"Lout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could do was trust to Gerda's own doubtless sterling good sense. She couldn't possibly prefer a lout like her current escort to good old Bill ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... thee for a saucy lout," said the sutor; "I'll brak' thy spindle-shanks wi' my pipe-stump. Be civil if thou can, Nicky, to thy betters. Sir, if it please ye to listen, we'll have ye well instructed in the matter by the schoolmaster here." He cast ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... should be, by a small band of Tory partisans, but after exhibiting my British pass I was permitted to proceed. Between Trenton and Amboy I met a party of our own horse, and had some trouble until I allowed their leader, a stupid lout, to read my open despatch, when he seemed satisfied, and sent on two troopers with me, whom ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... our mild Cavannah, has at length met with his deserts, and left the sage savans of the fool's hotbed, London, the undisturbed possession of the diligently-achieved fool's-caps their extreme absurdity, egregious folly, and lout-like gullibility, have so splendidly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... scarce looked at him," she said. "He is a lout, with great eyes staring, and a red nose. It does not need that one should look at men to win them. They look at ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Alexander Gordon could do was to put on the rough jerkin of a labouring man, and set to cleaving firewood in the courtyard with the scolding assistance of a maid-servant. When the troopers entered to search for the master of the house, they heard the maid vehemently 'flyting' the great hulking lout for his awkwardness, and threatening to 'draw a stick across his back' if he did not ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... ordered his Boy to get off, and got on himself. But they hadn't gone far when they passed two women, one of whom said to the other: "Shame on that lazy lout to let his ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... had got the "prairie flower" of Craig Ronald (for whom he cherished a romantic attachment of the most desperate and picturesque kind) away from the house for a whole long afternoon at the fishing, that this great grown-up lout should come this way and spoil all his sport. Andra was moved to the extremity ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... Jumbo. "Thank God!" he added inconsequently. He walked faster and faster, and on more than one occasion he brushed hurriedly against some of the brutal frequenters of that part of the world on foggy evenings. A rough lout growled belligerently at him, but shrank from the gladsome light of battle which leaped instantly into John Arniston's eye. To strike some one would have been a comfort to ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... complained that "The grand duke decided all the questions, shut up with two others in the bedchamber," the noble was promptly arrested, condemned to death, and executed. He interrupted the objection of a high noble with, "Be silent, lout!" His court displayed great splendor, but it was semi-Asiatic. The throne was guarded by young nobles called ryndis, dressed in long caftans of white satin, high caps of white ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... themselves up in cheap royal finery and did the Richard III swordfight with maniac energy and prodigious powwow, in the presence of the village boys. This blacksmith cub was there, and the histrionic poison entered his bones. This vast, lumbering, ignorant, dull-witted lout was stage-struck, and irrecoverably. He disappeared, and presently turned up in St. Louis. I ran across him there, by and by. He was standing musing on a street corner, with his left hand on his hip, the thumb of his right supporting his chin, face bowed and frowning, slouch hat pulled ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... I've told ye, it was for twa shillin' a week that I first worked. I was a strappin' lout of a boy then, fit to work harder than I did, and earn more, and ever and again I'd tell them at some new mill I was past fourteen, and they'd put me to work at full time. But I could no hide myself awa' from the inspector when he came around, and each time he'd send me back to ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... group of anxious watchers. This time he had more friends. They swarmed respectfully but enthusiastically after him out of Hoffmuller's place, a dozen at least of our ne'er-do-wells. One of these, "Big Joe" Kestril, a genial lout of a section-hand, ostentatiously carried the bag and had an arm locked tenderly through one of the Colonel's. These two led the procession. It halted at the corner, where the Colonel began to read his Argus notice to Bela Bedford, our druggist, who had been on ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... That is a task I would leave to my enemies. Besides, whenever I have come to grief, some other fellow has been to blame. When I fell into Hampton Lock, before the eyes of a multitude, it was because that ungainly lout Jones let the boat swing. Jones laughed then, and many times after when he told the story; but why should I help him to spread it? But that is neither here nor there. If I had been always as lucky as the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... now,' said the girl, sitting up, and holding out her hands for the bowl. 'They all left me, and the lad brought me—a great lubber lout—' ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... make trial with this mute, since with others I may not, if it be so. And indeed he is the best in the world to that end, for that, e'en if he would, he could not nor might tell it again. Thou seest he is a poor silly lout of a lad, who hath overgrown his wit, and I would fain hear how thou deemest of the thing.' 'Alack!' rejoined the other, 'what is this thou sayest? Knowest thou not that we have promised our virginity to God?' 'Oh, as for that,' answered the first, 'how many things are promised Him all ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... again to a farmer, who agreed to give him a cream cheese for his services. In the evening Jack took the cheese and went home with it on his head. By the time he got home the cheese was completely spoilt, part of it being lost and part matted with his hair. "You stupid lout," said his mother, "you should have carried it very carefully in ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... jolly comfortable perhaps—or perhaps the right man hasn't turned up. Florrie Hensor is several cuts above a malingering lout like Steadbolt. Well there, poor devil! Maybe, it's not unnatural that I should feel a sneaking sympathy for an unsuccessful lover. That abominable lie was a bit too strong though—and before you! The man must have been downright ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... Standing with the potato-bowl on one hip and a hand holding the knife on the other, she delivered her views as to David's laziness, temper, and general good-for-nothingness. If Reuben chose to incur the risks of throwing such a young lout into town-wickedness, with no one to look after him, let him; she'd be glad enough to be shut on him. But, as to writing to Mr. Gurney and that sort of talk, she wasn't going to bandy words—not she; but nobody had ever meddled with Hannah Grieve's ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the drama than the dialogue, the racy give-and-take of two characters, alike of lively imagination, whether gentle or simple. But even had the colloquies of St. Patrick and Oisin, of Dean Swift and his man Jack, of the Lout and his Mother, been developed, by 1890, to a drama as finished as that of Congreve or Goldsmith, Sheridan or Wilde, those who would have their plays abreast of our time would have gone, just as, with the conditions as ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... 'Ah! white-livered lout! I wonder what the devil made such a quaking pudding poltroon think of taking to our trade! Come: I am hungry: let us go into the kitchen, and get some grub; and then to bed. Pimping Simon, here, will see his grandmother's ghost, if we ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... I'll be allowed To realize that 'three can make a crowd.' I do not like to feel myself de trop. With two girl cronies would I not be so? My ring would interrupt some private chat. You'd ask me in and take my cane and hat, And speak about the lovely summer day, And think—'The lout! I wish he'd kept away.' Miss Trevor'd smile, but just to hide a pout And count the moments till I was shown out. And, while I twirled my thumbs, I would sit wishing That I had gone off hunting birds, or fishing. No, thanks, Maurine! The iron hand of Fate, (Or otherwise ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... merry-andrew, zany, harlequin, droll, punch, mime, farceur, scaramouch, grimacier jackpudding; boor, lout, gawk, gawky, lubber, put, bumpkin, churl, carl, tike; rustic, hind, clodhopper, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... say this creature fair In God's sight had a smaller worth Than that dull lout who watched it there, And in its ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... your book and your sucking animals. You've got nothing to show in your book. I know you—and your lout of a son, and your wenches of daughters, that are ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... that you apprehend," said the reverend lout, after solemn reflection, "would indeed seriously affect our friend's interest and endanger his soul. I had not expected Brother Dobsho so soon to give up ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... sprinkle the Leaf Man with water and feast on the food they have collected. In the Fricktal, Switzerland, at Whitsuntide boys go out into a wood and swathe one of their number in leafy boughs. He is called the Whitsuntide-lout, and being mounted on horseback with a green branch in his hand he is led back into the village. At the village-well a halt is called and the leaf-clad lout is dismounted and ducked in the trough. Thereby he acquires the right of sprinkling water ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... A man who would tell me that I am pretty, unless he is over seventy, ought to be kicked out of the room. But a man who can't show me that he thinks me so without saying a word about it, is a lout. Now in all those matters, your friend, Mr. Finn, seems to know what he is about. In other words, he makes himself pleasant, and, therefore, one ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... part, I like those long trials of the old-fashioned chivalry. That lout of a young lord, who took offence because his sovereign-lady sent him down among the lions to fetch her glove, was, in my opinion, very impertinent, and a fool too. Doubtless the lady had in reserve for him ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... dawn, to pawn, no doubt, (Miss this chance, glance untried aside?) John's shirt, my—no! Ay, so—the lout! Let yet the door gape, store on floor And ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... her days of presenting the spectacular, Cheyenne had never witnessed a more even contest than was now being staged this day in the early autumn of 1932, at the circus grounds in the city's suburbs. It was a race between a midget and a lout. ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... across her shoulder, saw something of all this in his face. It was a transfigured face, with great shining eyes that gazed beyond the veil of sound and saw behind it the leap and pulse of life and the gigantic phantoms of the spirit. She was startled. The raw, stumbling lout was gone. The ill-fitting clothes, battered hands, and sunburned face remained; but these seemed the prison-bars through which she saw a great soul looking forth, inarticulate and dumb because of those feeble lips that would not give it ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Hear his arrogance! A country lout who. . .who. . .has got no gloves! Who goes out without sleeve-knots, ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... occasions of his baptism and marriage. He was known as Jack's Tom. If he, in his turn, happened to have a son whom he chose to name Henry, the youth was known as Jack's Tom's Harry. Our friend Tommy's father had been called Hob, and hence the name of the ill-tempered lout who was gazing on the unsullied sea. Tommy watched the green water breaking over the brown sand, and far out at sea he saw the thick haze still brooding low. He knew the evening would be fine, and he knew that ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... were distinctly told, you old lout, that you were not to come here without money; and ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... further sport fell out When they to spoil did fall; Rude Robin Goodfellow, the lout, Would skim ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... In his foolish heart he thanked God he had not tried it. Then the apathetic recoil which is apt to follow any keen emotion overtook him. He was dazedly conscious of being rudely shoved once or twice, and even heard the epithet "drunken lout" from one ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... time before Beverley could again secure Alice for a dance, and he found it annoying him atrociously to see her smile sweetly on some buckskin-clad lout who looked like an Indian and danced like a Parisian. He did not greatly enjoy most of his partners; they could not appeal to any side of his nature just then. Not that he at all times stood too much on his aristocratic traditions, or lacked the virile traits common to vigorous and worldly-minded ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... "You lout!" she laughed, "I'll leave my pail, and dance with him for cakes and ale! I'll dance a mile for love," she laughed, "and win my wager, too. Your feet are shod and mine are bare; but when could leather dance on air? A milk-maid's feet can fall ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... haec ohm meminisse juvabit. Look at Clive, I was saying; a lout, a bear, a booby—as a boy, mark you; yet now! Is there a man whose name rings more loudly in the world's ear? And what Robert Clive is, that Desmond Burke might be if he had the mind and the will. You are going farther? Ah, I have not your love of ambulation. I will bid you farewell for this ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... dull-eyed, gin-sodden lout leaning against the post out there is immeasurably your intellectual superior? Do you know that every little-minded selfish scoundrel, who never had a thought that was not mean and base—whose every action ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... great personage in Nottingham, had a ward whom he had foisted upon the good folks of Nottinghamshire as an Earl, but as a fact he was simply a country lout, and all the teachings of the Sheriff would not make him appear anything different. Robert of Huntingdon was the Earl, in fact, and the Sheriff was going to try to keep him out of his title and estates. The merry ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... knows you! "sportsman" from suburban alleys, Stretched under seaweed in the treacherous punt; Knows every lazy, shiftless lout that sallies Forth to waste ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... our line of march recline Dead gods devoid of feeling; And thick about each sun-cracked lout Dried Howisons are kneeling. ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... blow in wanton play; I growl with new-born ecstasy; Then speaks she in a sweet vain jest, I wot "Allons lout doux! eh! la menotte! Et faites serviteur Comme un joli seigneur." Thus she proceeds with ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... absence of riotous fun, one of the best of all Paul de Kock's books—is Jean, also an example of his middle and ripest period. If translated into English it might have for second title "or, The History of a Good Lout." The career of Jean Durand (one of the French equivalents for John Brown or Jones or Robinson) we have from the moment of, and indeed a little before, his birth to that crowning of a virtuous young Frenchman's hopes, which consists in his marrying a pretty, amiable, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Carmen—Cadwallader with Inez. The officers are in their uniforms—a costume for equestrian exercise not quite shipshape as they would phrase it. On horseback in a naval uniform! It would not do riding thus on an English road; there the veriest country lout would criticise it. But different in California, where all ride, gentle or simple, in dresses of every conceivable cut and fashion, with no fear of being ridiculed therefor. None need attach to the dress worn by Edward Crozier. His rank has furnished him with a frock-coat, which, well-fitting, ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... Hae, have. Haena, have not. "Hae 't," have it. Haill, whole. Hantle, a great deal. Harry, to rob, to break in upon. Hash, a clumsy lout. Hand, to hold, to have. Hauld, a habitation. Hempie, giddy. Heugh, a dell; also, a crag. Hinny, a term of endearmenthoney. Holme, a hollow, level low ground. "Horse of wood, foaled of an acorn," a form of punishment. Howf, a retreat. Hunder, a hundred. ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... my head, and reddened foolishly, but he gave a loud laugh and said, "I can well understand. There was some country lout that your father would have wedded you to. That is the way with ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... strange character was that of an overgrown country lout with boorish manners and silly mind. He did not and would not go to school, and he asserts now that if he had done so he "would have become as big a fool as other people." A shiftless fellow, left to his own devices, he performed some wonderful feats, and among the many ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... and just as the dog and his master were within a yard, the gate was suddenly snatched open, and Uncle Richard appeared, when the lout turned sharply and ran off along the lane, followed by his dog, the fellow shouting "Yah! yah! yah!" his companion's snapping bark ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... lout who has spent his days herding swine, think you, that you could trick me into believing this creature to be Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye—this creature with the mien of a peasant, with a breath reeking of garlic like a third-rate eating-house, and the walk ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... Mr. Prohack agreed. "You always could judge better than I could myself when I had had enough, and what would be the ultimate consequences of my eating. And as for your lessons in manners, what an ill-bred lout I was before I met you, and what an impossible person I should have been had you not taken me in hand night and day for all these years! It isn't that I'm worse than the average husband; it is merely that wives are the sole repositories of the civilising influence. ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... of the arts of reading and writing, and would not be able to send word how matters went on after their departure. In this emergency, while Isoult and John were talking over the subject, Barbara presented herself with a deprecatory courtesy, or rather lout. ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... fallen. The dancing had become more and more excited. Lorchen had ceased to pay any attention to Christophe; she was too busy turning the head of a young lout of the village, the son of a rich farmer, for whom all the girls were competing. Christophe was interested by the struggle; the young women smiled at each other and would have been only too pleased to scratch ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... "Idle lout," she cried, "thou couldst not keep an eye to the bread although thou wouldst be glad to fill thy belly with it. Play another trick of the kind and I will thwack thee on ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... to do with the quarrel; but if I were walking along the streets and saw a big lout pick a quarrel with a weaker one and then proceed to smash him up altogether, I fancy I should take a hand in the business. The Germans deliberately forced on the war. They knew perfectly well that when they put up a German ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... your name was Dickson and you a journeyman baker; but beyond that, whether you were Catholic or Mormon, dull or clever, fierce or friendly, was all one to them. Others who were not so stupid, gossiped a little, and, I am bound to say, unkindly. A favourite witticism was for some lout to raise the alarm of "All aboard!" while the rest of us were dining, thus contributing his mite to the general discomfort. Such a one was always much applauded for his high spirits. When I was ill coming through Wyoming, I was astonished—fresh from the eager humanity ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at, I wonder?" she said. "There's that big lout of a Wigglesworth boy. He's up to no good, ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... "'Here is this lout on the way to destroy the foundations of Rome's greatness. Rome must be saved from him. My duty is clear. He must be put out of the way.' "Nice situation for me. I dare not let loose any such possible fanaticism for ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... not, however, get so far as the Consul, but one of the clerks, a stupid lout with an eyeglass, had come out and told him that he would get no employment on a ship belonging to the firm, until he had been to the Seamen's school, and gave up drinking. As he told his story there was an evil glare ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... gave a cheer at this, Ben Boltrope's lusty voice being conspicuously to the fore; but some, amongst whom was a lazy lout named Bill Moody, who was the chief grumbler in the forecastle, expressed their discontent audibly; saying that they "hadn't signed articles ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... after a pause, "you scurvy clown, that you are to be always interfering with me, and that you are to be always offending and I always pardoning? Don't fancy it, impious scoundrel, for that beyond a doubt thou art, since thou hast set thy tongue going against the peerless Dulcinea. Know you not, lout, vagabond, beggar, that were it not for the might that she infuses into my arm I should not have strength enough to kill a flea? Say, scoffer with a viper's tongue, what think you has won this kingdom and cut off this giant's head and made you a marquis (for all this I count ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Kay was but harsh to those whom he liked not, and from the first he scorned the young man; "For none," said he, "but a low-born lout would crave meat and drink when he might have asked for a horse and arms." But Sir Launcelot and Sir Gawain took the youth's part. Neither knew him for Gareth of the Orkneys, but both believed him to be a youth of good promise who, for his own reasons, ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... seeing something of the world, by serving a campaign or two. How many a light, empty shell of a young man comes home full, if not of sense, at least of something bearing the semblance of sense! How many a heavy lout, a dull son of earth, returns enlivened into a conversable being, who can tell at least of what it has seen, heard, and felt, if not understood; and who for years, perhaps for ever afterwards, by the help of telling of other countries, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... all arranged," he continued; "my uncle would have given you a hearty welcome, and made our peace with my father, or if not, he would have left us all his goods, and secured my career. What call had that great lout, with a wife of his own too, to come thrusting between us? I thought I should make short work of him, and give him a lesson against meddling—great unlicked cub as he was, while I had had the best training at Berlin and Paris in fencing; but somehow those big strong fellows, from ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... matters which concern it much more vitally than they concern others, and government by a neutral authority embracing rival groups in all matters in which conflicting interests of groups come into play; lout always with the fixed principle that the functions of government are to be reduced to the bare minimum compatible with justice and the prevention of private violence. In such a world the present harmful ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... think me,' he asked, under his breath, 'a mere ignorant lout, who has to be shamed before he knows what's manly and what isn't? Do you think because I'm a manufacturer, and the son of one, that I've no thought or feeling above my trade? I know as well as you can tell me, though you speak with words I couldn't ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... policeman surprised him at his work. In the room he had occupied I came upon a brazen-looking woman with a black eye, who answered the question of the officer, "Where did you get that shiner?" with a laugh. "I ran up against the fist of me man," she said. Her "man," a big, sullen lout, sat by, dumb. The woman answered for him that he was ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... said that possibility was not to make any difference to us. Wouldn't it be making the wrong sort of difference to let it keep a great lout like me in idleness while Bernard ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the Scotchman's room, And eats his meat and drinks his ale, And beats the maid with her unused broom, And the lazy lout with his idle flail; But he sweeps the floor and threshes the corn, And hies him away ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... what hard work being a good farmer meant. And I thought: What a stupid, lazy lout! When we talked seriously he would drag it out with his awful drawl—er, er, er—and he works just as he talks—slowly, always behindhand, never up to time; and as for his being businesslike, I don't believe it, for he often keeps letters ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... an old-fashioned place and it and its inhabitants were made the target for the jests and witticisms of the people of Judea. The word "Nazarene" was synonymous with "lout"; "boor"; "peasant"; etc., to the residents of the more fashionable regions. The very remoteness of the town served to separate it in spirit from the rest of the country. But this very remoteness played an important part in the early life of Jesus. Nazareth, by reason of its ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... enjoying the silence of the groves, listening to the murmuring waters and the rustling leaves, admiring the blue gaps outlined above my head by clouds of pearly sheen and gold, wandering fancy free in dreams of my future, I heard some lout or other, who had arrived the day before from Paris, playing on a violin with the violence of a man who has nothing else to do. I would not wish for my worst enemy to hear anything so utterly in discord with the sublime harmony of nature. If the distant notes of Roland's Horn ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... evening her eyes kept wandering in disapproval toward Sally. Joe Hawkes!—it was monstrous. That stupid, common lout of a boy—nearly two years her ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... he has gone—or at least whom he has gone with. Mon Dieu, and the drab has a father and a lout of a fellow who intends to make her his wife, and neither of them chooses to do anything. I suppose they agree with you, madame, that a great gentleman must have his little distractions." Her contempt was as ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... A young lout with a stumpy nose, which had evidently been broken some time or other, a bare breast, and a shock of ragged hair covering his ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... our inner task. We must never stand before our own picture. It seems to me that an artist should be of exalted modesty, and that without this modesty he is nothing but a more or less remarkable lout." ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... stepped promptly forward at the announcement of the overgrown lout, who had signified his intention of whipping the young engineer of No. 999. Clark had told Ralph that athletics was his strong forte. He looked it as he ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... strength residing in so spare a frame was proof sufficient of the accuracy of his shape. He must have been built somewhat after the pattern of Jack Sheppard; but the famous housebreaker, we may be certain, was no lout. It was by the extraordinary powers of his mind no less than by the vigour of his body, that he broke his strong prison with such imperfect implements, turning the very obstacles to service. Irvine, in the same case, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we all felt very blue; because he had been the joy of our lives. He left the command to Kleber—a great lout of a fellow who soon afterward lost the number of his mess. An Egyptian assassinated him. They put the murderer to death by making him sit on a bayonet; that's their way, down there, of guillotining a man. But he suffered so much ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... had been your reverence, I should have refused to do it. You haven't had your proper sleep, and you may have caught cold in the church. It is that which has upset you. Besides which it would be better to marry brute beasts than that Rosalie and her ugly lout. That brat of theirs dirtied one of the chairs.—But you ought to tell me when you feel poorly, and I could make you something warm.—Eh! Monsieur ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... browsed the bigness of my tongue: Since truth must out, I own it wrong." On this, a hue and cry arose, As if the beasts were all his foes. A wolf, haranguing lawyer-wise, Denounced the ass for sacrifice,— The bald-pate, scabby, ragged lout, By whom the plague had come, no doubt. His fault was judged a hanging crime. What! eat another's grass? Oh, shame! The noose of rope, and death sublime, For that offence were all too tame! And soon ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... that," he growled, and I saw the uselessness of trying to make the lout see reason. I now began to fear that he would tell Thirkle what I had ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... arrogance, and fawning, and deceit, John Brown; I love the meadow flowers, And the brier in the bowers, And I love an open face without guile, John Brown; And I hate a selfish knave, And a proud, contented slave, And a lout who 'd rather borrow than he 'd toil, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... it," said Mrs. Steward in the calmest of voices, "and when you go, take that great lout of a Caroline with you. She is as like you in appearance as one pea is like another. I am ashamed of you. Now, let us turn to a more congenial topic. Little Elma, I am glad to say, is ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... harmless play Beguiles the rustic's closing day, When drawn the evening fire about, Sit aged crone and thoughtless lout; Come, show thy tricks and sportive graces, Thus circled round with merry faces. Backward coiled, and crouching low, With glaring eyeballs watch thy foe. The house wife's, spindle whirling round, Or thread, or straw, that on the ground ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... put on the rough jerkin of a laboring man, and set to cleaving firewood in the courtyard with the scolding assistance of a maid-servant. When the troopers entered to search for the master of the house, they heard the maid vehemently "flyting" the great hulking lout for his awkwardness, and threatening to "draw a stick across his back" if he did not work to ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... he will be kind to you, you poor little fool. But a merchant will be so strict that you won't feel at home in your own house. You'll be wanting to fondle him and he will be counting his money, and when you sit down to meals with him, he'll grudge you every mouthful, though it's your own, the lout! . . . Marry ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Lothair," said St. Aldegonde; "or is it the dress that turns them out such swells? I feel quite a lout by some of ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... it. This Rivers is such a lout, that I could not tell how it might be. I did not look to see you ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... name of the gods, Rag, get thee to sleep once more, thou stupidest lout in Britain! It is a scurvy trick to waken thus at the wrong time and trumpet thy nonsense in such fashion. Good youth canst not skip that bit for peace's sake, and get ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... HIM for a while," said Polynesia coming out from her hiding-place. "Now let him teach navigation to the side-board. Gosh, the cheek of the man! I've forgotten more about the sea than that lumbering lout will ever know. Let's go upstairs and tell the Doctor. Bumpo, you will have to serve the meals in the cabin for the ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... the sergeant was not ill-natured—until you happened to cross him, when his temper became damnable—but merely a big, vain, boisterous lout. John, having taken his measure, found it easy to study him philosophically and even to be passably amused by him. But he made himself, it must be owned, an affliction; and an affliction against which, since the boats had parted company, ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cried one of them, "I thrashed him in the Grande Place, right before the hotel there—what's its name?—the first hotel in Petersburg. Yes, I had told the lout of a postilion, who had grazed my britska against the curbstone of every corner we had turned, that if he did it again I would punish him; that is, I did not exactly tell him—for he understood no language but his miserable Russian, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... through some of the "sights": for that great lout of a country lad (as Reuben could not help counting him, though he liked his big, honest heart for all that) had found him out, when he came to New York to take ship for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... sir. The party struck turns to me and says, "Come in. I give this man in charge for assault." I moves accordingly with the words: "I saw you. Come along with me." The defendant turns to me sharp and says: "You stupid lout—I'm a magistrate." "Come off it," I says to the best of my recollection. "You struck this woman in my presence," I says, "and you come along!" We were then at close quarters. The defendant gave me ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... it does? How do we know but that in Boston, among well-bred people, he may be regarded as an absolute lout? The way he calls ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... in a manner almost spectacular, rise before us as we study the literatures of the past? The youthful years of Shakespeare were spent under circumstances which might have produced in him one dull and unaspiring British country lout, like, as one egg to another, to a hundred thousand others who lived in his age. What made this one country boy the most astonishing genius in all the history of literature? Study the youth of Robert Burns, of Heinrich Heine, or Coleridge, ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... hanged, and will be; but, curse him, I wish he could have lasted out my time. He knew all my ways, and, dammy, when I rang the bell, the confounded thief brought the thing I wanted—not like that stupid German lout. And what sort of time have you had in the country? Been a good deal with Lady Rockminster? You can't do better. She is one of the old school—vieille ecole, bonne ecole, hey? Dammy, they don't make gentlemen and ladies now; and in fifty years you'll hardly know one man from another. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... doctor, if you will take that and give it to her.... I was almost starving myself once—-you know, Walters, when I got the sack from the 'Morning Star' Mine for plugging the English manager when he called me a 'damned colonial lout.'" ...
— In The Far North - 1901 • Louis Becke
... you have had me address him?" he inquired. "Would you have had me use cajolery with him—the lout? Would you have had me plead mercy from him, and beg him, in honeyed words, to be patient with a wilful lady? Let be, Messer Gonzaga, we shall weather it yet, never ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... as I rode beside their banks, but in their murmurings I heard only the music of her voice. The sun shone brightly, but its blessed light only served to remind me of the beautiful girl whom I had left in darkness. The light were worthless to me if I could not share it with her. What a mooning lout was I! ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... away home. His father gave him another drubbing and sent him to a blacksmith to learn smith's work. But there too he did not remain long, but ran away home again, so what was that poor father to do? "I'll tell thee what I'll do with thee, thou son of a dog!" said he. "I'll take thee, thou lazy lout, into another kingdom. There, perchance, they will be able to teach thee better than they can here, and it will be too far for thee to run home." So he took him and set ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... thou now apace Unto thy love that made thee low to lout; Thy love is present there with thee in place; Thy love is there advaunst to be ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... you'll be sorrier yet. There's the Governor with an attack of gout, screaming like a wounded horse, and you nowhere to be found. Be off, man—away with you at speed to Government House! You're awaited, I tell you. Best lend him a horse, Kent, or the lout'll be all night ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... feign'd to sleep, but tried in vain. I tost and turn'd from side to side, With open mouth and nostrils wide. At last there came a pretty maid, And gazed; then to myself I said, 'Now for it!' She, instead of kiss, Cried, 'What a lazy lout is this!' ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... to sympathize with me, and made some idiotic remark about my being quicker when I had had more practice. I bit his head off. I can't stand this hail-fellow-well-met attitude in these U.C. boats, from any lout dressed in an officer's uniform. They wouldn't be holding commissions if it wasn't for the war, and they should remember that fact. I suppose they think I'm stand-offish. Well, if they had my family tree behind ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... the King, was madly tempted to dash aside the royal lout to take her in his arms where she might find the longed-for ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... THE OPINION OF GREENE, CHETTLE, AND 'DIVERS OF WORSHIP,' Shakespeare was a writer as well as an actor is absolutely irrefragable. Had Shakespeare been the ignorant lout of the Baconian theorists, these men would not have credited him, for example, with his first signed and printed piece, 'Venus and Adonis.' It appeared early in 1593, and Greene and Chettle wrote in 1592. 'Divers of worship,' according to the custom of the time, may have seen 'Venus ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... you cowardly lout—drive on. We've done with you for the present. But, remember, not a word of this to the population of Deadwood, if you intend to ever make another trip over this ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... restored, and the care that had evidently been taken to remove the more obvious and brutal traces of burglary. This somewhat staggered his theory that Seth Davis was the perpetrator; mechanical skill and thoughtfulness were not among the lout's characteristics. But he was still more disconcerted on pushing back his chair to find a small india-rubber tobacco pouch lying beneath it. The master instantly recognized it: he had seen it a hundred times before—it was Uncle Ben's. It was not there when he had closed the room yesterday afternoon. ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... said definitely, "My point's been proven. Our average man is a slob. Give him the opportunity to exercise unlimited freedom without danger of consequence and he becomes an undisciplined and dangerous lout." ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... whistle. "Kick him out!" She yelled; and the knights, laughing, took the lout, And thrust him from the gate. A week from this, Looking without, she saw his simple phiz; And cried "Go kill him! Stick him like a pig! You three can do it, if he is so big!" Unwilling, yet the knights ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... what hours of bitter regret, what biting of lips, what flushes of shame, what heart-shocks that stopped the life-blood, and—well, truth must out—what caressing memories of the young hero who first leaped over her young love's ramparts! what loathing of the sensual lout who had been carelessly suffered to take command of the fortress!—Why, Mr. Asmodeus! you don't mean my friend, Mrs. Smith!—Did I mention any such name? No, Mrs. Grundy, I mean Mrs. Hidehart, a mild, patient, smiling wife. But, up in a little corner closet of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various |
