walked faster and faster, and on more than one occasion he brushed hurriedly against some of the brutal frequenters of that part of the world on foggy evenings. A rough lout growled belligerently at him, but shrank from the gladsome light of battle which leaped instantly into John Arniston's eye. To strike some one would have been a comfort to ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... she said, "that my heart bodes ill of this match? Eric is a mighty man, and, great though thou art, I think that thou shalt lout low ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... to say what hard work being a good farmer meant. And I thought: What a stupid, lazy lout! When we talked seriously he would drag it out with his awful drawl—er, er, er—and he works just as he talks—slowly, always behindhand, never up to time; and as for his being businesslike, I don't believe it, ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... cigar, our mild Cavannah, has at length met with his deserts, and left the sage savans of the fool's hotbed, London, the undisturbed possession of the diligently-achieved fool's-caps their extreme absurdity, egregious folly, and lout-like gullibility, have so splendidly qualified them ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... labour of love with him, and now that fresh hopes and prospects were dawning upon him, the farm duties seemed more insignificant and tedious than ever. Had it been Gethin who stretched himself and yawned as he attacked the first swathe of corn, Ebben Owens would have called him a "lazy lout," but as it was Will, he only jokingly rallied him upon his ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... printer's type in their description. There is no girl alive, fairly clever, half educated, and unluckily related, whose life has not at least as much in it as Maggie's, to be described and to be pitied. Tom is a clumsy and cruel lout, with the making of better things in him (and the same may be said of nearly every Englishman at present smoking and elbowing his way through the ugly world his blunders have contributed to the making of); while the rest of the ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... and freckled and sandy, face of a country lout", and, like Middleton's rouse-about, "hadn't any opinions, hadn't any ideas", but possessed sufficient instinct and common bushcraft with which, by hard slogging, to amass money. He was developing a moustache, ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... get so far as the Consul, but one of the clerks, a stupid lout with an eyeglass, had come out and told him that he would get no employment on a ship belonging to the firm, until he had been to the Seamen's school, and gave up drinking. As he told his story there was an evil glare in his eyes, which ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... lout," exclaimed a shrill voice, as the door opened and admitted a buxom woman of forty or thereabouts. "I have found you at last; come out with you," and she emphasised the command by a smart ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... hung my head, and reddened foolishly, but he gave a loud laugh and said, "I can well understand. There was some country lout that your father would have wedded you to. That is the way ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... making pies and tarts; Or, clad in motley coat, the footman neat Is dangling after Miss with shuffling feet, Bearing in state to church her book of pray'r, Or the light pocket she disdains to wear;{1} Or in a parlour snug, 'the powdered lout The tea and bread and butter hands about. Where are the women, whose less nervous hands Might fit these lighter tasks, which pride demands? Some feel the scorn that poverty attends, Or pine in meek dependance on their friends; Some patient ply the needle day by day, Poor half-paid seamsters, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... lord outbroke in one sudden curse like a blast from a horn. He tore his sword from its black sheath; he called to the hovering landlord: "A sword there, for this lout!" He turned to the lady, with a laugh that chilled her heart, and said: "You put much labour upon me, madame. It seems I must find you a husband and make you a widow in the ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... lout who has spent his days herding swine, think you, that you could trick me into believing this creature to be Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye—this creature with the mien of a peasant, with a breath reeking of garlic like a third-rate ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... am I saying? Her poor coquetries did not deceive me, but she never meant them to deceive me. They accomplished, after all, just that for which she intended them. They deceived and maddened her half-drunken lout of a husband. Her dress, too, was something shameless. She wore above her scarlet skirt (which I verily believe was the same she had ridden in) a bodice of the same bright colour, low as a maid-of-honour's, ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... he walked to Lowick. Fred's light hopeful nature had perhaps never had so much of a bruise as from this suggestion that if he had been out of the way Mary might have made a thoroughly good match. Also he was piqued that he had been what he called such a stupid lout as to ask that intervention from Mr. Farebrother. But it was not in a lover's nature—it was not in Fred's, that the new anxiety raised about Mary's feeling should not surmount every other. Notwithstanding his trust in Mr. Farebrother's generosity, notwithstanding ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... few, a very few holes, into which they dropped their neighbours, and they must go into one or the other. Nothing was more distressing than a specimen which, notwithstanding all the violence which might be used to it, would not fit into a hole, but remained an exception. Some lout, I believe, reckoning on the legitimacy of his generalisation, and having heard of this and other observations accredited to Miss Leroy, ventured to be slightly rude to her. What she said to him was never known, ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... lout who was even more empty-headed than his most empty-headed neighbour and who yet, throughout the domain, was looked on as a shrewd and ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan
... welcomed this rustic candidate for the honour of giving wings to their hours of lassitude and weariness, with a welcome more than common; and when his approach was announced, the polished circle looked for the advent of a lout from the plough, in whose uncouth manners and embarrassed address they might find matter both for mirth and wonder. But they met with a barbarian who was not at all barbarous: as the poet met in Lord Daer feelings and sentiments as natural as those ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... trees. This was a Grammatophyllum with bulbs some times over eight feet in length. The length of the name is certainly suitable for so large an orchid. I saw plenty of water-birds, including white egrets and a long-necked diver which is called the "snake-bird," owing to its long neck projecting lout of the water and thus greatly resembling a snake. I shot several of each kind of bird, plucking the fine plumes from the backs of the egrets. We ate some of the divers that evening and found them first-class food, tasting much like goose. We later in the ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... Already there are quite enough!' Collected were the fares at last, The mule that drew our barge made fast, But not till a good hour was gone. Sleep was not to be thought upon, The cursed gnats were so provoking, The bull-frogs set up such a croaking. A bargeman, too, a drunken lout, And passenger, sang turn about, In tones remarkable for strength, Their absent sweethearts, till at length The passenger began to doze, When up the stalwart bargeman rose, His fastenings from the stone unwound, And left the mule to graze around; ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... magnificent furniture in the rooms, and that there were numbers of people, both lackeys and officers, of various descriptions, who were awaiting the commands of the fool. The fool, seeing that all these people had a decent and honourable appearance, and that he alone was a lout, wished to be made ...
— Emelian the Fool - a tale • Thomas J. Wise
... will soon be here, and no more 'Suffolk' Bowling-greens. Once more I want you to help in finding me a lad, or boy, or lout, who will help me to get through the long Winter nights—whether by cards or reading—now that my eyes are not so up to their work as they were. I think they are a little better: which I attribute to the wearing of these hideous Goggles, which keep out Sun, ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... crash!" repeated Mr. Clare. "There is my theory, in few words. Now for the remarkable application of it which this letter suggests. Here is my lout ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... lout and a fool, The son of a female and a fool, Of the race of the Clan Cleopas, the biggest rogues in the land. That and my seven curses And never a good day to be on you, Who stole my little cock from me ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... resentful at her stubbornness and seeing himself as a lout cast out of heaven. Then he saw her at a distance, on the platform of the subway station at Seventy-second Street. She was with Phil Dunleavy. She looked well, she was talking gaily, oblivious of old sorrows, certainly not in need of ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... perhaps—or perhaps the right man hasn't turned up. Florrie Hensor is several cuts above a malingering lout like Steadbolt. Well there, poor devil! Maybe, it's not unnatural that I should feel a sneaking sympathy for an unsuccessful lover. That abominable lie was a bit too strong though—and before you! The ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... a pathway to his throne—and he forgot the matron's pies. And then the cowherd's wife came in; she smelled the smoke, she gave a shout; she biffed him with the rolling pin, and cried: "Ods fish, you useless lout! You are not worth the dynamite 'twould take to blow you off the map! Your head is not upholstered right—you are a worthless ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... had become more and more excited. Lorchen had ceased to pay any attention to Christophe; she was too busy turning the head of a young lout of the village, the son of a rich farmer, for whom all the girls were competing. Christophe was interested by the struggle; the young women smiled at each other and would have been only too pleased to scratch each other. Christophe forgot himself and prayed ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... considering, 'you said that possibility was not to make any difference to us. Wouldn't it be making the wrong sort of difference to let it keep a great lout like me in idleness while Bernard ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rosebud or a spray of forget-me-not would be found deposited on the chair in which she sat to play propriety when the pupils took their lessons. On the days when with great difficulty she managed to elude Reggie, a lout of a grammar-school sixth-form boy, whose name even she did not know, would watch her exit from the school, and stalk at her heels, keeping sentinel over her, in a way that she felt was making her ridiculous, to ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... 'they did not think so at home. No; nor did the Queen. She said I was a proper stripling! Well, it matters the less, as I shall not stay long to need their favour; and I'll show them there is some use in my inches in the tilt-yard. But if they think me such a lout, what would they ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... before Beverley could again secure Alice for a dance, and he found it annoying him atrociously to see her smile sweetly on some buckskin-clad lout who looked like an Indian and danced like a Parisian. He did not greatly enjoy most of his partners; they could not appeal to any side of his nature just then. Not that he at all times stood too much on his aristocratic traditions, or lacked the virile ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... this upstart lout, rich without deserving it for any competence he had, was giving himself the airs of an intelligent dealer, presuming to approach Rafael, "his deputy," with a proposal for a freight-rate bill to promote the shipping of oranges into the interior of Spain! As if a little thing like a bill in Congress ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... fool. But a merchant will be so strict that you won't feel at home in your own house. You'll be wanting to fondle him and he will be counting his money, and when you sit down to meals with him, he'll grudge you every mouthful, though it's your own, the lout! . ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... fule!" said Miller, in some anger. "An' 't will take more 'n you an' that moon-faced lout to put them things on the man, or I'm ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... adoration, wanting. I observed one fellow, as the landlord advanced, take the pipe out of his mouth, and gaze upon him with a kind of grin of wonder, probably much the same as his ancestor, the Saxon lout of old, put on when he saw his idol Thur, dressed in a new kirtle. To avoid the press, I got into a corner, where on a couple of chairs sat two respectable-looking individuals, whether farmers or sow- gelders, I know not, but highly ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... already begun to suspect that my friendship for Diana Vernon was not altogether so disinterested as in wisdom it ought to have been. I had already felt myself becoming jealous of the contemptible lout Thorncliff, and taking more notice, than in prudence or dignity of feeling I ought to have done, of his silly attempts to provoke me. And now I was scrutinising the conduct of Miss Vernon with the most close and eager observation, which I in vain endeavoured to ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... with no preface and of a sudden; her voice rang sharp as I remembered it when she first spoke to me by that white hedge of England, and I could have sworn that the tide had verily borne us thither, and she was again that sallow girl and I the blundering lout of a lad. ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... hope he won't be very hard upon you, old chap," he added, in a tone of deep sympathy, turning to me, "for somehow I have taken quite a liking to you, and if I had been at your elbow yesterday, instead of that over-grown lout, Harvey, I would have kept you out of the serape. You must be very quiet and submissive when he pitches into you, and plead ignorance—say you will be a good boy and not do ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... an old-fashioned place and it and its inhabitants were made the target for the jests and witticisms of the people of Judea. The word "Nazarene" was synonymous with "lout"; "boor"; "peasant"; etc., to the residents of the more fashionable regions. The very remoteness of the town served to separate it in spirit from the rest of the country. But this very remoteness played an important part in the early life of Jesus. Nazareth, by reason of its peculiar location, ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... one said; "you have taken that lout down a good many pegs, and I would not mind backing you to thrash him single-handed. We have noticed his goings-on for the past two or three days with the other boys, and had intended to give him a lesson, but you have ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... was the Satyr, strangely unreal for all that he cast a shadow and tossed the dust with his hoofs. After him from the brake came a monstrous lout, a thing of horse and rhinoceros, chewing a straw as it came; then appeared the Swine-woman and two Wolf-women; then the Fox-bear witch, with her red eyes in her peaked red face, and then others,—all hurrying eagerly. As they came ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... of march recline Dead gods devoid of feeling; And thick about each sun-cracked lout Dried Howisons ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... speak my opinion in this matter.—Thou art welcome, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby—speak,—speak what thou thinkest upon the subject, man, without fear.—Why then, replied Trim, (not hanging his ears and scratching his head like a country-lout, but) stroking his hair back from his forehead, and standing erect as before his division,—I think, quoth Trim, advancing his left, which was his lame leg, a little forwards,—and pointing with his right hand open ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... to eat to-day, Henry. I didn't bring ye up to brawl and to fit with yaller dogs, ye lazy lout," ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... sent down with the thread as a line. An inquisitive lout of a seal did all it could to bite through the thread, but whether this was too strong or its teeth too poor, we managed after a lot of trouble to coax the marlinspike up again, and the interfering rascal, who had to come up to the surface now and then to ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... said. Mebbe 'e did myke an engygement with you, an' you've gone and went an' forgot the dyte. Mebbe it's larst year's calendar you're thinkin' of. You Johnny" (to a lout of a boy in the group of seamen), "you run an' fetch this gentleman Whitaker's for ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... Beguiles the rustic's closing day, When drawn the evening fire about, Sit aged crone and thoughtless lout; Come, show thy tricks and sportive graces, Thus circled round with merry faces. Backward coiled, and crouching low, With glaring eyeballs watch thy foe. The house wife's, spindle whirling round, Or thread, or straw, that on the ground Its shadow ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... Gordon could do was to put on the rough jerkin of a laboring man, and set to cleaving firewood in the courtyard with the scolding assistance of a maid-servant. When the troopers entered to search for the master of the house, they heard the maid vehemently "flyting" the great hulking lout for his awkwardness, and threatening to "draw a stick across his back" if he did not ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... would never be successful in my brothel gewgaws. [3] Thus I flung off in a passion, telling him that I would soon show him that I spoke truth. The bystanders openly declared against him, holding him for a lout, as indeed he was, and me for a man, as I had ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... he meant to do. He had made a will in that son's favor; he had gone as far as the Code will permit a man to go in the way of disinheriting one child to benefit another; and what was more, he had been putting by money for the past fifteen years to enable his lout of a son to buy back from Emile that portion of his father's estate which could not legally be ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... are furnished by a perusal of the life of an eighteenth century minister, the Rev. Alexander Pope, who was stationed for many years in Reay. He was a huge giant of a man, and invariably carried about with him a nail-studded cudgel that was a terror to sinners. A lout of a fellow in his parish refused to come to church and get rebuked for an infringement of the usual commandment. Mr. Pope sent three elders with ropes to pinion the adulterer, hale him to church, and fasten him to a conspicuous pew right under the pulpit. The minister ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... after him so, though he cared little enough about Andor at one time. Andor was his only brother's only child, and I suppose Pali bacsi[3] was suddenly struck with the idea that he really had no one to leave his hoardings to. He was always a fool and a lout. If Andor had lived it would have been all right. I think Pali bacsi was quite ready to do something really handsome for him. Now that Andor is dead he has no one; and when he dies his money all goes to the government. It is a pity," he added, with a shrug ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... soon as they can utter a word, that they are free and have equal rights with the mightiest potentates of the universe."[1125] Petion's account of the journey in the king's carriage, on the return from Varennes, must be read to see how far self-importance of a pedant and the self-conceit of a lout can be carried.[1126] In their memoirs and even down to their epitaphs, Barbaroux, Buzot, Petion, Roland, and Madame Roland[1127] give themselves certificates of virtue and, if we could take their word for it, they would pass ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... idiots," retorted the captor, who had now released both young men. "Besides being a mean, detestable trick, it's as old as the world. That red-pepper trick was invented by some stupid lout who lived thousands ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... especially, with a very choice and particular hatred. 'That prig,' as hereafter he always designated Roger—'he shall pay for it yet,' he said to himself by way of consolation, after the father and son had left him. 'What a lout it is!'—watching the receding figure. 'The old chap has twice as much spunk,' as the squire tugged at his bridle-reins. 'The old mare could make her way better without being led, my fine fellow. But I see through your dodge. You're afraid of your ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... At Dantzig, among the Swedish-Goth kind of Heathen, he had some success, or affluence of attendance; not elsewhere that we hear of. In the Pillau region, for example, where he next landed, an amphibious Heathen lout hit him heavily across the shoulders with the flat of his oar; sent the poor Preacher to the ground, face foremost, and suddenly ended his salutary discourse for that time. However, he pressed forward, regardless of results, preaching the Evangel to all creatures who were willing or unwilling;—and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... hear it. This Rivers is such a lout, that I could not tell how it might be. I did not look to see you turn homesick ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Helen, ask yourself this question: what choice is left to a man in such a case? You are generally known as the most beautiful woman in this city. Now shall I, an artist, allow myself to acquire the reputation of an unsociable lout who shuts himself up in his four walls and denies himself to all visitors? The second possibility would be to receive you while at the same time pretending not to understand you. That would give me the wholly undeserved reputation of a simpleton. Third possibility—but this ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... lost." Although the moon should have nothing to say to Endymion, although he should settle down with Audrey and feed pigs, do you not think he would move with a better grace, and cherish higher thoughts to the end? The lout he meets at church never had a fancy above Audrey's snood; but there is a reminiscence in Endymion's heart that, like a spice, keeps it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Hear his arrogance! A country lout who. . .who. . .has got no gloves! Who goes out without sleeve-knots, ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... you nothing better than a good drubbing, you filthy cattle lout! If you don't pay up your bets, we'll take it out of your hide. I, for one, have a special use for my money at ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... set me talking; he had a liking for my gift of ready speech, for his own ideas came with difficulty, and it pleased and astonished him to hear me pouring out my views. Indeed, over there I was, I think, even more talkative than with Parload, though to the world at large I was a shy young lout. "You ought to write it out for the newspapers," he used to say. "That's what you ought to do. I ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... is of a little more importance than others are doing. Aunt Keziah tormented him a great while about the rich field, just across the road, in front of the house, which Septimius had neglected the cultivation of, unwilling to spare the time to plough, to plant, to hoe it himself, but hired a lazy lout of the village, when he might just as well have employed and paid wages to the scarecrow which Aunt Keziah dressed out in ancient habiliments, and set up in the midst of the corn. Then came an old codger ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... she, with a laugh in her voice, "ye will do well to seek the nut tree, first as last." She nonchalantly crushed another shell in her mouth. "Neither Cunora nor I can spare good food to a kiss-hungry lout like thee!" ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... lout! I wonder what the devil made such a quaking pudding poltroon think of taking to our trade! Come: I am hungry: let us go into the kitchen, and get some grub; and then to bed. Pimping Simon, here, will see his grandmother's ghost, if we stay five ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... god. But I know it can't be; that it is only pity and gratitude that prompts her. Heaven knows I'm uncouth enough at best, but now I have to exaggerate my rudeness. I play a part—the part of a lumbering, stupid lout, while my heart is breaking." He bowed his head in his hands, closing his dry, feverish eyes once more. "It's cruelly hard. I ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... Cross, here, beneath the bridge Sleep in a row the outcasts, Packed in a line with their heads against the wall. Their feet, in a broken ridge Stretch out on the way, and a lout casts A look as he stands on the edge of this ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... find it so hard to do!" confessed young Nisbet. "I'm a stupid sort of lout, you know, Miss Rathbawne. I've never had half a chance to practice talking to dames, and where other lads fuss like experts, I just can't make good. I foozle every stroke. I'm ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... I answered, "but not to-day. We will wait until everybody has had time to get completely sober again. I do not choose that the lady should be subjected to the annoyance of encountering, and perhaps being insulted by, some half-drunken lout. But you will not require all the boats, I suppose, so you had better send off the smallest one, with a pair of oars, that we may have the means of going to and from the ship and the shore at our own pleasure, ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... who was a great personage in Nottingham, had a ward whom he had foisted upon the good folks of Nottinghamshire as an Earl, but as a fact he was simply a country lout, and all the teachings of the Sheriff would not make him appear anything different. Robert of Huntingdon was the Earl, in fact, and the Sheriff was going to try to keep him out of his title and estates. The merry men of Sherwood forest were ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... the start," he muttered, "and it will be long before she loses it, if she ever does. She shrinks from me as from something coarse and rough. She feels that I don't belong to her world at all. In fact, her father's fine bearing, his erect, elegant carriage make me feel as if I were but a country lout in very truth." The reception given to Mr. Jocelyn satisfied Mrs. Atwood thoroughly that his prolonged absence did not result from any alienation from his family. They overwhelmed him with caresses, and either Fred or Minnie could scarcely ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... known as Jack's Tom. If he, in his turn, happened to have a son whom he chose to name Henry, the youth was known as Jack's Tom's Harry. Our friend Tommy's father had been called Hob, and hence the name of the ill-tempered lout who was gazing on the unsullied sea. Tommy watched the green water breaking over the brown sand, and far out at sea he saw the thick haze still brooding low. He knew the evening would be fine, and he knew that he would have a good basket for next day's ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... to the table with a bold step; there was nothing now of the country lout about him; on the contrary, he moved with remarkable dignity, and bore himself so well that many a pair of feminine eyes watched him kindly, as he took his seat ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... symmetrical, a well-shaped nose, and a small, pursy mouth. The worst of his face was that you could by no means remember it. But he knew himself to be a handsome man, and he could not understand how he could be laid aside for so ugly a lout as this stranger from England. Captain M'Gramm was not a handsome man, and he was aware that he fought his battle under the disadvantage of a wife. But he had impudence enough to compensate him for ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... Kabba Rega, the son of Kamrasi, the sixteenth king of Unyoro, of the Galla conquerors, a gauche, awkward, undignified lout of twenty years of age, who thought himself a great monarch. He was cowardly, cruel, cunning, and treacherous to the last degree. Not only had he ordered the destruction of his brother, Kabka Miro, ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker |
