"Unwieldy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vestige of power to link their molecules together so as to make a complex and massive compound molecule; and these are able not only to link similar molecules into a more or less indefinite chain, but to unite and include the saturated molecules of many other substances also into the unwieldy aggregate. ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... cab, his hands locked tightly together, it seemed to him as if every possible hindrance had combined to bar his progress. The traffic had never appeared so congested, the efforts of the agents on point duty so hopelessly futile. Omnibuses and motors, unwieldy meat carts and fiacres, inextricably jammed, met them at every turn, until at last swinging round by the corner of the Louvre the streets became clearer and the car turned sharply to cross the river. As they approached ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... reformed House of Lords, this would be quite practicable. An article in Fraser's Magazine, "Why not the Lords, too?" had struck me much, and the lines on which it ran greatly resemble those laid down by Lord Rosebery for lessening in number and improving in character the unwieldy hereditary House of Peers; but neither that writer nor Lord Rosebery grasped the idea that I made prominent in an article I wrote for The Review, which was that the reduction of the peers to 200, or any other number ought to be ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... trifle unwieldy," admitted Sargent, "but we're only going to graze home. And unless we get a permit, we had better hold over the line in Colorado until after the ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... cage in which he had to travel. He hated the harsh, incessant noise of the grinding rails, the swaying and lurching of the trucks, the dizzying procession of the landscape past the barred slits which served as windows to his car. Moreover, sometimes the unwieldy length of the circus train would be halted for an hour or two on some forest siding, to let the regular traffic of the line go by. Then, as his wondering eyes caught glimpses of shadowed glades, and mysterious wooded ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... time of Henry VI. the brotherhood of lawyers had attained to an unwieldy growth, and it separated into two halls, the original two halls of the Knights Templar forming the nuclei around which the frequenters of each grouped themselves. Thus arose the Middle and Inner Temple. Under the eighth Henry the two societies became direct tenants of the crown ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... steps taken by Philip was to obtain a Bull from Pope Paul IV for the creation of the new bishoprics, and this Bull was renewed and confirmed by Pius IV, January, 1560. Up to this time the entire area of the seventeen provinces had been divided into three unwieldy dioceses—Utrecht, Arras and Tournay. The See of Utrecht comprised nearly the whole of the modern kingdom of the Netherlands. Nor was there any archiepiscopal see. The metropolitical jurisdiction was exercised by ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... in the tide, a large unwieldy object which threatened to come in contact with one or other of the many ships and long black screws lying in the river, all of a sudden a little, panting, puffing steamer came alongside and, amidst more shouting, ropes were thrown and she was made fast, while another appeared off the ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... which were found sticking in their bodies; but most of them were killed with great wooden swords, sixteen or seventeen of which they found in the field of battle, and as many bows, with a great many arrows. These swords were strange, unwieldy things, and they must be very strong men that used them; most of those that were killed with them had their heads smashed to pieces, as we may say, or, as we call it in English, their brains knocked out, ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... them some day; but I never came, and after a lapse of thirty-one years Veraci keeps them still. He was one of the strangest poets I have ever met. He affected eccentricity to make himself notorious, and opposed the great Metastasio in everything, writing unwieldy verses which he said gave more scope for the person who set them to music. He had got this extravagant notion ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... jolly!" cried that young gentleman, looking up at the Captain, who, leaning on his stick, stood near, watching his futile endeavours to restrain the vivacious, side-walking, unwieldy little animals that seemed gifted with such indomitable energy, and equal perseverance to that of Bruce's spider. ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the fellows that are working along that idea are right. The mechanism is hopelessly complicated, unwieldy and expensive." ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... and buoyant in his oily mail, Gambols on seas of ice the unwieldy Whale; Wide-waving fins round floating islands urge His bulk gigantic through the troubled surge; 295 With hideous yawn the flying shoals He seeks, Or clasps with fringe of horn his massy cheeks; Lifts o'er the tossing wave his nostrils bare, And spouts pellucid columns ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... secretaries, male and female, and a treasurer. You pay a guinea, and you become a member. A suitable reduction is, I believe, made in the unlikely event of all the members of one family flocking to be enrolled. The existence of this society is a great relief, for it enables us to deal with our unwieldy theme in a light-hearted manner, and to refer those who have a passion for solid information and profound philosophy to the printed transactions of this learned society, which, lest we should forget all about it, we ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... back in dismay as the bull drew near: and she was right; for, in his agony and amazement, the unwieldy but sinewy brute leaped the five-barred gate, and cleared it all but the top rail; that he burst through, as if it had been paper, and dragged Uxmoor after him, and pulled him down, and tore him some yards along the hard road on his back, and bumped his head against a stone, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... breathlessly watching it fall, waver from side to side, and roll slowly under the bookcase. Too much excited to rise from his knees, he crept towards it, and, pressing his cheek against the dusty floor, he peered under the unwieldy piece of furniture, to catch a glimpse of his penny ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... not appear to be discouraged by this reception. She finished unloading the cart of all except the tables, which she found unwieldy single-handed. Then she unharnessed old Neddy, and went and seated herself on the low wall beside the house. She was seemingly quite content with the situation. But to the two women indoors it was a dreadful ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... "servants," and besought "favours" from them in the shape of a scarf, a veil, a sleeve, a bracelet, a ringlet, or a knot of ribands. At such times Henry himself would enter the lists; and, in his earlier days, and before he became too unwieldy for active exertion, no ruder antagonist with the lance or sword could be found than he. Men indeed, existed in his days, very different in hardihood of frame and personal strength from the silken sybarites, enervated by constant riot and dissipation, who aped the deeds of arms of their ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... their infantry is noticed as exceptional; it is remarkable that these had no cavalry, and perhaps were not even a Celtic but an immigrant German tribe. But in general the Celtic infantry of this period appears as an unwarlike and unwieldy levy en masse; most of all in the more southern provinces, where along with barbarism valour had also disappeared. The Celt, says Caesar, ventures not to face the German in battle. The Roman general passed a censure still more severe than this ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... some time with the water running out of their mouths, idly lashing their sides with their short tails, enjoying the bright warmth of the early sunshine; then, with much splashing and the gurgling of soft mud, they left the pool and clambered up the bluff with unwieldy agility. As soon as they turned, my brother and cousin ran for their rifles, but before they got back the buffaloes had crossed the bluff crest. Climbing after them, the two hunters found, when they reached the summit, that their game, instead of halting, had ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... vertical or a horizontal motion, and several strengthening keels that prevent leeway when turning. They are entirely on the principle of birds, maintaining themselves mechanically, and differing thus from the unwieldy balloon. Starting as if on a circular railway, against the wind, they rise to a considerable height, and then, shutting off the batteries, coast down the aerial slope at a rate that sometimes touches ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... of Pellegrino da San Daniele in 1494 when he returned from an early visit to Venice, where he had been apprenticed to Cima. He was appointed to decorate S. Antonino. His early work there is hard and coarse, ill-drawn, the figures unwieldy and shapeless, and the colour dusky and uniform; but owing to the Turkish raid, he had to take flight, and it was many a year before the monks gained sufficient courage and saved enough money to continue the embellishment of their church. In the ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... door of the shop and drew her unwieldy burden carefully inside. A girl stood back of ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... sofa, and scattered the lingerie far and wide as he laid me down upon it, and went to open the windows. Then he went to the bell and pulled it violently. In a few moments the cook came up (accompanied by Ann). She was a huge, unwieldy woman, but she had some intelligence, and knew ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... accomplished? On the stage and in novels one confronts an assassin with the spectacle of his crime, and keeps watch upon his face for the one second during which he loses his self-possession; but in reality there is no instrument except unwieldy, unmanageable speech wherewith to probe a human conscience. I could not, however, go straight to M. Termonde and say to his face: "You had my father killed!" Innocent or guilty, he would have had me turned from the ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... I counted no fewer than three of the giant red centipedes whose poisonous touch, called "the zayat kiss," is certain death; several species of scorpion were represented; and some kind of bloated, unwieldy spider, so gross of body that its short, hairy legs could scarce support it, crawled, hideous, almost at ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... sir," said Vance stiffly. "But a committee of more than three is unwieldy. Suppose you name two gentlemen and I one? Or," he shrugged his shoulders, "you can name ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... But by means of this very booty with which in his greediness he had overloaded himself, and the keeping of which he had far more at heart than the maintaining of his own or his country's honor, he was fated in the end to overwhelm himself with ruin and disgrace, since, by the unwieldy clog thus laid upon his movements, he had doubled his risk of being overtaken; and, with such a general, to be overtaken is to be defeated; and to ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... THEM. Let it however be observed, that the sayings themselves are generally great; that, though he might be an ordinary composer at times, he was for the most part a Handel. His person was large, robust, I may say approaching to the gigantick, and grown unwieldy from corpulency. His countenance was naturally of the craft of an ancient statue, but somewhat disfigured by the scars of that evil, which, it was formerly imagined, the royal touch could cure. He was now in his sixty-fourth year, and was become a little dull of hearing. ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... a large unwieldy collection of poetry and prose, superstition and science, love and religion, allegory and historical facts. It is crammed with all varieties of learning, and a perverse but infinite ingenuity is shewn ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... it safely with its guardians, the big boat moved across the lake to Leoni. How a little hamlet on a Bavarian lake got that Tuscan-sounding name I cannot tell; but Leoni it is. The big boat was a long time crossing; the lake here is about three miles broad, and these heavy barges are unwieldy and heavy to move, even though they are towed and tugged at from ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... Angelica, and put on her finger the ring which neutralised its effect. The shield blazed on the water like another sun. The orc, beholding it, felt it smite its eyes like lightning; and rolling over its unwieldy body in the foam which it had raised, lay turned up, like a dead fish, insensible. But it was not dead; and Ruggiero was so long in making ineffectual efforts to pierce it, that Angelica cried out to him for God's sake to release her while ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... having been a student. What was more surprising was, the withering sarcasm that blasted like the simoom, the brilliant sallies of wit that flashed like a sabre, the gushing eddies of humour that drowned all opposition and overwhelmed those ponderous and unwieldy arguments which the producers announced as rocks, but which he proved to be porpoises. Never was there such a triumphant debut; and a peroration of genuine eloquence, because of genuine feeling, concluded amid the long and renewed cheers ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... Then, with a hue in one hand and a cry in the other, she is prepared to mount. Lead the horse up to a stone wall or a freight car and spring lightly into the saddle with a glad cry. A freight car is the best thing from which to mount a horse, but it is too unwieldy and frequently delays the chase. For this reason, too, much luggage should not be carried on a fox-hunt. Some gentlemen carry a change of canes, neatly concealed in a shawl strap, but even ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... pieces of machinery that had arrived that day from New York. Ike and Simon had to help the three truckmen as they placed rollers under the press and rolled it from the truck and into the room. The stitcher, cutter and other pieces were not so unwieldy to move and place. At noon, Ned saw the men struggling with the press and so refrained from going near the house, but he told the other Bobolinks, and immediately after school was dismissed a crowd of ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... a huge, dark, unwieldy body advanced from the gloom with a growl, and he saw an immense grizzly bear lumbering toward him. As quick as thought his rifle was at his shoulder, and he fired full at him, the distance being so short that he could not fail to hit the mark; but the wound, however severe ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... centuries, the central power of the emperors incessantly struggled against this increasing debility; but the moment at length arrived, when all the practised skill of despotism, over the long insouciance of servitude, could no longer keep together the huge and unwieldy body. In the fourth century, we see it at once break up and disunite; the barbarians entered on all sides from without, the provinces ceased to oppose any resistance from within; the cities to evince any regard for the general welfare; and, as in the disaster ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... each flatboat a steel pin extended seven or eight inches above the woodwork. When this pin was thrust through the hole in the oar, the great sweep hung almost balanced, and the steersman who used it to guide the unwieldy craft forced the blade of the oar back and forth against the current with the force of his body. The boys found it almost impossible to lift one of ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... of them, and began my operations, feeling sure I had now got a most patient sitter, for they will lie for weeks together without stirring; but I had to keep throwing small pebbles at him, in order to make him open his eyes, and prevent his going to sleep. The flies appear to torment these unwieldy monsters most cruelly, their eyes and nostrils being stuffed full of them. I got a good sketch of the group. They appeared to stare at me occasionally with some little astonishment, stretching up their immense heads and looking around; but finding all still (I suppose ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... anywhere else, but the bad society was capital. I like, for instance, to watch the shoals of fishermen that throng our streets in the early spring, inappropriate as porpoises on land, or as Scott's pirates in peaceful Kirkwall,—unwieldy, bearded creatures in oil-skin suits,—men who have never before seen a basket-wagon or a liveried groom and, whose first comments on the daintinesses of fashion are far more racy than anything which fashion can say ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... clumsy of movement, and stiff in the joints; she had not been so far from the house for three years. The morning breeze filled the gathers of her wide gingham skirt, and aggravated the size of her unwieldy figure. She supported herself with a stick, and trusted beside to the fragile support of Peggy's arm. They were talking ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... gay old 'ash of it!" Recklessly she crushed the large hat against the unwieldy shoulder. "There, good-night agyne, deer! Sister Tobias—that's what they call the one that 'ousekeeps and manages the kitchen—Sister Tobias 'll be sittin' up for me, thinkin' I've got meself lost or bin run away ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... For when we may not do, then will we speak, Yet in our ashes cold does fire reek.* *smoke Four gledes* have we, which I shall devise**, *coals ** describe Vaunting, and lying, anger, covetise*. *covetousness These foure sparks belongen unto eld. Our olde limbes well may be unweld*, *unwieldy But will shall never fail us, that is sooth. And yet have I alway a coltes tooth, As many a year as it is passed and gone Since that my tap of life began to run; For sickerly*, when I was born, anon *certainly Death drew the tap of life, and let it gon: And ever since hath so ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... their place in this world among the things gigantic. But the gigantic things were no longer supreme. Nature had made an error, and was busy rectifying it. The dinosaurs—all the giant reptiles—were now sorely pressed. Brute strength, giant size and tiny brain could not win this struggle. The huge unwieldy things were being beaten. The smaller animals, birds and reptiles were more agile, more resourceful, and began to dominate. Against the giants, and against all hostility of environment, they survived. And the giants went down to defeat. Gradually, over thousands of centuries, they died ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... or seven feet beam, each canoe being manned by about fifty savages, every mother's son of whom was wielding a short, broad-bladed paddle as though his life depended upon it. Yet the canoes were not making very much headway, for they were unwieldy—looking craft, with long, high-peaked, overhanging bows, and sterns which seemed to catch and hold a good deal of wind, making the paddling of them to windward, especially against a heavy ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... most unfortunately there was just enough truth in the story in so far as its details went, to lend color to its sensational accusations. It could not be denied, as was stated in The Enochsville Evening Gad, that Noah had built a large, unwieldy vessel of his own designing in the old pasture up back of our Enochsville farm, miles away from tide-level. That it resembled what The Gad called a cross between a cow-barn and a Lehigh Valley Coal-Barge, was evident to anybody who ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... circumstance that the facts are not facts, and that the gist of the drama is to lie in the gradual triumph of the truth over this tissue of falsehoods. Still, explain it as we may, the fact remains that in no later play does Ibsen initiate us into the preliminaries of his action by so hackneyed and unwieldy a device. It is no conventional canon, but a maxim of mere common sense, that the dramatist should be chary of introducing characters who have no personal share in the drama, and are mere mouthpieces for the conveyance of information. Nowhere else does Ibsen so flagrantly disregard ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... counterparts of Gyas, Sergestus, and Cloanthus, bawling just as lustily as doubtless those coxswains of old shouted; no one, however, struck on the rocks, as we are told the unfortunate "Centaur" did. Still the little mahogany-built Abercorn continued to forge ahead of her unwieldy French competitors. The Frenchmen splashed and spurted nobly, but the little Oxford-built boat increased her lead, her silken "Union Jack" trailing in the water. All the muscles of the French fleet came into play; the admiral's barge churned the water into creaming foam; ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... of Messana, the Carthaginian fleet, that advanced from Panormus under the command of Hannibal, encountered the Roman, which here underwent its first trial on a great scale. The Carthaginians, seeing in the ill-sailing and unwieldy vessels of the Romans an easy prey, fell upon them in irregular order; but the newly invented boarding-bridges proved their thorough efficiency. The Roman vessels hooked and stormed those of the enemy as they came up one by one; they could not be approached either in front ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... with my gun-bearer and Umslopogaas, who, as he did not shoot, had elected to be my companion, I crouched and banged away at the unwieldy creatures as they advanced. But fire fast as I might with two rifles, I could not stop the half of them—they were drawing unpleasantly near. I glanced at Umslopogaas and even then was amused to see that probably for the first ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... down he would have been all right. But his stubborn character was displayed to the full by his still gripping the unwieldy thing and, like "Old Grindstone George," hanging on to the handle. He staggered to his feet, the umbrella quite hiding the coming freight train from his view, and stumbled a pace forward, ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... of a house where the archpriest of one of the churches resided, and from its doors there leapt a damsel clad in a jerkin and wearing a scarf over her head. For a while she thumped the gates so vigorously as to set all the dogs barking; then the gates stiffly opened, and admitted this unwieldy phenomenon of the road. Lastly, the barinia herself alighted, and stood revealed as Madame Korobotchka, widow of a Collegiate Secretary! The reason of her sudden arrival was that she had felt so uneasy about the possible outcome of Chichikov's whim, that during the three ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the opportunity and suggested a new form of trigger for the unwieldy crossbows. He saw that as at present discharged it must require some strength, perhaps the united effort of several men, to pull away the bolt or catch. Such an effort must disconcert the aim; these crossbows were worked upon a carriage, and it was difficult to keep the carriage steady ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... dogs are usually driven in one team, though sometimes a man is seen plodding along with a two-dog team, and occasionally as many as sixteen or eighteen are harnessed to a komatik, but these very large teams are unwieldy. ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... practice extends further, as I can prove to you. I was once at the establishment of one in London, and I observed in a large room about a dozen little lap-dogs all tied up with strings. The poor little unwieldy waddling things were sent to him because they were asthmatic, and I don't know what all; and how do ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... cigar, had taken to some unwieldy curvets and gambols, to vent the excitement into which he had been thrown; and now returning, approached the bench with a low growl of surprise, and sniffed at the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sole object of their thoughts; were the subject of their continual contemplation; they looked upon them as realities of the highest importance: thus nature quite disappeared; she was despoiled of her rights; she was considered as nothing more than an unwieldy mass, destitute of power; devoid of energy, as an heap of ignoble matter purely passive: who, incapable of acting by herself, was not competent to any of the operations they beheld, without the direct, the immediate agency of the moving powers they had associated with her: ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... Philippe, acquired the sobriquet of le Gros, or the Fat, from his excessive corpulence. His unwieldy body probably contributed to that indolence of mind which induced him to withdraw from nearly all participation in political life. Louis XV. was one of the vilest of men, and by a portion of his subjects was thoroughly detested. Exasperated by an act of gross ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... as the stitches were cut, fell five blank books of different sizes. Two, of convenient dimensions, might have been intended for diaries; the other three, somewhat unwieldy, were partly used ledgers from Judge P. H. Morgan's office. They were closely written in a clear, firm hand; the ink, of poor quality, had faded in many places to a pale brown scarcely darker than the deep yellow to which time had burned the paper. The effort to read under such conditions, and ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... were built on the east bank, and to them came presently numbers of strange vessels, broad in the beam like a barge, and with monstrous lateen sails that looked too unwieldy to be furled or set; and on their bows they bore the painted letters "I.W.T., R.E." and a numeral. They were native feluccas, garnered from every canal and waterway in Egypt. They brought grain and fodder for the horses, rations for the men, vegetables of all kinds from the ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... the scene from her prison windows. Daddy had the greatest difficulty in keeping order, for tempers grow short when excitement is too long protracted. The furniture was moved about to make room. Orders flew about like grape-shot. Everybody got in everybody else's way. But finally the unwieldy packing-case was in position, and a silence ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... numbered by the ten thousand, for more of them than I could count wandered round the camp to look at us. The men were fierce-eyed and hook-nosed; the young women well-shaped and pleasant to behold; the older women for the most part stout and somewhat unwieldy, and the children very beautiful. All were roughly clad in robes of loosely-woven, dark-coloured cloth, beneath which the women wore garments of white linen. Notwithstanding the wealth we saw about us in corn and cattle, their ornaments seemed ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... and feet, and replied at unexpected places, in explosive monosyllables at once ludicrous and disconcerting. Not even The Don, who came to her assistance, could relieve the awkwardness of the situation. Shock was too large to be ignored, and too unwieldy ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... extraordinary figure, rising from the grain beyond, began to gesticulate to him wildly. Checking the driver of the first carriage, Clarence bore down upon the stranger. To his amazement it was Jim Hooker. Mounted on a peaceful, unwieldy plough horse, he was nevertheless accoutred and armed after his most extravagant fashion. In addition to a heavy rifle across his saddle-bow he was weighted down with a knife and revolvers. Clarence was in no mood for trifling, and ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... with varied Fools th' eternal Jest: Thou who couldst laugh where Want enchain'd Caprice, Toil crush'd Conceit, and Man was of a Piece; Where Wealth unlov'd without a Mourner dy'd; And scarce a Sycophant was fed by Pride; Where ne'er was known the Form of mock Debate, Or seen a new-made Mayor's unwieldy State; Where change of Fav'rites made no Change of Laws, And Senates heard before they judg'd a Cause; How wouldst thou shake at Britain's modish Tribe, Dart the quick Taunt, and edge the piercing Gibe? Attentive ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... pale blue and prominent, looked out from under beetling brows. He wore a shabby plum-colored coat and tight, drab breeches. About his fat neck was a black stock, with just a suggestion of soiled linen showing above it. His figure was corpulent and unwieldy. ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... avoid an unwieldy electronic copy, I have transferred original pagination to brackets. A bracketed numeral such as [22] indicates that the material immediately following the number marks the beginning of the relevant page. I have preserved paragraph structure except ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... describe the status of a personage, or a personage of a status, of which it is awkward to speak; the French Academie, in its modesty, having omitted to supply a definition out of regard for the age of its forty members. Whenever a new word comes to supply the place of an unwieldy circumlocution, its fortune is assured; the word lorette has passed into the language of every class of society, even where the lorette herself will never gain an entrance. It was only invented in 1840, and derived ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... the cast were as unwieldy as oak chairs marching, and the setting was an arty arrangement of batik scarfs and heavy tables, but Maire Bruin was slim as Carol, and larger-eyed, and her voice was a morning bell. In her, Carol ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... support to the many that have their origin only in his own excited and doubting temperament. The gambols of the dolphin, the earnest and busy passage of the porpoise, the ponderous sporting of the unwieldy whale, and the screams of the marine birds, have all, like the signs of the ancient soothsayers, their attendant consequences of good or evil. The confusion between things which are explicable, and things which are not, gradually brings ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... had all filed into the boats. There was no noise, no excitement; just now and then a whispered command. I was in a tug with about twenty others who formed the rear-guard. The wind had freshened considerably, and was now blowing so hard that our unwieldy tug dared not risk a landing. We came in near enough to watch the other boats. About twenty yards from shore they grounded. We could see the boys jump over the side and wade ashore. Through the half-darkness we could barely distinguish them forming up on the ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... morning of our departure from the Lake of the Bear. A gang of lumbermen were bringing a lot of logs through the lake. Half-hidden in the cold gray mist that usually betokens a fine day, and wet to the waist from splashing about after their unwieldy flock, these rough fellows were singing at their work as cheerfully as a party of robins in a cherry-tree at sunrise. It was like the miller and the two girls whom Wordsworth saw dancing in their ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... prodigious living creature, breathing, feeding, suffering, triumphing, above all mating and breeding, terrible in her power and vitality, age old, yet still unspent. Presented herself to him as horribly prolific, ever outpassing her own unwieldy limits, sending forth her children, year after year, all the wide world over by shipping or by rail; receiving some tithe of them back, proud with accomplished fortune to enhance her glory, or, disgraced and broken, slinking homeward to the cover of her fog and darkness merely to ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... The unwieldy load swayed and threatened to buckle, and more than once they had to set it down and find new holds, but the winding road picked out by Frank Ellery was followed without any serious mishap, until at last they stood on the high bank ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... was heavy, and the bag and shawl made such an unwieldy bundle that his progress was very slow, and he stopped more than once to rest and take breath, and as often as he stopped the blue eyes would look up enquiringly at him with an expression which made his boyish heart beat faster as he thought what pretty eyes they were and wondered ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... the "Poetical Remains of Mr. Pringle," I find the following remarkable escape:—"Lucas Van Buren usually carried a huge elephant gun, as long and unwieldy as himself; but left it at home one day when he had most need of it. He was riding across the open plains, near the Little Fish river, one morning about day break, when observing a lion at a distance, he endeavoured to avoid him by making a circuit. There were thousands of spring-bocks ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... which he says of her heroine Glorvina, "I believe you stole a spark from heaven to give animation to your idol." He thought the inferiority of Ida was owing to its author's luxurious surroundings. "I cannot conceive why the brain should not get fat and unwieldy, as well as any other part of the human frame. Some of our best poets have written in paroxysms of hunger, and I really believe that Addison would have had more point if he had had less victuals; and if you do not restrict yourself to a sheep's trotter and spruce beer, your style will betray your ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... of advertisements. The suggestion as to form has been adopted bit many of our religious, literary, and special weeklies, to the great convenience of the readers, and I doubt not of the publishers also. Nothing is more unwieldy than our big blanket-sheets: they are awkward to handle, inconvenient to read, unhandy to bind and preserve. It is difficult to classify matter in them. In dull seasons they are too large; in times of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... all were together again each was impatient to be on the move. Wharton and Turner began using the poles with the skill shown some time before, and once more the unwieldy craft swung slowly down the Ganges, with all on board alert for the first sign of their enemies. The women were advised to remain in the small cabin, where they would be safe ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... Never in my life had I seen anything so grotesque as this woman. To begin with she was more than ordinarily stout and unwieldy—indeed, she appeared like a veritable mountain of flesh; but what was so disturbing to my mind was that she was nothing but a hideous caricature of her lovely daughter, whose dainty features she grotesquely recalled. Her face was seamed and wrinkled, ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... indomitable determination to wrestle with and prevail over it is inspiring. There is no imaginable image that he does not press into his service in rattling the chains of his voluntary servitude. Above all, he groans over the unwieldy mass of his authorities—"anti-solar ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... The trail was narrow, exceedingly steep, and in some places fronted on precipices. Gale's burden was not very heavy, but its bulk made it unwieldy, and it was always overbalancing him or knocking against the wall side of the trail. Gale found it necessary to wait for Yaqui to take the lead. The Indian's eyes must have seen as well at night as by day. Gale toiled upward, shouldering, ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... age of books of reference, and as knowledge increases, and the books which impart it to readers become unwieldy from their multitude, there are sure to be forthcoming those who will reduce the facts into a handy form. I have gathered in the following pages the titles of some of the best books of reference which are to be obtained. ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... greatest Power, should take that lead. What could their soldiers do to a soldierless people, anyhow; and even if we lost at the beginning, why, 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?' Of what use is the dominion of a huge, unwieldy empire when even a tiny country like this is so administered that a quarter of its population live always on the verge of starvation? Let the Empire go, let Army and Navy go, let us concentrate our energies upon the arts of peace, science, education, the betterment of the conditions of life ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... run ashore and be hauled up the beach and even, in rough weather, over the sea-wall. The herring and mackerel drifters, which may venture twenty miles into the open sea, cannot be more than twenty-five feet in length else they would prove unwieldy ashore. To avoid their heeling over and filling in the surf, they must be built shallow, with next to no keel. They have therefore but small hold on the water; they do not sail close to the wind, and beating home against ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... skill the merits of his case, calling to the stand four prominent educators from as many different sections of the State, and several citizens of well-known character, among them Babcock's former pastor, Rev. Henry Glynn. He pointed out that the school committee, as at present constituted, was an unwieldy body of twenty-four members, that it was regarded as the first round in the ladder of political preferment, and that the members which composed it were elected not on the ground of their fitness, but because they were ambitious for ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... was my time; I rushed—but no— Fate ever mocks an ardent man; Even as I rushed, unwieldy, slow, Bore down a ponderous Pickford-Van, And under two broad wheels crushed flat My loved but ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... "Unwieldy pedant, let thy awkward muse, With censures praise, with flatteries abuse. To lash, and not be felt, in thee's an art; Thou ne'er mad'st any but thy schoolboys smart. Then be advis'd, and scribble not agen; Thou'rt fashioned for a flail, and not ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... as British settlements were confined to trading factories on the shores of the Indian Ocean, the problems of administration were simple. The three "Presidents" who with their large and rather unwieldy Councils carried on at the beginning of the eighteenth century the affairs of the East India Company on the west coast, at Madras and in Bengal were chiefly concerned with commercial operations, and they ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... enjoying himself in clawing and tearing to ribbons everything within reach, and by the time his breathless keeper from the other ship arrived upon the scene to conduct his charge home in disgrace, the cabin was in a state of utter desolation. A bull in a china shop is nothing to an unwieldy brute of a bear in a small apartment measuring ten feet by eight. All's well that ends well, but the officer's best trousers were completely ruined, and he himself never heard the end of his Sabbath afternoon adventure. The bear received six strokes with a cane ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... though we set our horses to their speed, it seemed to make no difference to the unwieldy giant. He merely stretched his legs a little farther, and caused his great gaskined feet to pass each other as fast as if they had been shod with seven-league boots. So he not only kept up with us easily, ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... named Stephen Flood, who was a "very intelligent and reliable Indian." Cool-puj-ot is almost identical with Shawandasee, the guardian of the South. "He is represented as an affluent, plethoric old man, who has grown unwieldy from repletion, and seldom moves. He keeps his eyes steadfastly fixed on the north. When he sighs in autumn, we have those balmy southern airs, which communicate warmth and delight over the northern hemisphere, and make the Indian summer." The "affluence" and ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... old age the thing which interested him most and to which he gave all his strength and time was the placing of unfortunate children in good homes. It was through his labor and influence the Children's Home Society had been established and struggled for existence. He was hampered in his work by an unwieldy board of women managers, but he realized the importance of having a large board, because the more persons interested the more money it was possible to raise for his pet charity. At the time of Mary Louise's call funds were very low, so low that it seemed as though ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... not occupy herself with serving but the florid woman was most attentive to the guests. She darted in and out between the tables, managing her unwieldy farthingale with amazing skill. She poured out the wines, and offered tarts and dishes of anchovies and of cheese, also strange steaming beverages lately imported into England called ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... and traits of melody." Handel, in one species of composition, wrote down to the singers of his time. Whoever examines the bass songs of that period, will perceive that they were composed for inflexible and unwieldy voices, possessing a large and heavy volume of tone, but incapable of executing any but simple passages, constructed according to an ascertained routine of intervals. Lord Mount-Edgcumbe truly conjectured, that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... years hath Corineius lived, Sometime in war, sometime in quiet peace, And yet I feel my self to be as strong As erst I was in summer of mine age, Able to toss this great unwieldy club Which hath been painted with my foemen's brains; And with this club I'll break the strong array Of Humber and his straggling soldiers, Or lose my life amongst the thickest prease, And die with honour in my latest days. Yet ere ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... intercourse had created and which have been so cruelly dashed by the event, but also that of the void which his disappearance has left in the too thin ranks of those who, filled with reverence and enthusiasm for the great traditions of the past, seem nevertheless eager and capable of grappling with the unwieldy present. Let and restricted had been the recognition of his maturing worth, and now we must do without both him and the impetus of his so ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... of General Parliamentary Law, Reed declared that the House prior to 1890 was the most unwieldy parliamentary body in the world. Three resolute men, he asserted, could stop all public business. A few years later, when the Democrats were in power, they adopted the plans which Reed ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... among the derangements and deformities of nature. She, according to her usual taste and economy, would never be at the expense of rearing, and that upon ground that might have otherwise been much better occupied, such unwieldy, useless masses of matter, merely for the sake of gratifying the taste for grandeur and sublimity in a few of her sons, nor, indeed, for any other use we ever heard ascribed to them.... According to our test, a rich and gently undulatory surface, intersected ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... immense harvests and the vast tracts of country awaiting development, it has become necessary to work on a much bigger scale, and to bring in the aid of machinery. In some places the ordinary form of steam plough has presented many practical disadvantages. They are heavy and unwieldy, and apt to sink in soft ground, from which they are extricated with difficulty. This is likely to cause damage, or more serious accidents, through explosion. Further, they require a constant train of water-carts and fuel wagons, and a staff of at least six persons to ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... must admit that her disguise is none too successful. Yellow sashes round the abdomen do not make a wasp. It would need more than that and, above all, a slender figure and a nimble carriage; and the Volucella is thickset and corpulent and sedate in her movements. Never will the wasp take that unwieldy insect for one of her own kind. The ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... the old boat was pushed down the sloping sandy shore and into the mill-pond. Hugh and Thad sprang aboard and each snatching up a paddle, they commenced to urge the unwieldy craft along ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... and experienced captains, however confidently they may take the command at first, frankly own that they'll never put foot in her again, you very naturally begin to suspect that there's something wrong in her build. She is either too unwieldy, like the Great Eastern, or she is too long to turn well, or she requires such incessant repair; or, most fatal of all, she is entered for a trade where nobody wants her; and therefore you resolve that, come what ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... Army made its practical appearance in those parts. Fermor had, in the interim, seized Thorn, seized Elbing ("No offence, magnanimous Polacks, it is only for a time!"),—and would fain have had Dantzig too, but Dantzig would n't. Not till June 16th did the unwieldy mass (on paper 104,000, and in effect, and exclusive of Cossack rabble, about 75,000) get on way; and begin slowly staggering westward. Very slowly, and amid incendiary fire and horrid cruelty, as heretofore;—and in August coming we shall be sure ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... like the dog, has become an extremely variable creature in the domestic state, in voice no less than in size, form, colour, and other particulars. At one end of the scale there was the raucous bronchial strain produced by the unwieldy Cochin. What a bird is that! Nature, in obedience to man's behests, and smiling with secret satire over her work, has made it ponderous and ungraceful as any clumsy mammalian, wombat, ardvaark, manatee, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... of the great unwieldy form half across the table towards Wharton's seat—the roar of the speaker's immediate supporters thrown up against the dead silence of ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... might fall in with a tribe of Stone Indians, who had been threatening him, and had acted in a turbulent manner at the post a few days before. In the course of the afternoon, we saw a band of buffaloes, which fled from us with considerable rapidity. Though an animal apparently of a very unwieldy make, and as large as a Devonshire ox, they were soon out of our sight in a laboured canter. In the evening our encampment was surrounded by wolves, which serenaded us with their melancholy howling throughout ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... to the perfected concert organizations headed by a Sousa or a Gabriel Pares. It would embrace with like inclusiveness the history of the pipe organ through its stages of evolution from the ponderous instruments with men straddling unwieldy bellows to the marvel installed in Festival Hall, and it would embrace the history of the art of organ music up to such exemplars as our own Clarence Eddy, John &. McClellan, Edwin Lemare, and Camille Saint-Saens. What a chapter would be set aside for the record of Exposition choral ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... less good than they soon afterwards became; food that was intended to arrive hot arrived cold, and, having once been hot, received precedence over things originally cold but ultimately more essential. Hot-food containers proved too unwieldy for the forward area.[2] ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... Salamis. As the Asiatic hordes fled behind their panic-stricken king, the Greeks, looking round their limited horizon, could see no power that might vie with them. The idea of pressing home their success and overthrowing the entire unwieldy Persian empire was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... jutted from the corner of the fireplace half way out into the room. As it was seemingly from this seat that the men, who at various times had been found lying here, had fallen to their doom, a thrill passed over me as I noted its unwieldy bulk and the deep shadow it threw on the ancient and dishonored hearthstone. To escape the ghastly memories it evoked and also to satisfy myself that the room was really as empty as it seemed, I took another step forward. This caused the light from the lantern I carried to spread beyond ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... but wanting the bone, the muscle, and the nervous organisation necessary to set the great frame in motion. Even when the army was landed in the Peninsula, although the process of training and organisation had been going on for over six months, it was still a most unwieldy force. Fortunately for the Union, the Confederate army, except as regards the superior leaders and the cavalry, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the subjects treated of may not be wanting; but the abundant energy is wanting which to the fatigue of consecutive thinking will add the labour of deciphering the language. Many of us are but too familiar with the fatigue of reconstructing unwieldy sentences in which the clauses are not logically dependent, nor the terms free from equivoque; we know what it is to have to hunt for the meaning hidden in a maze of words; and we can understand the yawning indifference ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... be too unwieldy for our purposes, could it be got into the water; a thing in itself that would be almost impracticable for ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... inspection plate and pushing it free, he climbed out into the deserted lab; made his way out into the corridor, his unwieldy package hanging to his shoulder and runlets of water making a trail behind him—and stepped into ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... by accepting. Mullet is not the chap who bored your father so fearfully by endless talk about Shakespeare and Napoleon, but he is a prodigious admirer of the great dramatist. He has the Plays in one huge, unwieldy volume, and for that reason reads them less than he would if they were in a more handy form. Mullet is a great reader of the old English poets (I don't mean so far back as Chaucer and Spenser), and I suppose he can repeat from memory thousands of lines. I have found no chance to call upon him since ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... then is sober; so at length, When you awake from this lascivious dream, Repentance then will follow, like the sting Plac'd in the adder's tail. Wretched are princes When fortune blasteth but a petty flower Of their unwieldy crowns, or ravisheth But one pearl from their scepter; but alas! When they to wilful shipwreck lose good fame, All princely titles perish with ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... wreckage for which he was aiming than they had been to start with. And, reasoning upon this, the conclusion forced upon him was that, after all, he had merely succeeded in retarding their own drift to leeward; while to actually force his unwieldy raft to windward and thus reach the desired flotsam, was quite beyond ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... seemed to paw the verdant mead, and to despise the mould from which it came. A disdainful horse, it shook its flowing mane, and snuffed the enlivening breeze, and stretched along the plain. The red-eyed wolf and the unwieldy ox burst like the mole the concealing continent, and threw the earth in hillocs. The stag upreared his branching head. The thinly scattered animals wandered among the unfrequented hills, and cropped the untasted herb. Meantime the ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... with huge guns and other machinery of war; we see preparations in progress and the most strenuous activity, as though the heavens themselves were to be stormed, and truth were to be drawn out of the deepest of all wells; and yet, in war, the largest machines are the most unwieldy. Genuine culture therefore leaves such places as these religiously alone, for its best instincts warn it that in their midst it has nothing to hope for, and very much to fear. For the only kind of culture with which the inflamed eye and obtuse ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... and we began to recede from the shore, cutting diagonally across the decidedly swift current. Once beyond the protection of the point the star-gleam revealed the sturdy rush of the waters, occasionally flecked with bubbles of foam. Sam handled the unwieldy craft with the skill of a practiced boatman and the laboring engine made far less racket than I had anticipated. Ahead, nothing was visible but the turbulent expanse of desolate water, the Illinois shore being still too far away for the eye to perceive ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... am not blind....It is Monsieur de Tavernay who is applying again, and making all that noise....Don't you hear, Mame Piquignolles, Mame Piquignolles! Saved, saved!' And she dashed out of the cupboard like an unwieldy mass, with her cap all on one side, an anxious look and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... wears a huge rosary, sometimes so large as to be uncomfortable. I saw several that were so unwieldy that they went over the shoulders and formed a huge line, larger indeed than a string of sleigh bells. These are ornamental rosaries and are not used for prayer. The praying rosary is as small and dainty as those used by fashionable women in our own Roman ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... material energy engines, life on every planet would be possible now, even easy. The cost of manufacture, mining, shipping across the vast distances between the planets would be only a fraction of what it had been when man had been forced to rely upon the unwieldy, expensive accumulator ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... know that to be the opinion of the best seamen in Shetland?-I believe it is. For instance, the large boats used in the neighbourhood of Lerwick for herrings have often been lost when the common six-oared boats came safely. These large boats are more unwieldy and more difficult to handle than the ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... the goodliest armour, and A sword of such a temper, and a bow, And javelin, which might furnish Nimrod forth: A little heavy, but yet not unwieldy. And now I think on't, 'tis long since I've used them, Even in the chase. Hast ever ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... soon as the soldier became sober, and saw himself placed under such an unwieldy animal, he was so terrified that he scarcely durst move either hand or foot; but the elephant soon caused his fears to subside by caressing him with his trunk, and thus ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... has never seen a wild elephant can form no idea of his real character, either mentally or physically. The unwieldy and sleepy-looking beast, who, penned up in his cage at a menagerie, receives a sixpence in his trunk, and turns round with difficulty to deposit it in a box; whose mental powers seem to be concentrated in the ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... throughout the days of its republic, are still the objects of classic interest, of general homage, and of generous emulation, among all the nobler spirits of the world? We pass over the records of Oriental empire as we pass over the ruins of their capitals; we find nothing but masses of wreck, unwieldy heaps of what once, perhaps, was symmetry and beauty; fragments of vast piles, which once exhibited the lavish grandeur of the monarch, or the colossal labour of the people; but all now mouldered and melted down. The mass essentially wants the interest of individuality. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... manner, express the real views of the Committee. They claim to have drawn up a body of improved marginal references, to have wholly removed archaisms, to have supplied running headings, to have modified what they consider unwieldy paragraphs, to have lightened what they regard as clumsy punctuation, and by typographical arrangements, such as by leaving a line blank, to have indicated the main transitions of thought in the Epistles and Apocalypse. These and other characteristics will be found specified in the American ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... in our country had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the Captain. The fast-anchored isle never gave birth to a more unmitigated blackguard. His awkward, unwieldy misshapen body, was but a fair lodging for a low, depraved, licentious soul. Although liberally educated, he seemed insensible to any other enjoyments than those of sense. No human being could in his desires or habits approach more near to the animal than him. No gentleman ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Beasts of th' Earth, since wilde, and of all chase In Wood or Wilderness, Forrest or Den; Sporting the Lion rampd, and in his paw Dandl'd the Kid; Bears, Tygers, Ounces, Pards Gambold before them, th' unwieldy Elephant To make them mirth us'd all his might, and wreathd His Lithe Proboscis; close the Serpent sly Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine His breaded train, and of his fatal guile Gave proof unheeded; others on the grass 350 Coucht, and now fild with pasture ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... into existence in a state of nature, because the very first step towards such inferior forms would have led to the rapid extinction of the race; still less could they now exist in competition with their wild allies. The great speed but slight endurance of the race horse, the unwieldy strength of the ploughman's team, would both be useless in a state of nature. If turned wild on the pampas, such animals would probably soon become extinct, or under favourable circumstances might each gradually ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... man had to be made into a life-boat himself. I descended the bank, and stood on the edge of the canal as it drew near. Then I saw that every oar was loosely but firmly fastened to the rowlock, so that it could be dropped and caught again in a moment; and that the gay sides of the unwieldy-looking creature were festooned with ropes from the gunwale, for the men to lay hold of when she capsized, for the earlier custom of fastening the men to their seats had been quite given up, because their weight under the water ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... officers, and claimed their right to be under an Egyptian general. But history has told us nothing more of the rebellion than that it was successfully put down. The Greeks were still the better soldiers. The ships built by Philopator were more remarkable for their unwieldy size, their luxurious and costly furniture, than for their fitness for war. One was four hundred and twenty feet long and fifty-seven feet wide, with forty banks of oars. The longest oars were fifty-seven feet long, and weighted with lead at the handles that they might ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... of them that I recollect are known in Europe. At the entrance from the sea, sharks are found in great abundance; and higher up, alligators and the hippopotamus (or river-horse) are very numerous. The latter might with more propriety be called the river-elephant, being of an enormous and unwieldy bulk, and its teeth furnish good ivory. This animal is amphibious, with short and thick legs, and cloven hoofs: it feeds on grass, and such shrubs as the banks of the river afford, boughs of trees, seldom ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... land he swayed, Conferred on him by Charlemagne, in trust, To him the English duke a present made Of that so sturdy and unmeasured beast, That it ten draught horse burdens had conveyed; So monstrous was the giant, and next gave The net, in which he took the unwieldy slave. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... Viceroy of Mexico and ask that he lay the matter before the Cabinet and King. Without that high authority we can do nothing. But I see no reason to doubt the issue when we, who know the wants and needs of California, approve and desire. We are doomed to failure in this unwieldy land of worthless savages, but it is the business of the wretched servants of a glorious monarch to do ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... is a thing that can't have a head. It's a sort of unwieldy monster that's bound to run its skull against the wall sooner or later, and knock out what bit of brain it's got. You see, you need wit and courage and real understanding if you're going to do anything positive. And Labour has none of these things—certainly ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... a bull or a panther, they would have had their bones shivered to pieces by the tremendous blows which Boone dealt upon his adversary with all the strength of despair; but Bruin is by nature an admirable fencer, and, in spite of his unwieldy shape, there is not in the world an animal whose motions are more rapid in a close encounter. Once or twice he was knocked down by the force of the blows, but generally he would parry them with a wonderful agility. At last, he succeeded in seizing the other end of the rail, and dragged ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... sumptuous caleche beside the favorite gazelle, at the back of the theatre boxes which the Levantine hired, for she went abroad now, revivified by her masseur's treatment and determined to be amused. She liked the theatre, especially farces or melodramas. The apathy of her unwieldy body was minimized in the false glare of the footlights. But she enjoyed Cardailhac's theatre most of all. There the Nabob was at home. From the first manager down to the last box-opener, the whole staff belonged to him. He had a key to the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... not the slightest doubt of it, sir." Tristram stared at the old gentleman, who was of a tall unwieldy figure, short ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... demanded to see her at a distance, himself unseen, and this was arranged. He provided himself with a powerful binocular of the kind that is now used at sea, instead of the unwieldy old telescope, and the little girl was paraded by the nurse, who was in the secret. She played about in the sight of this strange spy. She was plump, she was rosy, she was full of life and spirit. Joy filled the father's heart; but then came a bitter pang to think that ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... she drew forward an unwieldy arm-chair, which was piled up with books and papers. These she was calmly about to remove, when a shriek from the anguished scholar ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... would have been ineffectual. The spear clanged harmlessly from the commander's armor, and the warrior who had attempted to pull him from the carrier died before he could give much of a tug. But the combination, plus the fact that the heavy armor was a little unwieldy, overbalanced him. He toppled to the ground with a clash of steel as he and the ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... I was aware that the silver-banded hat was at a most uncanonical angle. Behind me on the car was stowed my sketching umbrella; I tore it from the retaining embrace of the camp-stool, and unfurled its unwieldy tent with a speed that I have never since achieved. Robert, on the far side of the car, was reasonably safe. The inestimable Croppy quickened up. Cowering beneath the umbrella, I awaited the crucial moment at which to shift ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... the sole leather tanneries was interesting, too. Here many new phases of leather making confronted them. First there was the tremendous weight of the great skins, which were so unwieldy that they could not easily be handled and, like cowhides, had to be cut into halves, or "sidees." In addition to this they were usually split—sometimes before tanning, sometimes after. The grain, or the side next ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... be noted that nearly all the disasters to airships have been caused by launching and landing—the type is safe enough in the air, under its own power, but its bulk renders it unwieldy for ground handling. The German system of handling Zeppelins in and out of their sheds is, so far, the best devised: this consists of heavy trucks running on rails through the sheds and out at either end; on descending, the trucks are run out, and ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... fortunate that conspiracy should have cut him off in the full vigor of his faculties, in the very meridian of his glory, and on the brink of completing a series of gigantic achievements. Amongst these are numbered—a digest of the entire body of laws, even then become unwieldy and oppressive; the establishment of vast and comprehensive public libraries, Greek as well as Latin; the chastisement of Dacia; the conquest of Parthia; and the cutting a ship canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... result of the expedition, was the lesson which the Englishmen had thus learned in handling the great galleys of Spain. It might soon stand them in stead. The little war-vessels which had come from Plymouth, had sailed round and round these vast unwieldy hulks, and had fairly driven them off the field, with very slight damage to themselves. Sir Francis had already taught the mariners of England, even if he had done nothing else by this famous Cadiz expedition, that an armada, of Spain might not ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... arrived in the middle of the day, and was thunderstruck at the new and terrible disaster. He was a large, tall man, with a good-humoured, weather-beaten face, and an unwieldy, gouty figure; and he stood, with his eyes brimming over with tears, looking at his brother, and at first unable to read the one word Joe traced for him-for writing had ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... contrast to the flowing robes which disguised the thin frame. of the Eastern monarch. It was Richard's two-handed sword that chiefly attracted the attention of the Saracen—a broad, straight blade, the seemingly unwieldy length of which extended well-nigh from the shoulder to the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... is necessary to observe, that the Peggy was a large unwieldy Dutch-built ship, about eight hundred tons burden, and had formerly been in the Norway, and timber trade, for which, indeed, she seemed, from her immense bulk, well calculated. There being no freight in readiness for America, we were ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... Coming up on the other side, the Monarch dealt her antagonist a blow that left her in a sinking condition. Herself comparatively uninjured, she paused to allow the gun-boats to take a part. Those insignificant and unwieldy rams had placed three of the enemy's gun-boats hors de combat in less than a quarter of an ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... the lighterman, as he pushed his unwieldy craft from the jetty. "I'll tell Sam your opinion of ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... befitting style. He accordingly stepped into the barge, and took his seat beneath the awning. The grand chamberlain seated himself on the cushion opposite. The rowers bent to their oars, and renewed their mournful old ditty, and the gorgeous, but unwieldy barge moved slowly and ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving |
