"Clumsiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well-remembered scene stand revealed in disenchanting day. With incredulous surprise, with a constant struggle between past images and present revelations, were we forced to acknowledge the improbability of the story, the clumsiness of the style, the awkwardness of the dialogue, the want of Nature in many of the characters, the absurdity of many of the incidents, and the painfulness of some of the scenes. But with all this, a candid, though critical judgment could not but admit that these grave defects were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... badly done. I had jumbled my speech without wit or address, like a peasant dragging his milkmaid before the village cure. The woman may have felt my clumsiness. She dropped my hand, and curtsied deeply to the father, and he, staring, checked the hand that he had raised to extend to her, and bowed deeply in turn. It was a meeting, not of priest and refugee, but of a man and woman who had known the world. Father ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... the Indian. Then, appreciating Tom's clumsiness, the Indian loosened his grasp for a moment to straighten some cords with which to bind his captive. As the red man stooped with gun under his arm, for an instant he turned his back. Tom, for once in his life not slow, in a flash seized the gun and ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... have floated into the vague region of general interest, where any chance current of thought might drift them to it. Stanistreet dreaded it; but she was continually brushing up against it, with a feathery lightness which made him marvel at the volatile character of her mind. Was it the clumsiness of a butterfly or the dexterity of a woman? Once or twice he thought he detected a certain reluctant shyness in approaching the subject directly. It was as if she regarded her affection for her husband as a youthful folly, and her marriage as a discreditable episode ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... himself from the herd. She does not yet know that he has climbed her highest mountain-peaks. She has not yet heard tell of justice, pity, loyalty and honour; she does not realize what they are, or confounds them with weakness, clumsiness, fear and stupidity. She has stopped short at the original certitudes which were indispensable to the beginnings of life. She is lagging behind us; and the interval that divides us is rapidly increasing. She thinks less ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Bladesover, the more doubtful I grew of the duality of my reception, and the more I regretted that alternative. I suppose it was the dirty clumsiness of the shipping I had seen nearly, that put me out of mind of that. I took a short cut through the Warren across the corner of the main park to intercept the people from the church. I wanted to avoid meeting any one before I met my mother, and so ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... hardly spoke. I think he was worried about his left hand. There is a deep furrow across the back of it where a piece of shrapnel went through and there are two fingers that will hardly move at all. I could see that he was ashamed of its clumsiness and afraid that someone might notice it. So he kept silent. Professor Razzler did indeed ask him straight across the table what he thought about the final breaking of the Hindenburg line. But he asked it with that same fierce look from under his bushy ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... pretend to judge whether all this was mere accidental clumsiness and rudeness on the part of stupid detectives or if it was something very much deeper, prompted by someone higher up. One is, however, inclined to doubt inefficiency in the Prussian Secret Service and there may have been reasons why German ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... vanity of the fellow, his petty meanness and stupidity, his puling sentimentality and credulity, his bombastic air of a cock on a dunghill, his anaesthesia to all whispers and summonings of the spirit, above all, his loathsome clumsiness in amour—all these things must revolt any woman above the lowest. To be the object of the oafish affections of such a creature, even when they are honest and profound, cannot be expected to give any genuine joy to a woman of sense and refinement. ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... "You must know, then, that this ineptitude, inflicted on me by an eccentric editor for translation, drove me to madness, and not an hour ago I cast it from my window in disgust. It is a novel entirely devoid of taste and tact, and it had the clumsiness to alight on my landlord's head. Being a man of small nature, he retaliated by ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... cholerick. "Cuss your clumsiness," says he, "can't you come to a graffick without punching your ugly ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... It was a sad pity she entrusted him to hold her purse while she fed the gold-fishes. He was very proud of the honour till the gold fell from his hand among the gold-fishes. How appropriate was the misadventure! But Miss Black Eyes, angry at her loss and her swain's clumsiness, cried: "Jump into the pond, sir, and find my purse instanter!" Several wags encouraged her, and the ladies were of the opinion that her adorer should certainly dive for the treasure. "Alas," the fellow said, "I cannot swim, Miss. But tell me how many guineas you carried and I will ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... place. It is nothing to us that we go eighty or ninety miles from home to place of business, or take an hour's spin of fifty miles to our week-end golf; every summer it has become a fixed custom to travel wide and far. Only the clumsiness of communications limit us now, and every facilitation of locomotion widens not only our potential, but our habitual range. Not only this, but we change our habitations with a growing frequency and facility; to Sir Thomas More we should seem a breed ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... maintaining himself as a clerk at a small station on the Newcastle and Carlisle line. In the course of his duties in this situation, he found it irksome to have to write on every railway ticket that he delivered. He saw the clumsiness of the method of tearing the bit of paper off the printed sheet as it was wanted, and filling it up with pen and ink. He perceived how much time, trouble, and error might be saved by the process being ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... of one muscle or even one group of muscles. Even when we merely bend the arm we are doing things with the muscles which extend it, and when we raise it sideways we are modifying the whole trunk in order to preserve the balance. We have only to watch the clumsiness of an infant or a small child to realize how much skill the nervous system has to acquire. This skill may be mainly expressed as co-ordination, the balanced use of many muscles for a purpose and, as a rule, their co-ordinated use with one of the senses, more especially ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... quickly stopped our forward movement, and we began to drift backward over the spot where the skiff had been. Big Alec's black head and swarthy face popped up within arm's reach; and all unsuspecting and very angry with what he took to be the clumsiness of amateur sailors, he was hauled aboard. Also he was out of breath, for he had dived deep and stayed down long to ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... of his high-class mediocrity. He did his best, according to his lights. He endeavored to improve the shining hour, and admired the busy little bee, as he had been taught to do in the nursery. If he had not the air of a thoroughbred, he had none of the plebeian clumsiness of the cart-horse. Though he was not the man to lead a forlorn hope, he was no coward; and though he had not invented gunpowder, he had the requisite intelligence to make use of already existing inventions under the direction of others. He had a way of remembering what he had learned ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... awkwardness, clumsiness, ill-breeding, stupidity, boorishness, fatuity, ill manners, unmannerliness, clownishness, folly, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... assign himself to a place any better than that accorded each member of the clans who rallied about this Southern lady transplanted to the Western plains. Repulsed in his first unskilled, impetuous advance; hurt, stung, cut to the quick as much at his own clumsiness and failure to make himself understood as at the actual rebuff received. Franklin none the less in time recovered sufficient equanimity to seek to avail himself of such advantages as still remained; and he resolved grimly that he would ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... plains, now disinherited by human progress, the American bisons, are here more than portrayed; they are realized. Their essential characteristics, their strong mass, bulky without clumsiness, are made present and convincing in these two statues by A. Phimister Proctor, a master of animal sculpture. There is good reason for the living and sharp aspect of these plaster models. They are not copies ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... to companions more fit for thee. I am ashamed to stand in thy presence. I am dazzled by the brightness of thy countenance, crushed down by the thought of thy wisdom and power, uneasy lest I say or do something unfit for thee; lest I anger thee unawares in my ignorance, clumsiness; lest I betray to thee my own bad habits: and those bad habits I feel in thy presence as I never felt before. Thou art too condescending; thou honourest me too much; thou hast taken me for a better man than I am; thou knowest not what a ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... stowed away with the same clumsiness. He raised the manacled hands to his hat brim, gave it a downward pull that brought it over his face and then, letting his short arms slide down upon his plump stomach, he faced the man who had put ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... falls under these influences, and he will experience not the slightest difficulty in doing so; indeed, he will find friendly hands extended to welcome and to help, the result on his character must be most beneficial. The clumsiness of rural life will soon depart; he will regard his home-made suit with as much pleasure as if it were made by a fashionable tailor, and he will soon learn to distinguish between the vicious and the virtuous, ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... heroic truthfulness, devoted fidelity, a dove-like tranquillity of mind, and that abiding, reposeful trust in God which is equal to all trials, and can never be taken by surprise. Her voice was soft and soothing, her motions singularly free from clumsiness or fretfulness, her manners so beautifully blended of unaffected humility, patience, and self-respect as to command, in cheerful reciprocity, the deference they tendered; in which respect she was a severe ordeal to the sham gentlemen and ladies who had the honor to be presented ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... when the impotent old lady openly expressed a desire; Therese, Laurent, and the guests named one object after another that they fancied she might wish for. Grivet then made himself remarkable by the clumsiness of his offers. He mentioned, haphazard, everything that came into his head, invariably offering the contrary to what Madame Raquin desired. But this circumstance did ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... all is!" said Mrs. Malcolm. But she was wondering why men are so queer with their wives—resent so much the slightest social clumsiness on their part, while in other women—provided the offense is not too great—it merely amuses them. Even the guarded manners of Sir John had been disturbed. For a moment he had been very angry with the shadow that bore ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... her very brows, and over the entire face the black street veil. Not a feature visible. Not an eyebrow. Not an eyelash, not a hint of the small person herself, except a very small white, ringed hand, lifted as if in defense of his clumsiness. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... inharmonious evidence of his partnership with a poet of finer if not of sturdier genius. The same sense of discord and inequality will be aroused on comparison of the worse with the better parts of "The Old Law." The clumsiness and dulness of the farcical interludes can hardly be paralleled in the rudest and hastiest scenes of Middleton's writing: while the sweet and noble dignity of the finer passages have the stamp of his ripest and tenderest genius on every line and in every cadence. But for ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... was the greatest scramble to get their holyday dresses out of the guard-house, which, when put on, had more the appearance of being intended for the stage than the field of battle. Their quilted petticoats, sattin boots, and their fans, had a mixture of clumsiness and effeminacy that ill accorded with the ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... looks—more especially perhaps masculine ones—whatever rank of life might exhibit them, acted as a sure passport to Miss Verity's gentle heart. And the youth and good looks of the man approaching her became momentarily more incontestable. His bearing, too, notwithstanding the clumsiness of his shiny black over-garment, had a slightly ruffling, gallantly insolent air to it, eminently calculated to impress her swift and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... by the magnitude of his calamity. Then he drew a long breath and cursed his luck. He cursed the bottle, the fence, the whiskey, Waldstricker, who'd sent him, and Tess and the unknown man, on whose account he'd been sent. His maledictions included everything except his own drunken clumsiness. ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... political journalism so bad? It is worse even than it intends to be. It praises its preposterous party leaders through thick and thin; but it somehow succeeds in making them look greater fools than they are. This clumsiness clings even to the photographs of public men, as they are snapshotted at public meetings. A sensitive politician (if there is such a thing) would, I should think, want to murder the man who snapshots him at those moments. For our general impression of a man's gesture or play of feature ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... rendered somewhat more barbarous than usual by intoxication. Frequently one of them would address one of the players in language more forcible than choice, as he applauded some piece of FINESSE, or condemned some clumsiness on the part of the two youths who were struggling about in the centre, under the impression they were wrestling. There were but two moderate wrestlers in the parish, and those two were George Hawker and James Stockbridge. And James and myself had hardly arrived on the ground ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... tight little figure stepping to and fro, and his feet shuffling to the air, his eyes seeking and bestowing encouragement—and to have enjoyed the bow, so nicely calculated between jest and earnest, between grace and clumsiness, with which he brought each song to a conclusion. He was not only a great favourite among ourselves, but his songs attracted the lords of the saloon, who often leaned to hear him over the rails of the hurricane-deck. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... longer. He knew that the boat, drifting down with the current, was now exactly opposite to him. He heard the splash of the oars striking the water; although in their haste and clumsiness the three Carson boys were in danger of upsetting their craft while trying ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... He would have a piece played through, and if it did not answer to his wishes, have it repeated. If it went no better the second or perhaps third time, he would be extremely angry at what he considered the clumsiness, or even the ill-will of the players; but ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... suggestively. If she was too dreadfully below pitch, and had breath enough to hang on to the note so long that the audience (always composed of invited guests) writhed obviously, Tommy would sometimes drop a sheet of music on the floor and create a diversion, always apologizing profusely for her clumsiness. The third patron was a young baritone, who liked Miss Tucker's appearance on the platform and had her whenever he didn't sing Schubert's "Erl Koenig," which Tommy couldn't play. This was her most profitable engagement, ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... reach its destination. The chances of the second were not so good, and the second might mean life or death to Wanda. He walked slowly back towards the double doors. He might even gain a minute there, he thought, by simulating clumsiness with the handle should any one wish to enter in haste. He was at the outer door when a man hurried up the steps. This was a small man, with a pale and gentle face, and eyes in which a ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... class of dealers tremble before this occult power, and subsidize it without a word—coachmakers, jewelers, tailors, and all. If any attempt is made to interfere with them, the servants reply with impudent retorts, or revenge themselves by the costly blunders of assumed clumsiness; and in these days they inquire into their master's character as, formerly, the master inquired into theirs. This mischief is now really at its height, and the law-courts are beginning to take cognizance of it; but in ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... pure magic, untouched by human clumsiness, rare and spellbound as a stilly afternoon in oak woods ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... repeated efforts to drag him with her. At one of these efforts he embraces her with the clumsiness of a gorilla and makes several indecent gestures. HELEN utters suppressed cries for help.] Let go! This minute! Let go-o!! Oh, please, papa, Oh-o!! [She weeps, then suddenly cries out in an extremity of fear, loathing ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... discovered on the site of the oldest Etruscan towns, which circumstance has led antiquaries to allow the Etruscans the honour of having fashioned these rude specimens of pottery; but as the samples display a higher degree of skill they refuse to allow the Etruscans the merit of having improved the clumsiness of their early handiwork. In the sixth and seventh cases are pale vases with deep red figures, chiefly of animals upon them, chiefly from Canino and Vulci. The exertions of the Prince of Canino in excavating on his ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... between him and the coachman as to the clumsiness of smiths in general, who when they pare away a horse's hoofs in order to shoe it, so often cut into the living flesh, which is very dangerous, and ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... Thouvenin is the artist in whose charcoal furnace, the tools, which produced this echantillon, were heated. I have no hesitation in saying, that, considered as an extraordinary specimen of art, it is a failure. The ornaments are common place; the lining is decidedly bad; and there is a clumsiness of finish throughout the whole. The head-bands—as indeed are those of Bozerian—are clumsily managed: and I may say that it exhibits a manifest inferiority even to the productions of Mackinlay, Hering, Clarke, and Fairbairn. Indeed either of these artists would greatly eclipse it. I learn that ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... dramatic battle—and that in it he would most gloriously distinguish himself. He believed that, for her sake, he would face all the terrors of hell. The battle came and there were no terrors of hell—only sick headache, noise, men desperately wounded, and, once again, his own clumsiness. Then, in that final picture of Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov he saw ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... conscientious principle—many from far-sighted thrift, and from a love of thoroughness and well-doing which despised the rude, unskilled work of barbarians. People, having once felt the thorough neatness and beauty of execution which came of free, educated, and thoughtful labor, could not tolerate the clumsiness of slavery. ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... bar; and the Pioneer Band, accompanied by the resplendent asses, fill the other, and move shoreward to the inviting strains of Buffalo Gals, won't you come out to-night? It is a part of our programme that one of the asses shall, from sheer clumsiness, in the course of this embarkation, drop a dummy axe into the water, whereupon the mirth of the picnic can hardly be assuaged. Upon one occasion, the dummy axe floated, and the laugh turned ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... was intended as an apology, or at least as an explanation of sorts. It was rather appealing in its boyish clumsiness, but she felt too numb, too utterly weary, to respond ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... together. There is no squabbling amongst them. Enough fishes are thrown in to keep them occupied for a few minutes. The speed with which the guillemot cuts the water is truly amazing. Once more one has an opportunity of noticing the clumsiness of the penguin when it tries to leave the water. At either end of the tank a platform with transverse bars is let down for the convenience of the birds, but the silly penguin, instead of going to the end of the platform and gradually working its way upward, sometimes endeavours ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... threw out his broad hands in a powerful gesture against the sea and sky. "We have done so weakly—Heaven alone knows why!" I can see him now, queer giant that he looked on that dawnlit beach of splendor, the sea birds flying about us and that crumpled death hard by, no bad symbol in his clumsiness and needless heat of the unawakened powers of the former time. I remember it as an integral part of that picture that far away across the sandy stretches one of those white estate boards I have described, stuck up a little askew amidst the yellow-green turf upon the ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... first his head bent under her words, bent in cowardly evasion of her sharp glance, the sidelong shiftings of his eyes portraying him, the generous liar, brought at last to bay by his own honest clumsiness. Then, as her appeal grew warmer, tenderer, more insistent, the fine head was suddenly erected and proud confession was written plainly over the glowing face—that beautiful contrition of one who has willed to bear a brother's shame and failed from lack ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... as if to meet some one. At that, they were very much excited and pleased, and motioned us to go farther off still, as if it were too sacrilegious for us to stay there. They all turned away but the old man, and he began to move in a stealthy way towards the fire. All the clumsiness and weight of a man seemed to be gone. He was as light and wiry as a snake, and glided round the old drift that strewed the sand, with his body prostrate, but his head held erect, and his bright eyes fixed on the fire, like some wild desert creature, which ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... Owing to the clumsiness of her wooden fingers, the woman of the south was a poor needlewoman, but was a fine dancer. The woman of the north was very expert in needlework, but her wooden legs made her a poor dancer. Each of these women gave these traits to ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... sacredness; but the origin and the precise nature of the beliefs concerning it I have not been able to learn. Only this I know, that to touch it with the foot is considered very wrong; and that if it be kicked or moved thus even by accident, the clumsiness must be atoned for by lifting the pillow to the forehead with the hands, and replacing it in its original position respectfully, with the word 'go-men,' signifying, I ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... not know anything that passed upon that terrace. How should I know? Neither of them was likely to tell old Smith. And I wonder at the clumsiness of novelists in pretending to reveal all that he said, and all that she answered. But if I were such a clumsy novelist, I should like to invent it all, and see if I couldn't make you believe every word ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... furrowed as was his back, he continued to exclaim, when his friend Edmund of York came to condole with him as usual in all his scrapes, "'Tis she that should have been scourged for clumsiness! A foul, uncouth Border dame! Well, one blessing at least is that now I shall never be wedded to her daughter—let the wench live ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she dressed herself slowly, and with a certain clumsiness, took her little shopping bag and bought, with economy and taste, a very fair outfit of simple clothing for the seventy dollars she had gained on the strength of the peddler of embroideries; she passed the peddler's ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... and operation of his business, and shall not necessarily lose his position on having attained such knowledge. But there are so many more important things to be thought of, in the qualifications of a foreign resident, that his technical dexterity or clumsiness is hardly worth mentioning. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... absently. Then something quite unaccountable occurred. Mrs. Tollman, in putting down the somewhat heavy metal tray containing her trinkets, let it slip, so that it spilled its rings, and pins and necklaces on the desk top—and as if responsive to her clumsiness in handling her treasures, though really because of nervous tension, Eben started violently, and the box which he held fell from his quaking hands, scattering papers in a confused ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... old man has many and strange tools," while to the cockerel I bowed and murmured, "Your pardon for my clumsiness. The fault ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... with the greatest care, and naturally had little patience with clumsiness; the following incident illustrates both his kindly spirit and his self-restraint. At one of the lectures he had handed down for inspection a very rare and costly fossil, from the coal-measures, I think; including the matrix, it had about the size and shape of the palm of the hand. He ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... folds, and over it a mantle, while her long hair floated over her neck and shoulders." This warlike queen, therefore, notwithstanding her abhorrence of the Romans, could not resist the graceful elegance of their costume, so different from the rude clumsiness of the dress of her wild subjects; and, though fighting valiantly against the invaders of her country, she succumbed to the laws which Fashion had issued!—a forcible example of the unlimited sway exercised by the flower-crowned goddess ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... expression. On holidays she spent long hours at the piano, playing musical reveries, always the same. At other times Argensola saw her through the interior window working in the kitchen aided by her companion, the two laughing over their clumsiness and inexperience in ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... feet. We are ignorant of the course of events which, towards the close of the XVIIIth century B.C., led to their gaining possession of it. The Cossaean king who seized on Babylon was named Gandish, and the few inscriptions we possess of his reign are cut with a clumsiness that betrays the barbarism of the conqueror. They cover the pivot stones on which Sargon of Agade or one of the Bursins had hung the doors of the temple of Nippur, but which Gandish dedicated afresh in order to win for himself, in the eyes of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... smaller ones by the roots, and so fed on the leaves. The colossal breadth and weight of their hinder quarters, which can hardly be imagined without having been seen, become, on this view, of obvious service, instead of being an encumbrance: their apparent clumsiness disappears. With their great tails and their huge heels firmly fixed like a tripod on the ground, they could freely exert the full force of their most powerful arms and great claws. Strongly rooted, indeed, must that tree have been, which could have resisted ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... been wrong; he was a foolish, unreliable boy—but he was a boy. Whereas she was his mother, and ought to have known better. Yes, she had become his mother in the interval. For herself she experienced both pity and anger. What angered her was her clumsiness. Why had she lost her temper and her head? She saw clearly how she might have brought him round to her view with a soft phrase, a peculiar inflection, a tiny appeal, a caress, a mere dimpling of the cheek. She saw him revolving on her little finger.... She knew all things now ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... eyes were on him. In some indefinite way he was so different, so—so human and equal. Outwardly there was no evidence of the change—the same nondescript clothes, the same grimy hands and face, the same coarse boots and clumsiness. ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... from instant to instant. He is not bound to one setting, he has no technical difficulty in altering the whole scene with every smile and every frown. To be sure, the theater can give us changing sunshine and thunderclouds too. But it must go on at the slow pace and with the clumsiness with which the events in nature pass. The photoplay can flit from one to the other. Not more than one sixteenth of a second is needed to carry us from one corner of the globe to the other, from a jubilant setting to a mourning scene. The whole ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... mountain of slowness and stolidity, was not perhaps a fool, notwithstanding his outward clumsiness. A little attention is appreciated even by a matron ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... every man is his own barber and surgeon, cutting off his beard or arm, as occasion demands. No unusual thing, for the warriors of Varvoo to saw off their own limbs, desperately wounded in battle. But owing to the clumsiness of the instrument employed—a flinty, serrated shell—the operation has been known to last several days. Nor will they suffer any friend to help them; maintaining, that a matter so nearly concerning a warrior is far better attended to by himself. Hence it may be said, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... minute they gazed at each other in silence, as though they could not believe their eyes. Thereupon some force seemed to shove Zinotchka; she laid her hands on Sasha's shoulders and let her head droop upon his waistcoat. Sasha laughed, muttered something incoherent, and with the clumsiness of a man head over ears in love, laid both hands on Zinotchka's face. And the weather, gentlemen, was exquisite. . . . The hill behind which the sun was setting, the two willows, the green bank, the sky—all together with Sasha and Zinotchka were reflected ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... his face white, his chest heaving, before his opponent, who had at once recovered. With the blood-tinged tip of his sword resting on the ground, Andre-Louis surveyed him grimly, as we survey the prey that through our own clumsiness has escaped ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... only intended for gentle moods, softer purposes. Shrewd little Beth, whose wide, blue eyes had seen right down into the depths of his heart. He had been clumsy, if nothing else, and he had always thought that clumsiness was inexcusable. He had a guilty sense that while Beth was still the little lady to her finger tips, born to a natural nobility, he, the Grand Duke Peter, had been the boor, the vulgar proletarian. The look in her eyes had shamed him as the look in his own eyes had shamed ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... habit of frequently washing their bodies. From the front windows of the house one saw across Hampstead Heath towards London, and from the back windows one saw across the Heath towards Harrow. The house, in spite of its slight decrepitude and the clumsiness of its construction—the stairs were obviously an afterthought of the architect—had that air of comfortable kindliness which is only to be seen in houses which have been occupied by several generations of human beings. Mr. Haverstock was vaguely known as a ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... Did you ever see such idiotic clumsiness!" he ejaculated. And then, in deepest contrition: "I won't attempt to apologize—it's beyond all that. But you must let me make your ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... great loss from this accident, which was caused by the clumsiness and timidity of the steersman, Chaboneau. Captain Lewis's account of the incident records that the conduct of Chaboneau's wife, Sacajawea, was better than that of ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... clearly shows to what degree he either ignored or misrepresented it. The singular, confused architecture of Gothic cathedrals gave those who saw beauty in symmetry of line and purity of form but further evidence of the clumsiness and perverted taste of our ancestors. All remembrances of the great poetic works of the Middle Ages is completely effaced. No one supposes in those barbarous times the existence of ages classical also in their way; no one ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... original which suggested it—frankly a "popular" song, clumsily harmonized in a "four-square" manner (though written in 3/4 time) with nothing to indicate its latent possibilities. I compared it with his mss. and, lo, it had been transformed! Gone was the clumsiness, the vulgar and obvious harmonic treatment of the melody—Kreisler had kept the melodic outline, but etherealized, spiritualized it, given it new rhythmic contours, a deeper and more expressive meaning. And his ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... he said which struck me as worth listening to, was this—that Miss Verinder had declined to be questioned by him, and had spoken to him with a perfectly incomprehensible rudeness and contempt. I thought this curious—but I attributed it mainly to some clumsiness on the Superintendent's part which might have offended the young lady. After that, I put it by in my mind, and applied myself, single-handed, to the case. It ended, as you are aware, in the discovery ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... half-a-dozen times in the course of it, which bringing her to her original position, the same thing is repeated as often as it can be done without entangling the line. One or two of the women performed this with considerable agility and adroitness, considering the clumsiness of their boots and jackets, and seemed to pride themselves in some degree on the qualification. A second kind of this game consists in two women holding a long rope by its ends and whirling it round in such a manner, over the heads of two ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... your best?" asked Sylvia, aghast. "Have you another?" "I haven't anything but!" said the boy savagely. "There's a whole trunk full of them!" He was fumbling with a rough clumsiness at the lacing of his shoes, but made no progress in loosening them, and now began kicking at the grass. "I don't know how to get them off!" he cried, his voice breaking nervously. Judith was down on her knees, inspecting with a competent curiosity the fastenings, which ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... himself in the Government Mail Service at Washington. By 1876, he was at the head of this Department, which he completely reorganized. He introduced the bag system in postal cars, and made war on waste and clumsiness. By virtue of this position he was the one man in the United States who had a comprehensive view of all railways and telegraphs. He was much more apt, consequently, than other men to develop the idea ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... might add that the menore of those days was not the delicate, beautiful thing that it is to-day: it was comparatively crude, and clumsy band of metal, in which were imbedded the vital units and the tiny atomic energy generator, and was worn upon the head like a crown. But for all its clumsiness, it conveyed and received thought, and, after all, that was all we demanded ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... any member of his family would take the shilling, but he was ready to believe all things of their clumsiness. In vain did Grantly and Mary protest that they had never been near his desk; the squire might have been Sherlock Holmes himself, so certain was he as to the exactitude of ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... gone, and Hitty stole down to the garden-door with her little child, now just trying to walk, that he might have a little play on the green turf, and she cool her hot eyes and lips in the air. As she sat there watching the pretty clumsiness of her boy, and springing forward to intercept his falls, the influence of sun and air, the playful joy of the child, the soothing stillness of all Nature, stole into her heart till it dreamed a dream of hope. Perhaps the budding blossom of promise might become floral and fruitful; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the string which fastened the cloth, she poured some of the beans upon the table and ordered me to shell them quickly and carefully. I obey her mandate and with careful fingers separate the beans from the filthy pods which contain them; but she, accusing my clumsiness, hastily snatched them and, skillfully tearing off the pods with her teeth, spat them upon the ground, where they looked like dead flies. I wondered, then, at the ingenuity of poverty and its expedients for emergency. (So ardent a follower ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... there is a feeling that all able-bodied men and women are provided for. Here is none of the elegance and indolence of Athens, or of the ingenuity and cleverness of Constantinople, but a steadiness and drabness of a peasant clumsiness mark the new Sofia. It is neither so pleasant nor so promising a place as it was in 1915. The soil of the ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... worn to the smoothness of these tables here and carved as deeply with names. There was not a vestige of a cloth or napkins. The plates and knives and forks were rude enough to bear out the surroundings. In fact, the clumsiness and apparent age of everything almost transported us, in imagination, to the stone age, but the ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... you like it, Mrs. Macallister," said Mr. Willett, with the clumsiness of American middle-age when summoned to say something gallant. "If I'd told you what a surprise I had for you, it ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... the table. His eyes were all but invisible. There was no ursine clumsiness in his movements, as he walked to and fro in the bar-room. As became a feline, he walked in silence and on his toes. He was thinking of many a shady incident in his past career, and he knew that with the greater number of his shaded spots ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... and complex movements of these contrivances and the inert panting clumsiness of their masters was acute, and for days I had to tell myself repeatedly that these latter were indeed the ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... can chip without breaking the end of an egg in a glass on the anvil, crack a nut without touching the kernel, or strike a blow of ten tons eighty times in a minute, we have a steady onward movement. Prejudice builds its solid breakwaters; ignorance, inability, clumsiness, and awkwardness raise such obstacles as they can; but the delay of a century is but a moment. Slowly and surely the waters rise till they sweep away all obstacles, overtop all barriers, and plunge ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... is usually strongly built, broad-shouldered, and massive in frame, but his appearance is spoilt by the clumsiness of his walk and the want of grace in his movements. Though quite as large in muscle, it is very doubtful if he possesses the strength of the seamen who may be seen lounging about the ports. There is a want ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... the clumsiness of his tactics in remaining upstairs. He ought to have gone downstairs to meet his father and auntie, and left them to go up alone. His father was in an ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... deliberately, with a kind of mixture of clumsiness and assurance which was characteristic ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... have hurled me to his feet if Vanna had not held me with a firm restraining hand. Looking up in adoring love to the dark face was a ring of woodland creatures. I thought I could distinguish the white clouded robe of a snow-leopard, the soft clumsiness of a young bear, and many more, but these shifted and blurred like dream creatures—I could not be sure of them nor define their numbers. The eyes of the Player looked down upon their passionate delight ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... the animal's last moments, and the progress of public business, the eachetero, a butcher, came forward and performed his function of inflicting the death-blow on occasions when, owing to the perversity of the bull or the clumsiness of the matador, his final assistance becomes requisite. Grasping firmly a short sharp dagger, he by a steady and well directed blow put a period to the agonies of the animal—applauses and abuse were then liberally bestowed upon Leoncito; after which the fight was suffered to proceed, and the third ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... narrowly escaped being cast away off Cape Fear. In a few days more they anchored at Wococon, an island near Roanoke. In entering the harbor the largest ship, the Tiger, struck a sand-bar, and was nearly lost, either through the clumsiness or treachery of the pilot, Simon Fernando, a Portuguese. On the 11th of July Grenville, with forty others, including Lane, Amidas, and the chief men of the expedition, crossed over to the mainland. Taking northerly direction, they explored the coast as far as Secotan, an Indian town some sixty ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... that it should be the place to which my family were proposing to send me. When she assured me (as sometimes happened) that she liked me less than some other of her friends, less than she had liked me the day before, because by my clumsiness I had made her side lose a game, I would beg her pardon, I would beg her to tell me what I must do in order that she should begin again to like me as much as, or more than the rest; I hoped to hear her say that that was already my position; ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... a sharp pang, but after a passing movement of irritation at the clumsiness of fate, and at her own carelessness in not denying the door to all but Selden, she controlled herself and greeted Rosedale amicably. It was annoying that Selden, when he came, should find that particular visitor in possession, but Lily was mistress ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... handcuffs is small, because I dislike them, for in addition to their clumsiness, I know that when I have laid my hands upon my man, it will be difficult for ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... I thought a thousand times must have died. As for me, the powders d'Aillot preserved me from the pestilential air, and cured me from the effects of a fall in my bajarow,[144] caused by the clumsiness of my boatmen. I narrowly escaped breaking my ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... probably does not apply to any being who ever lived, except to a few school-girls of both sexes, it has a strong infusion of Borrow's satiric gift. As for the diatribes against gentility, Borrow has only done very clumsily what Thackeray had done long before without clumsiness. It can escape nobody who has read his books with a seeing eye that he was himself exceedingly proud, not merely of being a gentleman in the ethical sense, but of being one in the sense of station and extraction—as, by the way, the decriers of British snobbishness usually are, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... assistants, as well as he himself, knew that life or death hung upon the issue of the next ten minutes. Upon Street alone devolved the life of the little girl. A second's hesitation at the wrong stage of the operation, a slip of bistoury or scalpel, a tremor of the wrist, a single instant's clumsiness of the fingers, and the Enemy—watching for every chance, intent for every momentarily opened chink or cranny wherein he could thrust his lean fingers—entered the frail tenement with a leap, a rushing, headlong spring that jarred ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... the shingle, and the next ran in alongside before the oars were unshipped, and the wind was thick with curses on their clumsiness. The landing between the rock is a narrow one, and no more than two could come in at once. The ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... refer your question to Paul here," replied John. "He is the one who worked out this idea of using helium in an airplane and giving it the best properties of a dirigible without any of the dirigible's handicap of clumsiness and excessive wind resistance. He has been studying the properties of helium in school, also the ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... Epilogue. Poetry never was my natural turn; and what little propensity I had to it, is totally extinguished by age and pain. It is honour enough to me to have furnished the canons of your tragedy; I should disgrace it by attempting to supply adventitious ornaments. The clumsiness of the seams would betray my gouty fingers. I shall take the liberty of reading your play once more before I return it. It will be extraordinary indeed if it is not accepted, but I cannot doubt but it will be, and very successful; though it will be great pity but you ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... much neglected by popular favor. Its physical clumsiness, its lack of sporting competition in comparison with the airplane which must fight to keep itself up in the air, its lack of romance as contrasted with that of the airplane in war, have all tended to cast somewhat of a shadow over ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... son, it would serve to point us out to the assailants if there are a number, and you would be too much exposed; you would receive an arrow in you. Come, come," said the priest, lowering his gun after some moments of attentive scrutiny; "it is but an alarm; let us return and thank the Lord for the clumsiness of this cannibal, for if he had not blundered, you would not be here, my son. What astonishes me, and for which I thank God, is that you have escaped; a native so bold as to make such an attempt should have a true eye and ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... American standards the force was well trained. But the poor Indians and half-breeds that made up its bulk were so overwhelmed with the solemnity of the extraordinary occasion that they were even more ox-like in their clumsiness and nearer frightened apes in demeanor than in their native jungles. The quaking fear of making a mis-step caused them to keep their eyes riveted on the lips of our compatriot, from which, instead of the words of wrath they no doubt often ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... before he returned with several strips of fabric cut from the tent curtain, and the neatest splints he could extemporize from slabs of stripped-off bark; and the next half-hour was a trying one to both of them. Sometimes Vane assisted him with suggestions—once he reviled his clumsiness—and sometimes he lay silent with his face awry and his lips tight silent; but at length it was done and Carroll ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... make toilettes, to sit for hours together before the mirror, and in the evening read novels by lamp-light. What a jest it would be to mock her, to make her stare at country work, to spoil her precious hands in the skin-roughening house-keeping work, and to laugh at her clumsiness. ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... concert hall or opera house is no more than a baroque parody upon the thing the composer imagined. In an orchestra of eighty men there is inevitably at least one man with a sore thumb, or bad kidneys, or a brutal wife, or katzenjammer—and one is enough. Some day the natural clumsiness and imperfection of fingers, lips and larynxes will be overcome by mechanical devices, and we shall have Beethoven and Mozart and Schubert in such wonderful and perfect beauty that it will be almost unbearable. ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... of these book-products to the book-buyer of cultivated taste lies, of course, not in a conscious, naive recognition of their costliness and superior clumsiness. Here, as in the parallel case of the superiority of hand-wrought articles over machine products, the conscious ground of preference is an intrinsic excellence imputed to the costlier and more awkward article. ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... by her silence, but he felt that it was due to his own clumsiness, and promised himself that he would repair his error. He turned to Mme. de Montcornet and talked to her of Blondet, extolling that young writer for her benefit. The Countess was gracious to him, and asked him (at a sign from Mme. d'Espard) to spend ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... conveyed on board the boat, and there, with very little ceremony, his head was laid upon the block, and the executioner immediately commenced his task of severing it from the body. But, either from the unsteadiness of the boat, or the unsuitableness of the instrument, or the clumsiness of the operator, five several blows were required before the bloody ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott |
