"Oaf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pavilion, so far forgetting himself in his pleasure as to swing about his bat like a tennis-racket. What thunderous applause he received! It was his last term, and his last match. And I am glad that the final picture, which our memory preserves of White alive, shows us the sterling oaf departing after a glorious innings, surrounded by uproarious school-fellows, and smiling as only the righteous can. Grand old boy, may we meet ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... he doesn't know; and I don't care. (Violently.) Be off, you oaf. (Christy runs out. Richard adds, a little shamefacedly) ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... Brighton, should see the Prince Regent and the great fights on Hounslow Heath—whilst I was to remain forever a farmer's boy. That afternoon I was upstairs, looking at the reflection of myself in the tall glass, wondering miserably why I seemed to be such an oaf. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... deferentially dropped his opinion, that this proceeding was quite out of the common; while Nippers, twitching in his chair with a dyspeptic nervousness, ground out, between his set teeth, occasional hissing maledictions against the stubborn oaf behind the screen. And for his (Nippers's) part, this was the first and the last time he would do another man's ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... a sigh of relief. "Thank heaven! Isn't he maddening?" he exclaimed, reassembling his brushes. "Isn't he the most fatuous idiot that ever escaped from his native menagerie? Did you hear him commence to criticize my work? The oaf! I'm afraid—" glancing at her face—"that I swore at him, but he deserved it for butting in like that, and he couldn't understand what I said." His tone was ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... for some amiable exclamations, 'The oaf!' 'What a bore!' 'He has spoilt my sky!' 'I shan't finish this to-day!' 'Shall we order a carriage and take him to the office; we can't have him on our hands all the afternoon?' 'And we might get the ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Sit you down, oaf that you is!" Peggy Lacey commanded. "I'll read my letter an' open my packet an' return. Don't ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... to a dish of your own making, you shall have two served up to you by your humble servant Cecile Amelie Thirion!—Poor old Blondet! It is lucky for him that the President has taken this journey to turn us out, for now that great oaf of a Joseph Blondet will marry Mlle. Blandureau. I will let Father Blondet have some seeds in return.—As for you, Camusot, go to M. Michu's, while Mme. la Duchesse and I will go to find old Blondet. You must expect to hear it said all over the town ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... up her mind that he should be nothing to her,—nothing beyond a dear cousin; nevertheless, her eye had watched him during the whole hour of dinner, and, not knowing that it was so, she had waited for his coming to them in the evening. Heavens and earth! what an oaf was that young Thoresby as the two stood together near the door! She did not want her cousin to come and talk to her, but she listened and laughed within herself as she saw how pleased was her mother by the ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... this over-worked world, that stints itself to keep them in idleness, approves of the answer. "The flannelled fool," "The muddied oaf," is the pet of the people; their hero, ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... my lad. Besides, the old boy was beginning to annoy me. I couldn't take my eyes from my plate at meals without catching sight of that oaf...." ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... here in all the war. I was standin' right by my mistis' chair. I never heard old master make a oaf in his life, but when they brought the paper freein' the slaves, ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... well what set of ideas govern him. But that isn't the point. He has to reflect what others think of it, and to endeavour to do what will please them. There was I telling tarradiddles by the yard to that old oaf, Sir Orlando Drought, when a confidential word from Plantagenet would have had ten times more effect. And why can't he speak a word to the people's wives? They wouldn't bite him. He has got to say a few words to you sometimes,—to whom ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... She could not endure this; mamma never could have intended it! The Hartleys were different, of course. She was willing to acknowledge that she had been in the wrong about them; but this lout, this oaf, this villainous-looking churl,—to expect a lady to sit at the same table with him: it was too much! She would ask if she might not dine in her own room after this, as apparently it was only at dinner that this ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... ninnyhammer^; chowderhead^, chucklehead^; dolt, booby, Tom Noddy, looby^, hoddy-doddy^, noddy, nonny, noodle, nizy^, owl; goose, goosecap^; imbecile; gaby^; radoteur^, nincompoop, badaud^, zany; trifler, babbler; pretty fellow; natural, niais^. child, baby, infant, innocent, milksop, sop. oaf, lout, loon, lown^, dullard, doodle, calf, colt, buzzard, block, put, stick, stock, numps^, tony. bull head, dunderhead, addlehead^, blockhead, dullhead^, loggerhead, jolthead^, jolterhead^, beetlehead^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... one morning with that oaf of unlicked antiquity, Prideaux, and his great boy. He talked through all Italy, and everything in all Italy. Upon mentioning Stosch, Walpole asked if he had seen his collection. He replied, very few of his ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... the yard gate, and came through to them. Jim was the eldest son of the neighbouring farmer, whose girls were Louie's only companions. He was a full-blooded swaggering youth, with whom David was generally on bad terms. David despised him for an oaf who could neither read nor write, and hated ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bring the letter to the very house that was indicated, let the owner of the letter be where she might; and he laid down the law very satisfactorily with sundry long-worded quotations. Not to much effect, however, for the housemaid called him an oaf; and Robin would decidedly have had the worst of it had not the gardener come in and taken his part. "They women knows nothin', and understands nothin'," said the gardener. "Give us hold of the letter. I'll take it up to the ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... but presently to reign over the world. Sure there is no bound to the trustingness of women. Look at Arria worshipping the drunken clodpate of a husband who beats her; look at Cornelia treasuring as a jewel in her maternal heart the oaf her son; I have known a woman preach Jesuit's bark, and afterwards Dr. Berkeley's tar-water, as though to swallow them were a divine decree, and to refuse ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... oval room into which Ashley stumbled his way. The house was all sunshine and silence. He dropped into the nearest arm-chair. "It's a lie," he kept repeating to himself. "It's a lie. It's a damned, infernal lie. It's a put-up job between them—between the old scoundrel and that—that oaf." ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... passivity, the oaf advanced by inches, visibly. He looked knowingly about him, collecting approval from his followers, he whispered in her ear, hummed gallant airs, regaled the company with snatches of salt song. Fixed as the Sphinx and unfathomable, ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... hand, this very evening perhaps, and that I should never see him more except as the husband of a very rich girl, never be permitted even to speak to him save as an almost forgotten friend, and in passing! Even now perhaps he was on his way to her, whereas I, poor oaf that I was, was moiling here over some trucky work. Would my ship never come in? my great day never arrive? my turn? ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser |
