"Clownish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... And the burly Abbot of Unreason Forgets not that the blythe Yule season Demands his paunch at church; And he useth his staff While the rustics laugh,— And, still, as he layeth his crosier about, Laugheth aloud each clownish lowt,— And the lowt, as he laugheth, from corbels grim, Sees carven ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... approached slowly. He was more civil than the Bartram people usually were, for he plucked off his shapeless cap of rabbit-skin with a clownish respect. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... that honest Izaak's account is prejudiced, as Hooker in his will makes his "wel-beloved wife" sole executrix and residuary legatee, and his father-in-law was one of the overseers. Nevertheless Wood calls her "a clownish, silly woman, ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... composed of nymphs, cupids, and satyrs, with shreddings of heads and paws of meek wild beasts, and nondescript vegetables. And the lowest of all are those which have not even graceful models to recommend them, but arise out of the corruption of the higher schools, mingled with clownish or bestial satire, as is the case in the latter Renaissance of Venice, which we were above examining. It is almost impossible to believe the depth to which the human mind can be debased in following this species of grotesque. In a recent ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Shadow, Wart, and Bull-calf, recruits; Feebee, at once a recruit and a woman's tailor, Pilch and Patch-Breech, fishermen (though these last two appellations may be mere nicknames); Potpan, Peter Thump, Simple, Gobbo, and Susan Grindstone, servants; Speed, "a clownish servant"; Slender, Pistol, Nym, Sneak, Doll Tear-sheet, Jane Smile, Costard, Oatcake, Seacoal, and various anonymous "clowns" and "fools." Shakespeare rarely gives names of this character to any but the lowly in life, altho perhaps we ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... imperfect); then, laying every name by itself, they pronounced him whose name was written by the larger number, banished for ten years, with the enjoyment of his estate. As, therefore, they were writing the names on the sherds, it is reported that an illiterate clownish fellow, giving Aristides his sherd, supposing him a common citizen, begged him to write Aristides upon it; and he being surprised and asking if Aristides had ever done him any injury, "None at all," said he, "neither know I the man; but I am tired of hearing ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the presumption of the youths, the former uneasy at the possible results of their ignorance. To the astonishment of the company, Ginevra rose, respect and modesty in every feature, as the youth, clownish rather than awkward, approached her, and almost timidly held out her hand to him. He took it in his horny palm, shook it hither and thither sideways, like a leaf in a doubtful air, then held it like a precious thing ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... bandy-legged man waved their hands and set up such a shout that his shrill outcry was not even heard. And the simple country bumpkins, standing in a grinning row like so many Old Aunt Sallys at a fair, pulled off their caps and bowed, thinking it some company of great lords, and fetched a clownish cheer as the ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... known a member of the house of commons speak with great energy and precision, without being able to engage attention, because his observations were made in the Scotch dialect, which (no offence to lieutenant Lismahago) certainly gives a clownish air even to sentiments of the greatest dignity and decorum. — I have declared my opinion on this head to some of the most sensible men of this country, observing, at the same time, that if they would employ a ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... where I lived, you knave?" said the Lord Nigel, angrily. "'Sdeath! I shall have every clownish burgher from Edinburgh come to gaze on my distress, and pay a shilling for having seen the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... its little hands and laughed. I would you could have seen that grave company then. Every man of them sought a share in that sweet sudden laughter. The merchant dangled his gold chain, the clerk made clownish gestures, the merchant put a golden zecchin into the tiny fingers for a toy. And when it slept again we slept also, or watched the stars and thought of that star which long ago ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... pleasing (tho' less loquacious) society of a husband, who, with a complaisance peculiar to husbands, responds—sometimes by a doubtful shrug, sometimes a stupid yawn, a lazy stretch, an unthinking stare, a clownish nod, a surly no, or interrogates you with a—humph? till bed time, when, heaven defend us! you are doom'd to be snor'd out of your wits till ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... main the Turks were a good-natured people; that what would have been a deadly affront anywhere else was only a little freedom there: in short, they told him to think no more of the matter, and to try his fortune in another promenade. But the squire, though a little clownish, had some home-bred sense. "What! have I come, at all this expense and trouble, all the way to Constantinople only to be kicked? Without going beyond my own stable, my groom, for half a crown, would have kicked me ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... pinafores. Each table was attended by a matron, who served out the dry bread and hot milk to the prefects, who carried the basins up and down the tables as deftly as Mr. Paul Cinquevalli. Everywhere was a prospect of raw faces and figures, which Charity had deliberately made as uncomely as possible by clownish garb and simple toilet. The children ate hungrily, and the place was full of the spirit of childhood, an adulterated spirit. The noise leaped and swelled on all sides in an exultant joy of itself, but if here and there a jet of jolly ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... to be always a wag or clown among each group of animals,—some one species in which the amusing or the grotesque is prominent. Among these clownish fellows I should class the black vulture, or john-crow. He is not a crow at all, but gets that name probably because so historic a tribe as Corvus must have some representative, and the real crow, so common ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... as an equal by the brilliant circle of men of letters which the city then boasted—Dugald Stewart, Robertson, Blair, etc., and was a guest at aristocratic tables, where he bore himself with unaffected dignity. Here also Scott, then a boy of 15, saw him and describes him as of "manners rustic, not clownish. His countenance ... more massive than it looks in any of the portraits ... a strong expression of shrewdness in his lineaments; the eye alone indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast, and literally ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... with several voluminous letters in his own handwriting, duly signed. The major greeted the colonel most cordially; and in truth his manners of a gentleman are so innate that I believe it would be utterly impossible for him to be clownish or rude in his address, if he were to make a serious effort ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... blood-spot, or a lust-spot, on the clothes of a blooming emperor, give a kind of zest to the genteel young god? Do not the pride, superciliousness, and selfishness of a certain aristocracy make it all the more regarded by its worshippers? and do not the clownish and gutter- blood admirers of Mr. Flamson like him all the more because they are conscious that he is a knave? If such is the case —and, alas! is it not the case?—they cannot be too frequently told that fine clothes, wealth, and titles adorn a person ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... hide with a kind of lazy resentment, and saluted us with a reluctant grin and a savage growl, which plainly intimated that he did not think himself much beholden to us for our company. "This young brute, said our conductor, is animated by the soul of the late matter Rustick, of clownish memory. His father was a gentleman of rank and fortune, and greatly beloved and respected by all his acquaintance; and if his son Richard had possessed the same virtues and accomplishments, he might afterwards ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... Tiberius' nephew, Caligula's uncle, and a brother-in-law to Agrippina. Mr. Baring-Gould says that somewhere deep in him was a noble nature that had never had a chance: that the soul of him was a jewel, set in the foolish lead of a most clownish personality. I do not know; certainly some great and fine things came from him; but whether they were motions of his own soul (if he had one), or whether the Gods for Rome's sake took advantage of his quite negative being, and prompted it to their own purposes, who can say?—Sitting ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Cobbett, then a lad, who with a few halfpence in his pocket, and Swift's Tale of a Tub in his hand, had been so captivated by the wonders of the royal gardens, that he applied there for employment. The king, on perceiving the clownish boy, with his stockings tied about his legs by scarlet garters, inquired about him, and specially desired that he might be continued in ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... called Soato. Here they found themselves so much exhausted with over fatigue and want of food, that they were compelled to sit down and rest awhile. The people, however, were a very uncourteous and clownish race, and teazed them so much with their rudeness and begging propensities, that they were glad to prosecute their journey to save themselves from ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... in a glossy garb of the finest black broadcloth, with a spotless vest of pearl-tinted satin, and immaculate white kids. His dark visage, small, peering black eyes, and low-bred, clownish aspect, contrasted strangely with the brilliant creature at ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... were sprinkled with meal by the invalid, while Hasjelti and Hostjoghon performed their antics with fawn skin and wands. The third series embraced all the dances exactly like the above. The fourth series embraced nineteen dances. The only variation in this was that the leaders were often more clownish in their performances, and upon several occasions only four men representing women appeared. In this case two men danced together. Some of the dancers dropped out from weariness, which caused diminution in some of the sets. The last dance closed at the first ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... delicacy,—his eye is bright and quick,—his lips play over the thought he utters as a pianist's fingers dance over their music,—and his whole air, though it may be timid, and even awkward, has nothing clownish. If you are a teacher, you know what to expect from each of these young men. With equal willingness, the first will be slow at learning; the second will take to his books as a pointer or a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... name was Lewis Orne. He had been a blocky, heavy-muscled redhead with slightly off-center features and the hard flesh of a heavy planet native. Even in the placid repose of near death there was something clownish about his appearance. His burned, ungent-covered face looked made up ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... delicious, all-pervading sense of uninterrupted happiness. No man, however rough, could thus associate with a delicate and refined woman without acquiring some of the elegance which distinguished her. I imperceptibly lost the clownish air which had so often bitterly mortified me; and as my perceptions became more acute I saw in my own manners all that could render me repulsive, and hastened ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... tale gave great satisfaction to all the hearers, and the canon especially enjoyed it, for he had remarked with particular attention the manner in which it had been told, which was as unlike the manner of a clownish goatherd as it was like that of a polished city wit; and he observed that the curate had been quite right in saying that the woods bred men of learning. They all offered their services to Eugenio but he who showed ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... I remember. Well, he was better than most. But the faces of your young people in general are not interesting—I don't mean the children, but the young men and women—and they are awkward and clownish in their manners, without the quaintness of the elder generation, who are the funniest old dears in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... durabit, it shall not last), un lit sans ciel, that is, a bed without a tester, for un licencie, a graduated person, as bachelor in divinity or utter barrister-at-law; which are equivocals so absurd and witless, so barbarous and clownish, that a fox's tail should be fastened to the neck-piece of, and a vizard made of a cowsherd given to everyone that henceforth should offer, after the restitution of learning, to make use of any such fopperies ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... to know how to carve any joint or dish set before them, or, however high their standing in the world, they appear awkward and clownish; and, therefore, all men should practise the art of carving ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... commander of the starry sky, That guidest the life of every mortal wight, From the inclosures of the fleeting clouds Fain down some food, or else I faint and die: Pour down some drink, or else I faint and die. O Jupiter, hast thou sent Mercury In clownish shape to minister some food? Some meat! ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... attempt to rise above the level of ordinary life and colloquial speaking. You do not assume, indeed, the solemnity of the pulpit, or the tone of stage-declamation; neither are you at liberty to gabble on at a venture, without emphasis or discretion, or to resort to vulgar dialect or clownish pronunciation. You must steer a middle course. You are tied down to a given and appropriate articulation, which is determined by the habitual associations between sense and sound, and which you can only hit by entering into the author's meaning, as you must find the proper words and style to express ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... now the clownish sexton Narrow courtier-rules rebukes; First he shows the grave of Goethe, Schiller's next, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... drive or send to the poll an entire labouring population. These districts would return an unmixed squirearchy. The scattered small towns which now send so many members to Parliament, would be lost in the clownish mass; their votes would send to Parliament no distinct members. The agricultural part of England would choose its representatives from quarter-sessions exclusively. On the other hand a large part of the constituencies would be town districts, and these would send ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... First, a tall, clownish youth falls before the queen and desires a boon, which she might not refuse, viz. the achievement of any adventure which might present itself. Then appears a fair lady, habited in mourning, and riding on an ass, while behind her comes a dwarf, leading a caparisoned war-horse, upon which ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... was a clownish sort of boy among the boys—an expert mimic and impersonator. This talent made him popular and in his way a leader. He was a natural actor, and early showed marked ability as ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... of the people when questioned upon points the most interesting to them, regarding their history, their agriculture, their tanks, and temples, was most provoking; and their manners seemed to me more rude and clownish than those of people in any other part of India I had travelled over. I asked my little friend the Sarimant, who rode with me, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... be compared with the episode of Tappe-coue or Tickletoby in Pantagruel:—"Villon, to dress an old clownish father grey-beard, who was to represent God the Father [at the performance of a mystery], begged of Friar Stephen Tickletoby, sacristan to the Franciscan Friars of the place, to lend him a cope and a stole. Tickletoby refused him, alleging that by their provincial statutes it was rigorously ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... talk, dinner-guests should remember that the line of demarcation between light talk and buffoonery may become dangerously delicate. One can talk lightly, but nicely; while buffoonery is just what the lexicographers define it to be: "Amusing others by clownish tricks and by commonplace pleasantries." Gentle dulness ever loved a joke; and the fact that very often humorists, paid so highly in literature to perform, will not play a single conversational trick, is the best proof that they have the good sense to vote their hosts and companions ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... in part Gallegans, on which account I know not a little of their ways, and even something of their language." "Is the opinion which you have formed of them at all in their favour?" I inquired. "By no means, mon maitre; the men in general seem clownish and simple, yet they are capable of deceiving the most clever filou of Paris; and as for the women, it is impossible to live in the same house with them, more especially if they are Camareras, and wait upon the Senora; they ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... dream, as he ran his eyes over the rustic-looking passenger, that under that clownish hat was the busy brain that had trailed him and his crew down to such ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... meet Such full fruition, that the orb of heaven, Fullest of love, and of most ample space, Receive you, as ye tell (upon my page Henceforth to stand recorded) who ye are, And what this multitude, that at your backs Have past behind us." As one, mountain-bred, Rugged and clownish, if some city's walls He chance to enter, round him stares agape, Confounded and struck dumb; e'en such appear'd Each spirit. But when rid of that amaze, (Not long the inmate of a noble heart) He, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... to tree? or to the shrill cat birds? The sublime accents of the thrush from on high always retard my steps that I may listen to the delicious music. The variegated appearances of the dew drops, as they hang to the different objects, must present even to a clownish imagination, the most voluptuous ideas. The astonishing art which all birds display in the construction of their nests, ill provided as we may suppose them with proper tools, their neatness, their convenience, always make me ashamed of the slovenliness ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... Strophe and Antistrophe continue the strain, with a hope that now at length the wretched civil tumults may cease in England and Peace and Literature come back, but still with a return of the query what could possibly have become of the missing volume between London and Oxford, and into what clownish hands it might have fallen. In the third Strophe and Antistrophe there is a compliment to Rous as the faithful keeper of one of the most splendid libraries in the world, with acknowledgment of his kindness in seeking to have the missing ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... befell that when the one appeared gracious and the other ungracious, every trick of their bodies seemed to call out confirmation. Not that alone: but the more deeply Mr. Henry floundered in his brother's toils, the more clownish he grew; and the more the Master enjoyed his spiteful entertainment, the more engagingly, the more smilingly, he went! So that the plot, by its own scope and progress, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... place, I would not pry into such dirty corners, I would not soil my hands with it. But you have soiled yours. However, since you have begun on the subject yourself, I must tell you that six days ago I too received a clownish anonymous letter. In it some rascal informs me that Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch has gone out of his mind, and that I have reason to fear some lame woman, who 'is destined to play a great part in my life.' I remember the expression. Reflecting and being aware that Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... his assassination. And this it is that makes him now the less able, poor fellow, to understand and endure the shame he is put to. 'Stat rex indignatus.' He does try to assert himself now—does strive, by day and by night, poor petrefact, to rip off these fell and clownish integuments. Of his elder brother in Paris he has never heard; but he knows that Lazarus arisen from the tomb did not live in grave-clothes. He forgets that after all he is only a statue. To himself he is still a king—or at least a man who was once a king and, having done ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... and tact, which can only be formed in a highly polished state of society, nor for the indignation of insulted morality expressed by the ancients: it is altogether a caricature, not of finished individual portraits, but of a single type;—a clownish sensual German priest, his intellect narrowed by stupid wonder and fanatical hatred, who relates with silly naivete and gossiping confidence the various absurd and scandalous situations into which he falls. These letters are not the work ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... his foresters frolicked it among the shepherds, Corydon came in with a fair mazer[1] full of cider, and presented it to Gerismond with such a clownish salute that he began to smile, and took it of the old shepherd very kindly, drinking to Aliena and the rest of her fair maids, amongst whom Phoebe was the foremost. Aliena pledged the king, and drunk to Rosader; so the carouse ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... happiness, you would hardly know her. She has just been showing me the magnificent hoop of diamonds Ellis has given her. She says we must all call him Ellis now. 'Chacun a son gout:' Poor Ellis is not very brilliant, certainly: I remember we used to call him clownish and uncultivated. But he has a good heart, and he is really very fond of Isabel; and as she is satisfied, I suppose we need not doubt the wisdom of her choice. Mother is radiant, and makes so much of the little bride-elect ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... he became, from an idiot and a clown, to be one of the most complete gentlemen in Cyprus, did many valorous exploits, and all for the love of mistress Iphigenia. In a word, I may say thus much of them all, let them be never so clownish, rude and horrid, Grobians and sluts, if once they be in love they will be most neat and spruce; for, [5505]Omnibus rebus, et nitidis nitoribus antevenit amor, they will follow the fashion, begin to trick up, and to ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... rude, clownish, matter-of-fact man; he wanted some person to assist him in looking after the farm, and taking care of the stock; and he brought up Mary to fill the place of the son he had lost, early inuring her to take an active part, in those manual labors which were peculiar ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... seeing that Dunce, its great author and progenitor, cannot possibly dispense with the letter e. Meantime we must remark, that the first three of Mr. Campbell's variations are mere caprices of the press; as is Shagspere; or, more probably, this last euphonious variety arose out of the gross clownish pronunciation of the two hiccuping "marksmen" who rode over to Worcester for the license; and one cannot forbear laughing at the bishop's secretary for having been so misled by two varlets, professedly incapable of signing their own names. The same drunken villains had cut down the bride's name ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... episode in his life. He was the lion of the day in literary circles. Many persons who met him have told how he impressed them; but the most interesting account is that of Walter Scott, then a youth of sixteen. He says of Burns: "His person was strong and robust; his manner rustic, not clownish; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity. His countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. . . There was a strong expression of sense and shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think, indicated the ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... is by nature clownish, and who has what he calls a "noble sincerity," is very apt to do injustice to the polished man; he should, however, remember that "the manner of a vulgar man has freedom without ease, and that the manner of a gentleman has ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... severall sorts of fashions: Some of them she hath a great fancy for, but then she doubts whether that be the newest mode or not. One seems too plain and common, which makes her imagine in her thoughts; that's too Clownish. But others stand very neat and handsom. 'Tis true, the Stuf and the Lining is costly and very dear; but then again it is very comly and handsom. And then again she thinks with her self, as long as I am at Market, I'd as good go through stirch with it; and make ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... end, the coffee-master grows tired of his clownish visitors, saying plainly, "This rudeness becomes a suburb tavern rather than my coffee house"; and with the assistance of his servants he "thrusts 'em all out of doors, after ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... this point a short transition based on the rhythm of the first theme; followed by a lovely cantabile melody—the second theme proper—that typifies the romantic love pervading the play. This theme also is expanded into several sections; the first of which may portray the clownish Athenian tradespeople, and the second, the brays of Bottom after he has been transformed ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... excited by her cries, dashed at my schoolfellow in the way described. Several of the spectators now tried to seize the goat, but he being of extraordinary strength, butted and pushed so vigorously that several measured their length upon the earth, to the no small merriment of the clownish persons who had collected together to the burning ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... broken now and then by the stifled laughter of the onlookers, the strange meal proceeded; and when it was nearly at an end, a clownish fellow passed by, blowing on a rustic pipe. But for Don Quixote, who had transformed the inn into a castle, the fat publican into a powerful governor, and the vagabond damsels into high-born ladies, it was an easy matter to find in those rude notes a strain ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... idol of the schools. No wonder he and Oxford did not agree together. He wittily calls her "the widow of sound learning," and again, "a constellation of pedantic, obstinate ignorance and presumption, mixed with a clownish incivility that would tax the patience of Job." He lashed the shortcomings of English learning in 'La Cena delle Ceneri' (Ash Wednesday Conversation). But Bruno's roving spirit, and perhaps also his heterodox tendencies, drove him at last from England, and for the next five years he roamed ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... She was in harmony with the June evening and a part of it, while he, in his working clothes, his rugged, sun-browned features and hair tinged with gray, was a blot upon the scene. She who was so lovely, must be conscious of his rude, clownish appearance. He would have faced any man living and held his own on the simple basis of his manhood. Anything like scorn, although veiled, on Alida's part, would have touched his pride and steeled his will, but the words and manner of this gentle woman who tried to act as if blind to all ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... been comparing him in her mind with another. A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him. He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror. Instinctively he turned his back more to the light lest she might see the shame that ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... and that to be appointed at the Masters discretion, eyther the Thursday, after the vsuall custom; or according to the best opportunity of the place.... All recreations and sports of schollars, would be meet for Gentlemen. Clownish sports, or perilous, or yet playing for money, are no ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... hulking fellow, nearly eight feet high, with a heavy, loutish air, and the most pitiful little woman you ever saw, hardly taller than his knee. Her arms were not longer, than a baby's, and her poor little legs trotted along as fast as they could, to keep up with his sluggish stride. In a clownish, lubberly sort of way, he seemed to be taking good, kind care of her. They were on exhibition, it appeared, and (their own show being over for the night) were going, poor things, to see a certain famous ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... assumed. A greater attention was paid to dress, which was of gayer hues and more fashionable texture. I rallied her on these tokens of a sweetheart, and amused myself with expatiating to her on the qualifications of her lover. A clownish fellow was frequently her visitant. His attentions did not appear to be discouraged. He therefore was readily supposed to be the man. When pointed out as the favourite, great resentment was expressed, and obscure insinuations were made that her aim ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... sat down, they asked the hag where were the people of the house. And the hag spoke not but muttered. Thereupon behold the people of the house entered; a ruddy, clownish curly-headed man, with a burthen of fagots on his back, and a pale slender woman, also carrying a bundle under her arm. And they barely welcomed the men, and kindled a fire with the boughs. And the woman cooked something and gave ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... Among the people went Queen Bertha, breathing gracious charities, And saw but smiling faces; for the light Aye looks on brightened colors. Like the dawn (Beloved of all the happy, often sought In the slow east by hollow eyes that watch) She seemed to husked find clownish gratitude, That could but kneel and thank. Of industry She was the fair exemplar, us she span Among her maids; and every day she broke Bread to the needy stranger at her gate. All sloth and rudeness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... indeed left none his like behind him. There still remained, indeed, in his party, many acute intellects, many eloquent tongues, many brave and honest hearts. There still remained a rugged and clownish soldier,—half-fanatic, half-buffoon,—whose talents discerned as yet only by one penetrating eye, were equal to all the highest duties of the soldier and the prince. But in Hampden, and in Hampden alone, were united all the qualities which, at such a crisis, were necessary to save ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... condemns beyond the reach of hope The careless lips that speak of s[)o]ap for soap; Her edict exiles from her fair abode The clownish voice that utters r[)o]ad for road; Less stern to him who calls his coat a c[)o]at, And steers his boat believing it a b[)o]at. She pardoned one, our classic city's boast, Who said at Cambridge, m[)o]st instead of most, But knit her brows ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... Addison observes that 'women are armed with fans, as men with swords, and sometimes do more execution with them.' The graceful carriage of each weapon was considered a test of high breeding. The clownish man was in danger of being tripped up by his sword getting between his legs: the fan held clumsily looked more of a burden than an ornament; while in the hands of an adept it could be made to speak a language of its own. {35} It ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... impunity,) than through crime? and what utility, or what personal advantage do we hope for, when we are anxious to know whether those bodies are moving whose movements are concealed from us, and owing to what causes they revolve through the heavens? And who is there that lives according to such clownish maxims, or who has so rigorously hardened himself against the study of nature, as to be averse to things worthy of being understood, and to be indifferent to and disregard such knowledge, merely because there is no exact ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... the whole tragedy and comedy of a ham and beef carver's life. So you will get a view of the world as oddly coloured as Harlequin's clothes, with puffs of sentiment dear to the soul of Columbine, and Clownish fun with Pantaloonish wisdom and chuckles. When you were young, you used, I think, to enjoy a butterfly's kiss; and that, you remember, was when your mother brushed your cheek with her eye-lashes. And also when you were young you held a buttercup under ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... true, what Action will it beare? Nihil pro nihilo, none in law; what it will doe vpon the stage I cannot tell, for there a man maye make action besides his part, when he hath nothing at all to say: and if there, it is but a clownish action that it will beare; for what can bee made of a Ropemaker more than a Clowne? Will Kempe, I mistrust it will fall to thy lot for a merriment one of these dayes." Strange Newes, Of the ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp
... give makes the boys a little less clownish in their manners, and more intelligent when spoken to by strangers. On the other hand, it has made them less contented with their lot in life, and less willing to work with their hands. The form which discontent takes in this country is not of a healthy kind; for, the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... awkward, clownish, ill-mannered, insulting, uncouth, bluff, coarse, impertinent, raw, unmannerly, blunt, discourteous, impolite, rude, unpolished, boorish, ill-behaved, impudent, rustic, untaught, brusk, ill-bred, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... possessed De Guiche to go to a wild boar-hunt by himself; that is but a clownish idea of sport, only fit for that class of people who, unlike the Marechal de Gramont, have no dogs and huntsmen, to ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... grimy to his grave. Put a hundred boys together where they will have the appurtenances of a clown, and I do not believe there will be ten out of the hundred who will not become precisely to that degree clownish. I am not battling for the luxuries of life, but I am for its decencies. I would not turn boys into Sybarites, but neither would I let them riot into Satyrs. The effeminacy of a false aristocracy is no nearer the heights of true manhood than the clumsiness of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... did my heart e'er tell me, I should be Condemned the flower of my youth to spend In this wild native region, and amongst A wretched, clownish crew, to whom the names Of wisdom, learning, are but empty sounds, Or arguments of laughter and of scorn; Who hate, avoid me; not from envy, no; For they do not esteem me better than Themselves, but fancy that I, in my heart, That feeling cherish; ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... Monday morning, and the "crew" to which he had referred proved to be members of his own family—John and Will—whales as to size, and clownish. ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... for a moment silent. Then he laughed a little laugh—not a pleasant one. "Another of Time's clownish tricks!" he said to himself: "the earl the factor on the family-estate!" Donal did not like the way he took it, but saw ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... man with a long, square-jawed face, his skin tanned by exposure on shipboard, in the army, and on the farm, and his mustache cut in a straight line over a large straight mouth. He wore clerical eyeglasses and unclerical clothes. His opponents called him clownish; his friends declared him Lincolnesque. Failing to make headway against him by ridicule, the Republicans arranged a series of joint debates between the candidates; but the audience at the first meeting was so obviously ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... say to you personally what I am about to write, but was prevented by a kind of almost clownish bashfulness. Now that I a not in your presence I shall speak out more boldly: a letter does not blush. I am inflamed with an inconceivably ardent desire, and one, as I think, of which I have no reason to be ashamed, that in a history written by you my name should be conspicuous ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... proposed the motion for the Address to the King, and went over much of the {90} same historical ground that Pulteney had traversed in the Commons. The Duke of Newcastle replied in his usual awkward and bungling fashion, with the uneasy attitudes and clownish gestures which were characteristic of him. He was not able to make any effective use of the King's message, and the Lord Chancellor read it for him. The division in the House of Lords showed seventy-nine ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... thought streaming from the death-ship and the curving river is the thought of the older South,—the sincere and passionate belief that somewhere between men and cattle, God created a tertium quid, and called it a Negro,—a clownish, simple creature, at times even lovable within its limitations, but straitly foreordained to walk within the Veil. To be sure, behind the thought lurks the afterthought,—some of them with favoring chance might become men, but in sheer self-defence we dare not let them, ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... England to the north. The vigorous race on the other side of Trent only found its opportunity when the age of machinery began; its civilization, long delayed, differs in obvious respects from that of older England. In Sussex or in Somerset, however dull and clownish the typical inhabitant, he plainly belongs to an ancient order of things, represents an immemorial subordination. The rude man of the north is—by comparison—but just emerged from barbarism, and under any circumstances would show less smooth a front. By great misfortune, he ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... hapned, which being undertaken by xii. severall knights, are in these xii. books severally handled and discoursed. The first was this. In the beginning of the feast, there presented him selfe a tall clownish younge man, who, falling before the Queen of Faries, desired a boone (as the manner then was) which during that feast she might not refuse: which was that hee might have the atchievement of any adventure, which during that ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... I could do, Dugald?" said the comrade, a ludicrous man with his paunch now far beyond the limit of the soldier's belt he used to buckle easily, wearing in a clownish notion of deference to this soldier's passing a foolish small Highland bonnet he had ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... that the D'Ossoli family, though pretending to be noble, actually lived like peasants; that the count's brother had for some years been a servant to a gentleman he knew of; that the count himself was an exceedingly handsome man, but ignorant and clownish; that he could not even speak Italian; and that Margaret Fuller had become a good deal demoralized in Rome, and could neither write nor converse with her former brilliancy. Hawthorne accepted this statement and entered it in his diary with inferences of his own which are still more unfavorable ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... please. But your father had manners, after all. You are as rash as he; and in essential matters clownish—which he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... an intelligent and a pious mother, he was placed, like Voltaire and Diderot, in an attorney's office. Dismissed with disgrace "as good for nothing but to ply the file," the young man was bound apprentice to an engraver, "a clownish and violent fellow," says Rousseau, "who succeeded very shortly in dulling all the brightness of my boyhood, brutalizing my lively and loving character, and reducing me in spirit, as I was in fortune, to my real position ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the business. "She is my elder," he said. Perhaps an existence like his, always solitary, reduced to the satisfaction of mere needs, deprived of money and all pleasures in youth, may explain to physiologists and thinkers the clownish expression of the face, the feebleness of mind, the vacant silliness of the man. His sister had steadily prevented him from marrying, afraid perhaps to lose her power over him, and seeing only a source of expense and ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... understand the vital and almost painful interest which this young man had roused in her. He was both child and poet to her, and as she watched him trying to make friends with the men, her indignation rose against their clownish offishness. She understood fully that his neat speech, his Eastern accent, together with his tailor-cut clothing and the delicacy of his table manners, would surely mark him for slaughter among the cow-hands, and the wish to shield ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... ease with which the poet fell in and out of love was the chief fault in a faulty life. But when this episode occurred the boy was still an innocent country lad in his fifteenth year, a lad perhaps somewhat rude and clownish, at least such is an unfounded tradition. Out of the monotony of this life of prosaic toil and drudgery, Burns is lifted by the romance which fortunately he has ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... learn to hate his discords and false measures. The horror of cruelty more inclines me to clemency, than any example of clemency could possibly do. A good rider does not so much mend my seat, as an awkward attorney or a Venetian, on horseback; and a clownish way of speaking more reforms mine than the most correct. The ridiculous and simple look of another always warns and advises me; that which pricks, rouses and incites much better than that which tickles. The time is now proper for us to reform backward; more ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... boorish society of the country, finds himself, for the first time, amongst well-bred gentlemen. Of all here present you are probably the sole person ignorant that I am Sir Giles Mompesson. But it is scarcely likely that they should be aware, as I chance to be, that the clownish insolent who has dared to wag his tongue against me, is the son of a ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... may appear, to be thought a well-bred Person has no small Share in this clownish Behaviour: A Discourse therefore relating to good Breeding towards a loving and a tender Wife, would be of great Use to this Sort of Gentlemen. Could you but once convince them, that to be civil at least is ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... and cherishing them. But Lucius Manlius aggravated the misfortune of his son by severity, and further clogged the slowness of his intellects; and if there were in him even the least spark of natural ability he extinguished it by a rustic life and a clownish education, ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... husband's friend and in her dainty imperious way would take no denial. So George had his bath, got a fresh horse saddled, nearly chucked Minnie over the other side as he clumsily helped her to mount her pony, and rode away with her a willing if somewhat clownish captive. Arriving at the bungalow Mactavish, honest George was bewildered by the transformation it had undergone. Flowers were where the spirit-case used to stand. There was a drawing-room with actually a piano in it; the World lay on the table instead of the ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... The level lines of backs, the small, fine heads, And laugh'd and said, "The Gods will have it thus, The choicest of the earth for sacrifice; Let it be man, or maid, or lowing bull!" Where lay the witchcraft in their clownish words, To shake my heart? I know not; but it thrill'd, As Daphne's leaves, thrill to a wind so soft, One might not feel it on the open palm; I cannot choose but laugh—for what have I To do with altars and ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... aloud and scornfully, while he said: "Clownish dolts, don't thrust in your tongues, when people are debating about matters of art and science; stick to your straw and your chaff; they are things you are better skilled in handling. Proceed, knowing sir," he added, looking ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... character are deadened; all pride of personal appearance, all nice self-respect and proper regard for the good opinion of others, every sense of decorum, and at last every pretence of decency. Dignity of behavior yields to clownish silliness, and the person lately respected is now an object of pity and loathing. The great central convictions of right and wrong now find no place in his nature; conscience is quenched, dishonesty prevails. This is true both ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... fossilized in print, from the rhythmic cries of a barbaric dance-circle in its festal hour, there is a weighty school of critics who hold them to be the mere rag-tag camp-followers of mediaeval romance. See, for instance, the clownish ballad of Tom Thumbe, with its confused Arthurian echoes. Some of the events recorded in our ballads, moreover, are placed by definite local tradition at a comparatively recent date, as Otterburne, Edom o' Gordon, Kinmont Willie. What becomes, then, of their claims to long descent? ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... paper was not only not 'toned,' but rough and inelegant in the extreme; and the edges, which, ought to have been smooth and gilded, were rugged and uneven like a ploughed field. It was hopeless to expect that a most discerning public should pay six shillings for a book of pastorals of such clownish appearance, when the sweetest rhymes, jingling like silver bells, and descriptive of angels and cupids, and the whole heaven of Greek and Roman mythology, were offered for a lesser sum, in settings resplendent with all the colours of the rainbow. There was no room ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... a state of feverish excitement. His own behaviour had been wretchedly clownish; he was only too well aware of that. He ought to have put aside all the grosser aspects of his case, and have exhibited the purely intellectual motives which made such a change as he purposed seem desirable to him. That would have been to act with dignity; that would have been the very best form ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... were diffident. That was the first thing which reassured me. Had you been rustic, clownish, awkward, I ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... that you are participating in a carnival, portends that you are soon to enjoy some unusual pleasure or recreation. A carnival when masks are used, or when incongruous or clownish figures are seen, implies discord in the home; business will be ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... imprisoned damsel, whom he releases from the tree, Maudlin and Douce retiring the while to watch his success, which is small. Baffled, he again shuts the girl up in her natural cell, and his mother, coming forward, rates him soundly for his clownish ways, reading him a lecture for his guidance in his intercourse with women, in which she seems little concerned by the presence of her daughter. This latter, so far as it is possible to judge from the few speeches assigned to her in the fragment, appears to be of a more ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Saint-Romain, constructed one of the churches, which succeeded each other on the site of the Cathedral, but, they were deceived who have said that this bishop extirpated paganism from Rouen, and from the province. Saint-Ouen, who came after Saint-Romain, found the people clownish, superstitious, and idolatrous, in consequence of the negligence of some bishops, his predecessors. The inhabitants of the neighbouring country, were coarse, cruel and dishonest; morals and the sciences were cultivated only among the higher classes of society. We find in the preface to the life ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet
... leading out of the town in a northerly direction, several of the men on guard were assembled, amusing themselves at the expense of the departing peasantry, whose uncouth physiognomy and strange clownish appearance afforded abundant food for the quaint jokes and comical remarks of the soldiers. The market people were, for the most part, women, old men, and boys; the able-bodied men from the country around Pampeluna, having, with few exceptions, left their homes, either voluntarily ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... Surely, quoth he, this man, if he were a prophet, would not let this woman come near him, for she is a town-sinner (so ignorant are all self-righteous men of the way of Christ with sinners.) But lest Mary should be discouraged with some clownish carriage of this Pharisee and so desert her good beginnings, and her new steps which she now had begun to take towards eternal life, Jesus began thus with Simon. "Simon," saith he, "I have somewhat to say ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... all his gaiety and grace, ere the shock of his brother's death had fallen on him! At Thirsk, Malcolm told of the prowess and the knighthood of honest Trenton and Kitson, to somewhat incredulous ears. The two squires had been held as clownish fellows, and the sentiment of the country was that Mistress Agnes was well quit of them, and the rough guardianship by which they had kept off all other suitors. As mine host concluded, ''Tis a fine thing ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her to rise and abroad with me by coach to Bartholomew Fayre, and our boy with us, and there shewed them and myself the dancing on the ropes, and several other the best shows; but pretty it is to see how our boy carries himself so innocently clownish as would make one laugh. Here till late and dark, then up and down, to buy combes for my wife to give her mayds, and then by coach home, and there at the office set down my day's work, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... she was swayed by a pure and mystic passion. De Seze, on the other hand, believed this mystic passion to be genuine love. Coming to visit her at Nohant, he was revolted by the clownish husband with whom she lived. It gave him an esthetic shock to see that she had borne children to this boor. Therefore he shrank back from her, and in time ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... almost too pale for beauty, which came of his being so little in the open air and the sunlight—for even vegetables grown in the dark are white; but he looked happy, merry indeed—perhaps at the thought of having routed the goblins; and his bearing as he stood before them had nothing clownish or rude ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... "Pyramus and Thisbe" for the Duke's wedding feast. It is full of "local hits," which are not lost upon the audience. In the practical jokes, the melodrama, the ranting bombast, and Bottom's ambition to play "a tyrant's vein," they recognise a satire on the amateur theatricals of the trades-guilds, the clownish horseplay of the "moralities" so-called. These crude plays, once so popular, have become the jest of an audience who pride themselves on a drama of higher ideals ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... of problematical nature into the following sixteen classes: the sad, the extremely good or bad, star-gazers, scatter-brains, apathetic, misanthropic, doubters and investigators, reverent, critical, executive, stupid and clownish, naive, funny, anamnesic, disposed to learn, and blase; patience, foresight, and self-control, he thinks, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... passed between her and the chaplain. I forgot the shot through the window; I forgot Bates and the interest my room possessed for him and his unknown accomplice; but the sudden distrust and contempt I had awakened in the girl by my clownish behavior annoyed me increasingly. ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... "obscurists" and the adversaries of profane science; and this inevitable struggle determined the first character of Russian literature, where the satiric element, which in essence is an attack on the enemies of reform, predominates. In organizing grotesque processions, clownish masquerades, in which the long-skirted clothes and the streaming beards of the honorable champions of times gone by were ridiculed, Peter himself appeared as a pitiless destroyer of the ancient costumes and ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... yet our fires with joy could Plautus hear; Gay were his jests, his numbers charm'd their ear." Let me not say too lavishly they prais'd; But sure their judgment was full cheaply pleas'd, If you or I with taste are haply blest, To know a clownish ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... was Isis in the olden time, a rustic Corn-Mother adored with uncouth rites by Egyptian swains. But the homely features of the clownish goddess could hardly be traced in the refined, the saintly form which, spiritualised by ages of religious evolution, she presented to her worshippers of after days as the true wife, the tender mother, the beneficent queen of nature, encircled with the nimbus of moral purity, of immemorial and ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... hopefulness was too sudden to be borne. Crouching behind the bush, he dropped his head in his arms. What could he hope for, single-handed against such overwhelming odds? For a while his heart failed him utterly, and all his faculties were scattered in clownish confusion. He knew not which way to turn. At last one thought shone through the murk of his brain like a star: Natalie must not be rudely frightened. He got up; and composing his face with a great effort of will, ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... disappointed, but ample redemption, with interest, was secure with us. Lastly, our common captivatrix of the love of all men (money), did not neglect the rectors of country schools, nor the pedagogues of clownish boys, but rather, when we had leisure to enter their little gardens and paddocks, we culled redolent flowers upon the surface, and dug up neglected roots (not, however, useless to the studious), and such coarse digests of barbarism, as with the gift of eloquence ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... schoolmate Juanito Pelaez, the barbero or pet of the professors, as big a rascal as he could be, with a roguish look and a clownish smile. The son of a Spanish mestizo—a rich merchant in one of the suburbs, who based all his hopes and joys on the boy's talent—he promised well with his roguery, and, thanks to his custom of playing tricks on every one and then hiding behind his companions, he had ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... precincts? Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried in my very title-page? and could it have been possible for me, with a moderate attention to decorum, to introduce any scene more lively than might be produced by the jocularity of a clownish but faithful valet, or the garrulous narrative of the heroine's fille-de-chambre, when rehearsing the stories of blood and horror which she had heard in the servants' hall? Again, had my title borne 'Waverley, a Romance from the German,' what ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... would not show my CHARACTERS in so low and clownish a degree of Life; For if I draw 'em so rough, and Porter-like, in one place, I cannot give 'em Tenderness and Simplicity in another; without ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... for the place even of a menial servant, they were too clownish and awkward for the presence of the lady of the house;—and once, when William (who had been educated at the free grammar-school of the town in which he was born, and was an excellent scholar), hoping to obtain the good opinion of a young clergyman whom he solicited for the favour of waiting upon ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... life have not made me an adept in talking with young ladies," said Paul. "Doubtless you think me rude and clownish, and perhaps you are right, but I hope I have nothing but true feelings at heart. You are fighting for your father in this election, Miss Bolitho, and I do not complain in the least. You hope he will win, and you are using ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... polished and courteous, who bow and scrape, and salute each other by certain prescribed gestures, then the Quakers will appear to have contracted much rust, and to have an indisputable right to the title of a clownish and inflexible people. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... frequented. He mixed acute observation with light satire, in that just proportion which was free alike from malignant slander and insipid praise. He mimicked with ready accent the manners of the affected or the clownish, and made his own graceful tone and manner seem doubly such when he resumed it. Foreign countries—their customs, their manners, the rules of their courts—-the fashions, and even the dress of their ladies-were ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... right; is he not, father?' 'Do as you like, girl,' said he. 'I only wish to see you happy.' It was now settled that in two days we were to be spliced. All the clodhoppers and grass-combers I had met before, who were mostly her relations, were asked to the wedding, and among the rest her clownish admirer, who, I understood, was her cousin. He was rather sulky at first, but seeing everyone around him in good humour, he came up to me and offered his hand, which I took and shook heartily. The farmhouse not being more ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... "Indeed!" said the ill-bred, clownish king, contemptuously. "And how can the queen think of violating her solemn oath which renders every inch of the Low Countries inalienable. I have no desire to obtain distant territory which will be useless to me; much less do I wish to expend money in new fortification. Neither the ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... Persians used them, and this not once only, but many times, when they laid their cities waste, demolished their temples, and cut the throats of those animals whom they esteemed to be gods; for it is not reasonable to imitate the clownish ignorance of Apion, who hath no regard to the misfortunes of the Athenians, or of the Lacedemonians, the latter of whom were styled by all men the most courageous, and the former the most religious of the Grecians. I say nothing of such kings as have ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... most solemn act. Troops of devils burlesqued the sacred rites of the faith, and bands of comic masks filled the arena at times and delighted the audience by playing practical jokes on the spectators and each other. The solitary white woman attracted their clownish humour, and they danced in front of her balcony, shouting out rude witticisms that caused much amusement to the lookers-on. Fortunately the girl's command of the language, fairly good though it was, was insufficient to enable her to understand their coarse jests. But their intention to insult her ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... would mope alone, nursing his jealous mood, as though in this clownish fashion matters were to be mended. Did Cynthia but speak to Crispin, he scowled; did Crispin answer her, he grit his teeth at the covert meaning wherewith his fancy invested Crispin's tones; whilst did they chance ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... appendage to his daughter's state! Ah, Jesus Maria! such a state! such a muchacha! A picked-up foundling—a swineherd's daughter—to be ennobled by his, Pedro's, attendance, and for whose vulgar, clownish tricks,—tricks of a swineherd's daughter,—he, Pedro, was to be brought to book and insulted as if she were of Hidalgo blood! Ah, Caramba! Don Juan Peyton would find he could no more make a servant of him than he could ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... would protect them peacefully and with justice. The chiefs answered not a word to this. Thereupon, the bishop spoke again and asked them whether they had understood the words he had spoken to them, and if they would answer. Thereupon a clownish Indian arose and said: "We answer that we wish the king of Espana to be our king and sovereign, for he has sent Castilians to us, who are freeing us from the tyranny and domination of our chiefs, as well as fathers who aid us against the same Castilians and protect us from them." ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... first. His clownish ways pleased the judge, the jury and the spectators. His ready tongue and infinite good humor made him a favorite. There may not be much law in Justice-of-the-Peace proceedings, but there is a certain rude equity which possibly answers ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... his shedding tears over a print representing a soldier lying dead in the snow, his dog sitting in misery on one side, on the other his widow with a child in her arms. His person was robust, his manners rustic, not clownish. ... His countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. There was a strong expression of shrewdness in his lineaments; the eye alone indicated the poetic character and temperament. It was large ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... death against The will is but a slovenly kind of potion; And though prescribed by Heaven, it goes against men's stomachs. So does it at fourscore too, when the soul's Mewed up in narrow darkness: neither sees nor hears. Pish! 'tis mere fondness in our nature. A certain clownish cowardice that still Would stay at home and dares not venture Into foreign countries, though better than Its own. Ha! what countries? for we receive Descriptions of th' other world from our divines As blind men take relations of this from us: My thoughts lead ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... way; strong, exactly where we are weak, in pedigree and in the temper of a swordsman? Sure, no reasonable woman would hesitate. But alas——!" Here his argument was stopped by the consciousness that Lady Ashton was not always reasonable, in his sense of the word. "To prefer some clownish Merse laird to the gallant young nobleman, and to the secure possession of Ravenswood upon terms of easy compromise—it would be the act of ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... could possibly have possessed De Guiche to go to a wild-boar hunt by himself; that is but a clownish idea of sport, and only fit for that class of people who, unlike the Marechal de Grammont, have no dogs and huntsmen to hunt ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... unfeminine; wild, wild as an unbacked colt. untutored, unschooled (ignorant) 491. unkempt. uncombed, untamed, unlicked[obs3], unpolished, uncouth; plebeian; incondite[obs3]; heavy, rude, awkward; homely, homespun, home bred; provincial, countrified, rustic; boorish, clownish; savage, brutish, blackguard, rowdy, snobbish; barbarous, barbaric; Gothic, unclassical[obs3], doggerel, heathenish, tramontane, outlandish; uncultivated; Bohemian. obsolete &c. (antiquated) 124; unfashionable ; newfangled &c. (unfamiliar) 83; odd ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... amidst the dullness and barbarism which oppressed them. They readily believed each other's productions to be immortal, as every band of youthful poets does, and dreamt of a future of poetic glory for Steyn by which it would vie with Mantua. Their environment of clownish, narrow-minded conventional divines—for as such they saw them—neither acknowledged nor encouraged them. Erasmus's strong propensity to fancy himself menaced and injured tinged this position with the martyrdom of oppressed talent. To Cornelius ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... aims at. The culprit, who violates and suffers the vengeance of the laws, is not the dupe of ignorance, but the slave of passion, the victim of habit or necessity. To argue with strong passion, with inveterate habit, with desperate circumstances, is to talk to the winds. Clownish ignorance may indeed be dispelled, and taught better; but it is seldom that a criminal is not aware of the consequences of his act, or has not made up his mind to the alternative. They are, in general, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... friends; and when we entered the well-known reception-room, a very tall, lanky man came quickly forward to meet us. His manner seemed to me the perfection of courtesy. I was struck with the simplicity, kindness, and dignity of his deportment, so different from the clownish manners with which it was then customary to invest him. His face was a pleasant surprise, formed as my expectations had been from the poor photographs then in vogue, and the general belief in his ugliness. I remember thinking how much better-looking he was than ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... officers, except with the protector's consent, or by his orders. This vote brought affairs immediately to a rupture. The officers hastened to Richard, and demanded of him the dissolution of the parliament. Desborow, a man of a clownish and brutal nature, threatened him, if he should refuse compliance. The protector wanted the resolution to deny, and possessed little ability to resist. The parliament was dissolved; and by the same act, the protector was by every one considered as effectually dethroned. Soon after, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... measure. In the words of a recent writer, "the brutalities of Austria's white coats in the north, the unintelligent repression then characteristic of the house of Savoy, the petty spite of the duke of Modena, the mediaeval obscurantism of pope and cardinals in the middle of the peninsula, and the clownish excesses of Ferdinand in the south, could not blot out from the minds of the Italians the recollection of the benefits derived from the just laws, vigorous administration, and enlightened aims of the ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... always the case in towns, that some one in it is foolish or clownish. It happened to be so here; for a Maujeekewis was in the lodge; and after the young man had given his father-in-law presents, as he did to the first, this Maujeekewis jumped up in a passion, saying, "Who is this stranger, that he should have her? ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... he looked down and caught a clownish garnet gleam out of a blackness neighbouring his knee. "Well, see here," he said. ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... felt the words and the manner to be ridiculous, but could not restrain himself. Every moment increased his uneasiness; the hat weighed in his hands like a lump of lead, and he was convinced that he had never looked so clownish. Did her smile ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... surrounded by all the comforts and conveniences, all the marvelous treasures, all that is pleasing to the eye and to the senses, may not be happy—may be unhappy. The rustic who follows the plow through furrowed fields, unkempt, clownish, toil-stained, weary and overworked, may brawl raucous roundelay at even-tide and enjoy the fullness of earthly bliss. His neighbor similarly situated may suffer agonies because his tastes and ambitions are higher. Those who imagine "plow ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann |
