"Lout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 the biscuit tins to ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... whose 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 Its shadow throws, by urchin sly, Held ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... 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 mad from drink and fury and bitterness. It—it's ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... "that my heart bodes ill of this match? Eric is a mighty man, and, great though thou art, I think that thou shalt lout low before him." ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... I'm not a plunger, but I shall be glad, 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
... ill 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
... Wherefore I have often had it in mind to 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 Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... so, though he cared little enough about Andor at one time. Andor was his only brother's only child, and I suppose Pali bacsi[3] was suddenly struck with the idea that he really had no one to leave his hoardings to. He was always a fool and a lout. If Andor had lived it would have been all right. I think Pali bacsi was quite ready to do something really handsome for him. Now that Andor is dead he has no one; and when he dies his money all goes to the government. It is a pity," he added, with a shrug ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... had become a tolerably expert physiognomist, and singled out an unsophisticated-looking giant, who was patrolling a certain beat, as the best man among the line of sentries on whom to practise an imposition. This individual was evidently a good-natured lout, not long in the service, and very much resembling our conception of "Jonas Chuzzlewit," in respect to his having been "put away and forgotten for half a century." It is only necessary to add that his owners "had stuck a musket in his ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... 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 ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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 ere ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... 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 Wiltshire, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... importance than others are doing. Aunt Keziah tormented him a great while about the rich field, just across the road, in front of the house, which Septimius had neglected the cultivation of, unwilling to spare the time to plough, to plant, to hoe it himself, but hired a lazy lout of the village, when he might just as well have employed and paid wages to the scarecrow which Aunt Keziah dressed out in ancient habiliments, and set up in the midst of the corn. Then came an old codger from the village, talking to Septimius about the war,—a theme of which he was weary: telling ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have turned but for the stupidity and ill-breeding such a movement would evidence, yet as I held on my way at a slower pace and the pair approached, I felt every limb an encumbrance, I felt the country lout throbbing in every vein. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... 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 ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... 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
... thou a courtier marry What amusement unto me And consolation that would carry! For if as a country-lout he harry 435 Thee all day and for evermore, Would I, what though my heart should grieve, Rejoice, since, though I thee adore, Me thus contemptuously dost thou leave, And if he bid thee keep thy place 440 As being but of low degree: Since thou despisest ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... advance and had the pick. On one stage our baggage-sled was driven by a poike of not more than ten years old—a darling fellow, with a face as round, fresh and sweet as a damask rose, the bluest of eyes, and a cloud of silky golden hair. His successor was a tall, lazy lout, who stopped so frequently to talk with the drivers of sleds behind us, that we lost all patience, drove past and pushed ahead in the darkness, trusting our horse to find the way. His horse followed, leaving ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... were looks of respect, admiration, nay almost of adoration, wanting. I observed one fellow, as the landlord advanced, take the pipe out of his mouth, and gaze upon him with a kind of grin of wonder, probably much the same as his ancestor, the Saxon lout of old, put on when he saw his idol Thur dressed in a new kirtle. To avoid the press, I got into a corner, where, on a couple of chairs, sat two respectable-looking individuals, whether farmers or sow- gelders, I know not, but highly respectable-looking, who ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... worn and old More worth commanded than Peru, Our Princess bartered wealth untold, For the Magician's lamp quite new: So when this change the eunuch made In scorn the rabble 'gan to shout; Beholding such a silly trade, They deemed the wizard fool and lout. ...
— Aladdin or The Wonderful Lamp • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... stopped, as I supposed I 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 I ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... thee, and marvel that such young heads could ever bring such a matter as this to pass. I tell thee, the matter hath been a-brewing this quarter of a year at least, when thou wast in the country like a lout. Well, well, man, we shall either be men shortly, or no men; yea, and ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... "the bodies of young lads and maidens not exceeding fourteen or under twelve." Amiable humourist! laughing castigator of morals! There was a process well known and practised in the Dean's gay days: when a lout entered the coffee-house, the wags proceeded to what they called "roasting" him. This is roasting a subject with a vengeance. The Dean had a native genius for it. As the Almanach des Gourmands says, On ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 a push with the words: ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... know him, a big country lout and bumpkin, whom his uncle is trying to polish as he polishes his silver goods, ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... 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 is the smell of chocolate, sweet, sickly, effeminate, ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... 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. I ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... 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
... Tinker's a lout and a lubber, And the life of a sailor he dares not, When the snow-crested surges caress us And sweep us away with their kisses, He bides in a berth that is warmer, Embraced in the arms of his ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... old bones in 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, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... 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 location, ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... utilitarian, reasons, but for aesthetic. Stick to the rules, not because they are right or profitable, but because they are seemly—nay, beautiful. We are not telling you to be respectable, we are inviting you not to be a lout. We are offering you, free of charge, a trade mark that carries credit all the world over. "How French he (or she) is!" Many a foreigner would pay handsomely to have as much said ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... 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 to the wearing of these hideous Goggles, which keep out Sun, Sea, Sand, ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... who's got hold of her for his own amusement. Oh, the silly hussy! What could that prim Mistress Pinwell have been about? A fine boarding school indeed! She can't go back. But I won't have her here turning the heads of the men. That dull lout, Bob Dobson, 'ud as lieve throw his money into her lap as he'd swallow a mug of ale. What'll her fine friends do for her now? Nothing. She's ruined herself. Well, I won't have ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... times I'm a god. But I know it can't be; that it is only pity and gratitude that prompts her. Heaven knows I'm uncouth enough at best, but now I have to exaggerate my rudeness. I play a part—the part of a lumbering, stupid lout, while my heart is breaking." He bowed his head in his hands, closing his dry, feverish eyes once more. "It's cruelly hard. I can't ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... 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
... floundering in a morass of wrath and amazement it was this loud-voiced youngster. He was a slow-witted lout, but the veriest dullard must have perceived that the disappearance of the weapon which presumably killed his father was a serious matter for ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... say 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 given him to post for ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... that son's favor; he had gone as far as the Code will permit a man to go in the way of disinheriting one child to benefit another; and what was more, he had been putting by money for the past fifteen years to enable his lout of a son to buy back from Emile that portion of his father's estate which could not legally be taken ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... sense, which convinced her that the wild stories told concerning them were untrue. When she became enraged at their untruth she became more kindly disposed toward the young mother, whose baby had made a strong appeal to her girlish heart, and the big kindly lout of a man who had sheltered her from the rain. This benevolent disposition might have slumbered unfruitful but for the memory of the fine and resolute face of the young disciple who had promised to wrestle in prayer ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... 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 ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... 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 ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... 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
... the lout! in the shade of the hillock yonder; What a dog it must be to drowse in the midst of a time like this! Why, the horses might neigh contempt at him; what is he like, I wonder? If the smoke would but clear away, I have strength in me yet ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... century minister, the Rev. Alexander Pope, who was stationed for many years in Reay. He was a huge giant of a man, and invariably carried about with him a nail-studded cudgel that was a terror to sinners. A lout of a fellow in his parish refused to come to church and get rebuked for an infringement of the usual commandment. Mr. Pope sent three elders with ropes to pinion the adulterer, hale him to church, and fasten ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... 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. Hup! used to a horse in order ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... what Joe had caused of wreckage in her life by his meddling, her resentment rose against him. But for him, slow-mouthed, cold-hearted lout, she would have been safe and happy with Morgan that hour. Old Isom would have been living still, going about his sordid ways as before she came, and the need of his money would have been removed out of ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... 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 ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... glad 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 ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... 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 ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... themselves often 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 concerning early Greek and Roman ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... do 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, sir, I thought you were the janitor's boy!' nor did 'Please Professor ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... never far from the surface, now broke out in him, making the muscles of his face tense and his voice metallic. "Get to your room," he said fiercely, "get to your room. I've wasted time enough on you and your brat of a brother, and now a Western lout is to spoil what I've done? I've a mind to wash my hands of all of you—and sink you. Get to your room, and stay there, while I make up my mind which of the ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... 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
... is arrived, and thee's hat-box is smashed by the lout of a boy that brought it," she said; and this is merely a specimen of her manner. It was grating upon me, but I forbore to make remark, as I have no doubt her principle was all that could be desired, although it was faulty in its constructive carrying out. I may safely say that I did not remember ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... 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 ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... bodily defect he endeavoured to cure by frequent outward applications, but the mental shortcoming was beneath his efforts. Johnny meanwhile, who was as hard as nails, no sooner recovered from a thumping than he renewed and redoubled his loud contempt for a great lout over six feet high, who had never drawn a sword or pulled a trigger. And now for the winter this book would be a perpetual snowball for him to pelt his big brother with, and yet (like a critic) be scarcely ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... 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 ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... 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 ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... Miller, in some anger. "An' 't will take more 'n you an' that moon-faced lout to put them things on the man, or ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... sir," 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, of which I could ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... 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 ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... But now of Roister Doister somewhat to express, That ye may esteem him after his worthiness, In these twenty towns, and seek them throughout, Is not the like stock whereon to graff a lout. All the day long is he facing and craking[49] Of his great acts in fighting and fray-making; But when Roister Doister is put to his proof, To keep the Queen's peace is more for his behoof. If any woman smile, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... lout. He means, you grace, the banquet waits without. If at our humble board you'll ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... 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 man from another. But they'll ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the left, dipping to the south, the steep grey crags, curve after curve. The streets were alive with an abundance of merry young sailors and soldiers, brisk, handsome boys, with the quiet air of discipline that converts a country lout into a self-respecting citizen. An old bronzed sergeant led a child with one hand, and with the other tried to obey her shrill directions about whirling a skipping-rope, so that she might skip beside him; he looked at us with a ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... him as he walked to Lowick. Fred's light hopeful nature had 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 ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... lose Him when they leave the threshold of His house; which choruses from a thousand throats patriotism, defiance, self-confidence, but arms none of them with any useful weapon; which with drums and brass can send any lout to heroism without his knowing why; this art which burns up the manhood of its devotees — who ever heard of a great tenor who was a great man, or even of a great musician for more than half of whose life one must needs not apologize? — this art flourishes in ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... 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 on to the ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... reported by a lout of a countryman, Samuel Johnson by name, who had come up to London to make his fortune, and found his first work in reporting speeches in the House of Commons. Pitt did not write out his speeches for the press, weeks in advance, according to latter-day methods; the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... up and marched into the outer office where his office nurse sat at a typewriter, making lout bills. ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... 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
... asked him if he had seen a young gentleman on a pony going fast along the road. He nodded, made a sign that he was going very fast indeed, but showed that it had never entered his head to try to stop the pony. Ernest forced open the gate without waiting for the lout to do so, and they galloped through and along over the turf. There were two or three slight hedges, but they forced their way through them. The road, after winding considerably, crossed directly before the path they were taking. They heard a horse's hoofs come clattering along ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... the gentleman who had laid his whip across the saucy lout's back at the time the French prisoners were marching into the barracks. He was possessed of a fair competence; but loving a country life and something to do, had hired the Manor Farm in Yaxley. The house was of no great size, but built of stone, picturesque, ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... the crusading type, such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Brown, or Mazzini. When a man abandons his business or job and complacently leaves the clothing of his children to wife or neighbors in order to drink flip and talk politics, ordinary folk are content to call him a lazy lout, ne'er-do-well, worthless fellow, or scamp. Samuel Adams was not a scamp. He might have been no more than a ne'er-do-well, perhaps, if cosmic forces had not opportunely provided him with an occupation which his contemporaries ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... 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
... son; and if, after the great shock 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
... duties, was far too much inclined to bring him home to luncheon; and in the clash and crisis, without any one's quite knowing how it happened, it turned out that Mrs. Evelyn had been so imprudent as to sanction an attachment between her daughter and that great lout of a young doctor, Lady Fordham's brother! Not only the M.P., but all the family shook the head and bemoaned the connection, for though it was to be a long engagement and a great secret, everybody found it out. Lucas had long made up his mind that so it would end, and told his mother that ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 their very clumsiness, ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shoulders are and spine thrust out, * As seeking star which Satan gave the lout;[FN466] Or as he tasted had first smack of scourge * And looked in marvel for ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... This was a Grammatophyllum with bulbs some times over eight feet in length. The length of the name is certainly suitable for so large an orchid. I saw plenty of water-birds, including white egrets and a long-necked diver which is called the "snake-bird," owing to its long neck projecting lout of the water and thus greatly resembling a snake. I shot several of each kind of bird, plucking the fine plumes from the backs of the egrets. We ate some of the divers that evening and found them first-class food, tasting much like goose. We later in the day disturbed ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... of me. He has had all the chances; I've had none. With my father when he was alive, with my mother, it has always been Austin this and Austin that. He was the head of the school when I, the elder, was a lout in the lower fourth. He had a brilliant University career and went into the world and is making a fortune. I'm only able to ride and shoot and do country things. I've stuck here with only this mortgaged house ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... 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 ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... talk of it. That lout comes to a knowledge of his wants too late. If they promoted and offered me the command in India to-morrow—'My lord struck the arm of his chair. 'I live at Steignton henceforth; my wife is at a seaside place eastward. She left the jewel-case ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... from suburban alleys, Stretched under seaweed in the treacherous punt; Knows every lazy, shiftless lout that sallies Forth to waste powder—as he says, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of 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
... 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 ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... 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 Tibbie Sheil's ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... 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
... print, without one thought of asking what Herald this unknown represents, without remembering that Miller's Pond or Somebody-else's Corners may have a Herald she hastens to grant to this probably ignorant young lout the unchaperoned interview she would instantly refuse to a gentleman whose name was even well known to her; and trembling with fear and hope she will listen to his boastings "of the awful roasting he gave Billy This or Dick That," ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... 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
... ejaculated Ellen when, after more debating, the signature was finally inscribed, "I'm clean beat out. Why, I could have deeded away the whole United States in the time it's taken this lout of a boy to scribble his name. Is it any wonder that with only a stupid idiot like this for help, my garden's always behind other folks', an' ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... 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 would serve his purpose quite as well. So, all unsuspectingly, I trundled away forward, ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... Berenger; 'they did not think so at home. No; 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 say ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to have you out there in that store for these folks to look over and pick to pieces, my girl," he said decidedly. "You stay aft and I'll 'tend to things for'ard and handle this crew. Besides, there's that half-grown lout, Amiel Perdue. Abe said he sometimes helped around. He knows the ship, alow and aloft, and how the stores ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... shame, As of a luck not quite legitimate, Since fortune snatched from wit the lion's part? Was it a college pique of town and gown, As one within whose memory it burned That not academicians, but some lout, Found ten years since the Californian gold? And now, again, a hungry company Of traders, led by corporate sons of trade, Perversely borrowing from the shop the tools Of science, not from the philosophers, Had won ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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
... to self-made men of the need of the social graces for their sons, and nine out of ten stampede—for all the world as though it were suggested to put them in petticoats. Do they think a poor unlettered lout who shambles at the door, who stands unable to speak, who turns his cap in his hands, who sidles into the room, and can't for the life of him get out again, well trained for ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... The lout never said a word in reply, but his horse carried him swiftly out of sight in the wake of the runaway. Then the girl turned again to Hiram and the young farmer knew that he was being keenly examined ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... number of old white-headed men smoking their pipes, and leathery-faced women on household duties intent, with a score or so of little cotton-headed children running about over the manure pile in the neighborhood of the barn, to keep the pigs company; here and there a strapping lout of a boy swinging on a gate and whistling for his own amusement; while cows, sheep, goats, chickens, and other domestic animals and birds browse, nibble, and peck all over the yard in such a lazy and rural manner as would delight an artist. This is ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... well the beast, The miller caused his hopeful son to ride, And walk'd behind, without a spark of pride. Three merchants pass'd, and, mightily displeased, The eldest of these gentlemen cried out, "Ho there! dismount, for shame, you lubber lout! Nor make a foot-boy of your grey-beard sire; Change places, as the rights of age require." "To please you, sirs," the miller said, "I ought." So down the young and up the old man got. Three girls next passing, "What ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... on human digestion; 'cause when he speaks of a man with a good stomach,—an excellent stomach,—he always has a good word for him, and kind of strokes down his fur the right way of the grain; but he comes down dreadful strong on the lout that has no stomach, as he calls it. In 'Henry IV.,' he says, 'the cook helps to make the gluttony.' I estimate that that one sentence alone, if he'd never writ another word, would have made him immortal. If I had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... 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 ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... 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 ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... second, "make the forehead sweat as he sees how he has been delivering laws in a basket to grind iniquity through Tom Van Dorn's mill! Turn—turn, turn you lout!" ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... to 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 ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... of a ransom. Why, look you, in the affair at Brignais some four years back, when the companies slew James of Bourbon, and put his army to the sword, there was scarce a man of ours who had not count, baron, or knight. Peter Karsdale, who was but a common country lout newly brought over, with the English fleas still hopping under his doublet, laid his great hands upon the Sieur Amaury de Chatonville, who owns half Picardy, and had five thousand crowns out of him, with his horse and harness. 'Tis true that a French wench took it all off Peter ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... anybody whom Georgiana Longestaffe had despised from her youth upwards it was George Whitstable. He had been a laughing-stock to her when they were children, had been regarded as a lout when he left school, and had been her common example of rural dullness since he had become a man. He certainly was neither beautiful nor bright;—but he was a Conservative squire born of Tory parents. Nor was he rich;—having but a moderate income, sufficient to maintain a moderate country house ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... 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. ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... 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
... 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 next couple ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... scarlet with excitement. "Well, sir, we naturally resent this, as we are proud of our horse service, and do not want some lout with interest to back him, foisted upon us. It would be degrading, but I tell you frankly that ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... Mr. Channing would have traded temperaments with the dullest lout that ever lost his head over ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... 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 carrying ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... let it begin, we'll have to go on with it to a finish," he answered coldly. "After all"—he paused, polished a platter and turned away to put it on its shelf—"he's not doing anything so dreadful—just twisting the facts a little. I am an ignorant lout. I might as well be fourteen, ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... 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 lacking ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... ill, and then I saw her every hour or so. Then Fred came back, and I saw he 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 said ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... next appeared to our 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 ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... especially, with a very choice and particular hatred. 'That prig,' as hereafter he always designated Roger—'he shall pay for it yet,' he said to himself by way of consolation, after the father and son had left him. 'What a lout it is!'—watching the receding figure. 'The old chap has twice as much spunk,' as the squire tugged at his bridle-reins. 'The old mare could make her way better without being led, my fine fellow. But I see through your dodge. You're afraid of your old father ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... 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 ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... the music. Suddenly she turned and looked squarely into his eyes, as if impelled by the magnetism they unconsciously employed. A little flush mounted to her brow as she quickly resumed her former attitude. Chase cursed himself for a brainless lout. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... of a lout like that being taken for the leader!" he exclaimed. "He is nothing but a tool, and a pretty ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... even more fully than I have ever known it myself until within the last few hours. They say that when a man is nearing his end he sees more clearly than at any other time of his life. For my part I now see for the first time that I have never been anything but a worthless lout from my cradle. I have never been fit to walk alone, and if health and strength were to come back to me I should not be one whit better than I have hitherto been. I don't know whether I ever told you that ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... gestures of the lovers, felt all the force of sympathy. It was to him like a kind of prophetic mirror, revealing to him the true meaning of all he had ever felt for Dennet Headley, and of his vexation and impatience at seeing her bestowed upon a dull and indifferent lout like her kinsman, who not only was not good enough for her, but did not even love her, or accept her as anything but his title to the Dragon court. He now thrilled and tingled from head to foot with the perception that all this meant love—love to Dennet; and in every act of the drama ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... and flirted through the window with a handsome but ill-tempered looking man on a fine horse, who praised her 'golden locks,' as he called them; and, oddly enough, when Melchior said the man was a lout, and that the locks in question were corkscrewy carrot shavings, she only seemed to like the man and his compliments the more. Meanwhile, the untidy brother pored over his book, or if he came to ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... '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 stay five ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... 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 rascal, who had to come up to the surface now and then to take breath, got the spike of a ski-pole ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... increased by the impossibility of resolving them. I had already begun to suspect that my friendship for Diana Vernon was not altogether so disinterested as in wisdom it ought to have been. I had already felt myself becoming jealous of the contemptible lout Thorncliff, and taking more notice, than in prudence or dignity of feeling I ought to have done, of his silly attempts to provoke me. And now I was scrutinising the conduct of Miss Vernon with the most close and eager observation, which I in vain endeavoured to palm on myself as the offspring ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott |
