"Clumsiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lest Harris should want to get out and fool round it. I saw him fix a longing eye on the landing-stage as we drew near it, so I managed, by an adroit movement, to jerk his cap into the water, and in the excitement of recovering that, and his indignation at my clumsiness, he forgot ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... comes!" exclaimed Dick, as the hunter referred to came thundering up the slope at a charge, on a horse that resembled its rider in size and not a little in clumsiness of appearance. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... work had been completed. As Sam silently began to read, Mark bumped against him, knocking the translation from his hand. Sam's first reaction was anger at the boy's clumsiness. Then he became aware of the hope and the fear that lay behind Mark's excitement, and bit back the angry words which had ...
— Dead Man's Planet • William Morrison
... chancel, hurtling against the railing as I passed, and pausing for an instant, wondering whether those without could have heard the noise which in my clumsiness I had made. But the grinding sound continued uninterrupted, and I breathed more freely. I mounted the altar-steps, the distant light behind me still feebly guiding me; I ran round to the right, and heaved a great ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... said that a few pebbles from a brook in the sling of a David who knows how to send them to the mark are more effective than a Goliath's spear and a Goliath's strength with a Goliath's clumsiness. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... surprised to find how wonderfully the puppets followed the leading-strings; in spite of his clumsiness the story acted itself ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... alone in one of the clubhouse boats, was rowing with drunken clumsiness toward the head ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... one who is committing suicide, and who, from his love of noble and eloquent attitudes, is determined to die standing. He ended with a final impressive gesture. However, as he came down from the tribune, the general coldness seemed to increase, not a single member applauded. With supreme clumsiness he had alluded to the secret scheming of Rome and the clergy, whose one object, in his opinion, was to recover the predominant position they had lost and restore monarchy in France at a ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... pair of spectacles, which literally opened an entirely new world to me. I had no idea how beautiful the world was until I got those spectacles. I had been a clumsy and awkward little boy, and while much of my clumsiness and awkwardness was doubtless due to general characteristics, a good deal of it was due to the fact that I could not see and yet was wholly ignorant that I was not seeing. The recollection of this experience ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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
... happened to take them by surprize, there 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 ...
— 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
... peril of talking to her, that he held her in his arms without a single word, till Dr. May had unclosed his lips—a sign would not suffice—he must have a sentence to assure him; and then it was such joy to have her restored, and his fondness and solicitude were so tender and eager in their clumsiness, that his father-in-law ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... aware of the disadvantages connected with thus collecting together a number of separate papers, instead of writing a uniform treatise upon one continuous subject. The picture formed by their union must necessarily have much of the artificiality and clumsiness of the mosaic as compared with the oil or water-colour painting. But only in this form could I have brought together such a great variety of important things. And though I cannot hope that the inherent defect of the mosaic will be compensated by its permanence—for books of this kind do not last—yet ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Thynne on the subject of the craftsmen employed by both, and there seems no doubt that Longleat and Hardwick were the work of the same men. The inlays upon the long table are particularly fine, and except for a certain clumsiness almost recall the glories of the great period of Italian marquetry. The cradle of James I. (1566) is ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... specimens 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, ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... at the theatre and he handed her out—a little awkwardly perhaps, but without absolute clumsiness. They found all the rest of the party already in their seats and the curtain about to go up. They took the two end stalls, Trent on the outside. One chair only, ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was intended to prevent the upsetting of the canoe, which was so narrow that it could not have maintained an upright position without the outrigger. We could not help wondering both at the ingenuity and the clumsiness ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... legs usually do. While there was no great pain the leg was unhandsome to look upon, and it gave to Old Silver a clumsiness of movement he ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... "anonymous" there was something wrong, false, conceited, but I only realized that when I noticed that my wife flushed very red and hurriedly thrust the list into the heap of papers. We both felt ashamed; I felt that I must at all costs efface this clumsiness at once, or else I should feel ashamed afterwards, in the train and at Petersburg. But how efface it? What was I ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... he took hold of the boat, drew it close in, and then, he on one side, the two lads on the other, they ran it right up ashore, and close to the glowing peat-stack, where, with a good deal of laughter at their clumsiness in skates ashore, the punt was turned over, and Dave propped one side up with a couple of short pieces ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... 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
... She had only to tighten her lips—and she became oblivious of her clumsiness and her cruelty, savouring with pleasure the pain of the situation, clasping it to her! Now and then a thought of Mr. Skellorn's tragedy shot through her brain, and the tenderness of pity welled up from somewhere within her and mingled exquisitely with her dark melancholy. And she found ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... good-natured, harmless Victor Seitz, a Detroit cigar maker, a German, and one of the slowest of created mortals. How he ever came to go into the cavalry was beyond the wildest surmises of his comrades. Why his supernatural slowness and clumsiness did not result in his being killed at least once a day, while in the service, was even still farther beyond the power of conjecture. No accident ever happened in the company that Seitz did not have some share in. Did a horse fall on a slippery ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... 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 ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to make herself useful. She lacked experience in a house like ours, but her willingness and cheerfulness more than made up for the clumsiness of her hands as she would say to Teresa, "Let me do that, dear Teresa; you are so tired, and you have so much work now." Teresa, accustomed as she was to perform everything herself, hesitated a little at first; but Paula would look at her in such a beseeching way ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... pronounced, when the lances were set and the charge began, this momentary admiration was converted into a cry of derision, by the sudden restiveness of the Burgundian's horse. This animal, of the pure race of Flanders, of a bulk approaching to clumsiness, of a rich bay, where, indeed, amidst the barding and the housings, its colour could be discerned, had borne the valiant Bastard through many a sanguine field, and in the last had received a wound which had greatly impaired its ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... we except railways and telegraphs, which have become a military and political necessity, growing out of the progress of neighboring powers—while many of their fabrics are still made by hand, and their mints, presses, and fire-engines are of almost primeval clumsiness, the Russians eagerly grasp at all novelties, and are wonderfully quick in the comprehension of their uses and advantages. A similar comparison might be made in reference to the freedom of internal trade, and the encouragement given to every industrial pursuit among the people, being ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... sentimentalist's eyes were moist, and her voice choked, as she concluded her legend. It was the first love-story Dick had ever heard, and in pity at the beautiful narrative, which no clumsiness of narration could altogether rob of its pathos, he was crying too. There is no audience like an impressionable child, and the immortal story of love and misfortune seemed very pitiful to his ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... when they put the table-racks on. Seen from the pavement, or from the top of another omnibus, it is of barbaric majesty; not, indeed, in the single example, but as part of the interminable line of omnibuses coming towards you. Then its clumsiness is lost in the collective uncouthness which becomes of a tremendous grandeur. The procession bears onward whole populations lifted high in the air, and swaying and lurching with the elephantine gait of things which can no more ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... conspiring," said the Duke, "and with conspicuous clumsiness. It appears, child, that it was their common idiocy which of late brought together some two hundred gentlemen in Lancashire. Being every one of them most unmitigated fools, they desired that sot at Avignon to come over once more and 'take back his own,' as the saying is. He would not stir ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... please, please, don't!" she said. And William King winced at his own clumsiness; her reticence made him feel as if he had been guilty of an impropriety, almost ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... a costly victory. Except the Quotidienne, which stood by him consistently, not a paper was on his side. His clumsiness of style, his habit of occasionally coining words to express his meaning, and the coarseness of some of his writings, combined with the prejudice caused by his literary arrogance, had always, to a certain extent, blinded literary and critical ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... teacher—the lesson was a very kindergarten in methods. There were times when Georgiana had much difficulty in restraining her inward mirth, but she soon saw that this must be done, though Jeannette herself laughed at her own clumsiness, and evidently was determined to let ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... aptitude of the people who produced it for poetry. It is a familiar observation from beginners in German who have any literary taste, that German poetry reads naturally, German prose does not. In verse the German disencumbers himself of that gruesome clumsiness which almost always besets him in the art he learnt so late, and never learnt to any perfection. To "say" is a trouble to him, a trouble too often unconquerable; to sing is easy enough. And this truth, true of all centuries of German literature, is never truer than here. Translated ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... sixteen times without reloading, and which will kill at a hundred yards' distance. With a weapon unknown to me I might not only fail altogether, but I might not improbably do serious injury, by my clumsiness ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... brilliant road, out of the bondage of the humdrum and common, into the better life. The universal dead-level of plainness and homeliness, the lack of all beauty and distinction in form and feature, the slowness and clumsiness of the language, the eternal beer, sausages, and bad tobacco, the blank commonness everywhere, pressing at last like a weight on the spirits of the traveller in Northern Germany, and making him impatient to be gone, this is the weak side; the industry, the well-doing, the patient ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... had been during almost the whole campaign in the most pitiable condition, especially the former, who 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 ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... them, as they jumped the hedge, laughing gaily at Pee-wee's clumsiness and, waving their hats to her, took their belated way along ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... the management of his net, but failed sometimes from his eagerness to use his trident. He was received with loud applause when he entered, and justified the good opinion of the spectators by defeating his antagonist, who was armed as a Samnite, the spectators expressing their dissatisfaction at the clumsiness of the latter by giving the hostile signal, when the Gaul—for the vanquished belonged to that nationality—instead of waiting for the approach of Porus, at once stabbed himself with ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... disarmed, his lip in his teeth, 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 us at the ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... modern party 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 is made up ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... necessary to keep to a fixed arrangement of the position of everything on the work-table and to have all kept as clean as possible. To see the deft and unhurried work of a Japanese craftsman at printing is a great lesson, and a reproach to Western clumsiness. ...
— Wood-Block Printing - A Description of the Craft of Woodcutting and Colour Printing Based on the Japanese Practice • F. Morley Fletcher
... with Mr Petulengro, who directed him to Mumber Lane (Mumper's Dingle), near Willenhall, in Staffordshire, "the little dingle by the side of the great north road." Here Borrow encamped and shod little Ambrol, who kicked him over as a reminder of his clumsiness. ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... took up his station behind the wall of turf pointed to. He had once upon a time been forcibly rebuked for his clumsiness at some unaccustomed task in the Canadian bush and had not resented it, but the faint movement of Gladwyne's shoulders had brought a warmth to his face. The girl ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... selects what he needs, and John pays for it, wondering what sort of clumsiness he will display in the wearing of ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... willfully and less courteously than the men. For a while it may be that the caution of the poor Levantine may enable him to avoid contact, but sooner or later, perhaps, the dreaded chance arrives; that bundle of linen, with the dark tearful eyes at the top of it, that labors along with the voluptuous clumsiness of Grisi —she has touched the poor Levantine with the hem of her sleeve! From that dread moment his peace is gone; his mind for ever hanging upon the fatal touch invites the blow which he fears; he watches for the symptoms of plague so carefully, that sooner or later they come in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... inelegant protection. It would, therefore, entirely prevent inconvenience, and so thwart the Sex in their martyrial propensities. Such a thing is not to be thought of. On the contrary, either to suffer from sunlight without an ugly, or to suffer from clumsiness with one, enables the unfortunate Sex to indulge in its favourite passion to the fullest extent possible in such cases. Admirable portion of creation! what merits are yours, what praise is called for fully to requite you! But, indeed, it must ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... Tocqueville, 'unless he were a soldier. We tolerate from a man who has almost necessarily been deprived of a careful education much clumsiness and awkwardness of elocution. Soult did not speak much better than the Duke of Wellington, but he was listened to. He had, like the Duke, an air ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... latter stumbled, and in his struggles to lay hold upon the snag, pushed the end of the planks off their support. His mother's sinewy arm thrust him into safety, and she herself clambered up, very wet and very voluble in her imprecations on his clumsiness. ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... diligently, but against the stream, together with the clumsiness of the barge, they could not make headway with any degree of speed. It was not long before Bruce could see them. He raised his rifle and let go; and in the boat Umballa felt his turban stir mysteriously. The report which instantly followed was enough to convince him that he in ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... and go through with the other evolutions; but there was a certain polish needed—so the ring-master said—to make them pass off well. He was to assume a graceful position at the beginning and end of each act; he must recover himself without clumsiness; he must bow, and make a flourish with his hands, when he had done ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... 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, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... Overland smashed into a freight somewhere near Pittsburgh this morning. There were hundreds of people killed. Oh, Lord, Ted! I didn't mean to break it to you like that." Dick was aghast at his own clumsiness as Ted leaned against the brick wall of the college building, his face white as chalk. "I wasn't thinking—guess I wasn't thinking about much of anything except Tony," ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... obstacles to its attainment there seem to be. The abounding presence of numerous experimental motors to-day is so stimulating to the imagination, there are so many stimulated persons at work upon them, that it is difficult to believe the obvious impossibility of most of them—their convulsiveness, clumsiness, and, in many cases, exasperating trail of stench will not be rapidly fined away.[6] I do not think that it is asking too much of the reader's faith in progress to assume that so far as a light ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Americans, always shy about their country, have learnt from the ridicule which Europeans, on mixed aesthetic and moral grounds, pour on this statue, to dismiss it with an apologetic laugh. Yet it is fine—until you get near enough to see its clumsiness. I admired the great gesture of it. A hand fell on my shoulder, and a voice said, "Look hard at that, young man! That's the first time you've seen Liberty—and it will be the last till you turn your back on this country again." It was an American fellow-passenger, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... 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
... in nubibus... the works of the composer give us invariably the idea of an enthusiastic school-boy, whose parts are by no means on a par with his enthusiasm, who WILL be original whether he CAN or not. There is a clumsiness about his harmonies in the midst of their affected strangeness, a sickliness about his melodies despite their evidently FORCED unlikeness to familiar phrases, an utter ignorance of design everywhere apparent ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... 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, while he imitates the one and regards ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... fear. Go your way, Monsieur Percivail. I shall keep my gauze. Some day when we are very old people and very old friends I may then be permitted to bandage your hands. At present, however, the risk is too great, eh? I am so inexperience. I might by accident tie your hands in my clumsiness, and zat—that would make so much trouble for ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Oh, blast my clumsiness!" he whispered; then stood still as death to see what had befallen. Virginia stirred behind ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... but it seemed to him that fine living should be but the flower of fine feeling, and that such external graces, when they adorned a dull and vapid society, were as incongruous as the royal purple on a clown. Among certain of his new friends he found a clumsiness of manner somewhat absurdly allied with an attempt at Roman austerity; but he was fair-minded enough to see that the middle-class doctor or lawyer who tries to play the Cicero is, after all, a more respectable figure than the Marquess who apes Caligula or ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... words will suffice. If the word fisherman be derived from fishing, and not from fish, we had a great many such fishermen at Vichy; who, though they could neither scour a worm, nor splice the rod that their clumsiness had broken, nor dub a fly, nor land a fish of a pound weight, if any such had had the mind to try them, were vain enough to beset the banks of the Allier at a very early hour in the morning. As they ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... and establishing her on the topmost step, seated himself lower down, one arm passed behind her, his left hand covering hers that lay folded in her lap. Quita, looking down upon it in a flutter of happiness, noted and approved it as an epitome of the man; large, without clumsiness, nervous and ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... But, as conscientious artist, he was sensitively aware of makeshift. A great element of his success lay in the fact that he had trained the dog to appear the more clever of the two, to score off his pretended clumsiness and to complete his tricks. For years he had left uncultivated the art of being funny by himself. Without Prepimpin he felt lost, like a man in a sculling race with only one oar. He took off his make-up and dressed, a very much worried man. Of course he could ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... t' Church an' t' law, Aah b'lieve, but 'od rabbit him, Aah says, who knaws the clumsiness o' the creature. Just fit for nowt else but cuttin' up t' bait for t' ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... clotted hair protruded, the whole ghastliness of death that comes by violence. With all that under his eyes, Conroy had to give his account of the affair, while the ring of silent, hard-breathing men watched him and marvelled at the clumsiness of ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... the ambient air, in the most unintelligible Devonshire jargon, 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 ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... it is done; and he laughs with delight when he finds that any neighbor coming in can only growl and grumble—and fail. I'm going there just now; won't you come? And mind you be very angry when you can't get the ring off; you may use any language you like about your clumsiness—poor little chap, he has heard plenty of ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... farm; then he swung back into telegraphy, and in a few years found 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 of ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... under than above his rank; for his carriage was bold and somewhat supercilious, his step easy and free, his manner daring and unconstrained. His stature was of the middle size, or rather above it, his limbs well-proportioned, yet not so strong as to infer the reproach of clumsiness. His features were uncommonly handsome, and all about him would have been interesting and prepossessing but for that indescribable expression which habitual dissipation gives to the countenance, joined with a certain audacity in look and manner, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... required the practice of exercises calculated to insure independence. The pupil was instructed to go through these exercises first staccato, effected by a free movement of the wrist, an admirable means of counteracting heaviness and clumsiness, then legato-staccato, then accented legato, then pure legato, modifying the power from pp to ff, and the ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... 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 ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... because machinery, by placing an unmalleable and inflexible material—a material that refuses to be humanized—between man's fingers and the actual element he works in, has interrupted that instinctive aesthetic movement of the human hands, which, even in the midst of the most utter clumsiness and grossness, can never fail to introduce some touch of beauty into ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... faltered, and I began to reflect on the grotesque, the unconscious perversity of her action. I was the only person save George Gravener and the Mulvilles who was aware of Sir Gregory Coxon's and of Miss Anvoy's strange bounty. Where could there have been a more signal illustration of the clumsiness of human affairs than her having complacently selected this moment to fly in the face of it? "There's the chance of their seeing her letters. ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... Little Herbert, all clumsiness and fat legs and arms, did a good deal of hugging and squealing, and Miss Shake, Leonard's old governess, wept discreetly and worshipfully in ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... pride was for ever being needlessly hurt by Admiralty tactlessness. He had good reason on many occasions to take offence at their clumsiness. One of numerous grievances was Sir Sydney Smith being, to all appearances, put over him. He wrote to Lord St. Vincent, and reminded him that he was a man, and that it was impossible for him to serve in the Mediterranean ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... of my ineffectual attempts to be brilliant? That's a joy," he went on, "if it's not drawn out by the mere clumsiness of my flattery." She had turned away from him, kindly enough, as if time for his talk in the air were always to be allowed him: she took in vaguely Vanderbank's books and prints. "Why didn't your mother ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... Mangles, who had smiled at the clumsiness of some maneuver. John took the hint, but mentally resolved that he would nevertheless hold himself in readiness in case the incapacity of the crew should endanger the safety of ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... calls, if you tarry long in this quarter of the world, lad," returned the other laughing. "The echoes repeat pretty much all that is said or done on the Glimmerglass, in this calm summer weather. If a paddle falls you hear of it sometimes, ag'in and ag'in, as if the hills were mocking your clumsiness, and a laugh, or a whistle, comes out of them pines, when they're in the humour to speak, in a way to make you believe ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... boast of "prosperity" had made a deep impression. "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 ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... all thumbs as he took a cigar from the proffered box. He cursed himself because his tongue felt thick. Perhaps it was his silence, betraying something of his mental clumsiness, that brought a faint flush of color into her cheeks. He noted that; and also that the top of her shining head came just about to his chin, and that her mouth and throat, looking down on them, ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... aunt, "or rather Jenks has. He burned off the lamp shade from my reading lamp. And Jane Vanderdecken says because he did it out of sheer clumsiness I cannot ask the company ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... 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. Thus it came to pass that for many years the rural population of New England, as a general rule, did their own work, both out doors and in. If there were a black man or black woman or bound girl, they were emphatically only the helps, ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... 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 ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... the same time to Sir Charles that the real trouble arose from 'clumsiness of arrangement,' and quoted Lord Hartington's words as accepting ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... Polynesia, 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 ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... mind, as I sat staring before me out of the inn window, and paying no heed to what I saw; only I remember that my eye lighted on Captain Hoseason down on the pier among his seamen, and speaking with some authority. And presently he came marching back towards the house, with no mark of a sailor's clumsiness, but carrying his fine, tall figure with a manly bearing, and still with the same sober, grave expression on his face. I wondered if it was possible that Ransome's stories could be true, and half disbelieved them; they fitted so ill with the man's looks. But indeed, he was neither so good ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wonderingly but complacently, and, though quite conscious, Mistress Fiddy involuntarily sighed out "mother." Very motherly was the elder woman's assurance: "Yes, my dear, I'll serve as madam your mother in her absence, till madam herself comes; and she'll laugh at our confusion and clumsiness, I warrant." ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... killing him instantly. He was an honest, kindly man, to judge from the little I have seen of him, and, as Captain Holding assures me, an excellent navigator. Poor Railton was dreadfully upset by the effects of his clumsiness; although I dislike the man, I have not the heart to blame him when I see the contrition upon ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... obvious contrivances—like the wheel or the lever—which smooth and simplify earthly life, and the charm of whose utility no obviousness can stale. But of course any contrivance can be rendered futile by clumsiness or negligence. There is a sort of Christmas giver who says pettishly: "Oh! I don't know what to give to So-and-So this Christmas! What a bother! I shall write and tell her to choose something herself, and send the bill to me!" ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... 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 it is just as near. I would have college rooms, college entrances, and all college domains cleanly and attractive. I would, in the first place, have every rough board planed, and painted in soft and cheerful tints. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... kindness. Once I caught him throwing half his dinner to a wretched little lad who had just come to the factory, and worked near him; and once again, as I was leaving the building on a rainy night, I came upon him on the stone steps at the door bending down with an almost pathetic clumsiness to pin the woolen shawl of a poor little mite, who, like so many others, worked with her shiftless father and mother to add to their weekly earnings. It was always the poorest and least cared for of the children whom he seemed to befriend, ...
— "Surly Tim" - A Lancashire Story • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 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 her daughters, so that ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... thou swallow up my poem in thy glib clumsiness, Zabastes!" he said lightly—"And thus wilt them hold up the most tasteless portions of the whole for the judgment of the public! 'Tis the manner of thy craft,—yet see!"—and with a dexterous movement of his arm he threw ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... elbow of the hill and caught up with the two. It proved to be one several years their senior, a young man in the holiday dress of a prosperous farmer. He whistled clearly an old border air and walked without dragging or clumsiness. Coming up, he ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... more every day, he was reduced to painting, in addition to his usual panels and pictures, the meanest kinds of works. And he sank so low that everything was a torment to him, but above all his burdensome family of children, which turned all his ability in art into mere clumsiness. Wherefore, being overtaken by infirmities and impoverished, he finished his life in misery at the age of fifty-eight, and was buried in S. Simone, at Florence, by the Company of the ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... true; "changing" is as familiar as may be; "foam that passed away," strictly literal; and the whole line descriptive of the reality with a degree of accuracy which I know not any other verse, in the range of poetry, that altogether equals. For most people have not a distinct idea of the clumsiness and massiveness of a large wave. The word "wave" is used too generally of ripples and breakers, and bendings in light drapery or grass: it does not by itself convey a perfect image. But the word "mound" is heavy, large, dark, definite; there is no mistaking ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... a pity you didn't see who it was. Confound that bob-stay!' (his tactful way of reflecting on my clumsiness); 'which way did he run?' I pointed vaguely into the west. 'Not towards the island? I wonder if it's someone off one of those galliots. There are three anchored in the channel over there; you can see their lights. You didn't hear a boat ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... are all over, for which I truly say grace. I have had difficulties to keep my countenance at the wonderful clumsiness and uncouth nicknames that the Duke has for all his offspring: Mrs. Hopefull, Mrs. Tiddle, Puss, Cat, and Toe, sound so strange in the middle of a most formal banquet! The day the peace was signed, his grace could find nobody to communicate joy with him: ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... who is forced to something inevitable, and bent her head obediently so that he could get at the snarl better. Timothy worked away in silence, his knees braced in the soft ground. His fingers were never very good at this sort of thing, and right now they seemed to become clumsiness personified. They trembled so that the snarl seemed to grow worse and worse with each moment. He gritted his teeth and tried his best to control his hands and his heart, which raced and beat so loudly above the crouching girl. He was quite sure she heard ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... theology ought to have considered in advance the clumsiness of such an argument, and proved the divine laws and works by the Scriptures, and not by temporal analogies and worldly reason. For it is written that the divine commandments are justified in and by themselves, and not by any external ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... seems more like a white man's clumsiness. The fellow has been made to resemble an Indian, but people of our own colour have had a hand in ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... towards the unfortunate girl. In the meantime, the Flyaway had luffed up; though she was nearer to Carrie than Paul's boat, she was rapidly drifting to leeward. Her tender, which was a light canoe, had been placed upon deck, and the crew were launching her; but as they did so, by the clumsiness of some one engaged in the operation, she filled as she struck the water, and they were obliged to haul her up again ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... artistic insight may exhibit under the most disadvantageous forms. To realise his characteristic power, we should take one of the great French novelists whom we admire for the exquisite proportions of his story, the unity of the interest and the skill—so unlike our common English clumsiness—with which all details are duly subordinated. He should have, too, the comparative weakness of French novelists, a defective perception of character, a certain unwillingness in art as in politics to allow individual peculiarities to interfere with the main flow ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... wrap about her. It is a curious thing, by the bye, for which I am quite unable to account, that these weird creatures—the females, I mean—had in the earlier days of my stay an instinctive sense of their own repulsive clumsiness, and displayed in consequence a more than human regard for the decency and decorum of ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... overhauls the whole business of criticism, and clears the field for coming literary ideals. Especially telling is his demolition of Klopstock's violent "Northernism," to which he opposes a far wider philosophy of grammar and style. The universality of poetry, as contrasted with a narrow "German" clumsiness, is blandly defended, and a joyous abandon is urged as something better than the meticulous anxiety of chauvinistic partisanism. In all his many criticisms of literature there are charm, wit, and elegance, an individuality and freedom in the reviewer, who, if less penetrating than ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... I drew to 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 ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... tell the truth, she was in such a brown study over the events of the morning that she had become practically oblivious of her surroundings. When she recovered sufficiently from her confusion at her clumsiness to take in the details of the situation, she realized that the individual in question was a young man whom she was in the habit of passing daily at this same hour. Only the day before he had rescued her veil which had been swept ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... man was never missed nor owned by a friend. The murder of a king reshapes history; an assassinated Minister may change a Constitution; the killing of this man, apparently, mattered to no single living soul. Yet his murderers, in all their clumsiness and ignorance, contrived a crime which should be talked of daily for a century, and should have its separate, distinct record in stone when a thousand plots and passions of regicides and usurpers should be as clean forgotten as if their record had never ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... trial to every one, admirably borne. Shopland remained in his chair, with only a casual glance at the newcomer. Francis rose to his feet with a half-stifled expression of anger at the clumsiness of his clerk. Sir Timothy, well-shaven and groomed, attired in a perfectly-fitting suit of grey flannel, nodded to Francis in friendly fashion and laid his Homburg hat upon the table with the air ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... is very frequently (though by no means always) accompanied by what is called clairaudience, or the power to hear what would be inaudible to the ordinary physical ear; and we will for the nonce take our title as covering this faculty also, in order to avoid the clumsiness of perpetually using two long words where one ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... not intend to be very communicative, if their truth be not apparent, by the manner in which he has set forth the events in the tale itself, he must be content to lie under the imputation of having disfigured it, by his own clumsiness. All testimony must, in the nature of things, resolve itself into three great classes—the positive, the negative, and the circumstantial. The first and the last are universally admitted to be entitled to the most consideration, since ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... you, dear,' said Dick, who did not like to think that Kate was telling him a deliberate lie, and to avoid further discussion he suggested bed. Kate did not answer him, and he heard her trying to get undressed, and wondering at her clumsiness he asked himself if he should propose to unlace her stays for her. But he was afraid of irritating her, and thought it would be better to leave her alone to undo the knot as best she could. She tugged at the laces furiously, and thinking ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... they had been within musket-range of each other. But up to this hour Pepe knew not that his trapping comrade was the gigantic smuggler he had fired at from the beach of Ensenada; and Bois-Rose was equally ignorant that Pepe was the coast-guard whose "obstinacy and clumsiness" he had ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... harbour was cleared. Morgan's cheek flushed at the first cry, and he almost lost grip of his oar. The slip was noted instantly, and a warning, "Steady at number three," recalled him to his task. Jeffreys gave him a look, and the Spaniard cursed volubly at his companion's clumsiness. ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... supposes by this title that the author referred his tale to the days of the Caliphate. "Commander of the Faithful" was, I have said, the style adopted by Omar in order to avoid the clumsiness of "Caliph" (successor) of the Caliph (Abu Bakr) of the Apostle ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... contrary, he distinctly stated his approval of the scheme developed in the bill introduced by Senator Davis and passed by Congress. Reconstruction, as it was actually conducted later on, was wretchedly bungled, and was marked chiefly by bitterness in disputation and by clumsiness in practical arrangements, which culminated in that miserable disgrace known as the regime of the "carpet-baggers." How far Lincoln would have succeeded in saving the country from these humiliating processes, no one can say; but that he would have strenuously disapproved much that was done is ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... 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 fetters upon him, squaring his shoulders back. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... no religion. This is partly the cause of their clumsiness. Perhaps if from Christian girls they would learn how to pray, their souls might become more gentle, and their limbs be clothed with grace. You who are going into their country have a direct personal interest ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake |
