"Lout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... abject respect. When one of the boyards 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 fur, and ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... to hear it. This Rivers is such a lout, that I could not tell how it might be. I did not look to see you turn homesick all ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... come to Robert Hagburn?" said he. "He looks like another man than the lout I knew ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... service to me, I wrote the final scene of Joseph's Coat on a certain wintry day and was within a page or two of the conclusion of the story when I was called to luncheon. In the ardour of work I had allowed the fire to die out in my bedroom stove, and encountering on the stairs a certain lout, whose name was Victor, who did duty about the stables of the hotel, I gave him instructions to see to it. Ten minutes later a dreadful inspiration occurred to me, and I dashed upstairs. The man was kneeling before ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... French chance too is over. "To amuse me: but, PAR DIEU—!" His Notes to Podewils, of which Ranke, who has seen them, gives us snatches, are vivid in that sense: "I should be ashamed if the cunningest Italian could dupe me; but that a lout of a Hanoverian should do it!"—and Podewils has great difficulty to keep him patient yet a little; Valori being so busy on the other side, and the time so pressing. Here are some dates and some comments, which the reader should take ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of the man who kept it had often accompanied them on their excursions, and though the boys of the city streets considered him a dumb lout, they respected him somewhat owing to his inside knowledge of ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... 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 us, and that ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... found Madame Le Maitre weeping passionately over a dead baby, and the lout of a boy weeping with her. It surprised Caius to feel suddenly that he could almost have wept, too, and yet he believed that ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... wink-drain'd wells, The church 'tis true, is nigh out here, Too nigh wi' vive loud-boomen bells. There, naighbours wer vull wide a-spread, But vo'k be here too clwose a-stow'd. Vor childern now do stun woone's head, Wi' naisy play bezide the road, Where big so well as small, The little lad, an' lump'ren lout, Do ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... with the workmanlike manner in which the locks had been 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 ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... blank, and seemed so unable to return Oonah's fond greeting, that she felt the pique which every pretty woman experiences who fancies her favours disregarded, and thought Andy the stupidest lout she ever came across. Turning up her hair, which had fallen down in the excess of her friendship, she walked out of the cottage, and, biting her disdainful lip, fairly cried ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... anything. He took the handles from me,—his own handles, mind you, of his own barrow,—and trundled it solemnly along. I was struggling with hysterics. I am not in the least hysterical by nature, but the combination—the professor taken for a lout and commanded to trundle his own barrow, stolen by a sophomore, the twig in my eye and the stone in my foot—was too much for me. Besides, there seemed nothing in particular to say. I could not begin 'Please, ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... "Halloa, thou long-legged fellow in scarlet! Broad are thy shoulders and thick thy head; is not thy lass fair enough for thee to take cudgel in hand for her sake? In truth, I believe that Nottingham men do turn to bone and sinew, for neither heart nor courage have they! Now, thou great lout, wilt thou not twirl staff ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... Kerek, as pointed out to me several times, is N. by W. The direction of Katrane, a station of the pilgrim caravan to Mekka, is E.S.E. distant about eight hours. That of Szaffye, or the S. point of the Dead sea, is W. by S. distant about twelve hours. The Dead sea is here called Bahret Lout, the Sea of Lot. August 4th.—After having remained nearly three weeks at Kerek, waiting from day to day for the departure of the Sheikh, he at last set out, accompanied by about forty horsemen. The inhabitants of Kerek muster about one hundred horsemen, ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... the young lady must have gone away with the idea that I was a combination of longshore lout and effeminate dilettante, with the financial resources of the former. She might as well have that idea as any other, I supposed, but, in her eyes, I must be more of a freak than ever. I should ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of the great lord outbroke in one sudden curse like a blast from a horn. He tore his sword from its black sheath; he called to the hovering landlord: "A sword there, for this lout!" He turned to the lady, with a laugh that chilled her heart, and said: "You put much labour upon me, madame. It seems I must find you a husband and make you a widow in ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... 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
... drank and smoked and pored over a pocket-map of the department, a lout of a lad shambled out of the auberge wearing a fixed scowl in no degree mitigated by the sight of the customer. In the dooryard, which was also the stableyard, the boy caught and saddled a dreary animal, apparently ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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? O shame! The noose of rope and death sublime, For that offence, were all too tame!" And soon poor Grizzle ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... Deleah spoke to him. To her great embarrassment a rosebud or a spray of forget-me-not would be found deposited on the chair in which she sat to play propriety when the pupils took their lessons. On the days when with great difficulty she managed to elude Reggie, a lout of a grammar-school sixth-form boy, whose name even she did not know, would watch her exit from the school, and stalk at her heels, keeping sentinel over her, in a way that she felt was making her ridiculous, to her own door. She had caught Mr. Pretty peeping between ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... him, it's all lies, gentlemen! There, gentlemen, he's a most dishonorable man himself, gentlemen; he isn't worth your notice! Bah, my boy, what a lout you are! Well, I never knew you—and not for any blessings on earth would I have ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... her; she is expecting you this evening. That great lout of an Alsatian is going to have supper with his opera-dancer. Aha! he looked very foolish when my attorney let him know where he was. He says he idolizes my daughter, does he? He had better let her alone, or I will kill him. To think that my Delphine is his"—he heaved a sigh—"it is ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... which, 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, ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... a compliment, as well as a curiosity. Sally hesitated. She had planned to see Toby; but if Toby was going to be a lout she might just as well ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... remarked to Princess Edna, after their visitor had taken his departure, "what on earth induced the Mater to tell that lanky overgrown lout we should be pleased to see him any time he cared to drop in? We shall have the beggar running in and out here like a bally rabbit, you see ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... yourself, sonny, and don't waste valuable time in stopping to ask silly questions," was the ungracious reply I received; and I suppose it was the reflection that it served me right for persisting in my attempts to be civil to the lout that drove out of my head the thought which had flashed into it for an instant, that it was rather queer that the skipper should have sent for me at a moment when Bainbridge was actually on the spot and ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... Bourne scored no end in the next few rounds by following Acton's advice, his good efforts seemed wasted. The lout's face was as hard as a butcher's block. Acton saw that Bourne was visibly tiring, and that it was an almost foregone conclusion that in the end he would be beaten. He could hardly stall off the ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... 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, there was no redress. He was conceited, selfish, ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cigar, 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 qualified ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... lease of life in the last half-hour and he felt no fear of this sullen bill-poster for all his sly innuendoes. He, therefore, hindered the lawyer from his purpose, by a quick gesture of so much dignity and resolve that even the lout himself was impressed and dropped some of ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... came to the Serbian schools, but were denounced as ungrateful and impossible. A Montenegrin, I was told, was a lout who would sit all day on the doorstep wearing a revolver and doing nothing, and would expect high pay or at least good keep for so doing. In 1898 the Serb Government had actually forbidden the immigration ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... fetich was dead—dead as Mumbo 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
... such another lazy lout in all the village as my husband, it's as much as I can do to get him up in the morning by pulling him out of bed by the hair. The scoundrel knows to-day is market-day, and yet he lies there asleep at this hour of the morning. ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... hour was she arrested?" said the man, thrusting his beak-like nose closer to Armand's face. Evidently the piece of silver had done its work well; he meant to be helpful to this country lout. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... words, I am a lout and not a courtier," he smiled. "Well, a lout may look at a princess. We have no court etiquette in the hills, I am ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... cried Petullo, with the accent of a lout. "I wonder if you're on the same track as myself, for I'm like the Hielan' soldier—I have a Frenchman of my own. There's one, I mean, up by there in Doom, and coming down here to-morrow or the day after, or as soon ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... 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 ere the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... I to be kept waiting forever? You were quicker in obeying my caprices yesterday. Get up, you muddy lout, and let us kill each other ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... grown good for nothing, and ought to be sent off, as I have often told my master; but the lout is as obedient to him as possible—he knows the length of his foot—while to every one else he is cross-grained, and gives me ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... quick-retreating pride! I, too, began to doubt. Once let loose on that field, imagination soon saw shapes enough to confirm any doubt. Ottilie's manner certainly had seemed less tender—nay, somewhat indifferent—during the last few days. Had the arrival of that heavy lout, her cousin, anything ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... 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, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... turning round again in the other direction. But there was Neefit still confronting him. "Only stick to her, Captain, and we'll pull through. I'll put her through her facings to-night. She's thinking of that orkard lout of a fellow just because he's standing to be a Parl'ament gent." This did not improve matters, and Ralph absolutely ran away,—ran away, and escaped to his hotel. He would try again in the morning, would still make her his wife if she would have ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... sport fell out When they to spoil did fall; Rude Robin Goodfellow, the lout, Would skim the ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... twenty miles from any railway station, but, on the last occasion when I visited it, three louts were worming their way up it, within twenty yards of each other, each lout, with his huge rod, showing himself wholly to any trout that might be left in the water. Thirty years ago the burns that feed St. Mary's Loch were almost unfished, and rare sport we had in them, as boys, staying at ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... was making up to her, and told him of it. He acknowledged it, remarking it was a pity such a nice young girl should not taste the sugar-stick. "Perhaps she has," said I. He thought not, there was a country lout she wanted to marry, and the mother looked after her closely. "I would give a ten-pound note to have her," he ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... he told himself. "I'm neither a savage like Bizco nor a brazen, carefree lout like Vidal. What am I going to ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... have said. Certainly she did not anticipate violence on Tom's part. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps it was just because he was so quiet that she was afraid. She had always looked on him contemptuously as an amiable, transparent lout, and now he was puzzling her. She got an impression of something formidable behind his stolidity, something that made her feel mean ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... new boards, unused bosses, red ribands, lead-ruled parchment, and all most evenly pumiced. But when thou readest these, that refined and urbane Suffenus is seen on the contrary to be a mere goatherd or ditcher-lout, so great and shocking is the change. What can we think of this? he who just now was seen a professed droll, or e'en shrewder than such in gay speech, this same becomes more boorish than a country boor immediately he touches poesy, nor is the dolt e'er as ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... the tongue of slander. Heaven help and direct me! I would suffer death rather than see Doris subjected to the leers and innuendoes of every lout in ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... discourage you; I don't say the changes are against us. But with Mrs. Milroy threatening me on one side, and Mr. Midwinter on the other, the worst of all risks to run is the risk of losing time. Young Armadale has hinted already, as well as such a lout can hint, at a private interview! Miss Milroy's eyes are sharp, and the nurse's eyes are sharper; and I shall lose my place if either of them find me out. No matter! I must take my chance, and give him the interview. Only let me get him alone, only let me escape the prying eyes of the women, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... tender and motherly a way, what is she but a vampire, draining the blood of the weak? The upshot of such atrocities we may gather from the tale itself. Saintre becomes a perfect knight, but so utterly frail and weak as to be dared and defied by the lout of a peasant priest, in whom the lady, become better advised, has seen something ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... swains, that merry be, Have found a happy thunder stone, That Jove has cast the vale upon; So take occasion to be blest, And Bacchus was invited guest. His shaggy crew have helped the plan. Silenus made the pipes of Pan, The Satyrs teased the vines about, And Bacchus sent a lubber lout, Who lurked, and stole, ere wink of moon, The heedless Amalthea's horn. Now all are gone to Arcady, Head bent on rousing jollity. Now riot rout will be, anon, That shall the very sun aston, By waters whilst, and on the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... be more accurate, something jars. The orchestra plays Grieg and Moszkowski; a smell of chocolate is in the air; that tall, pink lieutenant over there, with his cropped head and his outstanding ears, his backfisch waist and his mudscow feet—that military gargoyle, half lout and half fop, offends the roving eye. No doubt a handsome man, by German standards—even, perhaps a celebrated seducer, a soldier with a future—but the mere sight of him suffices to paralyse an American esophagus. Besides, there ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... 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 Prince as candidate ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... soon be here, and no more 'Suffolk' Bowling-greens. Once more I want you to help in finding me a lad, or boy, or lout, who will help me to get through the long Winter nights—whether by cards or reading—now that my eyes are not so up to their work as they were. I think they are a little better: which I attribute ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... gone, 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
... lucky rustic, this upstart lout, rich without deserving it for any competence he had, was giving himself the airs of an intelligent dealer, presuming to approach Rafael, "his deputy," with a proposal for a freight-rate bill to promote the shipping of oranges into the interior of Spain! As if a little ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... nor did the Queen. She said I was a proper stripling! Well, it matters the less, as I shall not stay long to need their favour; and I'll show them there is some use in my inches in the tilt-yard. But if they think me such a lout, what would they ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... liking for my gift of ready speech, for his own ideas came with difficulty, and it pleased and astonished him to hear me pouring out my views. Indeed, over there I was, I think, even more talkative than with Parload, though to the world at large I was a shy young lout. "You ought to write it out for the newspapers," he used to say. "That's what you ought to do. ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... to sing on the stove, a bee came in and wandered about the hot kitchen; the grocer knocked, and Cherry let the big lout of a boy stare at ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... was sent down with the thread as a line. An inquisitive lout of a seal did all it could to bite through the thread, but whether this was too strong or its teeth too poor, we managed after a lot of trouble to coax the marlinspike up again, and the interfering ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... it! Tommy Hollins! He identified the youth, a yellow-headed, pink-faced lout in flannels who was always riding over, and who seemed to "go in" for nearly everything. He had detected a romping intimacy between the two. So it was Tommy Hollins. At once he felt a great relief; he need worry no longer over the singular attentions ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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 some exquisite flower of love, which he ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... Devil with 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 ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... perhaps never had so much of a bruise as from this suggestion that if he had been out of the way Mary might have made a thoroughly good match. Also he was piqued that he had been what he called such a stupid lout as to ask that intervention from Mr. Farebrother. But it was not in a lover's nature—it was not in Fred's, that the new anxiety raised about Mary's feeling should not surmount every other. Notwithstanding his trust in Mr. Farebrother's generosity, notwithstanding what Mary ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... And be dumb, And let every varlet undo us? Shall we doubt Of each lout That doth come, With a voice Like the noise Of a drum, And a sword or a buff-coat, to us? Shall we lose our estates By plunder and rates, To bedeck those proud upstarts that swagger? Rather fight for your meat Which those locusts do eat, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... spoke he stepped outside and slammed the door; and Darragh and Stormont leaped for it. Then the lout detonation of Quintana's rifle was echoed by the splintered rip of bullets tearing through the closed door; and both men halted in the face of the ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... "Peasant! Ignorant lout! You don't know how to behave with ladies! If you love me you will kiss my hand; I don't allow you to ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... 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 ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... respectful firmness, 'That instruction would place them under an omnibus; you had better confine your attention to yourself—you will want it all;' and has driven his charge away, with an intelligence of ears and tail, and a knowledge of business, that has left his lout of a ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... the table with a bold step; there was nothing now of the country lout about him; on the contrary, he moved with remarkable dignity, and bore himself so well that many a pair of feminine eyes watched him kindly, as he took his seat at the ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... wondering ef that fire out'n the water would burn," observed a fat, greasy, broad-faced lout, with a foolish, brutal grin. "It mought make out ter singe this stranger's hair an' hide, ef we war ter gin him a ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... man who goes fishing with any sort of ignorant lout, and who spends a whole day in a boat with him, to tell me when I am ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... off the molasses she exchanged shy looks with Stephen, who, clean, well-dressed, and carefully mothered as he was, felt all at once uncouth and awkward, rather as if he were some clumsy lout pitch-forked into the presence of a fairy queen. He offered her the little bunch of bachelor's buttons he held in his hand, augury of the future, had he known it,—and she accepted them with a smile. She dropped her memorandum; ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Van Horn galloped up, halted, and turned his head, following the direction of my outstretched arm. Others came, blinking into the ruddy evening glow, craning their necks to see, and from the wretched tavern a lank lout stumbled forth, rifle shouldered, pewter a-slop, to learn the news that had brought us hither ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... a coil was I in; how blackly deceitful I called her! How keenly I watched for any token of understanding and kindness more than ordinary that might chance to pass between them. But I could see none, for though the great soft lout of a ruddy beer-vat tried often to look under the brim of her hat, yet she kept her eyes down—only once, that I could observe, raising them, and that was more towards the Red Tower than in ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... 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 ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... 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 Junior Classics • Various
... the family vault; but the place was poisoned to him for evermore, he told Angela. He could not stay where he and his had been held in highest honour, to have his daughter pointed at by every grinning lout in hob-nailed shoes, and scorned by the neighbouring quality. He only waited till Denzil Warner should be pronounced out of danger and on the high-road to recovery, before ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... distracted. "On my word," he said, earnestly, "I thought you did. And now I have made you unhappy. Babbie, I wish I were anybody but myself; I am a hopeless lout." ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... They had a few, a very few holes, into which they dropped their neighbours, and they must go into one or the other. Nothing was more distressing than a specimen which, notwithstanding all the violence which might be used to it, would not fit into a hole, but remained an exception. Some lout, I believe, reckoning on the legitimacy of his generalisation, and having heard of this and other observations accredited to Miss Leroy, ventured to be slightly rude to her. What she said to him was never known, but he was always shy afterwards ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... 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 men of Sherwood forest were great favourites with Robert and they were ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... fifteen feet deep near the made embankment, was alive with the tiny fish, squirming in a mass as they were pursued by larger fish. The son of Prince Hinoe, a round-shouldered lout, very tall, awkward, and merry, held a bamboo pole. His white suit was soiled and ragged, and he whistled "All Coons Look alike to Me!" The peanut-vender had brought a rod, and was fishing with difficulty ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... you drunken lout, you! How dare you lay a hand upon my guest. Know you not that he who harms the guest of ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... face of the lad questioningly. He was a loose-lipped, awkward lout, trembling still from a fright he ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... "Who is it? What's that?" Then my footman walks in [draws himself up and imitates] and an-nounces: "Ivan Aleksandrovich Khlestakov of St. Petersburg. Will you receive him?" Those country lubbers don't even know what it means to "receive." If any lout of a country squire pays them a visit, he stalks straight into the drawing-room like a bear. Then you step up to one of their pretty girls and say: "Dee-lighted, madam." [Rubs his hands and bows.] Phew! [Spits.] I feel positively sick, ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... and freckled and sandy, face of a country lout", and, like Middleton's rouse-about, "hadn't any opinions, hadn't any ideas", but possessed sufficient instinct and common bushcraft with which, by hard slogging, to amass money. He was developing a moustache, and had a ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... do. 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 is ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... said Sanders, just as Andy thought he had finally succeeded in shaking him off, "do you remember Agnes Carroll? It seems she was married to a drunken, good-for-nothing lout, who beat her. Well, he took a glass too much one night, and walked off a ferry-boat into the East River. Drink is a terrible thing, isn't it? They ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... the tyme whyle Vertu was away. A my{gh}ty conflycte kept they {with} Vycys rout. And yet neuertheles for al that grete afray. Hope stod vpryght & feyth wold neuer lout And euermor{e} sayd Baptym syres put no dout. Vertu shal return & haue his entent. This feld shal be ours ...
— The Assemble of Goddes • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... seat in the pit, at one of Handel's performances, is a big lout of a fellow, with scars of scrofula on his neck and cheek. Next to him is a little man, and these two, so chummy and confidential, suggest the long and short of it. They are countrymen, recently arrived, empty of pocket, but full of hope. They have a selfish eye on the stage, for the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... than just to add that, if his admiration for Vergil was quite restrained, and his attraction for Ovid's lucid outpourings even more circumspect, there was no limit to his disgust at the elephantine graces of Horace, at the prattle of this hopeless lout who smirkingly utters the broad, crude jests of ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... de Mersch, standing between those two, he seemed like a country lout between confederate sharpers. It struck me that she let me see, made me see, that she and Gurnard had an understanding, made manifest to me by glances that passed when the Duc had ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... your Honour my advice, and speak my opinion in this matter.—Thou art welcome, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby—speak,—speak what thou thinkest upon the subject, man, without fear.—Why then, replied Trim, (not hanging his ears and scratching his head like a country-lout, but) stroking his hair back from his forehead, and standing erect as before his division,—I think, quoth Trim, advancing his left, which was his lame leg, a little forwards,—and pointing with his right hand open towards a map ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... 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? ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... clergymen, and were usually utterly inexperienced in wild backwoods life, in spite of their early surroundings—exactly as to-day any town in the Rocky Mountains is sure to contain some half-educated men as ignorant of mountain and plains life, of Indians and wild beasts, as the veriest lout on an eastern farm. Accordingly they accepted the wildest stories of frontier warfare with a faith that forcibly reminds one of the equally simple credulity displayed by the average classical scholar ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... lout, son of the second wife of Cymbeline by a former husband. He is noted for "his unmeaning frown, his shuffling gait, his burst of voice, his bustling insignificance, his fever-and-ague fits of valor, his froward tetchiness, his unprincipled malice, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... boys at, I wonder?" she said. "There's that big lout of a Wigglesworth boy. He's up to no good, I ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... she ever does. She shrinks from me as from something coarse and rough. She feels that I don't belong to her world at all. In fact, her father's fine bearing, his erect, elegant carriage make me feel as if I were but a country lout in very truth." The reception given to Mr. Jocelyn satisfied Mrs. Atwood thoroughly that his prolonged absence did not result from any alienation from his family. They overwhelmed him with caresses, and either Fred or Minnie could scarcely be kept out ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... 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 women 'Sister,' and ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... Mr. Clare. "There is my theory, in few words. Now for the remarkable application of it which this letter suggests. Here is my lout of ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... answered, "but not to-day. We will wait until everybody has had time to get completely sober again. I do not choose that the lady should be subjected to the annoyance of encountering, and perhaps being insulted by, some half-drunken lout. But you will not require all the boats, I suppose, so you had better send off the smallest one, with a pair of oars, that we may have the means of going to and from the ship and the shore at our own pleasure, and ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... take the thing so well, it matters not. To me, indeed, it seems discourteous. But you will find yourself the gainer. The family will not much tempt you. A mother, a son, and a daughter; an old woman said to be halfwitted, a country lout, and a country girl, who stands very high with her confessor, and is, therefore,' chuckled the physician, 'most likely plain; there is not much in that to attract the fancy of a ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... upon young Le Breton. As far as school-work goes, he's a capital master, I assure you—so conscientious, and hard-working, and systematic. He does his very best with the boys, even with that stupid lout, Blenkinsopp major; and he has managed to din something into them in mathematics somehow, so that I'm sure the fifth form will pass a better examination this term than any term since we first came here. Now that, you know, is really a great thing, even if he doesn't quite ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... "Come here, you lout," exclaimed a shrill voice, as the door opened and admitted a buxom woman of forty or thereabouts. "I have found you at last; come out with you," and she emphasised the command by a smart clout on ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... work is yet in bits, But still in every part it fits; Besides, you reason like a lout— Why, man, that carpet's ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... neck, were dragging a large fishing-net inshore, while, in the second place, there was entangled in the same, in addition to some fish, a stout man shaped precisely like a melon or a hogshead. Greatly excited, he was shouting at the top of his voice: "Let Kosma manage it, you lout of a Denis! Kosma, take the end of the rope from Denis! Don't bear so hard on it, Thoma Bolshoy [41]! Go where Thoma Menshov [42] is! Damn it, bring the net to land, will you!" From this it became clear that it was not on his own account ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... condemn as vice in this little band of Free State Boers and their leader, loyal to a lost cause? No, England, no! It is not you that shriek anathemas to the weeping skies because the foe dies hard. The gutter gamin and the brutal lout who never owned a soul fit to rise above the level of the kettle singing on the hearth may brand the name of Steyn and his stout burghers with infamy; but the clean-souled people of the Motherland, the people from whose ranks our ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... Sockna doxy, whom the little dirty Turk has closeted in an adjoining room. At first she peeps out, but seeing only a Christian has come in, she becomes more familiar, and at last sallies out boldly, and begins romping with the Kaed's Negro lad. This is a great lout of a fellow, who can't keep from grinning. The Nigger lout is dressed in the clothes of the new Turkish troops, and, as might be expected, there is a rent behind, from which issues his dirty linen, in all its nasty splendour. This the doxy now seizes hold of, to the infinite ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... bantam!" one said; "you have taken that lout down a good many pegs, and I would not mind backing you to thrash him single-handed. We have noticed his goings-on for the past two or three days with the other boys, and had intended to give him a lesson, but you have done ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... idiots," retorted the captor, who had now released both young men. "Besides being a mean, detestable trick, it's as old as the world. That red-pepper trick was invented by some stupid lout who lived thousands of years ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... bright shade of red that goes with a skin like thin, rose-tinted ivory. Her eyes were big and so dark a blue that they sometimes looked black, and her mouth was sweet and had a tired droop to match the mute pathos of her eyes. Her husband was a coarse lout of a man who seldom spoke to her when they were together. The Little Doctor had felt that all the tragedy of womanhood and poverty and loneliness was synthesized in this woman with the unusual hair and skin and eyes and expression. She had been coming every ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... this the monsters which render some scenes very pathetic, such as dragons, lizards, tortoises, and large toads, which promenade the theatre with a menacing air, and display at the opera all the temptations of St. Anthony. Each of these figures is animated by a lout of a Savoyard, who has not even intelligence enough to play the beast." Saint Preux is also made to say of the singers: "One sees actresses nearly in convulsions, tearing yelps and howls violently out of their lungs, ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... There lay the big lout of fifteen, who already boasted of his love-affairs, learned German, and was to be a gentleman like his father—there he lay on the bottom-boards in the bow ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... the elementary school at the corner of his street; but what are the duke and the coster to do? Neither of them has any effective choice in the matter: their children must either go to the schools that are, or to no school at all. And as the duke thinks with reason that his son will be a lout or a milksop or a prig if he does not go to school, and the coster knows that his son will become an illiterate hooligan if he is left to the streets, there is no real alternative for either of them. Child life must be socially organized: no parent, rich or poor, can choose institutions ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... astounding. 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 affairs yet and found ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... can be accomplished with the other," he answered hotly, and struck the cut-steel hilt of his sword. "You shall be rid of this lout as soon as ever I can come to him. I go after him to ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... Strephon is the kind of lout With Strephon for your foe, no doubt, We do not care a fig about! A fearful prospect opens out, We cannot say And who shall say What evils may What evils may Result in consequence. Result ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... 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
... there's no sense in it! If I 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 le Cure, speak ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... there was plenty of magnificent furniture in the rooms, and that there were numbers of people, both lackeys and officers, of various descriptions, who were awaiting the commands of the fool. The fool, seeing that all these people had a decent and honourable appearance, and that he alone was a lout, wished to be made better, ...
— Emelian the Fool - a tale • Thomas J. Wise
... with a contemptuous sneer; "her wits are so set upon it, that she would worship any ill-favoured lout that should ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... 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 peculiar ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... "We must not be vain. We dare not usurp a privilege which has no other basis than 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
... 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
... Melcombe with vehemence, "it's not credible that you can take up with a lout who courts you in such fashion as that. O Laura!" she exclaimed in such distress as to give real pathos to her manner, "I little thought to see this day, I could not have believed it of you;" and she burst into an agony ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... pype 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 ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... gasped. "Your honour is joking again. Surely this trumpery Scotchman in Jews' finery is no gentleman, nor the longshore lout he has got with him. They may ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... infernal rascal has made ten thousand pound, I believe—and deserves to be 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 ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and agitation of the previous evening, he had not suffered the reaction of rage, indignation, and rebellion which Mme. Roland had feared, it was because he had long been unconsciously chafing under the sense of being the child of this well-meaning lout. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... alternately resentful at her stubbornness and seeing himself as a lout cast out of heaven. Then he saw her at a distance, on the platform of the subway station at Seventy-second Street. She was with Phil Dunleavy. She looked well, she was talking gaily, oblivious of old sorrows, certainly not ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... that were baking, with instructions to turn them at the proper time. His mind wandered in thought and he forgot his trust. The good wife returned, found the cakes burning, and the guest dreaming by the fireside; she lost her temper, and expressed a decided opinion about the lazy lout who was ready enough to eat, but less ready to work. In the seventeenth century there was found in the marshes here a jewel that Alfred had lost: it is of gold and enamel, bearing words signifying, "Alfred had me wrought." The following spring (878) he sallied forth, defeated the Danes in ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... 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 ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland |
