"Clownish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lived in houses where the domestics were 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 ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... 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 not beneath the Character ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... recognisable, if not a staring likeness of the poet, I said and still say—"How awkward is the ensemble of the face! What a painful stare, with its goggle eyes and gaping mouth! The expression of this face has been credited with humour, bonhommie and jollity. To me it is decidedly clownish; and is suggestive of a man crunching a sour apple, or struck with amazement at some unpleasant spectacle. Yet there is force in the lineaments of this muscular face." The large photograph of the Monument lately issued by the New Shakspere Society, as well ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby
... Vegetius, Plato, Bodine, method. hist. cap. 5. hath proved at large) as constitutions of their bodies, and temperature itself. In all particular provinces we see it confirmed by experience, as the air is, so are the inhabitants, dull, heavy, witty, subtle, neat, cleanly, clownish, sick, and sound. In [3148]Perigord in France the air is subtle, healthful, seldom any plague or contagious disease, but hilly and barren: the men sound, nimble, and lusty; but in some parts of Guienne, full of moors and marshes, the people dull, heavy, and subject to many infirmities. Who sees ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... from his surprise he returned my assault with interest. I was nothing in his hands. I was game to be sure, for I was a gentleman; but he had the clownish advantages of bone and muscle. I felt as if I could have fought even unto the death; and I was likely to do so; for he was, according to the vulgar phrase, "putting my head into Chancery," when the gentle Columbine flew ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... delight at all, in very truth, But ever and anon she spoke of the giant strength Of Willard Shafer, and of his wonderful feat Of lifting a traction engine out of the ditch One time at Georgie Kirby's. So Jenny inherited my fortune and married Willard— That mount of brawn! That clownish soul! ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... and take upon themselves such forms for the mere purpose of tipping tables and piano-fortes, rapping upon doors, windows, and empty skulls, misspelling their own names, and murdering Lindley Murray, and performing clownish tricks for the amusement ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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
... quiet clique of the exclusive, studious and cultured; no rotten borough of the arts. All classes rub shoulders on the greasy benches. The raffish young gentleman in gloves must measure his scholarship with the plain, clownish laddie from the parish school. They separate, at the session's end, one to smoke cigars about a watering-place, the other to resume the labours of the field beside his peasant family. The first muster of a college class in Scotland is a scene of curious ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dispelled when Hervey came sauntering into camp at about four o'clock twirling his hat on the end of a stick in an annoyingly care-free manner. Tom Slade saw him passing Council Shack intent upon his acrobatic enterprise of tossing the hat into the air and catching it on his head, as if this clownish feat were the chief concern ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... convulsive twitch of the nose, would agitate his face from time to time, and it was this that completed his resemblance to a rabbit. His merriment was just as likely to find issue in a nervous, metallic, sonorous outburst as in a muffled, clownish guffaw. He would stare at people from top to bottom and from bottom to top in a manner all the more insolent for its jesting character, and to add to the mockery he would detain his gaze upon his interlocutor's buttons, and his eyes would dance from the cravat to the ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... steps into the empty, echoing courtyard. The unexpected appreciation of my doubtful humor set me musing over the possibility of a duty new to Americans. It is the French who have stood for gaiety. We have warmed ourselves in their quick wit. Perhaps it is time for us to do our little clownish best ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... the Caphons,[40] all the Saxas, and the other plagues which attend Antonius, are marking out for themselves in their own minds most beautiful houses, and gardens, and villas, at Tusculum and Alba; and those clownish men—if indeed they are men, and not rather brute beasts—are borne on in their empty hopes as far as the waters and Puteoli. So Antonius has something to promise to his followers. What can we do? Have we anything of the sort? ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... A very clownish Provencal rustic heard of the extremity of the King, while on his way from Marseilles to Paris, and came this morning to Versailles with a remedy, which he said would cure the gangrene. The King was ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... a nearer approach to unity, than the irregularity which is the reproach of the English theatre.' And this sound view of the importance of form, and of the barbarism to which our English genius is prone, from Goody Blake and Harry Gill up to the clownish savagery which occasionally defaces even plays attributed to Shakespeare, is collateral proof of the sanity and balance which marked the foundations of his character, and which at no point of his work ever entirely failed him. Byron's ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... 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, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... sigh, and have a sort of a being in Cologne, where I have some more assurance of protection than I could hope I from those interested brutes, who sent me from you; yet brutish as they are, I know thou art safe from their clownish outrages. For were they senseless as their fellow-monsters of the sea, they durst not profane so pure an excellence as thine; the sullen boars would jouder out a welcome to thee, and gape, I and wonder at thy awful beauty, though they want the tender sense to ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... in solemn silence, 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 of rare music, provided for his delectation ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... last and placed himself, with an inflamed visage, and all the motions of a conjurer, before the people's priest, and cried out: "Zwingli, I conjure thee, by the living God, to tell us the truth." The latter answered very calmly: "That shalt thou hear. Thou art as clownish and seditious a peasant, and as simple as any Our Lords have in the canton." A universal roar of laughter followed, ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... that time they put no women into nunneries but such as were either one-eyed, lame, humpbacked, ill-favored, misshapen, foolish, senseless, spoiled, or corrupt; nor encloistered any men but those that were either sickly, ill-bred, clownish, and the trouble ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... to Siluia. Valentine. Protheus. the two Gentlemen. Anthonio: father to Protheus. Thurio: a foolish riuall to Valentine. Eglamoure: Agent for Siluia in her escape. Host: where Iulia lodges. Outlawes with Valentine. Speed: a clownish seruant to Valentine. Launce: the like to Protheus. Panthion: seruant to Antonio. Iulia: beloued of Protheus. Siluia: beloued of Valentine. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... were only the first fruits of the prosecution.[348] However opinions may differ respecting the merits of the cause for which they suffered, there can be but one view taken of their deportment in the trying hour of execution. In the presence of the horrible preparatives for torture, the most clownish displayed a fortitude and a noble consciousness of honest purpose, contrasted with which the pusillanimous dejection, the unworthy concessions, and the premeditated perjury of Francis, during his captivity at Madrid not ten years before, appear in no ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... children, and the most part of them dressed up in 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 ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... 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 no wrong, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... 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 acquired ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... of 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 as to the solemn promises, which prove mere ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... notes of discord harsher, louder, and more frequent than any poet since Elizabethan times. Whatever we hold about the insight and imagination of Browning, no one can doubt that he often chose to be uncouth, crabbed, grotesque, and even clownish, when the humour was on him. There are high precedents for genius choosing its own instrument and making its own music. But, whatever were Browning's latent powers of melody, his method when he chose to play upon the gong, or the ancient instrument of marrow-bone and cleavers, was the exact antithesis ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Misrule With mimic pomp and march; 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
... equally 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 ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... the 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 ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... became too frequent an occurrence to occasion much comment, for the 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 ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... to scourging pedantry, and dissented in toto from the 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, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... appeared glad to see Jolly Robin when he came to the swamp that afternoon. At least, the Hermit said he was much pleased. He had very polished manners for a person that lived in a swamp. Beside him, Jolly Robin seemed somewhat awkward and clownish. But then, Jolly always claimed that he was just ...
— The Tale of Jolly Robin • Arthur Scott Bailey
... 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 ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... and do not outrage my sufficiently harrowed feelings by adding worse to bad. I shall go to the inn on terra firma, and leave you in charge of what you seem so able to manage in your own clownish, pantomimic way. Be good enough to bring my fish, and do not distinguish yourself by upsetting them into their native element." With these words, and in great apparent scorn, the draggled dominie took his ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... of the Muses, has always been at the service of the poets. Schiller tells a pretty story of his having been sold by a needy poet, and put to the cart and the plough. He was not fit for such service, and his clownish master could make nothing of him. But a youth stepped forth and asked leave to try him. As soon as he was seated on his back, the horse, which had appeared at first vicious, and afterwards spirit-broken, rose kingly, a spirit, a god; unfolded the splendor of his ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... of 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. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... cousin, what if we assay'd to steal The clownish Fool out of your father's Court? Would he not be a ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... 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 way ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... awkward dignity began to be 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, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... 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 ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... was strong and robust: his manners rustic, not clownish; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its effect perhaps from one's knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His features are represented in Mr. Nasmyth's picture, but to me it conveys the idea that they are diminished as if seen in ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... genius in sportive fancy—what, but for the self-rectifying spirit of fiction, would have been an outrage on nature, and in the number not only of forbidden but unhallowed things. The passages interpolated by Mr Horne's own pen are as bad as possible—clownish and anti-Chaucerian to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... 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
... one of Mr. Lincoln's personal 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 ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... like the case of Manlius Torquatus in Livy, who by his father was banished among his hinds for his clownish demeanour and untractableness to every species of instruction that was offered him, but who, understanding that his parent was criminally arraigned for barbarous treatment of him, first resolutely resorted to the ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... guise Both sins of old and new-born villanies: Stale sins are stole; now doth the world begin To take sole pleasure in a witty sin: Unpleasant as[34] the lawless sin has been, At midnight rest, when darkness covers sin; It's clownish, unbeseeming a young knight, Unless it dare outface the glaring light: Nor can it nought our gallant's praises reap, Unless it be done in staring Cheap, In a sin-guilty coach, not closely pent, Jogging along the harder pavement. Did not fear check my ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... 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 himself most liberal in this way was Don Quixote, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... inquire after the fruits and esculents; and one day, he saw here 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 ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... forms upon which the mantle of mystery and romance could seem to hang more ungracefully than upon that of the uncouth and clownish Schalken—the Dutch boor—the rude and dogged, but most cunning worker in oils, whose pieces delight the initiated of the present day almost as much as his manners disgusted the refined of his own; and yet this man, so rude, so ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... tenderness and joy and desire, she had 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 burned ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... books; for they knew to a certainty that their hopes reposed in our bosoms could not be 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 might be made sanative to the pectoral ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... to 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 ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... sparkle in small 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 ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... really believed that 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 their relation faded ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... less careful in nourishing 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, and ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... a small house here, but a very comfortable one, and the people are exceedingly obliging. Their demeanor in these country parts is invariably morose, sullen, clownish, and repulsive. I should think there is not, on the face of the earth, a people so entirely destitute of humor, vivacity, or the capacity of enjoyment. It is most remarkable. I am quite serious when I say ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... disgust, the anger, possibly even the alarm, with which many may have beheld the floor now taken, not by Peyton Randolph, nor Richard Bland, nor George Wythe, nor Edmund Pendleton, but by this new and very unabashed member for the county of Louisa,—this rustic and clownish youth of the terrible tongue,—this eloquent but presumptuous stripling, who was absolutely without training or experience in statesmanship, and was the merest novice even in ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... learning the desires of the volatile Italians, they improvised a vastly more vivid pantomime depicting a mock battle, with huge success. Assuredly the early Roman comedian must have acted with greater abandon and clownish drollery, if not with the elaborate histrionic technique of the later actor.[69] We have heard Dr. Charles Knapp relate that the performance of the Ajax of Sophocles by a troupe of modern Greek players went with amazing and incredible rapidity and vivacity. It is all of a piece. We must ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... some village near, and there by himself take his pipe and pot," &c. "But so it is that, notwithstanding our author's great merits, he was but little regarded in the University, being observed to be more clownish than courteous, and always to go in an old antiquated dress. Indeed he was a mere scholar, and consequently must expect, from the greatest number of men, disrespect; but this notwithstanding, he was always a true lover ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... capital picture of the ease and perfection with which the clownish chrysalis may be metamorphosed into the scarlet moth of war. Catch the animal young, and you may turn him into any shape you please. He will learn to wear silk stockings, scarlet plush breeches, collarless coats, with silver buttons; and swing open a gate with a grace, or stand behind ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... 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; though ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... must have heard already who was Giotto, and how great a painter he was above every other. A clownish fellow, having heard his fame and having need, perchance for doing watch and ward, to have a buckler of his painted, went off incontinent to the shop of Giotto, with one who carried his buckler behind him, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... joyous 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, he hastened back ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... advantage, the fanatic democratic ruler could never acquire, or else disdained to practise, the courtesies usually exercised among the higher classes in their intercourse with each other. His demeanour was so blunt as sometimes might be termed clownish, yet there was in his language and manner a force and energy corresponding to his character, which impressed awe, if it did not impose respect; and there were even times when that dark and subtle spirit expanded itself, so as almost to conciliate affection. The turn for ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... strongly indented by hard knuckles, below the left visual organ,—ornaments that are as frequently to be seen upon the inhabitants of St. Giles's, as rings are upon the visitors of St. James's. His ruffianly country dress, clownish manners, broad dialect of canny Yorkshire, with a certain cunning cast of the eye,—contracted no doubt by peering through the hedge, to see if the gamekeeper was coming,—all contributed to exhibit him before us, as the very ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... but frank and amiable, who even in a passion sensual at its commencement is capable of true attachment; the girl of light character, either thoroughly depraved, vain, cunning, and selfish, or still good-hearted and susceptible of better feelings; the simple and clownish, and the cunning slave who assists his young master in cheating his old father, and by all manner of knavish tricks procures him money for the gratification of his passions; (as this character plays a principal part, I shall shortly make some further observations on it;) ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... wrought finely. Educate a boy to tumbled hair and grimy hands, and he will go tumbled and 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 clod, but I think ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... now 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 ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... who, fresh from the 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
... tell him 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 motion of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... of all conditions in which fairy-powers might get a hold of them; the quarrelling king and queen of Fairyland, with their courtiers, Blossom, Cobweb, and the rest, and the court-jester, Puck; the ignorant, clownish artisans, rehearsing their play,—fairies and clowns, lovers and courtiers, are all mingled in one exquisite harmony, clothed with a night of early summer, rounded in by the wedding of the king and queen. But I have talked enough ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... family of the lower middle class, and brought up in the first instance by 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
... 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
... quite believe that Peregrine's courtly airs are not welcomed here; I could see what our good neighbour, Sir Philip Archfield, thought of them; but whereas no power on earth could make the young gentleman a steady-going clownish youth after his father's heart, methought he might prefer his present ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... off in high dudgeon, and he was left to curse his ill-timed jest. What a blundering fool he had been! Her first, timid little advance,—and he had met it with boorish, clownish wit! A scurvy jest, indeed! She was ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... very nice in your punctilios of ceremony; he is clownish, as a man may say: belching and calling of names have been allowed him time out of mind, by prescription: but, however, we are engaged in one common cause, and I must look ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... pressure of toil and the entire want of society, Burns might have grown up the rude and clownish and unpopular lad that he has been pictured in his early teens. But in his fifteenth summer there came to him a new influence, which at one touch unlocked the springs of (p. 008) new emotions. This incident must be given in his own words:—"You know," he says, "our ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... 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 votes and twenty-four proxies for the King, in all one hundred and ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... her memory with steady constancy. If—and I think we may—if we allow that every author has some especial quality with which, in more or less degree, he endows all his children—if we grant that Shakespeare's people are all meditative, even the sprightly Rosalind and the clownish Dogberry—if we allow that all our acquaintances in Dickens are a trifle self-conscious, in George Eliot conscientious to such an extent that even Tito Melema feels remorse for conduct which, granted his period and his character, would more naturally have given him ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... is commonly wise or a very great fool, or else as very a knave as he is a fool. He whose hair grows thick on his temples and his brow, one may certainly at first sight conclude that such a man is by nature simple, vain, luxurious, lustful, credulous, clownish in his speech and conversation and dull in his apprehension. He whose hair not only curls very much, but bushes out, and stands on end, if the hair be white or of a yellowish colour, he is by nature proud and bold, dull of apprehension, soon ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... 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
... 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 ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... eyes, and stretched out 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
... himself, and this is how a mind acquires strength and precision. There may be here and there a licentious phrase, but there is no ground for alarm in that. It is not the least rude who are always the most pure, and even a rather clownish speech is better than that artificial style in which the two sexes seduce one another, and familiarise themselves decently with vice. 'Tis true our Swiss drinks too much, but after all let us not ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... bringing the subject to perfection, and waited day after day in expectation that it would utter articulate sounds. At length nature became exhausted in them, and they lay down to sleep, having first given it strictly in charge to a servant of theirs, clownish in nature, but of strict fidelity, that he should awaken them the moment the image began to speak. That period arrived. The head uttered sounds, but such as the clown judged unworthy of notice. "Time is!" it ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... 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 ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... of address and signature are never dropped in this most intimate of letter-writing. It is not a little depressing to think that in this very form and state is supposed, by the modern reader, to lurk the stealthiness of the husband of farce, the "rogue." One does not like the word. Is it not clownish to apply it with intention to the husband of Prue? He did not pay, he was always in difficulties, he hid from bailiffs, he did many other things that tarnish honour, more or less, and things for which he had to beg Prue's special ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... 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
... its interior arrangement be for the convenience of the in-door farm work, and the proper accommodation of the farmer's family, should be quite as apparent; but, that it should assume an uncouth or clownish aspect, is as unnecessary as that the farmer himself should be a boor in his manners, or a dolt in ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... woman was, to touch him. 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 unto thee. And he saith, ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... 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 ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... had just relieved me. So careless have we grown, that we now stand in broad daylight at the exposed break of the poop. Nobody shoots at us, and, occasionally, over the top of the for'ard-house, Shorty sticks up his head and grins or makes clownish faces at us. At such times Mr. Pike studies Shorty's features through the telescope in an effort to find signs of starvation. Yet he admits dolefully that Shorty ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... a courteous and kind Salutation oftentimes engages Friendship, and reconciles Persons at Variance, and does undoubtedly nourish and increase a mutual Benevolence. There are indeed some Persons that are such Churls, and of so clownish a Disposition, that if you salute them, they will scarcely salute you again. But this Vice is in some Persons rather the Effect of their Education, than ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... 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 ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... captain of a troop of horse, and at the death of his cousin Hampden, he was only colonel. He was indeed a member of the Long Parliament, as was Hampden, and had secured the attention of the members in spite of his slovenly appearance and his incoherent, though earnest speeches. Under his rough and clownish exterior, his talents were not perceived, except by two or three penetrating intellects; but they were shortly to appear, and to be developed, not in the House of Commons, but on the field of battle. The rise of Oliver Cromwell can scarcely be dated until ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... D'Ossoli. This informant said 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 ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... Bess went her way, throwing her tainted money back to the town as fast as the town threw it into her purse, roaring, swearing, laughing—a thumping sentimentalist, a clownish Samaritan, a Madam Aphrodite by Rube Goldberg. There are many stories that used to go the rounds. But when I read the coroner's report there was one tale in particular that started up in my head again. A mawkish tale, perhaps, and if I write it with too maudlin a slant I know who will ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... 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 than three miles from Chatham, ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... a woman who has attempted to marry him, always carries away a maudlin sympathy for her in her defeat and dismay. But no one ever heard of a woman who pitied the poor fellow whose honest passion she had found it expedient to spurn. On the contrary, women take delight in such clownish agonies, and exhibit them proudly, and boast ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... manners. Recent investigations tend to show 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
... 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, who before had question'd, thus resum'd: "O blessed, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... 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 ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... husbands; led by his passions and caprices, and incapable of hearing the voice of reason." A woman's vanity may be hurt when she finds that she has a husband for whom she has to blush and tremble every time he opens his lips. She may be annoyed at his clownish jealousy, his mulish obstinacy, his incapability of being managed, led, or driven; but she must reflect that there was a time when a little wisdom and reflection on her own part would have prevented her from delivering her heart ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... rehearse his praises in strange, cabalistic words. Scripsit, who has digested his paltry rasher in moody silence, shall touch the hearts of men with new-born words of flame; and the poor epic, which once had served a clownish huckster's vulgar need, shall travel far and wide, in blue and gold, and lie on tables weighed with words familiar in all mouths. Patrista, who, thirsting for his country's good, has been, perforce, content to see all others ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... had 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 faggots 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 them to eat, ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... haue had against him for calling thy Father Ropemaker. Mas, thats 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 intercepting ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp
... a short clownish grub, would beare the whole carkase of an Oxe, and yet neuer tugged with him, like that so famous Milo, when hee was ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... invested in his thirteen landed estates; he attends to the management of it in person systematically and with enthusiasm; he comes seldom or never to the capital, and, when he does appear there, by his clownish manners he contrasts not less with the polished senator than the innumerable hosts of his uncouth rural slaves with the elegant train of domestic slaves in the capital. Far more than the circles of the nobility with their cosmopolitan culture and the mercantile class at home everywhere ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... great," with such absolute frankness and sincerity that Aladdin's heart almost warmed toward him. It was presently known all over the house that Aladdin had written the song. And some of the more clownish of the young people called for Author, Author. ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... 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 him everywhere ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... scene and the rehearsal scene, and the realistic offset the latter scene supplies to the fairy fantasies that are to follow in the next acts? For instance, it may be shown that the merriment the clownish scene provides balances the dignity of the ducal scene. His audience, having put a yoke upon the dramatists by requiring a clown, his genius is betokened here by his ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... 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 ease without freedom." ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... 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 him made ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... to his sister, and he did so from a consideration that was outside of 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 injury in ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt |
