"Uncouth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these bones, from insult to protect, Some frail memorial still, erected nigh, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked, Implores the passing tribute ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... domesticating such a prize. It is a more open ravine than that at Shanklin, and like it cut out by a tiny stream, while far away through the entrance is a distant view westward to Portland Isle and St. Aldhelm's Head. The rocks are dark green, streaked with gray and brown sandstone, looking like uncouth courses of masonry. The adjoining coast is guarded by grim crags on which many ships have been shattered. There are other chines to the westward—all of great attractions, though of less size and celebrity. The coast is not of so much interest beyond, but the cliffs, which are ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... back yard. After heaping up more than a sufficient quantity, we returned to the sitting-room, drew our chairs close to the hearth, and began to talk over our prospects. Soon, with a tremendous stamping in the entry, appeared Silas Foster, lank, stalwart, uncouth, and grizzly-bearded. He came from foddering the cattle in the barn, and from the field, where he had been ploughing, until the depth of the snow rendered it impossible to draw a furrow. He greeted us in pretty ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... written on each forehead of the worshippers. Browning, the artist and student of art, was not insensible to the spiritual power of beauty; and beauty is conspicuously absent from the praise and prayer that went up from Mount Zion chapel; its forms of worship are burlesque and uncouth. Browning, the lover of knowledge, was not insensible to the value of intelligence in things of religion; and the congregation of Mount Zion sit on ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... very important part in the advancement of civilisation and the development of the resources of the world, a part which the more fiery horse could not have played; let us then bear with his heavy trailing gait and uncouth movements; only next time we will keep him tight, even though he starve for it. If bullocks be invariably driven sharply back to the dray, whenever they have strayed from it, they will soon learn not to go far off, and will be cured even of ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... eccentric bady, and there is a small tincture of a barbarous sart of wit in what he says; but it wants an immensity of correction, an infinitude of polishing; he is a mere son of nature, everything he says is express'd in such a Gathic, uncouth, Anti-Chesterfieldian style; and as for his dress, it is pasitively most prepasterously ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... easily be overcome by a small degree of practice and application [113]: however, for the further illustration of this matter, and the satisfaction of the curious, a fac simile of one of the recipes is represented in the annexed plate. If here and there a hard and uncouth term or expression may occur, so as to stop or embarrass the less expert, pains have been taken to explain them, either in the annotations under the text, or in the Index and Glossary, for we have given it both titles, as intending it should answer the purpose of ...
— The Forme of Cury • Samuel Pegge
... a year or more in Italy, and came home, as I have implied, in time for my wedding. He found his native city more uncouth and unkempt than ever. Such it was, absolutely; and such it was, relatively, after his years under a more careful and self-respecting regime. The population was still advancing by leaps and bounds, and hopeful spirits had formed a One-Million Club. A few ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... instantly reminded of certain experiences he himself had had in using a telegraph key while sending a message over the wires or listening to the sounder rattle off one from some distant point. Rude and uncouth though the dots and dashes were, Max quickly found that he could make out a positive word; and it was the significant one ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... the Chamber. He was answered by "Blunderbuss" Pepper, the new Senator who had turned every aristocrat out of office in his aristocratic Southern State and filled the vacancies with men of his own humble origin. He was a burly untidy- looking man, and frequently as uncouth in speech, a demagogue and excitable. But the Senate, now that three years in that body had toned him down, conceded his ability and took his abuse with the utmost good-nature. Betty recalled his biography as sketched by Senator Burleigh, and noted that almost every Senator ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... well as a considerable share in the actual administration, the Hungarian county-assemblies, handing down a spirit of rough independence from an immemorial past, were probably the hardiest relic of self-government existing in any of the great monarchical States of Europe. Ignorant, often uncouth in their habits, oppressive to their peasantry, and dominated by the spirit of race and caste, the mass of the Magyar nobility had indeed proved as impervious to the humanising influences of the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... his iron arm when he held her in a kind of frenzied gratitude. A wild upland rider, living only for a wild horse! How like Indians some of these riders! Yet this fellow had seemed different from most of the uncouth riders she had known. He spoke better. He appeared to have had some little schooling. Lucy did not realize that she was interested in him. She thought she was sorry for him and interested in the stallion. She ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... Gentleman we visited the other day. I think him handsome. Mr. Masenbird is an Englishman, and single, that has settled in this part of the World. I had heard he was a very uncouth creature, but he is quite ...
— Journal of a Young Lady of Virginia, 1782 • Lucinda Lee Orr
... before the dire prostratiou of this malady. A young lady will recline unwittingly in the arms of a perfect stranger, and the bride of three months, deserted by her husband, will offer no resistance to the uncouth seaman, who, in his kindness, would loosen the laces that ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... popularly of men so devoid of all principle and integrity, so strangely uncouth and assorted, as the Daniel O'Connells, the John M'Hales, and the Feargus O'Connors; of men so unlearned in all principle, political and economical—so wanting, moreover, in the presence of the higher order of moral sentiments, as the Cobdens, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... the most gold, but the first amounted to a sum that our young mate knew to be very considerable. Rose had made him acquainted with the sex of Jack Tier since their own marriage; and he at once saw that the claims to the gold in question, of this uncouth wife, who was so soon to be a widow, might prove to be as good in law, as they unquestionably were in morals. On representing the facts of the case to Capt. Mull and the legal functionaries at Key West, it was determined to relinquish this money to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the scene of the encounter. Kathleen's sole reply to the threat was a contemptuous shrug of her shoulders. "Come on, girls," she said so nonchalantly that the curious ones dropped disappointedly away. Not more than four minutes had elapsed from the time the uncouth stranger had appeared until he slunk off. Emma, Grace and Patience ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... though a prisoner, the eccentric general was treated with the greatest courtesy, and seems even to have received a card for the famous ball. But, never too careful of his personal appearance, he must on this occasion have looked particularly uncouth. Certainly the beautiful Miss Franks, one of the Philadelphia belles, thought him far from ornamental, and, with the keen wit for which she was celebrated, spread abroad a report that General Lee came to the ball clad in green breeches, patched with leather. To prove to ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... their parents as early as possible. When the family council finds an heiress who answers all the conditions of the programme laid out, they begin by giving the victim his cue. Provided the young lady has not a positively crooked nose, arms too red, and too uncouth a waist—sometimes even notwithstanding these little misfortunes—the transaction ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... son's life thus blighted, and having abandoned all hope of his recovery, nor caring to have the cause of his mortification ever before his eyes, bade him betake him to the farm, and there keep with his husbandmen. To Cimon the change was very welcome, because the manners and habits of the uncouth hinds were more to his taste than those of the citizens. So to the farm Cimon hied him, and addressed himself to the work thereof; and being thus employed, he chanced one afternoon as he passed, staff on shoulder, from one domain to another, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the voice and action of the orator; but, in the reports which are read the next day by hundreds of thousands, the difference between the noblest and the meanest figure, between the richest and the shrillest tones, between the most graceful and the most uncouth gesture, altogether vanishes. A hundred years ago, scarcely any report of what passed within the walls of the House of Commons was suffered to get abroad. In those times, therefore, the impression which a speaker might make on the persons who actually heard him ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... them behind her. "Aunt Raby is a good woman," continued Priscilla; "she is brave, she is a heroine. Although she is just a commonplace old woman, no one has ever led a grander life in its way. She wears poor clothes— oh, the poorest; she has an uncouth appearance, worse even than I have, but I am quite sure that God— God respects her— God thinks her worthy. When my father and mother died (I was fourteen when my dear mother died) Aunt Raby came and took ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... nature is but a poor and imperfect business", unless it proceeds into action. As justice consists in no abstract theory, but in upholding society among men,—as "greatness of soul itself, if it be isolated from the duties of social life, is but a kind of uncouth churlishness",—so it is each citizen's duty to leave his philosophic seclusion of a cloister, and take his place in public life, if the times demand it, "though he be able to number the stars and measure ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... head-dress nought but a 'crantz,' or wreath of roses, encircling their bare hair, as laurel Caesar's; and though of the worshipful, scorned, yet is braver, I wist, to your eye and mine which painters be, though sorry ones, than the gorgeous, uncouth, mechanical head-gear of the time, and adorns, not hides her hair, that goodly ornament fitted to her head by craft divine. So the good lasses, being questioned close, did let me know, the rosebuds are cut in summer and laid then in great clay-pots, thus ordered:—first bay salt, then ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... coterie which we aspire to imitate. The only difference is that remote and unsophisticated communities are more constant to a style they once adopt. There are isolated peasant communities in Europe who have kept for centuries the most uncouth and inconvenient attire, while we have run through a dozen variations in the art of attraction by dress, from the most puffed and bulbous ballooning to the extreme of limpness and lankness. I can only conclude that the civilized human being is a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... before the hour of his departure, Mrs. Evremonde summoned him to her, and showed him a slip of paper, on which was written, in an uncouth ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mature: the contour of the face sharpened from the roundness of boyhood, and losing its bloom without yet acquiring that relief and shadow which make the expression and dignity of the masculine countenance. Thus accoutred, thus gaunt, and uncouth, stood Morton. Arthur Beaufort, always refined in his appearance, seemed yet more so from the almost feminine delicacy which ill-health threw over his pale complexion and graceful figure; that sort of unconscious elegance which belongs ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... order to take toll from those who wished to lay up for themselves treasures in the Western Heaven. The first passer-by who took any notice of her was an amiable maniac. His dress was made of coloured shreds and patches, and his general appearance was wild and uncouth. "Whither away, nun?" he asked. She explained that she was collecting subscriptions for the casting of a great image of Buddha, and had come all the way from Shantung. "Throughout my life," remarked the madman, "I was ever a generous giver." So, taking the nun's subscription-book, he headed ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... he shewed a very acute penetration. My wife paid him the most assiduous and respectful attention, while he was our guest; so that I wonder how he discovered her wishing for his departure. The truth is, that his irregular hours and uncouth habits, such as turning the candles with their heads downwards, when they did not burn bright enough, and letting the wax drop upon the carpet, could not but be disagreeable to a lady. Besides, she had not that high admiration of him which ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... of Mr. Sheridan's life we are indebted for most of those elegant love-verses, which are so well known and so often quoted. The lines "Uncouth is this moss-covered grotto of stone," were addressed to Miss Linley, after having offended her by one of those lectures upon decorum of conduct, which jealous lovers so frequently inflict upon their mistresses,—and the grotto, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... He was a gift of Heaven. At any other epoch he would have been as great, perhaps greater. What he received from his surroundings and from the "civilization" with which he was blessed, he has handed down to us in the uncouth form, the intricacy of plot and adventures, which would have rendered barbarous a poet less naturally gifted. And, although the question has never been definitely settled, it is probable that he was born and lived a Catholic; and it is strange how Elizabeth, who, tradition tells us, was present ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... of a somewhat soft and ugly-coloured jade is sent from Yarkand, also agates and carnelian; beads of these are strung into rather uncouth necklets, which may be bought for half the sum ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... at Newport, but is altogether on a grander scale, and shows a more poetic union of shore and sea; besides, it offers the curious and fascinating spectacles of the rocks inhabited by the sea-lions, and the Cypress Point. These huge, uncouth creatures can be seen elsewhere, but probably nowhere else on this coast are they massed in greater numbers. The trees of Cypress Point are unique, this species of cypress having been found nowhere ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... would not the men find us better and more suitable companions and assistants to them in every useful purpose of life?—O that your lordly sex were all like my dear Mr. B.—I don't mean that they should all take raw, uncouth, unbred, lowly girls, as I was, from the cottage, and, destroying all distinction, make such their wives; for there is a far greater likelihood, that such a one, when she comes to be lifted up into so dazzling a ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... human feeling and unexaggerated friendship; they were always restless for the something deeper. Ordinary folk seemed shallow to them, trivial and inconsiderable. And so they were unaccustomed, painfully uncouth in the simplest social intercourse, suffering, and yet insolent in their superiority. Then beneath was the yearning for the soul-intimacy to which they could not attain because they were too dumb, and every ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... which the mantle of mystery and romance could seem to hang more ungracefully than upon that of the uncouth and clownish Schalken—the Dutch boor—the rude and dogged, but most cunning worker in oils, whose pieces delight the initiated of the present day almost as much as his manners disgusted the refined of his own; and yet this man, so rude, so dogged, so slovenly, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... NOTE. The original title, Mester-Pijl-droegster Herdal, would sound a trifle too uncouth to the Philistine ear, and is therefore modified as above, although the term "droegster," strictly speaking, denotes a practitioner who has not received a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 11, 1893 • Various
... this appreciation and this critical discrimination myself. I believe that what I have written and may still write about pictures will give them pain, and I am honestly sorry for it. I even promised that I would hide my uncouth sentiments in my own breast. But alas! I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... adds that the real proletarian is "uncultured and uncouth in appearance," that he has "no manners and little education," and that his religion is "the religion of hate." Of course this is a mere caricature of the attitude of the ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... been so solitary, and had taken more care of himself in his way of living than he did, he would have made known the greatness of his intellect in such a way that he would have been revered, whereas, by reason of his uncouth ways, he was rather held to be a madman, although in the end he did no harm save to himself alone, while his works were beneficial and useful to his art. For which reason every good intellect and every excellent craftsman should always be taught, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... What in the name of goodness are you doing here? I hardly recognized you." Marsh's voice was round and musical, his accent Eastern. With an assumption of heartiness, he extended a white-gloved hand, which the big, uncouth man who faced him refused to take. The other three had risen. George seemed to be groping for a retort. Finally he blurted ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... furniture began to arrive, and this was another surprise for the Close, where houses were not adorned with the designs of any one period, but were filled with a heterogeneous collection of articles, generally aged and remarkably uncouth. Everything in the Tenor's long low room, on the contrary, even down to the shape of the brass coal scuttle and including the case of the grand piano, was in harmony with the colour and design of the frescoes on the walls and ceiling; ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... to the Professor's teaching and example, Lucy," replied her lover. "He was an uncouth lad, I understand, when your step-father took him into the house six years ago. Now he is quite presentable. I shouldn't wonder if he ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... power. And while for the first years he had drifted, he was always aware of his power. Knew that he had only to rise to assume gigantic stature. And then, just because he was very stiff, and the pain of stiffness and stretching made him uncouth, he grew angry. He resented his captivity, chafed at his being limited like that, did not understand how it had come about. It had come about through love, through sheer sheltering love. She had placed a crystal ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... no intermission in the work. It is true that in the trench they were in some measure protected from the storm. The lashings had been fixed on the brickwork under his careful superintendence; the men were on the point of hauling on the ropes, when a thing of monstrous size and uncouth shape glided silently into the opening of the trench, and ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... with character. On every page there is set the strong stamp of sincerity, and the attraction of a certain artlessness; the most awkward sentence rings true; and there is often a pure and simple note that touches us more than if it were the perfection of elaborated melody. The uncouth procession of the periods discloses the travail of the thought, and that too is a kind of eloquence. An honest reader easily forgives the rude jolt or unexpected start, when it shows a thinker faithfully ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... uncouth demeanour, and fault of stuttering, Peter was a man of unswerving principles and of the most extraordinary good sense. Somehow—by small borrowings, sundry strokes of business, petitions for grace, and promises to repay—he contrived to carry ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... mimic. But his mocking habits almost annihilate his value as a songster,—as the effect of a good concert would be spoiled, if the players were constantly introducing, in the midst of their serious performances, snatches of ridiculous tunes and uncouth sounds. I have never heard the Nightingale; but if I may judge from descriptions of its song, and from the notes of those Canaries which are said to give us perfect imitations of it, we have no bird in America that equals this classical songster. The following description, by Pliny, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... stairway. Beyond the twentieth century portieres of a thirteenth century doorway lay the goal we sought. I hesitated briefly before drawing them apart and taking the final plunge. As a matter of fact, I was beginning to feel ashamed of myself. Suppose that she really had a headache! What an uncouth, pusillanimous brute I— ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... at Penelope in awe. She was no longer the little girl whom I had met by the mountain stream. I was still an uncouth boy, with face smudged with the dust of the fields and hands blackened in play. Yet she did not see the wide gulf which separated us, and, forgetting the hat, the frock, the chaff that clung to my matted hair and the grime of my shirt, she ran to me, threw her arms about my neck and cried: "Davy—Davy—I ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... This uncouth vestment, which was used only by men of the lowest order, or by others solely when engaged in long and toilsome journeys, or in cold wintry weather, was composed of a thick loose-napped frieze or serge, of a dark purplish brown, with loops and fibulae, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... therefore he follows the old corrector in substituting "unsane lunes." Now it strikes me that there is quite as much tautology in "unsane lunes" as in the double epithet, "dangerous, unsafe." It is, in fact, equivalent to "insane madness;" and, moreover, drags in quite needlessly a very unusual and uncouth word. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... loss for words. A great pity and resentment swelled up in my heart. I still hoped that there might be a mistake somewhere. I shrank from picturing this young and beautiful girl as the wife of old Griffith Hawke, sharing with him the uncouth and half-barbarous life of a wilderness trading post. It ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... appreciation of his genius, whereas her mind was too limited to comprehend it. She was in love with the possibility of being a queen upon such easy terms, delighted to find that the necessary husband was no uncouth tyrant but a man of winsome personality whose delicate assiduities were ever present and yet never over ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... woman he had sought so long, whose face he had not found in the cities and dwellings of the living, neither her grave in the silent communities of the dead. There, before the uncouth monument of dark red marble beneath which Tycho Brahe rests in peace, there she stood; not as he had seen her last on that day when his senses had left him in the delirium of his sickness, not in the freshness ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... universally respected and admired. A resident contemporary writes: "He was certainly a Reformer, but not a violent one. His most conspicuous services to the College were, in my opinion, these: (1) Sage guidance of the turbulent and uncouth democracy of which a College Governing body consists. (2) A steady aim at the highest in education, being careful to secure the position of literary education from the encroachments of science and mathematics. (3) Affectionate stimulus to all undergraduates ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... filled pipes and smoked in contemplation; children warmed themselves as near the tiny fires as they dared. Out of the dense blackness of the forest from time to time staggered what at first looked to be an uncouth and misshapen monster, but which presently resolved itself into an Indian leaning under a burden of spruce-boughs, so smoothly laid along the haft of a long forked stick that the bearer of the burden could sling it across his shoulder like a bale ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... execution of these scenes are singularly rude; men and beasts—indeed, all the figures—have exaggerated proportions, uncouth forms, awkward positions, and an uncertain and heavy gait. The war ended in a treaty concluded with Enakalli, vicegerent of Grishban, by which Lagash obtained considerable advantages. Idingiranagin replaced the stele of Meshilim, overthrown by one of Enakalli's predecessors, and dug a ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... I think; including the matrix, it had about the size and shape of the palm of the hand. He cautioned us not to drop it. When it had reached about the middle of the audience a crash was heard. The precious thing had been dropped by a new and somewhat uncouth assistant whom we will call Dr. X. He hastily gathered up the pieces and rushed out of the room. For a few seconds Agassiz stood as if himself petrified; then, without even an 'Excuse me,' he vanished by the same door. Presently he returned, flushed, gazing ruefully at the fragments ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... inexorable logic. Rene Descartes, who was born at La Haye, near Tours, in 1596, and died at Stockholm in 1650, escaped the influence of Richelieu by the isolation to which he condemned himself, as well as by the proud and somewhat uncouth independence of his character. Engaging as a volunteer, at one and twenty, in the Dutch army, he marched over Germany in the service of several princes, returned to France, where he sold his property, travelled through the whole ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... none with her opine, and, in the lack Of a companion, singly must she fare, So then, alone and friendless, she a track Uncouth pursues, and through a wooded lair. Gryphon the white and Aquilant the black Take road more beaten with the other pair; And on the following day a castle see, Within which they are ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... after all, the true ones. "The Old Red Sandstone" formed an era in the history of fossil geology. That formation had hitherto been regarded as well nigh barren of organic remains; but Mr. Miller demonstrated that it contains at least three successive stages, each characterized by a suite of uncouth and hitherto unknown fishes. A few years later he published his "Footprints of the Creator." This is undoubtedly his chef-d'oeuvre, exhibiting, as it does, the full powers of his massive intellect and his poetic ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... crowds the uncouth forms advance: Each would outstrip the other, each prevent Our careful search, and offer to your gaze, 80 Unask'd, his motley features. Wait awhile, My curious friends! and let us first arrange In proper order your ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... diseased thoughts and harmonizing them, Nurse would become once more composed; the phantom danger was again put off, and the violinist would presently fall into silence,—sometimes into sleep. But still, while he slept, the witch-eye watched him; though with an expression of yearning, uncouth intensity which seldom ventured forth while ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... sums it up. I doubt if I've ever seen an uncouther kid than this Glossop. Ask anyone who knew him in those days to describe him in a word, and the word they will use is 'uncouth'. And he's just the same today. It's the old story. The boy is the father ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... hospitable, unsuspicious. Their board, though simple and uncouth, was wholesome and plenteous. Their residence was sequestered and obscure, and not obnoxious to impertinent inquiries and malignant animadversion. Their frank and ingenuous temper would make them easy of persuasion, and their sympathies ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... cast upon his son the imputation of robbing him. Violent scenes ensued between the two—they quarrelled and wrangled from morning till night; and at length, upon Simon's refusing his assent to the marriage of his hulking boy with a very honest, but at the same time somewhat uncouth and very poor girl—went ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... in his uncouth native language, until his new shipmates feared his jaws would split asunder. They furnished him with garments, entertained him hospitably, and on the following day landed him on the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... foam, white as the bitten lip of hate, When, in the solitary waste, strange groups Of young volcanos come up, cyclops-like, Staring together with their eyes on flame— God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod: But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between The withered tree-roots ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... everything. He is said to have known one Henry Needler, a pupil of Purcell, and also Gostling, the son of the singer of the same name for whom Purcell wrote; but neither acquaintance seems to have profited him aught. His anecdotes are the product of inborn wickedness and an uncouth, boorish imagination. When we have cleared away his garbage, there remains only a skeleton life, but at any rate we have the satisfaction of knowing that ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... Baltic coast and at the mouth of the Elbe, there appeared before the gates of Luneburg, and later on at Hamburg, Lubeck, Wirmar, Rostock, and Stralsuna, a herd of swarthy and strange specimens of humanity, uncouth in form, hideous in complexion, and their whole exterior shadowed forth the lowest depths of poverty and degradation. A cloak made of the fragments of oriental finery was generally used to disguise the filth and tattered garments of their slight remaining apparel. The women and young ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... short sixth chapter of his eleventh book is the real keynote of Blackstone and De Lolme. It led them to investigate, on principles of at least doubtful validity, an edifice never before described in detail. It is, when the last criticism has been made, an immense step forward from the uncouth antiquarianism of Coke's Second Institute to the neatly reticulated structure erected upon the foundations of Montesquieu's hint. That it was wrong was less important than that the attempt should have been made. ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... twinkling of an eye (both these sights, when once they come, being in the same organ and inseparable), or they strike them dumb. The tramontanes to this day place bread, the Bible, or a piece of iron, to save their women at such times from being thus stolen, and they commonly report that all uncouth, unknown wights are terrified by nothing earthly so much as cold iron. They deliver the reason to be that hell lying betwixt the chill tempests and the firebrands of scalding metals, and iron of the north (hence the loadstone causes a tendency to that point), by an antipathy thereto, these odious, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... came, and knocked at my thin door. I from my window looked: the thing I saw, The shape uncouth, I had not seen before. I was disturbed—with fear, in sooth, not awe; Whereof ashamed, I instantly did rouse My will to seek thee—only to fear the more: Alas! I could not find thee ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... "what an advantage it'll be to ye. Richard'll inherit the hull of our property some day. He will be a gentleman, an' the son of a gentleman, too—of a good old fambly. It'll be a very gratifyin' thing, too, fer ye to know that Richard's father was a Councillor of Glendow. So now, dear, give up that uncouth Frenelle boy, an' take on with our ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... this meenit, Jock Gordon, ye gomeral!" cried Meg, shaking her fist at the uncouth shape twisting and singing against the sunset ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... has to serve and wait ere he can awaken love in her who is to him the one woman in the world. Many a woman has to wait and wonder and face distress. Then, too, till the stage of mutual acknowledgment is reached love makes men and women awkward. They do uncouth, crude, and clumsy things. They get into muddles. They make mistakes. It would seem that some delicate process of mutual adjustment is often necessary before two souls can really find each other, and while the stumbling preliminary days last, love is often ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... Though inartistic and uncouth, That effort of a novice hand Exemplifies a striking truth, And may Time's ravages withstand, To be by future ages read, When years and centuries ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... chiselled. I cannot, however, declare them less interesting on that account. The work of the Tokkaido sculptor copies the conventional artistic notion of light grace and ghostliness. The rustic foxes of Izumo have no grace: they are uncouth; but they betray in countless queer ways the personal fancies of their makers. They are of many moods—whimsical, apathetic, inquisitive, saturnine, jocose, ironical; they watch and snooze and squint and wink and ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... The gross, jaded, uncouth present has slipped from me as a garment might, and I see the past like a little show, struggles and heartbreakings of long ago, and watch it with the same indifferent curiosity as I would the regulated mimicry of a stage play. Pictures from the past come and go without ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... sentences is a curious framework with pegs and hooks to hang his thoughts upon, for his own use and guidance, but almost out of the reach of every body else. It is a barbarous philosophical jargon, with all the repetitions, parentheses, formalities, uncouth nomenclature and verbiage of law-Latin; and what makes it worse, it is not mere verbiage, but has a great deal of acuteness and meaning in it, which you would be glad to pick out if you could. In short, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... he paused to look down into the vast chamber below. At some point among its chandeliers burned a small pinhole of light that revealed in a strange dimness various forms of furniture, showing monstrous and uncouth in their night attire. Night-gowns rather than pajamas seemed the general wear; only a few legs were to be seen. In this, its sleeping aspect, the place was certainly more harmonious and more chaste than by day; mirrors and pictures loomed from the white walls with a mystery that would disappear ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... together have been Inquisitive into the State of that Land in which I was Captivated; whose Curiosity I indeavour to satisfie. But my Relations and Accounts of Things in those Parts were so strange and uncouth, and so different from those in these Western Nations, and withal my Discourses seeming so Delightful and Acceptable unto them, they very frequently called upon me to write what I knew of that Island of Ceilon, and to digest ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... with more art than truth. Sheen, i.e. smiling, shining. That sheen signifies shining, is easily proved, but when or where did it signify smiling? yet smiling gives the sense necessary in this place. Sir T. Banner's change is less uncouth, but too remote from the present text. For my part, I question whether the original line is not lost, and this substituted merely to fill up the measures and the rhyme. Yet even out of this line, by ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... at seeing the doctor pull out his note-book and write in it. The doctor, to indulge them, made a few clear strokes; and a young man, who had attached himself to Jerry and me, imitated them in a wonderful way, considering his rough and uncouth hand. We had heard them making a number of strange sounds, and at last we discovered that ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... thy test; "Still, it should be our very best. "I thought it best that thou, the spirit, "Be worshipped in spirit and in truth, "And in beauty, as even we require it— "Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth, "I left but now, as scarcely fitted "For thee: I knew not what I pitied. "But, all I felt there, right or wrong, "What is it to thee, who curest sinning? "Am I not weak as thou art strong? "I have looked to thee from the beginning, "Straight up to thee through all the world "Which, ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... he would willingly have given her the most gorgeous ring in the shop, was delighted to find that her taste was so good, and like herself. He had great ideas about taste, some of his secret fears had been lest her strange uncouth upbringing should have caused her to like gaudy things. He could have hugged her before them all when she chose that particular ring, which he had himself noticed as ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... she had unfortunately conceived for Mr. Falkland, would listen with reluctance to any matrimonial proposal. Grimes he selected as being in all respects the diametrical reverse of Mr. Falkland. He was not precisely a lad of vicious propensities, but in an inconceivable degree boorish and uncouth. His complexion was scarcely human; his features were coarse, and strangely discordant and disjointed from each other. His lips were thick, and the tone of his voice broad and unmodulated. His legs were of equal size from one end to the other, and his feet misshapen ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... all the dinners for a French hotel, and no window is ever opened. Among our fellow-travelers there was here and there a west- country Missouri farmer going down, under the protection of the advancing army, to look after the remains of his chattels—wild, dark, uncouth, savage-looking men. One such hero I specially remember, as to whom the only natural remark would be that one would not like to meet him alone on a dark night. He was burly and big, unwashed and rough, with a black ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... what greediness are the miraculous accounts of travellers received, their descriptions of sea and land monsters, their relations of wonderful adventures, strange men, and uncouth manners!"—Hume's Essay on Miracles, p. 179, 12mo; p. 185, 8vo, ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... half-breed clerk to the Swan River every winter. But this man had lately died, and now the trade threatened to lapse for the lack of an interpreter. None of the Kakisas could speak English, and there was no company employee who could speak their uncouth tongue except Gordon Strange the bookkeeper, who could not ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... a girl at our house who's called Ruth: She is fond of an unpleasant truth; She says she is seeking To practise plain speaking, But we think she is merely uncouth." ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... life here I looked upon as only an incident. The gay tawdry had faded; I realized how much more enduring were the rough, uncouth but genuine products like my friend Mr. Jenks and those of that ilk, who spoke me well instead of merely fair. Health of mind and body ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... epitaphs are to be found scattered up and down our country churchyards—'uncouth rhymes,' as Gray calls them, yet full of the sombre philosophy of life. They are fast becoming illegible, worn out by the rain that raineth every day, and our prim, present-day parsons do not look with favour upon them, besides which—to use a clumsy phrase—besides ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... depends much on the physical conditions by which he is surrounded. We have only to instance a mountain and valley population. The former is isolated and out of the way, and the people simple, uncouth, and uncultivated—contented, it is true, but, nevertheless, enjoying but little of the abundance and variety in which people of culture luxuriate. The valley population have a city, villages, rich lands, trade, and commerce; ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... far, Marianne: remember I have no knowledge in the picturesque, and I shall offend you by my ignorance and want of taste if we come to particulars. I shall call hills steep, which ought to be bold; surfaces strange and uncouth, which ought to be irregular and rugged; and distant objects out of sight, which ought only to be indistinct through the soft medium of a hazy atmosphere. You must be satisfied with such admiration as I can honestly give. I call it a very fine country,—the hills are steep, the woods seem ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth; Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be, Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea, Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... consciousness that he was being steered by a knowing hand, he sped onwards at a terrific pace. While in mid career, one of the mounted police espied the captain coming along the road at a distance; recognizing the horse, but not knowing the rider, and noticing also the portmanteau, and the uncouth equipment, this rural guardian of the peace came to the conclusion that this was a case of robbery and horse stealing; and as the captain neared him, he endeavoured to stop him, and stretched forth his hand to seize the improvised bridle, but the ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... the drinking-horn, pleasantly brimming with wine and mead." "Horn in hand,—what then?" "Bravely carouse until drunkenness overwhelm you—all to the honour of the gods, that they may bless the marriage!" The rough warriors break into laughter, and in uncouth jollity stamp with their feet and spear-butts. "Great good fortune is indeed abroad on the Rhine when Hagen the grim grows jovial!" Not the faintest smile illumines the bleak face. At sight of Gunther's ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... Names of our People do in a manner import somewhat, which from a peculiar Note at first of some of the Progenitors, in process of time inverted itself in a possession of the Posterity, even as wee see the like often befall to those whose Fathers bare some uncouth Christian Names. Yet for the most part we avoid the blemish given to the Romanes in like Cases, who distinguished their People by the Imperfections of their Bodies; from whence grew their Nasones, Labeones, Frontones, ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... again as she thought of her eldest daughter,—Mattie was thirty; and her mother felt she would never marry. It was not that she was so absolutely plain,—people who liked her said Mattie had a nice face,—but she was so abrupt, so uncouth in her awkwardness, such a stranger to the minor morals of life, that it would be a wonder indeed if she could find favor in any ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... joyless toils in early youth endured, The expanding dawn of mental day obscured, Each genial passion of the soul oppress'd, And quench'd the ardour kindling in his breast. Then censure not severe the native song, Though jarring sounds the measured verse prolong, Though terms uncouth offend the softer ear, Yet truth and human anguish deign to hear: 80 No laurel wreath these lays attempt to claim, Nor sculptured brass to tell the poet's name. And, lo! the power that wakes the eventful song Hastes hither from Lethean banks along: ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... through Grizzly Canon, by this time clothed in funereal drapery and shadows. The redwoods, burying their moccasined feet in the red soil, stood in Indian file along the track, trailing an uncouth benediction from their bending boughs upon the passing bier. A hare, surprised into helpless inactivity, sat upright and pulsating in the ferns by the roadside as the cortege went by. Squirrels hastened to gain a secure ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... anticipated. If it had not been for her music she would never have pulled through with the boys of Wissan Bridge. By her music she tamed them. The young Marsyas himself never piped to a wilder set of creatures than the uncouth lads and young men that sat in wide-eyed, wide-mouthed astonishment listening to the first song their pretty young schoolmistress sang for them. To have singing exercises part of the regular school routine was a new thing at Wissan Bridge. It took like ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... however; for the main object of these remarks is to convey and impress the idea, that what naturally seems to us the strange and uncouth spelling of former times, was not a proof of the gross, untaught ignorance which it would now indicate. The purpose of the writer in those days was, not to spell accurately words which there was no strict rule for spelling, but to note down words ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... features are far from being disagreeable; some females I observed among them whose expression of countenance was extremely prepossessing, and who would pass for "bonnie lasses" even among the whites, if divested of their filth and uncouth dress, and rigged out in European habiliments. The women fasten their hair in a knot on the crown of the head, and anoint it with rancid oil in lieu of pomatum; they also tattoo their faces, with the view, no doubt, of enhancing their charms in the estimation of their blubber-eating lovers. ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... score of horses ready to start.... There is no public education. The colleges—sumptuous buildings—palaces to be compared to the Tuileries, are occupied by rich idlers, who sleep and get drunk one part of the day, and the rest they spend in training, clumsily enough, a parcel of uncouth lads to be clergymen.... In the fine places that have been built for public amusements, you could hear a mouse run. A hundred stiff and silent women walk round and round an orchestra that is set up ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... might come when she could enjoy him—as a reminiscence. Mrs. Dyer was kindly, and not more of a gossip than her neighbors; and there were no children,—only one grandchild, the inoffensive Nicky. The ways of the house were somewhat uncouth, but everything was clean and in a certain sense homelike. To Miss Newell's homesick sensitiveness it seemed better than being stared at across the boarding-house table by Boker and Pratt, and pitied by the engineer. She had a little ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... [Greek: barbaros], the name among the early Greeks for all foreigners. The word is probably onomatopoetic, designed to represent the uncouth babbling of which languages other than their own appeared to the Greeks to consist. Even the Romans were included in the term. The word soon assumed an evil meaning, becoming associated with the vices and savage natures of which they believed their enemies to be ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... attempting to be at all familiar. A mutual atmosphere of suspicion, in fact, seemed to pervade our quarters, making things already uncomfortable enough, still more so. Now, however, they fraternized with us, and in a variety of uncouth ways made havoc of the English tongue, as they tried to impress us with the beauty, fertility and general incomparability of their beloved Cape Verds. Of the eleven white men besides myself in the forecastle, there were ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... two centuries ago, o'ergrown With brush and ivy, all undoored, ungated; And in restoring it we found a stone Set here and there in the dilapidated And crumbling frieze, inscribed, in antiquated Big characters, with certain uncouth names, Which we conclude were borne of old by awful Rapscallions guilty of all sinful games— Vagrants engaged in purposes unlawful, And orators less sensible than jawful. So each ten years we add to the long row A name, the ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... for them, and they rewarded him—not indeed with toys or money, but with their countenance, their company, their praise. And scarcely was there a sermon preached from the patrician part of the bench, in which the dean did not fashion some periods, blot out some uncouth phrases, render some obscure sentiments intelligible, and was the certain person, when the work was printed, ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... his suite in the Auditorium Annex, Partridge and Granby, next to him the most important members of my combine, since they were the only ones who had interests that extended into many states. It was after an uneasy silence that Granby, the uncouth one ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... due caution being taken that I should not escape. As a matter of fact I held up the would-be passengers for nearly a minute by my unaided attempts to boost my uncouth baggage aboard. Then my captors and I blundered heavily into a compartment in which an Englishman and two French women were seated. My gendarmes established themselves on either side of the door, a process which woke ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... operated upon life with their full force. He might therefore have displayed a series of subordination and a form of government, which, in more luminous and improved regions, have been long forgotten, and have delighted his readers with many uncouth customs that are now disused, and wild opinions that prevail no longer. But he probably had not knowledge of the world sufficient to qualify him for judging what would deserve or gain the attention of mankind. The mode of life which was familiar to himself, he ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... of this fellow, and his wild, uncouth appearance, had often filled the girl with a vague apprehension even when other people were by, and had occasioned her to shrink from him involuntarily. The having him for an unbidden companion in so solitary a place, with the darkness fast gathering ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... church is in that unhappy condition which bespeaks the churchwarden's period—whitewash plastered over everything, obliterating lights and shades and rare carvings beneath a glare of uncouth cleanliness. In their desire to remove every object that could harbour dust or obstruct the besom of reform, they have bodily removed from the church many rich monuments and interesting effigies, and these are to be seen huddled away in an obscure corner ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... resting-place of the dead. Arrived there, the two coffins were at once deposited in their respective graves, when the new captain, standing between the two holes, somewhat hurriedly completed the ritual—for the light was fading fast; whereupon, after bestowing a final parting glance at the rough, uncouth box which concealed our beloved chief's body, we all turned slowly and reluctantly away to retrace our steps back to the apology for a camp which was to shelter us for the night, leaving a fresh party of workers to ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... that might almost be a tower rising above the rest of the building. Then there were documents that seemed all names and dates, with here and there a coat of arms done in the margin, and she came upon a string of uncouth Welsh names linked together by the word 'ap' in a chain that looked endless. There was a paper covered with signs and figures that meant nothing to her, and then there were the pocket-books, full of old-fashioned writing, and much of it in Latin, as her husband told her—it was ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... helpful. Ralph could not help feeling grateful to her, the more so, perhaps, because he had not told her the truth about his state; and when they reached the gate again he wished to make some affectionate objection to her leaving him. But his affection took the rather uncouth form of expostulating ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Portuguese, sir, from Fayal," said the woman, prolonging with sweet intonation the soft name of her birthplace. "This is my capote, she added, taking up with pride the uncouth costume, while the children gathered round, as if its vast folds ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... this crazy hut a thin thread of smoke would now and then rise into the air, for there were folk living far up in that empty, airy desert, and oftentimes wild, uncouth little children were seen playing on the edge of the dizzy height, or sitting with their bare legs hanging down over the sheer depths, as they gazed below at what was going on in the court-yard. There they sat, just as little children in the town might sit upon their ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle |
